Mommy of Many®

You know I’m all about using “Smoke and Mirrors” for getting through each day and today’s no different. But, I chuckled when I put Gabi’s white socks, with the lace at the top, on Luke-Xavier this morning. My thinking was this; “we have to get out the door and I can’t make sense of the whole sock basket right now. Luke-Xavier needs socks! Gabi’s socks are right here. Hey, they’re white. If I pull them up (instead of folding them over), the lacy part will be under his pants and no one will know any different.” But after I did it, the burning question in my brain was. “is this how men who secretly cross-dress got started?”

Hmmmmmmm………………………

Have a great day~

Yep, those are my 3 youngest boys asleep on the floor. Never mind the piles of clothing or junk on the floor or that they each have a perfectly good bed waiting for them.

They are little roamers who sometimes sleep UNDER the beds. I never know where I’m going to find a little body in the middle of the night, to trip over. Sometimes one will be asleep in the doorway or completely in the hall. Why the beds aren’t appealing I don’t know. The thing that cracked me up about last night was that Luke-Xavier has now joined in the fun. Baby no more!

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I wanted to say thank you to all of you who sent recipes for easy and inexpensive meals that can be stretched. I received some GREAT recipes! So far, they’ve been tasty, easy and enjoyed.

Thanks!

Have a great day~

So, here we are at the end of the Christmas Break. The tree has been taken down and dragged outside (one of my wall sconces being dragged along with it ). The pine needles have been vacuumed up. The Christmas decor boxes have been repacked. JJ has headed back to the cold, snowy depths of PA. And now I’m faced with packing lunches, waking kids while it’s still dark and dressing everyone, making sure there hair is brushed and checking their breath, all before 7:30 am. Ugh! I don’t want to! I liked this break. Usually the Christmas or Easter breaks are a little hectic because it’s just a couple of weeks. But this break was really enjoyable. I was sort of hoping that we could all just forget about going back to school and keep up the routine we were in. The thing about going back that’s hard for me is being on someone else’s schedule. It makes me a little frantic sometimes. 

They’re going back to Science Fair projects, sports and 6th grade camp, all good things. However, they require me to adhere to deadlines that the kids aren’t paying attention to.

Anyway, back we go, like it or not

!I hope you each had a very enjoyable break and are recharged and ready for the New Year!

Have a great day~

Many studies have been done about siblings, sibling dynamics and birth order. I get to see it on a first-hand basis everyday in my own house. With 9 kiddos in all stages of learning, growing and life, it’s interesting to see how it all plays out. I’m the oldest of 9 children, so I’ve been on both sides of a big family. It’s been interesting to see that the way you interact with your siblings when you’re young plays a part in who you are as an adult. Knowing this, I hope my kids ease up on each other a bit.

Thank you for visiting MommyofMany.com and for listening to the show. You can leave a comment, here, on the site or you can email me at; Jen@MommyofMany.com. Love the show? Can’t wait for the next episode? Subscribe! You can click the icon on the left of this page. Don’t forget to let the world know what you think by leaving a review in iTunes!

Thanks again! Enjoy~

 

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As I go through each day, giving out instructions and requests, I’ve realized that kids have to be told every detail of the task they are asked to perform. You can’t just say to an 8 year old, “go take a shower”. Instead, it’s necessary to say, “Go take a shower. Take all of your clothes off. Make sure you use body wash on your body and shampoo on your hair. Be sure to rinse all of the soap off of your body and all of the shampoo out of your hair before you turn the water off. Please don’t forget to use warm water.” Then you will get a clean child. Otherwise, it’s likely that you will get a well-watered child, but not a clean one. I know for a fact that I have at least one child that did not use body wash or shampoo in the shower/bath until asked about it and then being instructed to do so. It’s not just hygiene that must be spelled out. I’ve had to tell older children to take the younger child/children outside and to watch them play or play with them and to please make sure that they know where they are at all times and to be sure that they do not go into the street. The funny part about these detailed instructions is the response you get if it’s not laid out in every detail and then you point out what’s going wrong;
Mom- “So-and-So!……..The baby is in the street and you’re not supposed to let him be in the street.
“Kiddo- “I know”
Hmmmmmm………really?! Yet those same, older kids will start to cut you off when you are trying to lay out the details, by saying (the ever-present), “I know”. But they will later defend their behavior by saying, “You didn’t tell me I had to do that.”
Yep, it’s an ugly cycle, but bottom line, we have to lay out all the details so that they know, for sure, what they are supposed to do.

