By Deb - Mom of 3 Girls on March 13, 2010, at 2:10 am
Over the years, my friend Mary and I have come up with a fairly regular schedule of how often and when we visit each other. Living two hours apart means a lot of weekend trips back and forth – usually associated with one of our kids’ birthdays. With 6 kids between us, that’s at least a half dozen times we see each other – almost exclusively in the wintertime. You see, somehow or other, we both seem to have ended up with kids who all have birthdays between the months of November and April. So we see each other a lot this time of year – but not as much during the summer, when we could simply send the kids all outdoors to play and run off energy. Instead, we’re all stuck inside (for the most part), including the birthday parties that are often being held during these weekend visits. Some of us (Mary) get more creative in coming up with fun parties to do at home, while others (me) explore just about every possible venue that keeps me from having to host both houseguests and a party in the same weekend.
I’m not sure why I hate to do parties at home so much – having crafty and creative friends should spark that interest in me, at least you’d think. But no. I’m perfectly happy to sit on the sidelines and assist where needed at someone else’s house – as was the case last weekend when I packed up my girls and headed down to Mary’s for a weekend that involved both her daughter Emma’s 7th birthday party, as well as one of our semiannual visits to the outlet mall to stock up on (very) cheap clothes for the kids. More on that part of the trip later.
As I’ve mentioned here before, Hannah loves dogs. And this is a love that she’s shared with her best friend, Emma, who also loves dogs. Emma therefore requested a birthday party theme this year that turned out to be a combination of husky dogs and the Disney movie, Bolt – also dog-related. So Mary, being the creative person that she is, came up with some very cute and fun ‘dog’ themed games and activities for the party. Being a busy mom with a toddler to chase after and keep amused, she had a lot of work left for the party when we got to their house on Friday, so I was glad to pitch in where I could to help out.
Project #1 involved a Bolt-themed beanbag toss game that Mary made entirely by herself. She’d sewed up several beanbags already – a doggie bone as well as two that were shaped like Bolt’s favorite carrot squeaky toy. Then she hand-drew Bolt and Rhino onto cardboard (modeled after a graphic she’d found online) and mounted them onto red foam board. My only real input on this project was to suggest that the extra hole be lightning bolt shaped, like the ‘Bolt’ that the character was named for. The result turned out spectacularly – and the kids all had a blast tossing the beanbags through the holes before, during and after the party.
The next project was to create a pinata from scratch. Unlike last year’s Wall-E, this one was simply box-shaped with Bolt graphics pasted on the sides. We originally intended to paint the box white first, but due to a lack of time (and decent white paint) ended up simply wrapping the box as if it were a birthday gift, then attached the graphics. With a flap cut out on the bottom, Mary loaded the candy and used duct tape to secure the flap closed. We then slid multiple colored ribbons through slits in the flap – all of which would simply slide right out when pulled, except for one. Choosing the one ‘real’ ribbon is a scientific process – we pick the one color that we think a group of young girls are least likely to pick first, so as to give most of the group the chance to have a turn before the pinata opens. We make the ‘real’ ribbon shorter than the others so it’s not as obvious. And in this case, we succeeded completely – the yellow ribbon which opened the pinata wasn’t pulled until Abby’s turn, and since we went in order of age with youngest first, Abby was the next-to-last one to pull. And she was thrilled to be the one to send all of the goodies inside crashing to the ground.
Here’s a look at the birthday girl, as she took her turn:
My biggest contribution to the whole party involved the ‘dress-up’ portion of the activities. Mary had designed a way to create dog noses and ears out of craft foam for each guest to wear. Along with a ‘dog tag necklace’ activity, the transformation of little girls (and one boy) to doggies was complete. I spent two nights before the party in tracing, cutting out and stapling foam shapes, and tying elastic to doggie noses. The end result was absolutely adorable though – as modeled here by my girls:
I don’t know how Mary was still functioning by Sunday – I’d stayed up until after 3am both nights to help out, but ended up having to crash well before Mary headed to bed. Somehow she managed to not only get everything done in time for the party, but also to stay awake that day after no more than 3 hours of sleep on either Friday or Saturday nights. She figured that pure adrenalin was getting her through, and I have to agree. I don’t think I could’ve done it.
The cake was simple, and yet brilliant – a doggie bone created out of two heart-shaped cakes with the points cut off and pushed together, then frosted over in Emma’s two favorite colors: pink and purple. It was a very big hit, both with the guest of honor and all of the other guests as well.
