Feeling better and God’s provision

I think I am finally on the mend from this bug I have had for over that last week.  I woke up Tuesday morning feeling much better.  It helped that William and Tyler slept in their own beds.  I love having my boys sleep near me, but sometimes I just need the space.  William slept for 10 hours in the crib.  Even though he is 17 months old, that almost never happens.  I woke up before him.  He did end up sleeping part of the night with us last night.

God is providing for us.  I wasn’t quite sure how he would provide for us over the next few weeks, but he is already showing himself faithful, first with the food from our neighbors and now a friend is going to help me out with milk, juice, cheese and possibly some other perishables.  I am not quite sure how we are going to pay for gas over the next week.  I have enough gas in the tank to get to work for the rest of this week, just not sure about next week.

My mom came over yesterday and helped me cut both of the little boys hair.  Their cowlicks look worse than ever, but Tyler’s usually calms down after a few days so I imagine William’s will do the same.  She also brought over my serger that had been stored at her house since we moved.  It was nice to sew on it again.  I had forgotten how relaxing it is to me to sew. We rearranged the living room so we had a good spot to put my desk, so I could use it as my sewing table.  With the rearrangement, it also enabled us to hard-wire the home computer network to the TiVo in the living room.  Taking some stress off connecting the TiVo and actually giving us more function that we have had with the TiVo’s.  We just have to deal with glare from the window where the TV is now.  It did eat up some space in the living room, but I think I am going to like it better as it is now.  It is cozier.

God is Good!!

Just as I finished posting my last post about not feeling well, I heard a knock at the door.  It was our next door neighbor.  She and her husband are “snow-birds” that live in Florida over the winter.  They are leaving tomorrow and she is cleaning out the refrigerator.  She brought a lot of things that we use every day and things I would love to have but haven’t bought since we moved.  The thing we brought I was most excited about, lemon juice!  With my sore throat I have been wanting hot lemon water with honey, but didn’t have any lemons or juice.

God takes are of us even when we least expect it or sometimes right when you complain to show how good He is.

Tired of not feeling well

I will be so glad to be over this cold, or whatever it is that I have.  I have had a sore throat for a week today.  Waking up in the morning is the worst, or just sleeping in general.  Last night Tyler decided that he needed to sleep by mommy at 3 am.  Thankfully William was sleeping on our “satellite” bed (crib mattress next to our mattress) at that point and I could slide over next to Russ and still have a fair amount of space.  Well at 6, William woke up and wanted to nurse.  Ok, you can nurse for a little while, but nurse, pop off, nurse, pop off, fuss, nurse, pop off, fuss was not ok, as it was keeping mom awake and she was getting hot.  Got up turned on a fan, laid back down “I want covers” (Tyler).  Back to nurse and pop off.  Mommy is not putting up with this.  Grabbed William a pacifier.  By this time Russ was awake, I grabbed a blanket and a pillow and ran off and hid in Tyler’s room on is bed for the next few hours.  William went right to sleep.  That was nice sleep, just wish it lasted longer.  William likes sleeping with Daddy most of the time.  They have been sleeping buddies since William was a newborn.

 I have a lot of housework to do, especially since I haven’t been feeling well, so house work has been on the bottom of my list.  I should get off the computer and get some work done.  Like picking up the mess in the living-room and unloading the dishwasher.

I need to be feeling better as we are feeling a real financial strain right now and I need to be able to work and possibly get some overtime so we have money to live on for the next month or so.  I hate the consequences of bad decisions, but I hope me make good use of the lessons learned.

Any one have very inexpensive Christmas gift ideas of things I might already have around my house?

Knitting Progress

I finally was able to get pictures of my knitting projects on our computer thanks to my mom letting me borrow her camera last week. On my first blog post I mentioned that I had finished Kitchen Sink. Here are couple of pictures of the project in progress.

Now finished and well used. You can see the needle of another project sticking out of the mesh.

Russ loves blankets and has asked me to knit him one. So here is it in progress.

This has been a fun project. I pretty much did my own pattern, a couple inches of garter stitch then switched to seed stitch with a garter stitch boarder. I was knitting it off 3 cones, but it was really getting annoying so I finally balled the yarn.

It has been temporally put aside because I realized at I was finally was ready to do the bust shaping on my tank top that I have been working on since April. It has been fun learning how to do short row shaping. This project has had a lot of firsts for me — knitting in the round, short row shaping, using stitch markers and large article of clothing for me to wear. I have been carrying this around with me everywhere. I even had it with me at ACLS today and did get a couple of more rows done. I know a tank top in October in Michigan, but as a friend has pointed out it is a great layering piece, just to figure out what to wear over it.

