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Archive for November, 2015

Time to eat down the pantry

November 18th, 2015 at 09:20 pm

My cupboards are bursting at the seams with weird odds and ends. I opened one today, and a box of crackers fell on my head, so that can only mean one thing: Time to eat down the pantry.

So... I'm going to focus on buying only milk and fresh fruits/veggies at the store this week. It'll help clear some room ahead of Thanksgiving. We are hosting at our house again this year, and having two houseguests staying with us for the week.

It should be a challenge to see what we can come up with for dinner this week!

My 7 year old is crazy....and it's driving me crazy

November 3rd, 2015 at 03:00 pm

Parent teacher conferences are today.

Report cards just came home, and I was shocked to see that my oldest son's behavior marks were abysmal. Apparently, he's yelling things out in class, using crass language, and being overall disruptive and strange. This is totally out of character for him at school. His last two years at this school, he's been great. He's been the 'good' kid.

I don't know if he's just going through a phase, or if it's developmental. (He's in second grade and will be 8 in April), but he's also been pretty terrible at home these last few months. Bullying his brother (who is 6) by saying mean things to him in order to manipulate him. He's disrespectful and talking back to us. He complains NON-STOP. I mean, the kid never shuts up, and all of it is whining.

I have tried to give him space when he gets home, and freedom, because the belief was as long as he was doing what needed to be done at school, and was meeting all of his obligations and doing well, I would give him a little more slack to let off steam at home. Now I find out He's NOT doing what he's supposed to at school, and well, now I have to figure out what to do with him.

He didn't used to be like this. I'm trying to figure out what to do and what changed. But as you know, nothing in parenting is ever clear.

I did notice that he suddenly has no social skills. I guess as relationships have gotten more complicated (sharing is no longer enough), he's being left behind. At school fun night, he sat alone under a table instead of running around and playing with other kids. It was only at the end where he ran around with some friends. Then, we took him to a cub scout meeting and instead of talking with the kids he knows, he was alone. He also would scream, then fall on the ground and roll around whenever something exciting happened. All the other kids looked at him like he was crazy. Not an appropriate reaction. I asked him about it later, and he said he didn't know why he did it, just that he was excited.

He has friends, but still. Ugh. Why is my kid so weird??? Wink

Anyway, there are a few financial bits in this, too. I swear.


$1200 more off the mortgage balance
- Dh took the kids to see his parents in Vermont. They had originally said they would pay for the plane tickets, but we ended up paying for them out of pocket. DH came home with a check from his parents for $1200 for the tickets. We'd already paid the bill, so we put it to the mortgage. It was nice to knock another $1200 off the balance.

Inch-worming to the IRA goal
-I got a check for $912 in freelance and I put all of that into the IRA for the year. At first, I was excited to see I'm over $4000 for the year, then I realized I STILL have to come up with $1200 to fully fund for the year. Gah!