One side effect of dressing up a dozen little kids as doggies was a volume level that was extremely deafening. So much so that Mary’s mom removed her hearing aids for the extent of the party, and Dave dug out his hunting earplugs. I was wishing for some of those myself after a while – there was a lot of barking, whimpering and just plain screaming going on. But everyone had a blast – which always makes every moment of effort you put into something like this completely worth it.
I think that Emma’s favorite gifts were the stuffed husky dog that we got for her – along with this husky dog towel that Mary made. Yes, she made it herself – she sells these towels at craft fairs and to friends and family.
The biggest thing that was completely unanticipated party-wise was the huge bag of bead necklaces that Mary’s mom had picked up at Mardi Gras and brought for each guest to pick out a few. We had some rather blinged-out doggies after that – and even Emma’s little brother Eric had to get into the act too:
Hmm, Mary may have to keep an eye on this one – he’s already partying hard! Someone may have to warn all of the little 2-year-old girls out there. *grin*
Overall the party was a huge success, I think – although I’m sure Mary’s just as relieved to have it over and done, so she could finally get some sleep. Next is my turn to host as we gear up for Abby’s birthday in early April. She’s asked for an Easter theme though, which makes it so much easier for me and my limited creativity. A plastic egg hunt I can handle, and as for the rest, the roller skating rink that Abby’s requested as the party venue is always a big hit.
An egg hunt on skates however, may make for some blog worthy moments.
By Deb - Mom of 3 Girls on March 11, 2010, at 12:10 am
To a new web host that is. I’ve been with the same hosting company ever since I first moved to self-hosted Wordpress back in 2008, but it’s finally time to find something that’s more reliable. I think I’ve found a good fit and they’re in the process of migrating everything over from the previous host to the new one. But, due to the technical issues that have been occurring lately on both of my sites (the main reason for the switch), the migration is taking longer than expected.
I’m hoping that there should be little to no disruption to this site – beyond the php time-out errors that you may have already been seeing. Once the migration is complete in a day or so, those should be gone for good, and I’m confident that we’ll be back on track with my being able to post regularly again here – and with your being able to get here to read and comment.
There is one other thing, that I brought up in a brief post that I managed to squeeze through the time-out errors over at JAMTOT today… Over the past several months it’s become increasingly difficult for me to keep up with regular posting on both of my sites – and still give my family the time and attention that they deserve. I’ve been exploring the idea of combining the sites back into one – likely over at momstakeonthings.com. That would mean one site for both personal types of posts that you see here regularly, as well as the reviews and giveaways that I post over there. I know that some of you come here only for the personal stuff – and I have an idea how you could continue to receive only that type of content if I do move everything over to JAMTOT. If I end up going that route, I’ll set up a category feed that Mom of 3 Girls readers could subscribe to if you want, that would only publish the personal posts.
I’m still not sure what I will end up doing – I’ve been blogging here for almost 3 years now and I’m hesitant to just simply stop. It may be that I will come up with a more specific focus for this site and keep posting, but still move most of the ‘regular’ stories and photos over there. For now everything will stay just as it is, while I take some time to think. If any changes are made, I’ll plan on rolling them out in May, to coincide with my 3rd blogging anniversary here and my 2nd over at JAMTOT. Kind of cool how both blogoversaries ended up in the same month, huh!
If you have any thoughts as to what you’d like to see – either here and/or over at momstakeonthings.com, please feel free to leave me a comment either here or on my post over there. I truly value the community that I’ve found here and want to make sure that I don’t lose any loyal readers if I do make any changes.
So please pardon the dust as this site migrates to its new home – hopefully you won’t see any differences on the front end at all. I have lots to update you on afterward – including our weekend visiting my friend Mary, her daughter’s birthday party, and the spring-like weather we’ve had here so far this week. See you on the other side!
UPDATE: As of last Friday night (3/12), the site is migrated over to its new home and everything seems to be running smoothly. And incredibly quickly – I’m already amazed at how fast it’s loading and responding. I should’ve switched hosts long ago. Thank you to WiredKey for such a smooth transition! With the timeout errors being experienced on the other server, it wasn’t an easy (or quick) process for them. So far I’m extremely happy with the customer service and can’t wait to get my other site moved over soon too.