The stitch markers I am using now were given to me by Carolynn , much nicer than the ones I was using. I want to learn how to make some, so I can give them away as gifts especially to my mother-in-law who has also been bitten by the knitting bug. She prefers to just knit, where I like to knit and crochet and have a crochet project I have been working on off and on for 8 years to finish — hum I wonder where it is? A project I should also finish this winter.

Walking is better than Crawling

It looks like William has finally decided that walking is better than crawling.  He has now tipped the scale to walking more than crawling, particularly the short distances in the house.  We have been home most of the day and he is enjoying walking.

 I finally today got the boys clothes switched for winter.  You can tell Tyler is the first born.  He could really stand to have a few more pairs of pants mostly for play.  We were started in 3T last winter, so we have pants that fit for the beginning of winter.  William’s drawer is almost overflowing.  I had a hard time deciding what size to get out for him since he wore 6-9 months all summer long.  I finally decided to get out the 18 month clothes.  I am not sure how the pant length will be on my walker, so I may have to get out the 12 month clothes if the pants end up being too long.

I have the pictures taken of my recent knitting projects with my moms camera, though we don’t have the right card reader.  I hope tomorrow to get the card reader or cable from mom to download the pictures and post my knitting blog I have been wanting to do.

Well, halftime of the MSU game is over and I don’t have boys ready for bed.  Best post and run.

91 degrees on October 8

I can’t believe this weather, it is 91 degrees where I live according to Weather Underground.   I was thinking that it was probably a record high, but instead I found this.

… All time monthly record high temperature set at Saginaw…

The high temperature at Tri Cities Airport reached 91 degrees today.
This not only broke the daily record of 84 degrees which was set
previously in 1913… but will gone down as the warmest temperature
ever recorded during the month of October. The previous monthly
record was 88 degrees.

We hit the all time MONTHLY high temperature for the month of October.  At least the forecast for tomorrow is for much cooler weather, 69.  I am glad the I have only had to endure one day without air conditioning since I worked yesterday.  Our house doesn’t have central air and we took our window units out almost a month ago.  If we still lived in the house we moved out of, you can guarantee that we would have had the central air going.

Baking bug

I don’t know why but I have been bit by the baking bug.  Maybe it is because we have been very, very low on funds and I have been trying to think of ways to save some money and feed my family.  Saturday I made cookies from a mix that has been sitting on my counter or cupboard for probably close to a year.  The butterscotch chips had gotten melted (I don’t remember how, just that it was shortly after we got the mix), so I had to chop up the melted together chips.  I liked them at way, since I am not a big fan of butterscotch anyway.  I really like this recipe because it had coconut, rice crispies, and nuts in it as well.  I would love to find a chocolate chip recipe the coconut and rice crispies.

Monday with dinner Russ wanted rolls, so I dragged out the bread machine and cookbook and found a good recipe f or rolls.  I think they would also make yummy hamburger buns.

We are down to our last 2 slices of bread, so I knew we either had to buy some or make our own, since we really can’t live without bread at this house.  Today before I went to work I put a whole wheat, oatmeal, & honey bread in the bread machine and set it so Russ and the boys would have hot bread with dinner.  I was a little jealous because he got to smell it baking and a roast in the crock-pot while I was a work.

Tomorrow (or should I say today) is playgroup.  One of the mom’s is avoiding dairy since her son is sensitive to it so I have been trying to think of things to take to playgroup that she can eat.  Every recipe I have thought of had some form of dairy — butter or cheese.  I finally settled on plan old french bread.  It still should be good, since the usual fair at playgroup is cheese, deli meat, fruit and veggies.   The best part I can smell this one baking since I will be home.  I set the delay timer on the machine so it should be ready about 11am, right before playgroup starts at 11:30.

Well I should head to bed so I will want to get up in the morning and William is getting very heavy sleeping on my arm making it hard to type.

“Mommy, I have something to tell you”

I had put both my boys down for a nap in their room, but William (16 months) was pitching a fit to be in the crib and did not want to go to sleep without cuddling with mom.  He was good at first when I put them down, then stood up and started trying to play with Tyler (3 1/2) and crying.  Tyler hates it when William cries in the crib.  Too many times he have heard the call, “Mommy (or Daddy), William’s crying,” and we can hear both of them well.  For a while Tyler associated the crib with William automatically crying.

Well, I had left them upstairs and was getting some work done downstairs and I could hear Tyler singing “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” his favorite song.  After a little while Tyler comes down stairs, “Mommy, I have something to tell you.  I sang ‘Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star’ to William and he fell asleep.”  I was so proud of him.  He figured out how to help his brother go to sleep and that William actually fell asleep with putting both in the room together awake to fall asleep.  Usually I do one, then the other when the first is sleeping already.

Now to get Tyler to fall asleep.

UPDATE

Tyler is now sleeping under the crib, yes, under the crib with all his blankets.  I wasn’t even sure if he was there, until I moved a couple of blankets.  I told Russ, we now have bunk beds.