So, lesson #5 is; Children need things spelled out for them in as much detail as can be provided.

Have a great day~

When I read or hear or see something great, I want to pass it along.

I love Reader’s Digest. I’ve been a subscriber for many years and have always read it cover to cover. I love to read but since Gabi was born, I’ve had a hard time being able to sit down with a whole book. I’ve managed a few, but for the most part, my reading enjoyment over the last 3 years has come from picking up my Reader’s Digest and going through the articles. This month’s issue has an article on debit card use that I found eye opening. Whenever I’ve been asked “debit or credit”, I found it more annoying than anything else. I always figured there wasn’t much of a difference. This article made me think again.

Have a great day~ 

A few years ago (4 or 5) we went “all cellular”. When we looked at our phone bills and what kind of calling we were doing, we decided that we didn’t need a land-line and that we would save $ by just having the cell phones. It took a few months of tweaking everything so that our plan fit our usage, but it’s worked well for us for years. Fast forward to 2007…………..now we have 6 cell phones, 1 for each of the 3 oldest kiddos, 1 for Clay, 1 for me and 1 that is the “home phone”. When I got the bill, due for January, I wanted to fall over. We paid almost $200 for texting, alone! I went to the cell phone store and fixed the plan so that it won’t happen that way, again, but it still leaves me with a HEFTY phone bill, right after Christmas. YIKES!

Now, if you were to ask members of the family, under 30, how to pay for the extra large phone bill, you might get answers involving “magic money” or “the money tree”. Ask Clay or me and you’ll hear this; Well the only place to really pull “extra” from would be the food budget. So, the only way to pay for all those SUPER, important texts that HAD to be made, is to shave off of the food budget. So, yesterday I armed myself with pen and paper and sat down to write out meal plans for the next 14 days. Now, breakfast is easy because you can always have hot cereal or cold cereal and everyone feels like they’ve had a choice. And lunch, well PBnJ for 2 weeks will have to do. It’s the dinner-time plan that’s the most challenging. I was able to come up with 9 dinners, using mostly what is in the cupboards and freezer. Now the really challenging part is picking my brain for the other 5 meals and trying to keep it all under $150. Here’s where I get to revisit the past. (memory sequence………………..)

It’s 1994, we’re living in military housing at Camp Pendleton. We have 3 kiddos (and depending on how far into the year we are, we have one on the way) and we are now living on one income and have one vehicle. I suddenly went from working full time to being a full-time stay-at-home mom. We had sat down with the budget the year before and made the decision that putting 3 kiddos into daycare and buying a second car, for me to continue working, would not pay. So, we decided on complete breast-feeding (I was about to deliver Baby #3), cloth diapers, stick with one car and agree to watch the soon-to-be new baby across the street when that mom went back to work. Whew! But the budget was still VERY tight. I had $300 every month for food. The real kicker was that the budget only allowed for the money on the 15th. I couldn’t use ANY of the money from the 1st paycheck of the month for food. I learned by trial and error, what foods could be successfully frozen and how long things kept in the fridge. BTW-don’t freeze oranges. But, I have to say that we were never hungry and our meals weren’t terribly boring (however, looking at old photos, we were all much thinner). Times were simpler. We couldn’t just jump in the car and run errands or pull into a fast-food restaurant because it was easy. I took walks with the kids and they played, happily with what they had. There are times that I miss the way it was (ok, I don’t REALLY want to have to give up Starbucks or putting exciting new foods into the basket, but the simplicity was nice).

So, I feel confident that I can pull from my memory and whip together a few, well-planned, meals. And a couple of weeks of “light” meals won’t hurt any of us (check the pictures!)

Have some great, simple meal ideas? Share them!

Have a great day~

This is how we spent the last day of 2007 in sunny, San Diego

If the beautiful, last day of 2007 was any indication of the year to come, I’ll take it!

A happy 2008 to each of you~