I guess I missed my half birthday and didn’t even think about it. Oh, well. I feel like the last few weeks have been kind of a brain fog since Logan hasn’t been sleeping as well. Katsu lets me sleep in pretty much every morning so I get enough hours almost every day but the breaks are hard for me. I also gets tons of insomnia in the night if I wake up, so that doesn’t help. I am just a bad sleeper – probably the worst in the house!
Well, I totally jumped off the healthy eating bandwagon this month, but I think I will try it again next month. I did pretty good for a couple weeks with working out, but not so well this week. I need to get back to working out in the morning – it really makes the rest of my day feel SO much better.
I got a new calling – YW secretary. Initially I have been pretty excited because I have always wanted to serve in YW and never have. I think I can easily do the secretary stuff and it will be fun to get to know the girls. I am not so sure about activity every week and a presidency meeting every week in the evening – that takes two whole evenings where I will basically get 0 time with Katsu and I am not excited about that at all. Maybe we’ll be so super efficient we won’t need a meeting every week!
I didn’t try too many new recipes this month. But, I am back into the cheese making – Katsu bought me some new rennet and spices for Valentine’s Day and so we tried our hand at mozzarella – did not work at all, so we ended up making it into ricotta and having lasagna (which the boys wouldn’t eat – they never want to eat anything … I swear, we could beans and rice for dinner every night and the boys would be in heaven). I tried again and I got curds using powdered milk, but the flavor and texture were blech. On the other hand, I finally broke out the yogurt maker I bought and have been making yogurt all month and with powdered milk it still seems to turn out well. I am really enjoying making yogurt and Seth loves eating it out of the little cups since we usually get the big containers. Andrew is not impressed. I am excited to try it out with Logan, too. I am also day dreaming about making hard cheeses with a press once we have a house. Something to save my fun cash for (yes, Katsu and I get an allowance every month).
We finally got Katsu’s raise this month (yay!) and also with the tax return, it is super exciting to be able to add to our house payment savings account. Our goal is 20% down plus closing costs (but I would love to put even more down … though that is unlikely). Let’s hope we ultimately move somewhere not too expensive (i.e., East Coast or California) because I am super pumped to buy a house. Surprisingly, I have not been spending every spare minute looking at houses in Madison, even though Katsu interviewed there this month (like I did when he interviewed in NC). I don’t really know if we will move there. I guess I have other things to occupy my time.
I haven’t been to much into reading books and have been wasting my time reading blogs when I’ve been nursing. But books I’ve read or skimmed this month: Bringing up Bebe – not too impressed with this book – I found some of the ideas about parenting from the French interesting, but the lady seemed way too pessimistic about American parenting and seemed to much idealize the French. Also, it seems like the French don’t actually spend too much time with their children and delegate their child-rearing to others. I did like the idea of the cadre, however, and also some of the food stuff and would like to implement. I am trying to get the kids to like the idea of a vegetable course first … hmmm. You Believers – I read about 75 pages of this book and then decided it wasn’t worth my time. Peas and Thank You - hoping for veggies recipes the kids would like, but was none too impressed with the carb heavy, fake soy stuff. Yuck. I am interested in vegetable-dishes not just vegetarian pretend meat dishes. It probably had some good stuff, but the lady looked a little too Utah-mormony and kind of scary to me. Hard to explain. The Sibling Effect – still reading, just okay, we’ll see how much more I read. Reassuring to read that kids ages 2-4 generally fight every 9.6 minutes – I think ours is less than that, but at least I am not the only one who feels like she is referring all day long. Eat to Live – somewhere recommended this diet book, but sorry, I think I would die on this plan and the weight recommendations are scary thin, in my opinion. They recommend a weight that when I was at as a teenager people though I had become anorexic. No thanks. Making fine cheeses – a fantasy book for me, but oh, a girl can dream, right. How Eskimos keep their babies warm – the book was okay. Not greatly written, and I have to admit, I am getting a bit tired of this new parenting genre book, but I thought some of things were interesting. I still don’t understand how Argentinan babies stay up so late. Attachments – this was kind of a fun chick lit book. A little fluffy, but a little fun. Reminds me of You’ve Got Mail. The Reading Promise – This looked promising but I couldn’t get past the first couple chapters. I just found it boring and unremarkable – or at least not as remarkable as they think. However, I do love the idea of reading to children all the way through high school. I would love to make that happen. Hmmm … just thinking about that makes me want to try the book again. I just didn’t like the style. Sigh. Stiff – okay, I was so excited about the premise. I have always wanted to donate my body to science and found the beginning interesting. But the author was somewhat crude and just way too … casual … unprofessional … gross? I mean, obviously a book about cadavers has to be a bit of that, but this was still further than I expected. She just seemed immature to me. I am not even sure if I finished the last chapter or so. Raising Cain – I didn’t get to finish this book because I had to take it back to the library before I was done. I found it quite interesting and it made me really think about how important it is to connect to boys and their inner thoughts and not just blow it off. This is kind of hard for me because Andrew is SOO verbose and always going on and on about his feelings, but it is really important to not shut that off. I should pick this up again sometime, maybe when he is a bit older. Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet – I really really enjoyed this book. Maybe it was the Japanese aspect. Maybe it was the easy-to-read-but-enjoyable fiction. Or just the thinking about family relationships, about heart and soul. But I really liked it. Highly recommend. Boys Should Be Boys – a bit similar to raising cain, but I liked it. Not too much to say.
