Applesauce Oatmeal Muffins

These are excellent muffins for breakfast or for lunch on the go. They’re not too sweet, and they’re very moist. They might also make a great base for a cranberry oatmeal muffin if you add dried cranberries or something of that sort. If you want a bit more sweetness, you could try making extra topping.

Applesauce Oatmeal Muffins
Serves: 12
Total time: 30 minutes
Prep time: 10 minutes

Ingredients:

Muffins
1 ½ cups quick oats
1 ¼ cups flour
¾ tsp cinnamon
1 tsp baking powder
¾ tsp baking soda
1 cup unsweetened applesauce
½ cup milk
½ cup brown sugar
3 tbsps vegetable oil
1 egg white

Topping
¼ cup quick oats
1 tbsp brown sugar
⅛ tsp cinnamon
1 tbsp margarine or butter (melted)

Instructions:

1. Heat oven to 400
2. Line muffin tin with paper cups or spray with cooking spray
3. Combine oats, flour, cinnamon, baking powder and baking soda
4. Mix in applesauce, milk, brown sugar, oil and egg white until batter is consistent
5. Fill muffin cups almost full - remember they will rise
6. For topping combine remaining ingredients in small bowl (quick oats, brown sugar, cinnamon, melted margarine or butter)
7. Sprinkle evenly over batter, press in slightly with finger
8. Bake 20-22 minutes until deep golden brown and toothpick comes out clean

 Original recipe found at food.com with nutrition facts. Modifications made to instructions, based on my experience.

A Day In The Life

We have a schedule... sort of.

If the kids aren’t already up by 7:45, I get them up because they absolutely must file through our single bathroom one-by-one before breakfast, which is at (or near) 8:00. Breakfast is usually just cereal. I’ve tried other things, but 8:00 am is not a good time for me to hear “I don’t like it” after I’ve just made applesauce pancakes, so I stick with what’s safe.

I try to have the dogs fed by 10:00 because I have to have lunch ready by 11:00. A result of feeding them cereal for breakfast: they’re hungry for lunch. The twins usually finish their lunch in 30 minutes or less, while the youngest sometimes takes over an hour. My favorite thing to make for lunch is turkey and cheese wrapped in crescent roll dough. They love it, and it’s fun. And I try to always offer a side of fruit. Of course, they also like corn dogs, mac and cheese, and pizza, but those things make me feel guilty, so I try to limit them.

Nap time is from 1:00 to 3:00, with some flexibility. It is required that they clean their room before they nap, so I assess the damage at around 12:00 to determine if the clean up will be a half or whole hour-long project. I also generally have to spend most of clean-up time in their room with them, keeping them on track and reminding the two-year-old where things go. But I don’t physically help.

The twins will soon be ditching naps, except on days when they've exhausted themselves in the morning. So, we'll probably utilize that time for more lessons.

Between 3:00 and 4:00, I take my dog out.

Lately, my partner has been on the “late” shift. He works for the school district, though, so that amounts to 8:00am to 4:00pm. The office is downtown, so he gets home between 4:30 and 4:45.

Dinner is as close to 6:00 as possible, and limited to 45 minutes. Our current favorite dinner food is tortilla soup.

After dinner, we fit in a bath, a second clean-up session, brushing teeth, and a story.

Bedtime is at 9:00.

It looks like this:

Click image to see larger version

I’m so glad that it counts as education when my kids ask me questions over dinner, or when they ask me to explain what something is during story time. Additionally, we manage to fit in math practice after dinner, to earn gummy bears or jelly beans for dessert. Still, sometimes I have to interrupt their play time to work with them on something. Otherwise, I’m not sure how I’d fit the required 4 hours (on average) into each day.

This post linked to iHomeschool's  *Not* back to homeschool blog hop

Exciting News

We FINALLY got our ultrasound this morning. The girls were all excited to go see the baby, but almost totally lost interest after they saw what they wanted to see. My partner got a half-day off of work for it, so it was a room full of family.

Let me just get this out of the way: baby is healthy. All organs are normal, heart rate is perfect, growth is right on schedule... no complaints.

Also, it's a boy!

Boy and proud! This was the first thing he showed us.

He also has... substantial thighs like his daddy. In fact, based on his measurements, he's in the 78th percentile for his age.