By Deb - Mom of 3 Girls on March 10, 2010, at 12:57 pm
I’m so sorry this is up late and that the site’s been up and down recently. I’m working on trying to find new (and more reliable) hosting for my sites – it’s been so frustrating!
By Deb - Mom of 3 Girls on March 8, 2010, at 11:24 pm
No, I know what you’re thinking and I’m not talking about the blog – at least not yet. In this particular instance, I’m talking about me.
Last year I posted about deciding to finally just let my hair go gray because I was done with having to spend the time and money on something that’s well, let’s face it – is just surface vanity. And back then I meant what I said. Even at only age 39 (and I’ve been going gray since my 20’s), I was willing to just not have to deal with it anymore altogether.
But then two things changed.
First – I began to feel well, old. And I’m not ready to feel old – at least that old – yet. No matter how I look.
Second – is the fact that when your 7-year-old comes right out and tells you that she wants you to have brown hair, not gray hair, well it took me about 2 seconds to agree. I had older parents when I was growing up too – and early gray runs in my family. I know exactly how she feels – something I hadn’t considered before, and should have.
So that’s why about a week ago, I took myself to the hair salon at the mall. I’d been coloring my hair here at home previously, but it has gotten to the point where I just can’t manage it by myself anymore. I also wanted to talk to them about possibly trying to go a few shades lighter – so that the roots don’t show up quite so clearly when new growth comes in. Nothing too drastic – my natural hair color is very dark brown and I can’t quite see myself as a blonde. But something at least a little different.
Attempt #1 didn’t quite work out as expected – I got home that evening to find that the all-over color and highlights (the few shades lighter part) hadn’t completely covered the gray. In fact, there was quite a lot showing through – creating sort of an odd striped effect. Which was interesting, but not exactly what I was going for.
Apparently I not only have gray hairs – and many of them – but the darn things are rather stubborn too. Hmph.
I knew that I was going to be out of town this past weekend and that I wanted to get things fixed before then, so I spent my Friday afternoon back at the mall salon instead of getting everything else done that I needed to before picking up the girls and heading out.
But it was worth it. And my faith in the mall hair salon is firmly back in place after another complete all-over color and more highlights (all for free since it should’ve worked the first time) – but this time it took. And it looks so much better than what the original stylist was trying to do – I will be going back to this second one from now on. And thankfully here on out we’ll only be needing to cover the new growth, so it shouldn’t be as difficult (or expensive) as this initial color job.
Here’s a comparison of the original ‘before’ and the final ‘after’. I didn’t take any pictures of the ‘middle’ because I knew it wasn’t going to stay like that.
After the stylist was done, she took a few minutes to dry my hair and also used a flat iron to smooth out the natural waves that drive me crazy because they don’t curl enough to be ‘curly’ but keep me from being able to just wear my hair down. I don’t usually blow my hair dry – I haven’t owned a blow dryer in over a decade and would never even have thought to try a flat iron. That’s how so ‘not with it’ I am when it comes to style and fashion. Yes, I’ll admit that. But I’m now a convert – I bought myself a flat iron today. I don’t know if I’ll use it every day – my 5 minutes and out the door ‘style’ generally works on most days. But it’ll be fun to play around and see what looks good.
Since I couldn’t convince the stylist to come home with me to do my hair for me every morning… Hey, it was worth a try – I can’t believe how silky and smooth my hair was on Friday. I hated to have to wash it! But even so – the color looks wonderful and I actually feel good about myself for the first time in quite a while. Now I just need to find the motivation to lose 50 pounds of ‘baby weight’ and I might actually look on the outside the way I still feel on the inside.
One thing at a time though. It is Easter season, after all.
By Deb - Mom of 3 Girls on March 5, 2010, at 3:18 am
It’s Friday again! My favorite day of the week.
Here’s my question for this week:
What color is your house? Or apartment, or townhouse, or whatever kind of building you reside in?
When we moved here, this house was the most horrible shade of yellow, with dark brown brick and trim, but a white garage door. A few years ago we managed to afford to have the siding painted, so it’s now a nice tan color, with dark brown trim – and a dark brown garage door, that I painted myself. I describe the colors as pretty much the same as a Three Musketeers candy bar.
