Educating the Wheelers

So. What do you do with a 4 year old, anyway? With a 20 month old ball-of-energy boy along for the ride?

Well, she’s already a fairly proficient reader, and has been since she was 2. That’s the only good gene I brought to this marriage — early and enthusiastic reading. Even Owen is starting to recognize letters and words and wants me to read to him all the time.

Audrey enjoys workbooks, so that makes things easy. I’ve picked some up here and there for crazy cheap — you can almost always find them at thrift stores or in clearance bins. Every time she finishes a page, she likes it when we put a sticker on top, or write “100!” or draw a star on it. She’s loving her Singapore Earlybird Math — she’ll do a good 10 pages before she wants to move on to something else.

For “fun,” she loves the time4learning website. True to form, she cleared through all of the science lessons first, and then redid them. And redid them. And redid them. Then some more. But now she’s starting to explore the language arts lessons, too. She considers this her treat, not school. (Though I understand some people use it as a complete curriculum.)

I am, however, completely deficient in the arts and crafts department. So my mom got us the Winter Promise “I’m Ready to Learn” program which really focuses on the hands-on. We’re not doing it at all on the schedule, but picking and choosing what works best for us. And Audrey has her own ideas of what she wants to do with the art supplies. Humorously, her ideas are low-key enough for me to do with her. The other day, she said she wanted to cut out felt pieces to paste smiley faces on paper plates. Woohoo — I can do that! And so can Owen — he loved that one. Heck, we’ve even done it again.

And Owen? Give him a Thomas the Train coloring book and a bucket of crayons, and you don’t need to worry about him for a good 15 minutes. That’s about 4 years in toddler time, so I’m grateful.

So a little bit of workbooks (mostly math and “language arts”), a little online learning, a little hands-on arts and crafts. Then there are the read-alouds, which I’ll have to hit in another post. We usually work in about 15 minute segments, scattered throughout the day, but centered in the morning, after chores. And, when I’m lucky, they work independently at the kitchen table for a bit while I get my chores done. Works out nicely.

I was going to go to Walmart or Target today, but I think I’m going to push that off. Those two were my biggest budget-busters last month. (Well, second biggest. The 550 dollar dental bill was the killing blow, really.) Sometimes it feels impossible to leave one of those stores with less than 100 dollars (or worse) worth of stuff, even if the only items on my list were “Generic Infant Tylenol” and “diapers.”

Willpower is not my specialty, to paraphrase Wallace.

That’s my current strategy with the grocery store, as well. Hold it off as long as humanly possible. It does help that it’s winter and most of the fruit is pretty hardy and will last a long time. It’s also giving me an excuse to rotate my freezer stock. Audrey is a particular fan of frozen long green beans — she always asks for “Bamboo Salad” (her name for it!):

1 bag frozen Aldi’s green beans or equivalent
A small little bit of balsamic dressing, store bought or homemade
4oz or less crumbled feta
a handful of walnuts

Empty bag of green beans in a colander and run under cool water for a little while to defrost a little. They’re very skinny, so it won’t take long. Put in a bowl with other ingredients. Serve to delighted child.

Heck, she doesn’t even eat the feta and walnuts — that’s just in for mom. I got some of those “spray” bottles of dressing really cheap a while ago, so I just use about 6-7 sprays of that and it seems to be plenty. With that and a restrained amount of cheese and walnuts, the salad manages to be decently healthy.

Oh, yeah, I’m behind the times. This post should have been written a few months ago. Better late than never!

We took the kids to the local YMCA this year for their annual Halloween party, and at first it looked like they were the only kids there with home-made costumes. (I eventually saw a few others.)

I would pat myself on the back for this, were it not for the fact that I searched high and low for the costumes they asked for … and could not find them sold in any store, online or brick and mortar, or ebay or anywhere!

They asked for … Underdog!

Now, being a Disney produced movie, I can only assume that there was some seriously messed up rights issues with the cartoon … because, come on. Disney movie? No promotional tie-ins? No toys? No Halloween costumes? Nothing? But it’s the kids’ favorite movie, and by golly, they wanted to be Underdogs for Halloween.

Owen has a cape, as well, but was not okay with it being tied around his neck. I ended up safety-pinning it to the back of his sweatshirt.

And finally, an Underdog “action shot” from Audrey:

It looks like it’s been about a year since I posted, which means pretty much no one should be reading this post. Heh.

After the birth of our second child, I was able to post for a little while when pretty much all he did was sleep all day, but once he moved out of that stage, blogging was one of the first things to fall by the wayside. Then our more labor-intensive frugal ways. Then the housework. Et cetera. But now our littlest guy is quite a bit more independent, and lo and behold, I’m starting to get our lives back on track again. The house is getting cleaner, the meals are getting better, the spending is tightening up. And now here I am writing a blog post again!

Life has changed quite a bit for us. We are living up in Minnesota now, about 8 blocks from my parents. That has been a life-saver for my sanity, and the kids LOVE seeing them nearly every day. Of any decision we’ve ever made for our kids, putting us in a situation where their grandparents are part of their everyday lives is one of the very best. Many of my very favorite memories of childhood memories are with my own grandparents, especially spending summers up on their farm.

On the other hand, it is 8 gazillion degrees below zero right now. And snowing!

(On the third hand, I love snow. But I digress.)

One major downside is the cost of living difference. In order to buy a comparable home, we spent 100k more. This really says more about how insanely cheap the Austin housing market is, but the Twin Cities aren’t exactly a bargain, either. And then we got a 15 year mortgage instead of a 30. This works out to about a thousand dollars more a month than we were spending in Texas. So the more “free-wheeling” year that we just had took a little bit of a toll. We don’t have any debt (save the new mortgage), but our reserves have gone down more than I am comfortable with.

Time to get back on the wagon and be more disciplined.

So, here I am.

In addition to talking finances again, I’ll also be covering more day to day life and the beginning of our homeschooling. Just this weekend, Audrey declared that she’s a big girl now, and old enough to do school every day. So, okay! Now we do a little school every day. I’ll have to post more on that later, because this one is starting to get dangerously long. A year’s worth of pent up things to say!