Last Night's Read Alouds

One of my Goodwill finds- $1.50 for a spotless hardcover with the dust jacket.  Hilarious ABC book about a kitty gone bad, then good, then bad again.  The kids LOVED it.  There are lots of other Bad Kitty books with continuing adventures that we'll definitely be checking out!

This one I didn't actually read.  We'll call this the creative lazy parent's way of reading bed time stories.  This can be a great bedtime story solution for exhausted parents.  Check out Online Storytime by Barnes & Noble.  Famous people reading bedtime stories to your kids for you! 



My Kids Have a LOT of Books

My kids have a lot of books.  It's because their mom is a book addict teacher.  I might be a little out of control- especially now that I know that Goodwill sells children's paperbacks for 75 cents and hardcover books for $1.25.  And let's not even discuss the ones that are 50% off of that because they have the "color of the week" sticker on them!  Be still my heart!!  It really didn't help the situation any that last summer I went & found a teacher had retired & turned in what looked like her entire collection.  Imagine- barely used & beautiful books for such a steal.  This is where I go to load up for my classroom library, and inevitably some awesome special find makes it's way home for my own kids.  

Reading research says that reading aloud to your kids is one of the best things you can do for their reading, writing, auditory, and oral skills; plus it's a lot of fun- so we do a lot of it around here.  I'll be posting some of our favorites here on my blog- check them out! 



One of the kids favorites, we just returned it to the school library after having it for a ridiculously long time.  (Thank goodness our Media Specialist likes me & didn't come hunting it down!)  Monkey fell in love with a ripped up, pages missing copy of this at Peanut's ballet school when he was 2.  We never knew what happened in the great hall with the knights until we got a copy of the book with all the pages intact.  A wonderful book with repetetive text that the kids can start to help "read" along with you once they're familiar with the story.  Great for "reading" the pictures also- once they know the story they can retell it easily by reading the pictures. 

I'm not sure who loved this story more- the kids or mommy!  Hilarious story about all the things Mr. McGreeley does to keep the bunnies out of his vegetable garden.  Fun, repetetive text that the kids can help read along with you, GREAT vocabulary building- talk about all the different names he calls the bunnies, lots of great synonyms in this book.  If you have a preschooler, check out the lapbook resources for this story at Homeschool Share.  This classroom guide to the book with garden-themed teaching ideas is great.  For some cool writing lesson ideas to use with this book, check out Two Writing Teacher's Site. 

Last one for tonight- the book that I SWEAR is the reason Peanut knows the letters of the alphabet.  Between the time she was 1-2 I lost count of how many times I read this book at night-night time.  She loved it, found it hilariously funny, and sat patiently listening while I pointed out the letter/sound each of the letters made on each page.  Not the quickest book to get through, with 26 letters, but so enjoyable you won't notice, I promise.  Wonderful illustrations, rhyming verse, & each monkey's name starts with the same letter as the naughty thing that s/he is doing on their page.  This book is just plain FUN to read & share with someone you love- you'll laugh together as you read.  After enjoying the book check out some of the fun activities at Shannon's Book Nook. 

Cool New Teaching Blog & Contest!

One of my favorite bloggers, Jodi from Littlest Learners & Clutter Free Classrooms, has started a new blog devoted entirely to organizing your classroom- visit here to check it out: http://www.cfclassroom.com/.

Numb Butt and Other Sunday at 2 am Thoughts....

For anyone out there (and I'm sure that doesn't include those of you that actually read my blog!) who thinks teachers have it easy because we have our "summers off"- my butt is completely numb from sitting here for hours working on my work blog for the week.  I haven't even made a dent on the 3 sticky notes worth of other stuff that I need to do for work this weekend, never mind the laundry sitting in the washing machine downstairs and other assorted & sundry household chores that are being ignored.  On the upside, pretty soon our toilets and shower will be a great science experiment for my 2 kids at home- observe what happens to a __________ (insert offending item here) when it doesn't get cleaned for _________ (insert # of days). 

So, since I've spent several hours on the blog I have to do & none on the blog I want to do, you might as well have a look-sy at what I've been up to.  If any of your kids are between 4-7, you may find something on there that you can use! 

The Kinder Camp Chronicle

On a home note- here is what happens when your 3 year old comes up to you & says, "I want to make a tree mommy."  You put down your stuff you "need" to do, think fast, start pulling out construction paper and glue, and spend the next 1 1/2 hours watching your 2 kids rip paper to their hearts' content to make apple trees. 

We also worked on the letter L a few weeks ago and made these cute Lions and Love (hearts)/Lollipop painted Ls (let your kid dip the lollipop in paint & paint with it- the paint doesn't show up great on black paper- sorry!)  Be sure to have an extra lollipop for them to EAT after!

