Leatherstocking Tales

The February List

I haven't blogged in a while because we've been busy getting doctors together for our oldest and one of the babies.  One of the babies has torticollis, a hereditary condition in which the muscle on one side of the neck is too tight for him to hold his head up straight.  (Apparently this used to be called "wry neck".)  He had his first PT appointment Thursday.  It's a good place but a little over an hour's drive.  Thankfully, since this is our third kid out of five to be born with torticollis, the PT said we could just come once a week.  We'd already been doing the stretches at home anyway, just waiting for the doctors to catch up.

I've also been trying to get a new schedule in place for our homeschooling.  I don't dictate much about when or what the kids do, but we needed some more uninterrupted blocks of time for read alouds and for them to choose activities. It's been hard work, but it's already paid off.

Stuff we've been thinking/doing lately:

1.  Going to need another vehicle if we're going to do all these doctor appointments in Albany.  Do we straighten out the title mess with the station wagon and get it running?  Or do we straighten out the title mess and trade it for a used pickup?  (Last summer we used the station wagon to haul firewood out of the tree line.  That was sort of interesting.  It reminded me of David and Micki Colfax and their Volvo.)  This decision depends on what we want to earmark the savings for.  Do we pay off the rest of the student loan first?  My husband makes good money at this job, but our biggest concern is to save for the kids' college and to live as debt-free as we possibly can.  Lately we have been wondering why we didn't do what we'd thought about doing when we were still looking for a house: we considered buying land and putting a mobile home on it for a while.  I now think I would have preferred that option, since the road in front of the house is busier than I'd like and the house payment makes me cringe every time I pay it.  Blame it on pregnancy and stress hormones, I guess, which is probably why you shouldn't move 1000 miles when pregnant with twins.

2.  We haven't been able to use our woodstove because the chimney is leaking.  When it was warm Andy got up on the roof and discovered that the bricks are pretty much falling apart.  Repairing it gets added to his lengthening list of things to do.  (He's building a bookcase for our oldest, too.)

3.  We picked out our garden site.  It's a 60 x 60 ft. plot.  We have a lot of deer here so we're thinking we ought to put up a deer fence.  One more thing to add to the list.

4.  We're going to Tennessee to see our parents for 3 weeks in March.  I'm trying not to think too much about why we decided that taking twin 4 month old babies on a 20 hour car trip was a good idea.  But we're going to do it anyway. 

5.  When we get back, we have to investigate a better source of goat milk than Wal-mart that doesn't involve getting a goat (because I'm not ready for that yet!).  Andy brought home a list of local organic farms the other day. And I have to join the local natural foods co-op.

6.  I have promised the girl child a hamster when we get back.  But what I would really like is a dog.