And, to be clear, EVERYONE was excited. All three of my girls are excited to have a little brother and I've already been asked if they get to hold him "when he's out and healthy and... clean."

(not) Ultrasound

I had my intake appointment on the 14th, last Tuesday, at my new clinic. They sent various body fluids off to be tested, and we all got to listen to baby’s heartbeat. The nurse also explained that since I will be opting to have a C-Section (I have already had to have two, and don’t want to risk serious complications), and my due date is December 31st, they would normally want to schedule the surgery for 1 week in advance which would land me in the hospital for a couple of days starting on Christmas Eve. She reassured me that we could push it back a couple of days so I can be with my kids on Christmas. Poor Christmas baby.

The clinic scheduled my 20 week, detailed ultrasound for the 21st, which actually coincides with my 21st week of pregnancy. I know and accept that this is my fault, because I hesitated to start prenatal appointments, not wanting to figure out how to fit them into my still otherwise normal life. But when that day came around, my partner had taken the day off of work, we had gotten the kids up and breakfasted, we were all dressed, I had done my makeup and hair... and I got a call from the clinic.

They informed me that their ultrasound machine was down. This was fairly early in the morning, so I can only assume that whatever it was, it happened overnight. At that point, they said they were bringing in a specialist to have a look and try to fix it, but they weren’t sure how long that would take. They asked me to call back before I left the house for my appointment, to check on the progress.

They’re a small, comfortable clinic, so it’s not surprising that they apparently have only one machine. Also, I am thankful that they caught us before we walked out the door, even though the clinic is only 6 minutes away, by google’s estimate. It is considerate of them to call.

When I called back about an hour later, the repair tech had only been there for around 20 minutes and still didn’t know what the trouble was. This time, “I’ll call you back as soon as I know something.” is what she offered.

When she called, about 15 minutes before my scheduled appointment, she explained that the machine was still not functioning, and they would need to reschedule my appointment, “does Friday morning work for you?”

I hate to be one of those disgruntled clients who gets short with a representative on the phone who had nothing to do with the delay. Don’t shoot the messenger. But the first thing to cross my mind was, “my partner is going to have to get ANOTHER day off.” and the truth is I wasn’t sure that Friday WAS going to be okay, because I needed to discuss it with him first. Even then, we have to wait until he goes back to work to see if he can even have the time off. I’m sure all of that made me sound... exasperated. I know it wasn’t this nice lady’s fault.

But I rescheduled my appointment for Friday at 9:15 AM. My partner just confirmed that morning off. Hopefully things will be fully functional by then, and we’ll see what there is to see.

Introducing, My Homeschoolers

Click on the image to see a larger version

These are my homeschoolers. That’s S, on the left, C in the middle, and M on the right. S and C are five-years-old and are just starting a structured homeschool year. M is 2 and will be 3 soon. I make sure to keep worksheets and projects around for her, too. Wouldn’t want her to feel left out.

There is one huge advantage to having twins that has remained true for their entire lives thus far: They entertain each other. These days, that has allowed me some time to get my planner together, accumulate some worksheets, and do some research. But on the flip side of that is a problem.

They distract each other and rely on each other. When we’re doing lessons that involve me explaining anything for more than a minute, they find something funny in what I said and it can be hard to get them back on track. I’m sure other moms remember from their own childhood, how sleepovers got out of hand when it was time to go to sleep. If you have a friend laughing with you, it’s hard to stop. Then, if there’s a math problem or reading, S will wait for C to get the answer, and then jump on board with her, even when C is wrong, instead of working it out for herself. In that sense, it’s just like public school, except she’s not getting away with it for an entire school term and failing to learn anything for herself.

A couple of weeks ago, one of my kids asked why they’re not going to school. I explained (in so many words) that public schools often have 15, 20, maybe even 30 kids in a classroom with one teacher and that teacher has to keep up with all of those kids. The teacher’s job is to make sure that all of the kids understand each concept, and they’re limited to about 7 hours per day, and 4 or 5 days per week, so other kids are often working at the pace of those who are slower to grasp a lesson. And while I don’t expect to never have days or weeks or months when one of my kids is considerably behind another in a subject (even though they’re the same age), I do believe having only a few kids to look after, and having much more time available to me, allows me to make time to teach each one on her own level.

