I passed!

I went in to a room for about an hour and 15 minutes. They asked me questions. I answered. I listened. I commented. I got sent out. They discussed. I came back in. I passed.

I was "satisfactory."
I don't know how many levels there are to the scoring, but I passed and that is enough for me. A pass is a pass. Thank you to everyone who was praying for me.

I took the kids to the park (despite it only being 40-50 degrees) and they ran and played. We went and got ice cream (thanks to all those dental/doctor passes because my kids are good at following directions when they come from anyone but me).
I pretended to cook for dinner (microwaving vegetables, reheating left-over noodles, and opening a can of tuna doesn't really count as cooking...) and then I gave myself permission to have a short break before I dive in to the next step.

So I am "officially" ABD now. ..as in All But Dissertation.

Making progress

For as confident and as hard working as Andy can be, it can be difficult to get him to try certain things....like writing his name. Last week he got in trouble at Speech because he started goofing off when he got frustrated.
However, this week has been a different story.
Prior to yesterday he had only come home with attempting to write his A and N in his name. I couldn't even get him to attempt writing even those two letters at home. Yesterday he came home with a paper that had all four letters of ANDY written on it.
Then, when he was done with speech, his speech teacher said that he had made more attempts and was making the initial "K" sound better and more often. One of the things that might be helping with that...he has been cheering "Go Canada" when we watch the Olympics.

Reflective

I have been in sort of a reflective mood this evening.
I think it is because this week I have a lot going on. It is not unusual for me to have a lot going on...but some weeks are worse than others and sometimes it just gets to me.

One time I went to a conference where a keynote speaker commented that our best assets are often also our worst problems. In her case she was talking about how she used to get in trouble for talking too much and now people pay her to talk.
For me I can think of times when my caution has saved me from making an unwise decision, but it has also meant I missed opportunities. My perfectionism means that I do well in most classes, but I am also tempted to give in rather than have to try and possibly fail when something makes me a bit nervous.
So this week I am trying not to be my own worst enemy. I have to do my oral comps which basically means that I go into a room for 90 minutes to two hours and a group of professors can ask me about what I wrote on my written comps and then just about anything else they want to ask me about within my field.
I am trying to convince myself to be confident and that I really do know the content of my field. My biggest fear is just stumbling over words and giving a completely unorganized answer.
I am praying for confidence and for the right words to come out of my mouth on Thursday morning starting about 9:15.

How my week is going....

Don't get me wrong. This week is better than last week (I'll take healthy children over sick ones any time).
However, I leave you with this debate:

• Is it better to have spilled your mostly, but not all the way, closed coffee travel mug upside-down in your work bag...

-OR-

• To have spilled an entire container of thumb tacks in your bag?

I have done both this week.

It snowed!

It snowed here on Friday. The kids (and Pop and Nana) had a great time. Of course I was the main target of snow balls. Doug was pretty decent at rolling snowballs once he saw a grown-up do it. I really hadn't thought before about how a yard with trees (or maybe it's just that we never quite got ALL of the leave raked up) makes for a "dirty" snowman. Of course the next day the snow was basically gone except for the remnants of the snowmen.

How can one two year old be more work than two four year olds?

Doug is doing great. He is getting well and healthy after being sick last week and has shown initiative to do things when I ask.

Andy has his stubborn moments but he has shown some great moments this past week (sharing a sticker with his siblings...Doug & Josie both wanted the sticker so Andy, with the wisdom of Solomon tore it in half and put a piece on each sibling.)

Josie on the other hand is two going on 14 or 15. She wants to do everything herself and she gets upset when she has trouble. She is still making progress on potty training but she gets mad if I try and help her, even just verbally, with other things.
So I am just curious how many other people have had their two year old tell them that you are ruining her life and that she just doesn't want you to be near her. She will get upset if Doug or Andy say something or try to help and then go running down the hallway crying to her room. I know this too shall pass and she will grow out of it.
I vaguely might remember going through this a bit with the boys (I don't know...a lot of that stuff seems to have been blocked out by me) but it's tough while you are going through it.

God moments

I had two God moments today.
1. One of the professors I work for is currently on medical leave (pray for health...) and I happened to go in to her office today to look for a couple books. While I was looking I stumbled across three books from the university library that were due at the end of January. So I went and returned them and was all prepared to pay the fines only to find out that they were still in the grace period. I feel really good about taking care of those for her.

2. Josie's potty training sort of happens here or there and it is really easy to make excuses not to work on it (she's sick, we're going some place, etc.). So today Josie spontaneously decided to strip from the waist down and remain that way for the rest of the afternoon. She managed to put pee into the potty chair and with no problem put poop for the first time in to the potty. She did great until we came back upstairs and I had to go down to get the potty chair. While I was retrieving the potty chair she had an accident, but I am joyful at her willingness to try since she had previously said that she was not interested.

If you made it I would buy it....

If these things existed I would be the first in line to buy them:

• Self-cleaning toy rooms
• Laundry that folded itself and made its way to the drawer
• Dishwashers that unloaded themselves

Short of these things being invented I am waiting for the day when I can tell my children to do these things and having them do it does not create more work for me.

It's exciting to me

Today when Andy went to speech I brought in a deck of cards and Doug and I (and Josie at time) played "Go Fish."

I love card games and board games and jigsaw puzzles and all of that sort of thing. It is really exciting to me that Doug and Andy are starting to be able to do those things and that they enjoy it also. I think I have found a new activity for while we are at Speech.

The games we have learned recently are:
Crazy Eights (Doug got a special deck for Christmas)
Go Fish
Concentration
War
Rock Paper Scissors (but if you ask Daddy and Andy you can also have Thunder....)
Squares (Andy has learned this but I have not had the opportunity to teach Doug)

The forever to-do list

I once had a professor who said that the sooner you got behind during the semester the longer you had to catch-up. I'm not sure on the logic in that but I am trying not to live it.

January has flown by and it is not as if I am not working it is just that I started out behind. There might have been some minor things I could have done during the break, but I have a feeling that would not have made a great deal of difference in the length of my to-do list.

I've start not listing everything but just the most important things. I've also started not trying to list all of the little tasks, but to think of the big areas and remember one item that is crucial from each of those areas.

I also need to seriously get better about writing things down and actually consulting my calendar to keep things straight. At the moment I have too many calendars going (some are course calendars that I just have not had time to transfer to my personal calendar). I have sort of lucked out on a few things that a reminder or a change came just in time for me not to have a problem.

I can sort of see a light at the end of the tunnel with some major things, but I have to work to get there.