Friday Focus: Bolt

Bolt is a good name choice for this girlie.  She is so fierce and tough and independent, but she still rocks her pink bows.  She makes me laugh every day.

 

She's on a wicked nap boycott lately- just doesn't feel like she needs to sleep much.  Some days she refuses to nap at ALL and yells at us when we try to put her to bed.  No tears, not sad,  The chick is angry.  Just yells.  The minute you get her up she's all sunshine again and just goes and goes.  She's very much The Little Engine That Could.  Much more than meets the eye.  :)  She's one that I could easily see being an Olympic gymnast.  She's wiry and strong and so determined.  Nobody's gonna tell her she can't do something.

And she's so snuggly and koala bear when she feels like it.  She settles in and holds on tight around your neck and just grips harder if you act like you're putting her down.  It's especially fun to snuggle her in her pink bear suit.  It's full length and has ears and feet and the whole shebang.  Pretty awesome.

Being as independent as she is, feeding her has been interesting the past month or so.  She would rather die than let us spoon anything into her mouth like a baby.  Although she sees no problem with eating oatmeal with her fingers… we sometimes do.  :)  It gets pretty messy but she has such a good time and it makes for really fun photos.  I didn't realize how many I have of her eating!

Not a fan of kale the first time we tried!

Her name is one that's pretty easy for the other kids to say and so she's kind of like Norm from Cheers.  She comes in and everybody yells her name.  When she gets picked up in the afternoons, Maid Marian will yell "BOLT!" and then run to her and pat her on the back, just to make sure that her dad knows which kid he's supposed to take with him.  It's hilarious.  The other day MM was out and he joked that he wasn't sure who to pick up without her help.

She just adds so much fun to our days!  We love you Miss Bolt!

Stuff and Things

• The big girls will eat TONS of bell pepper and cucumber if I'm willing to just hand it to them a slice at a time while I'm standing at the chopping board.  They mill around my feet saying MORE and I just keep passing it out.  The minute I put them in chairs with a tray, they throw all the veggies on the floor.  Every single time.  Yesterday Cinderella ate twenty pepper slices and Violet ate five cucumber slices before they sat, and both ate nothing while sitting.  They do this every time so now I just do a first veggie course while we all stand in the kitchen.  It's weird but it totally works.
• Our snow day policy says we are closed if schools are closed.  Really I wrote that thinking that there would not be two in a row, because even after living here 25 years I forget how quickly this state shuts down for a tiny bit of weather.  My feeling is this: if there's one snow day, I'm good with being closed.  Usually a lot of your offices are closed as well and it's just kind of fun to have an unexpected day at home for everyone.  If it runs over into more than one day, I'll be open.  Anna may or may not be able to get here, depending on what her apartment parking lot is like, but usually on a second day there are enough people still staying home that I'm in ratio alone, or else hubby is home too still.  
• I'll also always post what's going on as my facebook status for Giant Steps- it's a public page and you can go like it if you haven't.  I can't invite you to like it unless we're already fb friends on my personal page.  (Also you can let family and friends know so they can see pics and stuff if they want to like it too.)
• We have many new babies who need blog names.  I know one of the boys will be Mowgli but I'm still mulling over the others.  I spend a ridiculous amount of time on this but it's one of those small things that makes me happy.
• Bolt's mom texted me accidentally the other day to ask me to put the trash out and tell me she loved me.  So I asked dad if he put the trash out when he came to drop Bolt off and the look of panic on his face was just really great.  I promise I'm not stalking y'all and I wouldn't know when trash day was otherwise, and it's okay that you forgot.  You didn't actually get the reminder, and anyway your trash can't be as stinky as mine is!  :)  
• I've had forty blog posts rolling around in my head and now that I'm writing I can't think of anything else.  And this much has been in draft for a week.  Since there might be more snow coming, this could be stuff you need to know, so I better just post!

Friday Focus: Russell

I've had this post in draft for months because of the picture issue.  I just think posts are more fun with pictures.  But it's taking forever to work out the bugs and Russell is going to be leaving us soon, so I have no more time to wait.

He's getting a nanny that will come to his house!  I will say, one of my favorite non-baby things about this job is the zero commute, so I totally approve the idea of having one less place to go.  It'll be super easy for them to not have to trek over early, especially on rainy days.  We will miss him though.  :(

Russell is such a happy kid!  He's got the most awesome goofy grin and he just wanders around finding  stuff to do on his own.  He's mobile and pretty independent and he's perfectly fine to figure out his own entertainment.  I love when they do that- it's really fun to watch his mind at work.

Oh and of course, now that I try the pictures one last time, they work.

He really likes to put his head down on the girls' backs while they're trying to crawl.  He could pin them down pretty easily if he put his mind to it, but usually it's more like a fierce hug.

See?  Such a great smile.

He falls asleep in his breakfast on a semi-regular basis.  He eats fast and gets tired of waiting for his friends to hurry up and finish, so he just takes a snooze on the tray.

Nothing bothers him  So happy.

Sharing a toy with Mufasa.

This monster poncho pleases me so much.  I think, far more than it pleases him.  He looks so cute with it on though and he always gets compliments when I take him up to the school to get O'Malley wearing it.

We love you Russell!  Have a great time in your next adventures!

2015 Closings

Here are our closings for this year.
Updated: no week off in summer.  New additions in red.