By Deb - Mom of 3 Girls on March 5, 2010, at 2:52 am
On February 22nd, my dad turned 81 years old. This past weekend we drove over to the Detroit area to visit him, for the first time in a year. I don’t know how we went that long without making the trip over to the other side of the state, but I’m determined not to let such a large period of time go by again without taking the girls to visit their Grandpa Al.
One difficulty when we do go is that there’s really no good place to actually ‘visit’ him, since he lives in a one-bedroom apartment in a senior apartment complex. Especially in the wintertime, when we can’t take advantage of the building’s grounds or pool. I’m always paying attention to how loud the girls are being – they’re not used to being in an apartment building where neighbors can hear through shared walls.
We usually spend most of the time in my dad’s friend P’s apartment, rather than his. She lives down the hall from him and is such a sweet lady. Her apartment – though beautifully decorated, is full of art, knick-knacks and lovely things that make me incredibly nervous to have three girls hanging around. Especially when said girls have usually just been cooped up in the van for a 2-hour drive. Both Dad and P are very good with the girls and understanding of their need to be loud and work off energy – but I think they’re also very glad to get their peace and quiet back after we’ve spent a few hours in rather close quarters together.
The main attraction of P’s apartment – at least for the girls, is the upright piano. They love to ‘play’ on it, which usually involves the three of them hitting random keys – loudly. Last year I’d taught Abby and Hannah a short tune – which surprisingly, they still remember. And Ron spent quite some time teaching Hannah to peck out The Star Spangled Banner. But it’s usually up to me to finally put an end to their musical experimentation – usually around the time my ears are about to explode. In such a small apartment, there’s just no place to get away from the piano – probably one reason why it’s so tempting.
Oh we can often find other ways to keep the girls amused too though. On this particular visit we spent a while in a sort of ‘hot potato’ type of game involving all of us tossing Hannah’s stuffed polar bear to each other around the circle of P’s living room. I tend to feel like I spend these visits in a constant state of saying, “No, don’t…!”, so from time to time I try to bite my tongue and remember that they’re just kids, after all – and bored ones at that. Not that they don’t love seeing my dad and P, but still…
On this trip, my brother was able to get away from his incredibly busy work schedule and meet us for a portion of the afternoon. He has such patience with the girls – for example, Becca spent much of the time trying to get him to play “UmiZoomi” with her. As a doting uncle, but non-parent, Donnie’s not usually up on the latest offerings from Nickelodeon so the girls all had to bring him up to speed on exactly what’s involved with pretending to be the character’s from Becca’s newest favorite show, Team UmiZoomi. Listening to their explanations made me really wonder exactly where the creators of these shows come up with their ideas – as cute as they are on-screen, something just plain gets lost in the translation, at least when described by a 4-year-old. But Donnie took it all in stride, as usual, and enjoyed reading to and dancing with Becca for a while too, while big sisters were busy ‘making music’.
Speaking of making ‘music’ – the girls’ other favorite part of visiting Grandpa Al and P is that she will usually let them play with her collection of small (breakable) bells for a little while:
I have to give the girls credit – they did an awesome job of behaving on this trip. Especially since it really didn’t include any kind of activities for them. After we left my dad’s apartment building, we drove across town to visit my mom and my Aunt Pat, who underwent heart bypass surgery back in December and has had an extremely rough recovery since. If nothing else, this trip highlighted for me just how little time we’re likely to have with my family – my parents, aunts and uncles are all in their 70’s and 80’s now.
It was all-in-all, a good trip, but a short one since we drove the 2 hours back home that same evening, after meeting my dad and P again for dinner. It makes for a long day with a total of 4+ hours in the car and lots of enforced ‘quiet time’ for the girls while the adults visit and talk. There were no other kids their ages around – only my uncle has a couple of grandkids who are still little, but we didn’t see any of them on this trip. And since my brother doesn’t have any kids, there are no cousins to play with.
But it was wonderful to be able to see my dad, to wish him a happy birthday and the girls colored many pictures for him and for P during our visit. I’m hoping we can make a trip back over there this summer, when the weather is nice and we can take the girls outside to run around and play.
By Deb - Mom of 3 Girls on March 4, 2010, at 12:12 am
As I start to gear up for our next birthday party odyssey at the roller skating rink (seems to be our girls’ locale of choice for the moment), I can’t help but be reminded of the previous party we held there and the fact that I was in so much pain at the time as to be incapable of either truly hosting or even enjoying the experience. Thankfully there shouldn’t be a repeat experience next month, but it does remind me that I don’t think I’ve written much about what’s been happening with me since the surgery last December.