Yesterday, at Ikea, two different women directed this question at one of my five-year-olds, “are you in kindergarten?” The first time, the woman got a baffled look and a nervous smile, and I had to explain, “they’re homeschooled, and we just started, so they haven’t really figured out that not ‘GOING to school’ is still school.” The second time, my daughter proudly announced, “I’m homeschooled!” 

This post linked to iHomeschool's  *Not* back to homeschool blog hop

 

Planners

I mentioned in my previous blog that I printed a planner. I spent one whole day on the process, which involved finding forms that worked for me, printing, copying, and filling out the pages, and putting the planner together. Granted, this would not have have taken nearly so long if I didn’t have many other obligations, but we’re working with whatever free time we can find, here.

To me, it’s a masterpiece. To anyone else, it’s a pinkish-purple binder full of paper. And, really, who uses binders? But I keep looking at it and thumbing through it with pride.

You can buy lesson planners. Book stores have them, or you can buy them online. There are lots of options on Amazon. That might work for you if you are a flexible person who doesn’t mind having to bend a bit to conform to the styling set out in a pre-printed book. Also, if you can make the time to review a few different versions and find the right one for you. I make that sound bad, but that’s only because I’m not that person.

If you’re not at all flexible, you can make your own. If you know how to use Excel (or something similar) or tables in Word, or any of a number of Adobe programs (I bet InDesign would be fun for this), you could organize and style your own planners from scratch. That, though, requires some time.

For those of us in between, there are great resources online. I want to be able to pick what kind of pages I include in my planner, how many, and how I organize them in my binder. I have most of a design degree, so I do know how to do this on my own, but I don’t really have time. So I’ll sacrifice a little personalization for the sake of being able to put it together in one day and no longer having to think about it.

I got my planner pages at http://donnayoung.org/forms/. This site has a short list of different sets available. Then, if you click on a set you like, then click “homeschool”, you can see the different pages available for that set. For instance, in the set I chose (Colonial, because I’m a sucker for script), you can choose from 9 different layouts for your planner, depending on what works for you.

My planner includes an attendance calendar, two sets of lesson plan pages (one for each kid, since one will have speech therapy and the other will not), and two reading lists. This year, it’s fairly simple. We’re not grading because I don’t have to report grades to the district yet. However, when that changes, there are grading tables available, too. And if I need more copies of, for instance, the reading list, I can just copy a blank page and not have to fill it out again. This works for me.

I’m pretty sure I’m not being biased at all when I say the planner I created is concise and easy to use. I have a dream in which I imagine family members being able to substitute teach and fill out the planner for me while the kids are on vacation with them. For some, though, that might be unrealistic.

As mentioned in the previous post, I’m currently compiling a list of resources I use for our lessons, as well as free/cheap field trip (or just for fun) destinations for families in Denver. If you have any suggestions for either list, let me know. I can always use more information.

Curriculum

A page from our headstart agenda

I’m noticing the topic of conversation this week among homeschoolers has been curriculum. And since the conventional school year is about to begin (some schools here started this Wednesday), a hot topic is how to save money on your materials. For those of you who don’t homeschool but read this anyway, imagine back-to-school shopping, but include all of the stuff the school provides, too. Keep in mind, the state doesn’t consider us part of its budget, so we have to find our own resources like textbooks and chemistry sets.

My kids are young. We did some head-start work through spring and summer, and we’re starting our first full year of lessons this fall. So, textbooks aren’t a concern yet. Instead, we need workbooks, for which I can mostly find free, printable versions. And there is no strict curriculum, yet. We have lessons, but they’re usually dictated by what my kids are interested in learning that day, and are generally kept pretty short, so they don’t lose focus.

This year, I plan to cover the following topics:

Reading: We started on this in our head-start period. We will spend more time working on it this year, and we’ll probably be spending an increasing amount of time at the library. We have a lot of books, here. Really, I barely have space for them all. But I think exposure to the library is positive.

Writing: We also worked on this in the last several months, as you may have gathered from my last blog. They’re getting fairly good at it, but still require reference sheets to get each letter right and need practice. I also thing reading and writing go hand-in-hand and I would like for them to start writing words by the end of the term.

