Ten on Tuesday

1.  Cooking notes:  I finally pulled myself together yesterday and made a meal plan (or at least a list of meals) for the first time in awhile and actually bought ingredients for everythign today.  Here's hoping that makes for more creative dinners around here.  Today's dinner was a "kid's pick" - sliced, sauteed smoked turkey sausage, steamed green beans with lemon, &  pretzel bites.  I cannot fathom why my kids like the sliced sausage so much, but it works, so why question! (They even somehow have decided that this delightful cassoulet recipe is "corn dog casserole" and thus eat it happily.) The pretzel bites were fine, but not spectacular (Brent sighs knowing they will probably never be seen again).

2. Exercise:  The best of times and worst of times.  I exercised for four days straight last week and then didn't for three days... consistency is not my strong suit.  I did return a bit today with my third pass through the new maternity belly dance DVD Mary bought me.  It is actually pretty good, as these things go... although Brent doesn't seem convinced I'm getting that much exercise.  I am quite warm and happy when it ends and not sitting in a chair for 30 minutes, so it counts.

3.   Potty Training -- oh how I loathe thee!  It drives me crazy as she seems to cycle through exceptional phases followed by well, not exceptional.  I'm going to spare details, but it is tormenting me and I so wish it was over.

4.  Scrapbooking:  I'm back to my beloved 12x12 pages as of January 1 and happily so.  My first efforts (although badly photographed) are above.  I even made that little rosette out of ribbon myself and was quite happy.  I'm sparing you the second picture as it is just too dark for good pics just now, suffice it to say, it looks very much like this one by Megan Klauer that served as my model. Hoping to do another this evening... if I'm lucky.

5. Pregnancy:  Good news! I had my follow-up test on Friday and it came back clear.  Also, in exciting news, I get to transition back to my prior Doctor at OU tomorrow so hopefully my appointments will start taking less than 2.5 hours each (Because seriously, how can routine appointments take so long!).  Still no gender news, but should be within the next month....

6.  Family Fun Day:  Monday was our last day of vacation together so we had a little outing to the OK Science Museum (aka Omniplex for you old-time Okies).  Usually our visits are only an hour or two as we can go frequently with our passes, but we hadn't been in awhile, had no time constraints, and had a lovely, long visit.  We did things we rarely do there like eat lunch at Pavlov's Cafe, go to the Planetarium show (no, M did not make it all the way through the show), and even bought M a small souvenir at the gift shop-- a bag of rocks as we found it otherwise impossible to pry her from the rock display, and $2 seemed a small fee for getting to go home with her.  B's favorite part, by far, was the new building buddies exhibit.  We spent hours there both before and after lunch.  Great fun!

7.  Photography:  My camera and I had a bit of a tiff during December.  Partially, I was struggling with the limits of my knowledge and partially I just didn't feel like taking photos as much.  I wanted to live the experiences more than photograph them.  However, when it came time to go through my pictures from Christmas and there were so few (seriously, you saw most of them), I decided it was time to reengage with visually capturing our moments.  So, I read the entire manual, tried all the settings on Brent as he played video games with Zach, and am trying to take at least take a couple pictures a day as practice definitely makes perfect. I took my camera to the museum and fiddled with all my new knowledge and I think it helped.  (Granted, I haven't uploaded the pictures to show you yet, but I will!)

8.  Back to "school":  Today, Brent and I returned to work, but the whole household won't be fully back to routine until "school" resumes tomorrow.  M will now be joining B as Mother's Day Out five days a week.  It was sad to say farewell to her babysitter today, but we may see her again in the summer or maybe even for the new baby in the fall.  Meanwhile, It will be very nice to have both kids in the same place and they both seem very happy there.  I'm not so excited about the return to packing lunches, but otherwise, I think we're ready for the new routing.  We'll see how B does though with a suddenly drop in video game time.... ah transitions.

9.  Electric Family:  Over the course of the long weekend and recent weeks we've developed a habit of about 20-30 minutes a day where we each play simultaneously with our gadgets of choice.  M and I snuggle ourselves into the chair with the iPhone and iPad and the boys play Skylander/Zelda/Kirby on the couch nearby.  It isn't a lengthy thing, but we all enjoy it so it works.  Sort of funny to consider that M is ready to join in our wired life, but she spends her time happily arrange letters to make the words in Deluxe Words, watching Elmo videos on the alphabet, or playing with Super Why.

10.  Books:  This month's book club assignment was to read a book of our choosing and report to the group.  Most of what I've been reading of late felt far from book report worthy so I started looking through the Kindle store and happened upon a sale on the kindle version of  The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood.  This falls squarely in the distopian future genre with other classics like Fahrenheit 451, Brave New World, Nineteen Eighty-Four, and more recently The Hunger Games Trilogy.  I'm not sure why I read these books as I can't say I precisely enjoy them, but do find them thought provoking.  This one focuses on reproductive abilities being limited and the government's attempt to control/manage a declining fertility rate and gender roles.  Interestingly, I happened to read The Children of Men by P.D. James (one my Grandpa's favorite authors) near the end of my pregnancy with B, which is also about global fertility issues.  In both instances, it was sort of odd to read about a wide-spread inability to reproduce when I was pregnant.

That's the main topics for this week.  Feel free to send me suggestions of things you'd like to hear more about in these postings and I'll be back with more soon!