A wonderful day

Trying to find a way to feel more mellow about things

Visiting Birmingham, a photo by Hamstocks on Flickr.

I've been kind of breaking down and falling apart a little lately. I want to get to a place where everything is feeling comfortable. I am trying to find ways to motivate more energy out of myself to happily pull every small nook and cranny of my life together (family, health, friends, politics, housework). I am plotting new routines for my day and ways to sort of refresh and motivate throughout the day.

I haven't posted much lately. Birmingham was a fun trip. Now both boys are in school. Toby just got kicked out of naptime for not sleeping and not letting the other kids sleep. This is a real problem. He has been a little better lately about being quieter, but it isn't really good enough. I am afraid that with everything that is going on with Henry, Toby is not getting the sort of disciplined parenting sometimes. We haven't worked very hard up until now about teaching him self-discipline.

We are going to Vero Beach for a wedding this weekend. Virginia is leaving Thursday, and I am leaving after work on Friday. This means that I have the house to myself for an evening. I am making lists of things that can get done with the kids out of the house. I need to check the wiring on a ceiling fan that I installed, and that means turning off power to part of the house. I have put that off until they are gone. Also, putting stuff up in the attic is another that is hard with the kids around. The wedding is not kid friendly, so we have a sitter planned for the evening. That kind of bums me out, but it will make us more relaxed I guess.

Right now it's a workday, then trying to make some headway on projects at home and maybe going to the gym.

New blogger iphone app

Works pretty good, but doesn't have landscape mode.

Birmingham not burningman

Went to the science center, now we are getting ready to eat some great BBQ. Lots of rain coming down. Good fun even still.

On our way

Typical Friday post

Toby, a photo by Hamstocks on Flickr.

We will be embarking soon on our first long (eight hours) car ride to Birmingham. It looks like this will be a wet weekend, but it should still be fun to see Chip and Mer and spend some time in their new town. Let's just hope we don't have to evacuate. It is a long weekend so we should have three good days to visit before the drive back.

I am finally starting to feel better. I am trying to eat a 1000mg vitamin C every hour.

I am trying out a new time out system for Toby. He is having trouble with self control, during work time at school and being quiet at nap time. The new time out is that whenever he gets in trouble, he has to sit quietly for two minutes. If he makes noise, the timer resets. I think this might help him learn self discipline, and it will teach him how to be quiet when it is requested. I think it also kind of acts as a reset button for what caused the time out. He is also getting quiet time out for making noise at bed time, again this should help with napping at school. It is kind of tough love, because he has a really hard time being quiet, but in the end I think it will solve some issues and make everybody happier.

Someone is coming by to measure the house while we are out of town, so that he can draw up plans for the space and then we can draw out the remodel plan. I wanted to get the house more together before he came, but being sick has messed up lots of plans. We were going to have a yard sale and that was going to solve some of the space issues in the storage room (soon to be bedroom). I hope he can get it done. If he can, he is a true professional.

I ended up throwing away a batch of kombucha, because I didn't get to bottle it in time (I blame the sickness).
The plan is to take photos and post a bunch during the weekend adventure.