So I cleaned the kid's room today. Holy Lord they have a lot of stuff! As in so much stuff that they walk into their room and can't find anything to play with. So much crud it cancels itself out leaving nothing to a five year old view.

I'm getting rid of it all tomorrow. Well most of it. There's no point in having so much stuff that you can't find anything to do. I tried to do it tonight amids screams of "But Mommy, I need that one!". No. No you don't. You didn't even know it was there until I pulled it out of the bottom of the toy box. I could leave it in there for the next ten years and you'll never play with it again. I think I'll send the kids to the park with dad.

They'll come home and find everything magically clean and organized. They probably won't even know that anythings missing. I'll have to post before and after pics tomorrow.

On the writing front, I think I'm going to go back to writing my novel (Sci/fi- Fantasy). I figure it may never get published but at least I'll have the satisfaction of knowing I finished it. And who knows, maybe in five or ten years I'll be rich and famous. Wouldn't that be nice.

Remember what I said about updating this daily? That's right folks, it's been a month. Ah well...

On the upside, I did manage to go camping with my family for the first time in seven years. The kids loved it! They came back looking like little brown gnomes. Of course once we got them sprayed down in the yard they got much paler somehow...

On the home-schooling front, we decided that since it is summer, we'd have a competition in lieu of actual sit down classes. My son is absolutely dying for a Wii system so my husband and I told him that if he could read two hundred (short ie. Doctor Suess) books by mid-December then we could probably see our way around to getting him one for Christmas. Naturally my younger sister (also home-schooling with us) needed a competition also. It kind of raises the stakes competition-wise and after all it wouldn't be fair otherwise. Her task is to read twenty-two (quite a bit larger) books in the same period. My son reads at a second grade level and my sister at a ninth. We're rather proud of them, or had you noticed that?

My daughter had an exciting trip to the ER this week. We set her down in her "time-out" chair...

We don't really do "time-out "but we have to have someplace to put her when she throws her tantrums so that she doesn't hurt herself. We have a nice comfy armchair that works splendidly for that purpose. 

Anyhow, I'm side tracking again. We put her in her chair, screaming at the top her lungs and turn back to look at her only to see her eyes rolled back in her head and she's convulsing! We call our family doc. and he says to take her into the ER and get her worked up for a seizure disorder!

So we get to the ER and the Pediatrician on call hears our story, takes one look at her, laughs and tells me that his daughter used to do that all the time. Apparently some kids when they get really angry will hold their breaths until they almost pass out and it looks quite a bit like a seizure. Who knew? All I can say is, holding your breath until you pass out over a cookie? At least she has conviction.

Our youngest is doing quite well. He's now 6 weeks adjusted (4mo actual age) and weighed in at his last doctors appointment at 10lbs 6oz! He's now officially on the growth chart for is actual age! 

Well, if I keep going on this blog post will be of epic length so I will try to update this again tomorrow. We'll see how that goes...

On my (incredibly long) list of things to do, one item has been start a blog. Originally I figured it would be easy. I've always been a writer so I figured what's the big deal? But it's harder than it looks and recently life has gotten away from me. 

I recently (March 30th) was ushered into the overwhelming community of preemie moms. My youngest son was born 11 weeks premature at a whopping 2lbs 10oz.  Wow, what a ride! He was released from the hospital on May 17th after seven weeks of intensive care. He's doing well and we recently managed to wean him from the little bit of oxygen he went home on. What a relief it is to have him free of all the tubes and equipment!( although I have to say that when we finally got to take him home I was so relieved that I wouldn't have cared if he'd come home attached to an elephant). He's thriving and then some. He's growing like a weed and now weighs almost 9lbs now!

I'm also the mommy of two other brilliant little ones, a boy and a girl. A (my oldest boy) is 5 (and a half -so he says). He's currently home schooled and we love it (science experiments and field trips are always more fun at home), although there are days... especially math days. We've recently tackled "big math" (2-digit addition) and it terrifies him not because he can't do it but because it's "big math". We'll get there... someday.

I (My little girl) has just turned two and is a stunningly good talker ( although somehow all of her really intelligible phrases are things like "bad daddy" "you do it" and any sentence containing the word cookie.) She's recently discovered the concept of "princess clothes" and will romp around in dresses or nothing.

Me? I'm easy. I read to much (mostly Sci/fi and Fantasy stuff), write to much (everything from fantasy stories to medical articles), and generally spend my days in our whirlwind of a family trying to feel like I've gotten anything accomplished. I want to be a freelance writer when I grow up. Well I'm already a freelance writer but someday I'd actually like to get payed for it.

Hopefully I'll be able to update this every couple of days (assuming anyone is interested), but who knows. 'Course now that I've said that the next entry will (of course) be six months from now!