Small celebrations

(c) 2008 Ms. Huis Herself at musenmutter.blogspot.com

I've been doing some of the Flylady stuff. Babysteps, you know. So far, I'm finding it helpful, my house is tidier AND cleaner, and I'm feeling a sense of accomplishment about it. I'm not worrying too much about the parts I'm not getting to/not ready for, but the ideas of what to do when, setting a timer to focus on a task for 5 or 15 minutes, clearing off "Hot Spots" for 2 minutes once or twice a day - those are definitely helping. It makes me feel more peaceful to be able to look at what I've accomplished and to have things more tidy.

My girls have been having a blast at lunch today eating plain fresh spinach and pretending to be caterpillars. Mmmmm... leaves!

I've done menu planning the last two weeks and it's helped so much! I have an idea of what I'm going to do, I try to balance out easy/time-consuming meals or veg/meat or pasta/potatoes/etc., and it made grocery shopping this morning a breeze.

Plus, I actually sat down on the couch and clipped coupons while I watched TV last night, remembered to bring them along, and used them. Between some clipped coupons, some in-store coupons, and in-store promotions, I saved $29 - 17% of my bill! Yay! (I avoided buying stuff just 'cuz I had a coupon, too, just stuff we needed anyway or were staples like frozen veg.)

Pumpkin got her first progress report/report card from school today and she's doing very well. She's already at a lot of the end of year goals for the 4Kers and "progressing" in a few, but no "beginnings." So that looks great. Her teacher even left notes on a couple of the goals like knowing 20 of the 54 upper/lowercase letters (it's 54 'cuz of g & g & a & simpler a that I don't have on any of these fonts) where she knows virtually ALL of them. So she's doing well academically, socially, and is demonstrating good learning skills/attitude. Yay, Pumpkin!

I read about this kid music video site, Jitterbug, through Cool Mom Picks and they're so FUN! Also, a good way to check the email/blogs while entertaining any wee ones around. Warning - if you listen to the They Might Be Giants song "Never Go to Work," you'll be humming it all day. Or maybe singing it aloud. Not that Mr. Kluges and I have been doing that, oh no. Pumpkin thinks 789 by The Barenaked Ladies is good fun, but we laughed when she asked Mr. Kluges for the naked lady song. ;) Penguin thinks they're all fun and dances around in the office when we play any of them.

Penguin is "talking" more and more. She sort of knows some of her colors (blue, yaya (yellow), poe-poe (purple), geen (green). We had to swing by the Target at the mall yesterday, so we spent some time at the playplace by the food court. She's been talking about it off and on ever since. "Whee." (I went on the slides.) "Choo-choo." (Hey, Mom, remember there was a Thomas balloon way up high on the ceiling.) "Choo-choo up." (Boy, that Thomas balloon was something way up there.) "Blue." (It was even blue.) "Eyes." (And had eyes.) "Move." (And it'd sometime change position because of the wind/vents/?. That was really cool.) In fact, just now she came in the office and said, "Choo-choo. Move. Eyes. Up." and nodded her head, 'cuz you know, she just wanted me to remember it with her. Funny girl.

So there you go - celebrate the small stuff. Got any small celebrations you want to share?