Basic Math: Some work has been done on this already. They’ve established the method of double-digit counting, and know the concepts of addition, subtraction, and multiplication. But, here again, practice. We use Khan Academy quite a bit, and I’m thinking about incorporating “bedtime math” to see if I can foster more interest. 
http://khanacademy.org
http://bedtimemathproblem.org/

Science: We will mostly be focusing on the visible, physical world. There are a lot of great resources for this, which is good because my kids’ interests are varied. I’m thinking we’ll have one structured and pre-planned science lesson per week, and anything else they feel like bringing up will be taken seriously and explored. This is a category we never seem to have a shortage of inspiration for. http://scienceforpreschoolers.com/

Culture: This year, I want to start talking about religion. We are not a religious family, but I want the kids to understand and appreciate religion, and be able to make their own (educated) decisions about it in the future. I’d also like to talk about the role of girls (since I have all daughters) throughout the world. And, since we’re here in America, we’ll talk about the history of our country and how it came to have the culture it does.

Sign Language: This one has been running its course for years, now. I started teaching them their alphabet with sign language so they could break up the “LMNOP” segment, visually. We’ve been using Signing Time, and I want to expand on this by taking some courses, myself. If I manage to go back to school part-time this year, it will probably be for this. http://www.signingtime.com/

Art: I’m not sure if this one counts. I don’t so much “teach” it. Mostly, I let them draw and color because, even if they don’t end up caring at all about art, and even if they can never draw anything more exciting than stick figures, it’s great practice for motor skills and not structured like writing practice. I consider it part of the curriculum because it needs devoted time, because it’s important. http://www.kiwicrates.com

Speech Therapy: One of the twins has a bit of a speech problem. I believe it's a tongue thrust problem, but we'll have to have it assessed. Then, I plan to work speech therapy into our structured time at home.

An important note: My homeschoolers are five-years-old. According to the state of Colorado, it is not required for them to enrolled in school at all for one more year. This means I don’t have to subject them to standardized testing yet. I also don’t have to take attendance, tabulate grades, or submit an official curriculum to a district school. http://www.cde.state.co.us/choice/homeschool_law.asp

However, since this is the year leading up to their official homeschooling, I’m trying to simulate (at least for myself) what this undertaking will eventually involve. I have a planner I printed and arranged for the coming months, that includes reading lists for each kid. I also have an attendance chart to keep track of our days and hours.

Colorado requires at least 172 days, averaging 4 hours of “educational contact” per day. Our current schedule will leave us short at 169 days, if we do nothing educational at all on the weekends. But I suppose you can imagine how likely that is. After all, weekends are our preferred field trip days.

I’m currently compiling a list of resources I use for our lessons, as well as free/cheap field trip (or just for fun) destinations for families in Denver. If you have any suggestions for either list, let me know. I can always use more information.

This post linked to iHomeschool's  *Not* back to homeschool blog hop

Pending Baby

I don't normally blog in the middle of the week, but this is not a homeschooling update, so I thought I would just share it as it becomes available.I seem to be gaining some readership that extends beyond my friends and family, so I suppose I should let you know what they’ve already heard: I’m pregnant.

As of August 14th, I’ve met the 20 week mark, and am halfway to the finish line with baby number 4. I had specifically planned to avoid having more kids... until I met my partner. He doesn’t have any of his own, but he has been instrumental (and amazing) in day-to-day ventures with mine. We found out my sister was pregnant and decided to try for our own, with the thought that close-in-age cousins would be a great idea for the family. Then, right as we were finding out we were pregnant, we found out that his sister-in-law was as well. It’s going to be one crazy winter.

The most satisfying part about this whole experience is a convenient combination of being right, and this finally going the way I always thought it should. My partner has been incredibly supportive and helpful and understanding. I knew him to be a reliable and strong person, but a pessimistic part of me really clung to the idea that he would change as soon as he thought he had me committed. He hasn’t at all. I’ve been sick, or tired or emotional. There have been cravings, cry sessions, and energy crashes at dinner time. He stands by me through it all and doesn’t make me feel guilty for feeling weird.