To recap, I’d been experiencing intermittent pain on my left side for over a year – that quite annoyingly seemed to vanish whenever I had the opportunity to talk to a doctor about it, but managed to re-appear at the most inopportune times like weekends, Tuesdays (when my doctor isn’t in the office) – and birthday parties, of course. Now that particular occurrence was the worst by far – involving such intense pain that I ended up at Urgent Care, vomiting and hardly able to walk. A couple of weeks later I had laparoscopic surgery to remove a cyst on my left ovary – which turned out to be so large (I was told softball-sized) that it was twisting the ovary and fallopian tube around, which is what caused the overwhelming pain. Unfortunately the ovary and tube couldn’t be saved.
Physically things have healed well – after about a week of recovery, I was back on my feet and running around with the girls as I usually do. The scars are minimal, and since I don’t plan on baring my midriff anytime soon (not that anyone would want me to, ugh) I barely even notice them. Life goes on. Except for two nagging little things that really aren’t important to anyone but me – but which I’m going to talk about anyway. I know I’m not the only one who’s dealt with ovarian cysts, so I’m hoping to hear what thoughts some of the others of you might have.
Not to get into a whole lot of detail here, but certain monthly stuff has continued without a hitch since the surgery. Which is a good thing, of course – it means that the remaining ovary has kicked in to make up for losing the other. No worries about early menopause – at least from what I’m told. And my fertility should remain intact as well – which is a relief. But the doctor was careful to let me know that it is possible for a similar thing to happen on the right side – since my body is apparently conducive to growing this type of cyst. Right now, I really don’t miss the ovary or tube at all – I mean it’s not like they’re body parts that you’re even really aware of. But I am much more cognizant of the fact that if something were to happen to the other ovary, then I’d be unable to ever get pregnant again.
Now before anyone gets all excited here – I don’t know that I ever will be pregnant again. But I don’t know that I won’t either – Ron and I haven’t ruled anything out where a fourth child is concerned. It’s something we’re not in any shape to consider right now – financially, time-wise or in terms of our sanity. But there’s always that well, maybe in another year or two thought. I just don’t know if I feel that our family is really complete at this point. But then again, maybe it is. Or maybe the decision will get taken out of our hands altogether. With my 40th birthday looming at the end of this year, it’s getting late in the game where having babies is concerned anyway. Maybe I should just be thankful to have the three kids that I’ve been blessed to be able to have conceived, carried and given birth to. Then again, I think maybe I simply like having all of my options in place – just in case.
Another separate issue that has been coming up is one that I was hoping would be remedied once the cyst was removed – but which unfortunately seems to have only gotten worse since then instead. Basically, for a good day or two right before my cycle every month, I have what is generally overwhelming fatigue. To the point where I literally cannot keep my eyes open on those days and end up falling asleep almost the minute that Ron walks in the door from work – if not before. I mean, getting a lot of rest is definitely a good thing, but I kind of like to be in charge of my sleep schedule… Falling asleep on the couch at the drop of a hat for hours at a time isn’t always very convenient when you have a family to take care of. I know I don’t always get as much sleep as I should – not nearly, but then again I shouldn’t require 15+ hours of sleep in a 24-hour period just to be able to simply function either. And with a 24 to 25 day cycle, I’m coming up against this every few weeks. This whole thing started around last summer – which is why I was hoping it might be related to the cyst and would go away after the cyst was removed. But no such luck.
I know – as far as medical issues go, I’m lucky that this has been a rather minor one. And I’m dealing with it. But I am curious if this is something that anyone else has struggled with? Is it just part of the whole getting older thing? Maybe I’m just rambling on here and losing all of you in the process. Sorry about that.
When it comes down to it all, I guess that I’m mainly just grateful. For the family that I have, for all of our general good health, and for having options, whether we choose to ever expand our family or not. I’m very grateful for not having any more pain either – and that I should be easily able to enjoy Abby’s birthday party next month. And who knows, maybe I’ll even get out there and skate right along with the kids this time.
By Deb - Mom of 3 Girls on March 2, 2010, at 12:21 am
One reason that I love Becca’s preschool teacher is how creative she is and how well she is able to create opportunities at a preschool level, for the kids to understand concepts and to grow educationally. Over the years, we’ve had a child in her classes 4 times now (Hannah had her twice), so I love the consistency of knowing the projects that Becca’s going to be working on and being able to see how her work relates to that of her big sisters.
