What I'm Reading/Busy Griping

yes, that's a Hello Kitty silly bandz

Don't you love when people gripe about how busy they are and then chronicle it all for you? Good! Because here ya go, people. So, yeah, I'm doing a post called What I'm Reading because I needed to fill this space because I'm getting my butt kicked this week with:

1. Aron in Wyoming part of the time (yee haw!)
2. Cub Scout Blue and Gold shopping and planning and plotting
3. A homeschool Pinewood Derby on Saturday
4. Trip to the dentist for Callie
5. Ash Wednesday service
6. Homeschool park date
7. President's Day educational program with our rockin'  homeschool group
8. Bible Study
9. Article rewrites
10. The 4th edition of the "Make Money to Write About Your Kids" ebook to get the heck outta here
11. Callie's final two cheerleading games Friday night and Saturday
12. Making sure Blue and Gold is all set up and cleaned up after
13. Making sure the Pinewood Derby has a track. Since Aron is out of town, I am BEGGING someone else to help set it up.
14. I get to learn the PD software to get names entered and all that
15. Cloning myself since I have to be at the PD and at Callie's cheer game at the same time. Any suggestions?
16. Oh, yeah, and that thing called HOMESCHOOLING (forget about keeping a clean house this week)

So here's what I'm reading (ha!) when I get a free 2 seconds:

1. Teach Your Own by John Holt
2. It's Hard Not to Hate You by Valerie Frankel
3. Steven Tyler's autobiography
4. Mia Tyler's autobiography
5. Now all I need is Cyrinda Foxe's autobiography. Has Liv done one yet?

What did you do this week? What are you reading (besides this blog!)?

Stapled Pizza/Spilled Cocoa

Last week we had ONE OF THOSE DAYS.

• The phone would not stop ringing while we were homeschooling (not that I expect the world to be psychic and know when we homeschool)
• We struggled to get through Curious George Learns the Alphabet
• It took me 2 hours to figure out how to download a Big Fish game called Insaniquarium that the boys had been begging me for
• We missed Bible study ... again
• Sam was stuffy so we hadn't slept well
• Aron was working his 10th day in a row of 14 hour days
• I had a hard 2nd rewrite on a topic I don't love
• At one point I covered my ears and could hear just fine
• Then I looked over and Sam was stapling a piece of pizza

This was the day I couldn't reach the cocoa and batted at it with a spoon, causing it to fall and do this

That's when the crazy turns to funny and I remember why I love being home with all of my kids all day every day. I keep having dreams about my old job, the one I probably loved least of any job. And it reminds me that my WORST day at home is better than my BEST day at work ever was. I'm not judging working moms here ... just saying we all have our own experiences that shape us for some reason or another.

A Married Person Shouldn't Have to Pay for Sex

me and Aron when he brought me coffee on Valentine's Day (aka, VD)

I have to confess something very personal.

My husband and I pay for sex.

Yep, there are times when we are able to spend a few moments together but the kids won't leave us alone so we can sneak off. So, yes, it's true. We might pay a sitter to take the kids to the park so we can be alone. So technically we pay for sex.

I'm sorry, but like many parents, we are too freaking tired at night after the kids are in bed to even look at each other. We crash within seconds. Family bed has nothing to do with it ... NEWSFLASH: you don't just have to mess around in BED.

So we have to find time OTHER times. And doing that Natural Family Planning makes things even trickier, folks. It's not like it's ON like Donkey Kong every single day at my place. There's a window of opportunity for NOT becoming someone who shops once again at Babies R Us. The window is slimmer than you would think when you are truly trying to be careful.

Don't you judge me. Just offer to babysit :-)

Stuff You SHOULD NEVER Do When Pregnant and Do Anyway

I love Virginia over at Meet Virginia and want to eat her with a spoon. She responded to my recent post about loving coffee by saying that she loves coffee but she's always pregnant (I hear ya, sister ... except she's having #7 soon so she wins this round) so she has to cut back and she still has 2 cups a day.

If you are freaking out right now you are reading the WRONG BLOG becuase you know how I feel about that sort of junk.

I am all about my kids being kept safe and (fairly) clean and very healthy and getting enough sleep and brushing their teeth and taking their baths and showers and eating pretty well except for all the Hershey kisses we got 50% off the day after Valentine's Day. I know where my kids are all the time. And I take care of myself when pregnant ... don't smoke, don't drink, blah blah blah.

But you KNOW there are those people out there who might see a preggie with a Starbuck's and send negative death rays at her head. Which is really just a waste of time for the haters, don't you think? Because if I am looking out for someone and am concerned about their well-being, I'm not going to try to change their mind by being a jerk; I'm going to talk to them lovingly. And really, a little caffeine is the hill you want to die on?

OK, so my post makes sense with the title for a change, here are other things you should never do when pregnant, except that I did all of them and have 5 healthy, smart, amazing kids:

1. Eat fish.
2. Slip on ice and fall on your ass.
3. Hang out in a hot tub.
4. Get stressed out at work.
5. Nurse an older child.
6. Snort nasal spray to get some freaking sleep.
7. Fill in the blank.

One more thing to totally send you off the deep end: if smoking was so bad for preggies back in the 1960s, why aren't most of us born to smokin' preggies running around underweight and short and stupid? And don't get me started on the Valium use back then :-)

P.S. Before this post went to press, Virgnia wanted me to add: "the ONLY kid I drank NO caffeine with was my oldest. I was super strict about everything and he is the only kid I have with the most issues. Not only does he have a form of Autism but he has major allergy issues. He's my most unhealthiest and the most hyper. You better believe I'm gonna have caffeine after that."

Talk amongst yourselves and report back here. I can take it.

Electronic Medical Records: Yes or No?

So I'm perusing my March 2012 issue of BabyTalk magazine. Yes, I still take all the parenting and baby mags I can get my hands on because (1) I like to be on top of my mothering game so I pretty much go AGAINST all the advice in these mags and (2) I aspire to write articles and shorts for them someday ... honest stuff, funny stuff, useful stuff and not fluff. Although I will write fluff for enough money. Just being honest.

Anyway, there's this teeny thing about a company called Motherknows.com and for $8 per month plus $49 setup fee they "compile your child's medical history, allowing parents to tap into it 24/7."

Tap into this, you sleep-deprived mommies with too much money and too little time: Obama laid down the law and our records have to be all electronic by 2014 anyway (HITECH Act of 2009). Will your doc's records upload to Motherknows' records every time you go to the doctor or do you have to do it your dang self? What a pain if you have more than 1 kid and a job and stuff like that.

It seems to me that Motherknows.com is trying to cash in on people who don't know that their records are going to be in that form soon enough anyway. Me, I just toss vaccine and appointment info in an Excel file with a different sheet for each kid. When that gets overwhelming, I just toss stuff in a file folder called "medical" and dig through it when I need to.

So why would you pay for your kids' records to be electronic when soon enough everybody's records will be that way anyhow? For free! Well, kinda for free. I mean, your tax dollars will pay for it, but whatever. That's like free money for the government anyway. It's like my Paypal money. Ha!

Now I will sit back and wait for the company to Google themselves and find me and then comment about how great they are!

While we wait, shall we discuss banking umbilical cord blood? Yes? No? I don't do it. Did you? Would you? And let's also find out what you think about medical records going electronic! My doc's been doing it for a while now ... I miss seeing him lug around my 27-pound chart sometimes. Ah, memories.