Friday, March 20- personal day

Friday, April 3- Good Friday

Monday, May 25- Memorial Day

Friday, July 3- 4th of July observed
Friday, July 17- closing at 3:30
Monday, August 10- personal day

Monday, September 7- Labor Day

Monday, October 12- personal day (Columbus/Fair day)

Wednesday, November 25- personal day

Thursday/Friday, November 26-27- Thanksgiving

Thursday, December 24- Christmas Eve

Friday, December 25- Christmas Day

Monday-Friday, December 28-January 2: closed for the week

Eating the Good Stuff

Right now Russell and Pearl usually split a jar of food for breakfast.  Anna fed Pearl this morning but Russell fell asleep in his chair eating kix, so I didn't get to give him his official breakfast til he woke up.  I got his out of the fridge and started feeding it to him, carrying on my running conversation like I do.  "Look Russell!  Yum!  You're eating pineapple, pear, and avocado."

"WHAT?!? That is so weird," says Anna.  I ask her if she even read the name of it this morning, since she was the one who got it out to feed to Pearl.

"No, I just checked to see if it had acid and that's all."

"Wait.  Wow, that sounds awful.  Like we drug the babies!  Oh no!"  Silly things make us laugh, and it's yet another example of something that is totally normal in this job but would be extremely odd in another setting.  Pearl's been having a little trouble with citrus lately and so we check to see if there's added citric acid in the jars.  There wasn't, by the way.  

I'm having trouble getting pictures on here lately, which is part of why I haven't posted in so long- I like to put them up.  Too many posts with no pictures make me feel like it's just Too Long: Didn't Read.  Also I've been busy, and also lazy.  Let's just be honest.  Anyway, I'll try to be better with little anecdote stuff, even if I can't figure out the picture issue for a bit.

Lunch Lady Success

I say lunch lady because all the ladies loved this dish.  All the boys pushed it around their plates or threw it on the floor.  But at least it was a partial success!  I have a hard time getting Violet to eat lately and she loved it so that made me happy.  Cinderella and Maid Marian chowed it down too.  It's nice to find healthy things that at least some of them enjoy.

It's Tuscan Chicken Skillet and it's just a random one I found on pinterest awhile back.  I do take issue with the fact that it says it takes one dish, because it keeps telling you to take things out of the skillet and then put them back in, so I did get about four bowls dirty.  :)  But if that's the biggest problem with the food, I think we're good.

I left the sundried tomatoes out because I didn't have any, and I just put regular diced tomatoes instead of fire roasted.  Using up what's in the pantry!  I"m sure it's even more delicious if you make it like it says to.

Enjoy!!  Recipe is here.

Yearly Inspection

It's over for another year, which is good.  It seems like I run around trying to get everything in order for a month or so before they arrive, and STILL always forget something.

We got a new licensing rep this year- the last one was around for five or six years and they like to move them around to different areas every now and then.  The last gentleman would offer me pointed advice like, "you know, my clients who are organized do things *this* way...."  I will say in my defense that I've gotten much better with the paperwork over the years, and that they never have to get on to me for health or safety or ratio issues.  The paperwork system does elude me from time to time though...

I told the new lady that he used to tell me that, and she said, "Oh, so what you're saying is that I should go back to the office and tell him you didn't listen to a thing he said?"  Smiling, but still.  Oh well.  It's hard for me to not get flustered when you're not sure what they're going to ask for and every new person inspects in just a little different way.

In any case, we made it through.  There were a couple things they talked to us about- she doesn't like the food-grade disinfectant we use to clean the toys and diaper changing station.  (This is one of those things that I'm not sure if it's due to having a new rep, or if the codes have changed, but in twelve years everyone else has been okay with what I use.)  She wants me to use bleach water.  Honestly I'm not comfortable doing that.  You have to mix a new bottle every 24 hours because it breaks down and becomes worthless, and it's toxic.  If I ever mixed it too strongly it could cause more of a health issue than not disinfecting at all.  I want to be more natural and healthy here than just spraying bleach on things.  I'm going to look into some other options.  I definitely want to follow the rules AND also disinfect the way that is best for the kids.

O'Malley had a playdate that day and she wanted to see the paperwork for the friend.  I can totally see why- I am a licensed business and am supposed to have records for every child in residence.  However, as a mom, it's a little awkward to ask for shot records before my kid can have somebody over to play for an hour after school.  I always make sure that we're not full and that playdates don't mess with our ratios, but my kids have to give up so much by having this daycare in their home.  I hate to deny them the occasional social time bc of paperwork.  Anyway, she didn't write me up for that, which made me happy.  He's not somebody who's here regularly, and if he was, then I would get all his papers in order.  :)

Anna and I worked really hard to make sure that we got all our training hours accounted for and were ready with our paperwork for that.  However, I totally forgot that there's an online training course that we are supposed to retake every year.  She did say she was going to mark that as a violation, although I haven't seen it pop up in our file yet.  If she does, it will likely say that we haven't had SIDS and shaken baby training.  That doesn't look so good for the file, but I've taken it eleven times and just forgot to do it this year.  Hopefully that makes it a little better- it's an oversight in renewal, not that we don't have knowledge on the topic.

Anyway, I just like to be honest and upfront with the things going on around here, so there you have it.  Much better to explain everything than have people surprised by it.