Four years ago, we were excited that Miss J’s ‘Olympics’ unit coincided almost perfectly with the actual events of the 2006 Winter Olympics. We’d participated the year before when Abby’s class had their ‘Olympics’ but it added a whole new dimension with an actual Games taking place. Miss J recreates the feel of the Olympics so well – including elements like the torch relay, the ‘team’ parading into the ‘stadium’ together, individual events similar to those held during the summer and winter Games, and even each participant having the opportunity to stand on the podium to receive a gold medal. In this Olympics – everyone wins gold, you see. Here are a couple of pictures from way back when Abby and Hannah each competed in their 3-year-old preschool Olympics:
There’s a lot of red, white, and blue – and chanting of “U-S-A”, which the preschoolers always love, of course. They all even wear their team shirts – created during an earlier class, specifically for their Olympic day. And they learn the names of some of the different countries who compete in the Games, along with their flags.
It’s extremely cute – and there are always several parents in attendance, both to help out and also to capture the moments with cameras and camcorders. This year I was armed with both. Please excuse the quality of most of the rest of these photos – the lighting in the gym isn’t very good and I went back and forth between settings on my camera trying to find the best option that would allow everyone to be seen without being TOO blurry.
This year was extra special again, of course, with another real Winter Olympics taking place at the same time. And for the first time that I’d seen, Miss J included a real outdoor element to the Games – with the introduction of the Snow Sledding and Snow Man Making events.
Becca chose not to participate in snow sledding – which surprised me, since she loves to sled down the hill in our backyard. However, when it came time to create her group’s snow man blob (what you get when the snow doesn’t pack very well) she pitched in eagerly and the group created quite a cute little blob guy thingy:
And she also had no problems with being pulled around the field on a sled with the other classmates in her group either. Thankfully the outdoor events were short-lived though, since it was cold and windy out that day and this Mama had forgotten to bring gloves.
Once everyone was inside, Team USA was ready for their parade, with tissue-and-foil-covered-toilet-paper-tube torches in hand.
Waiting for her turn in the torch relay – one side of the gym to the other:
Becca competed in both the two-man bobsled (for both Canada and Great Britain, no less)…
and the one-man bobsled race. She was excited to take second place in this one, but her glory was short-lived, as you can see in the short video below:
Apparently the belly-scoot wasn’t her strength as she came in almost last. However she seems to be a pro at scooting along with her feet while seated on the thing because she zoomed right along then.
She was quite content to watch during the bowling, but did take her turn when it came as well.
But I think that the noise and chaos of balloon hockey was a bit overwhelming. She just wanted one balloon that she could swat where she wanted it to go – instead of the free-for-all that ensued. Eventually she just gave up on the hockey stick altogether, as you can see here (she’s in the center of the screen after I zoomed in):
Her favorite event by far had to be the long bouncing track where the kids each had a few opportunities to jump – or run – down the length of it from one end to the other. That was definitely a very popular event at this Olympic Games.
Eventually every Olympics must come to an end though – and every athlete proudly stood atop the podium to claim his or her gold medal:
After which they celebrated with red, white and blue popsicles before heading back out into the blustery day for home.
My little Olympic star!
Oh yes, and next week’s study unit? Space. Involving a ‘real’ spaceship in the classroom that can hold up to 3 kids at a time. Final frontier, here we come…
By Deb - Mom of 3 Girls on February 26, 2010, at 2:18 am
It’s Friday again! My favorite day of the week.
Here’s my question for this week:
What are you really worried about right now?
The biggest worry I have at the moment deals with whether or not Congress will renew the extensions of unemployment benefits before Sunday. With Ron’s hours so low right now his paychecks are about half of what they used to be. If we lose unemployment, I have no idea how we’ll survive. Since I was laid off in 2008 I’ve been looking for jobs and applying for whatever I can find – I spent a lot of time again today job hunting, but there’s so little out there even to apply for… At least now that Ron’s home in the evenings and on weekends (for now) there’s the possibility I could find an evening/weekend job so we wouldn’t need daycare. Sigh. Am praying and keeping my fingers crossed that the extensions will continue and give us at least another few months of breathing room, and that the right job will come along in time.
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