Baby at 10 weeks

At 10 weeks, I wound up in the ER over some severe abdominal pain. After a thorough ultrasound, we’re still not sure what caused it. What matters is it never came back, and we got a chance to check out the baby and make sure everything was fine. Since then, I’ve had some trouble dealing with my insurance (and my resistance to what I see as unnecessary medical appointments) so I’ve only recently begun having regular check ups. A thorough ultrasound will follow shortly, and I’ll let you know what we find out.

By the way, we decided on the names Ada Danelle (girl) or Elon Tiberius (Boy). First names are linked to the person for whom our baby will be named.

Since I’m coming clean about this, I should let you know a few other dirty details of my life.

Obviously, my partner is not the father of my previous children (the twins and their little sister). They, however, do share a father: My husband. Yes, I’m still married to the guy, despite continued efforts to be otherwise. He and I have been physically separated (living in different states 1,000 or more miles away from each other) for around 20 months, now. I’ve spent this entire time trying to get a divorce, starting, of course, with the most basic, “I’m done and I want a divorce”. But it has been a nasty battle.

I’m not going to air the details of this experience to the entire internet, but I’m sure many of the divorcees out there have at least some idea what this feels like. It has actually been incredibly difficult not to explode to all of my friends on Facebook, on the more difficult days. I have managed to find a few to confide in, but mostly it stays between me and my mom. However, I will say that since I’ve rebooted my own life, I feel free, productive, beautiful, fresh, and desirable in ways I haven’t experienced in years. I’m a whole new person, and I feel big enough to face fears and insecurities I harbored and let grow as his wife.

Staying Positive

For reference if you aren't familiar with practice paper.

This is a difficult one for me. It’s fairly easy to stay positive when explaining things to the kids, but not as simple to stay positive in my head when things aren’t going right. I think that’s okay, as long as you don’t get stuck on that track.

This week, during writing practice, one of my daughters drew an ‘e’. It was very well structured for a five-year-old’s hand writing. It was even the right size. The problem was that it floated on the dotted line on her practice paper, instead of spanning the space between the dotted line and the bottom line.

She panicked. “I messed it up!”, she said. I looked at it and noticed how upset she was. So I pointed out that it was actually a really great ‘e’, and that’s a pretty difficult letter to draw, since it has a round part and straight line all in one. She did a good job. “it just belongs down here”. And, “you know what? It’s not a problem. You have lots of paper, and you have an eraser. You can choose to erase and start over, or leave it there and make a new one. There’s plenty of space.”

Attitude adjusted, she chose to erase the offending letter and try again. And she got it right the second time. Also a significant note: she was noticeably more pleased with that second ‘e’ than she was with getting any other letter right on the first try.

But, earlier that same day, I found myself in a funk during nap time. My five-year-olds don’t want to take naps anymore, and they probably don’t really NEED them anymore (except on days when we’re particularly active). But my two-year-old needs a nap every day. They share a room, and I don’t have enough space to let the five-year-olds stay up where they won’t keep the younger one awake. But their presence in the bedroom, while not sleeping, keeps the two-year-old awake anyway. For the last week, we’ve been having particularly persistent problems, and I can’t seem to devise a solution.

They get multiple timeouts every day as a result of this problem. It’s really the only thing they get timeouts for anymore. After a couple of sessions of that, I get frustrated. So I’ve tried lots of different theories on them; most of which worked for a week or so before they lose power somehow.

Since my whole world is centered around my children (stay-at-home-mom/homeschooler), these things are especially discouraging. So, when they persist for several days, I feel disappointed in myself for not being able to work it out.

Maybe this is just a little biased, since I clearly don’t want to be broken or wrong, but I don’t think there’s anything unusual about that. In fact, I think it is part of what makes me good at what I do. It upsets me to be unable to fix a problem, so I devote a lot of time and thought to finding a solution, and I try a lot of different methods before I give up. But, there will be failures. So, when failure gets me down, I try to remind myself that it is a side effect of caring so much about my kids and my parenting.

I’ve been steeped in the fallout of disappointments this week, more than usual. I have a feeling I’m not the only parent who ever feels this way. So, hopefully sharing how I cope with it might help someone else remember what a wonderful mom or dad they are. I’m no psychologist, but I think it’s okay to feel that way, as long as it’s only temporary.