7 Quick Takes Friday - XI

1. Been a while since one of these!  Anyhow, the boy is off to school.  Didn't know if he'd be going today, since he was up a lot last night coughing, but he was up and asking about school this morning, soo...we'll give it a go.  Resumed breathing treatments as well, so hopefully that will help.  Allergies are awful right now.

2. Calla likes trains.  Not so much playing with toy trains (though she will), but making trains from lines of chairs or other furnishings...

The view from my seat.  Skeleton bear (thus named b/c of his skeleton costume - he doesn't have his hood up, but Calla prefers it down.  He's her favorite stuffed animal by FAR.) is in front of me, in the dining car. ;)  There's an ottoman in front of the table, but you can't really see it from this angle.

 And the view behind me, where her favorite doll is riding.  Sometime after this, she also added a little toy-sized Cozy Coupe as a passenger as well.

3. We're going to be getting Patrick a new car seat this weekend.  I had been forewarned on one of the message boards I frequent that the one he has now, which can be used with a harness or as a booster, is not a good booster b/c of the way it positions the seat belt on the child's body (lap belt too high).  I tried it to see how it fit him, and yep - it did NOT fit him well at ALL.  It's almost like it held the seat belt out in front of him for him to crash into, rather than position it to lay across him correctly.  He's hit the weight limit on the harness of the seat, so we'll be getting a new carseat for him this weekend (probably a booster only, but I'm open to a higher weight limit harness & booster combo, if we can afford it).  We'll probably move Calla into Patrick's current seat with the harness, because it is SO much easier to get a good snug fit on the harness in his than in her current seat.

4.  Purged some toys from the kiddos' room yesterday and boxed 'em up - they could probably stand to have another box out as well, but I only had one box.  I was going to rearrange their room to see if I could get them more floor space with the beds against the wall, but it didn't work well that way.  Oh well - at least I got a box of toys out.

5.  I took Calla to a baby-to-preschooler age mom-and-kid type music class thinger on Monday - the instructor's son had been in speech therapy with Calla.  I had been meaning to take her for months now, but with the bronchitis and such, it's only now that I finally got around to it.  She didn't quite follow what was going on, but that's pretty typical of the first couple of sessions.  I'll probably go ahead and take her through the rest of this year (only a couple more sessions until summer break), since it's only $1 per session, and then we'll see how she handles it when it starts back up this fall.  I'd like to get her acquainted with a structured activity of some sort, just to see how she does.

6.  Assuming that enough students sign up, I'll be doing a physics class for a local homeschool co-op this coming school year.  It's two hours a week (the co-op is actually one day a week, but they have classrooms secured for a second day for high-school level classes and such that really do need more tutor-led instructional time per week), and the child care during class times is a whopping $5 (though I'll need to check - I dunno if that's available during that additional day or not.  If it isn't, I imagine I should be able to line someone up for that one day per week, since it's such a short time).  The following year, though, I will probably be trying to get into the local school district.  Glad we'll have been able to swing my staying home with the kiddos as much as I have until school age, but it's been tight, and being able to get some savings built up will be a good thing.

7.  Fingers crossed, I think Calla very nearly has this whole potty thing down.  She's very inconsistent with poo, but otherwise seems to have it.  Hopefully that'll come too pretty soon.  C'mon, Calla!!