It's All Coming Back to Me....

...slowly but surely. Whew! First 12 days of school down and still alive, despite the apallingly short periods of sleep I've been getting each night. I feel like all I do is race from point A to point B this year. Race to point A usually begins with me shutting my alarm off & waking up thanks to my full bladder, yelling some epithet, and making it from the bed to the front door in 3 minutes flat. Then all day at work I run around like a chicken with my head cut off (bonus that I don't have time to think about, much less miss, my own 2 kids). Then the end of the school day is a race to get home before our wonderful nanny turns into an extra-$10-an-hour pumpkin. I'm tired just thinking about it all.

I've been gone from Kindergarten for 4 years and I've found out (usually the hard way) that there are a LOT of things I've forgotten. Here's a small sampling:

1. Watch your fingers c-a-r-e-f-u-l-l-y when holding the paper for the 4 year old who is cutting. Watch the scissors they're holding even more C-A-R-E-F-U-L-L-Y!
2. Tape the ends of the strings before attempting to string fruit loops to make AB pattern necklaces.
3. Don't wear anything you care about on days that painting is going to be done. Even if you aren't the adult in charge of the painting activity & you are all the way across the room at the time....somehow you will end up with paint on you.
4. They miss their mommies. And sometimes that makes them cry. New discovery- their crying will make me think about missing my kids and make me cry. Kind of like the student-teacher version of If You Give a Mouse a Cookie.
5. Their attention span is about 10 minutes max at the beginning of the year.
6. The beginning of Kindergarten is VERY, VERY similar to playing Whack-a-Mole at Chuck E. Cheese's...or dropping a jar of marbles and then running around & trying to collect them. You pick which form of torture you prefer. I have chosen to teach Kindergarten.
7. Cut and staple all the books together before having the group. If not, all you're going to get done at this point is cutting & stapling....forget coloring or reading.
8. Since I am unable at this time to clone myself, I have come to understand that the new reality of my life as a "Kindergarten teacher with 2 small children of my own at home" is that I just physically can't do it all. There are not enough hours in the day no matter how organized & efficient I am. My type-A personality recoils from this fact, but a fact it is. It's killing me. I will adjust to this new reality...eventually. Until then I'll continue to see how the human body functions on about 4-5 hours of sleep a night.

I was planning on there being 10 items on this list, but right now I'm too tired to remember any of the other bazillion items I've re-learned these last couple weeks. However, I have found some amazing teachers to borrow ideas for some great lessons this week. We read Where the Wild Things Are, Go Away Big Green Monster, and Leonard the Terrible Monster this week and did the monster glyphs, graphing, and writing activities from the August section of Mrs. Jump's Kindergarten site.

On one of the MANY sticky notes covering my desk (see #8 above) I have a reminder to put together the calendar binders. I got the idea from Kristen's Kindergarten. I had planned to start them in August, but the new reality is now hoping for sometime next week & we'll "practice" with a catch up of the August calendar & then really do well at it in September. Same thing for the actual calendar. I have forgotten to do calendar several days in the past 12 days. Somehow the day is just getting away from me, we're so busy. For various reasons I didn't have it first thing in the morning this year and that's just not working for me, so I need to make another sticky note and add "re-do schedule".

Another cool thing I'm trying this year are my CAMP books. I decided on a camping theme so we could be the Kinder Campers...and I love a good theme, so when I do it, I do it all the way. Man oh man have I made the camp stuff (or found it online). I'll come back & post files to share when my 2 remaining brain cells have recharged. For now, back to the CAMP books. Basically it's a binder that the kids take home & bring back for communication. I think they're working great & it seems to be helping to organize the chaos of notes, lunch $, important schedules, etc. I call them CAMP books to go with my theme (stands for Communicating And Managing Paperwork), but the idea is based on BEE and MOOSE books I found on other teacher's sites.

Lastly for tonight. God bless the powers that be in CCSD for the wonderful Math RAP stuff they've posted to be used on the new Smart Boards we have. I had "beginner" training at the end of last year, then got laid off & missed the intermediate summer training, and got a condensed version Wednesday. On my own I discovered this stuff, so now I'm thinking, "Bye bye paper calendar whose space could be used for something else", hello to doing calendar on the Smart Board every morning.

Okay, going to see if I can break my record and get MORE than 5 hours of sleep tonight!

Amazing Deals

I found an online coupon for Office Depot (visit school.com to keep up with any deals they're offering for teachers) that was $10 off of a $25 purchase, so since there are several things I need for the beginning of the year- off my 2 little helpers and I went to Office Depot. I ended up spending $0 and here is what I got:

*22 green folders with brads (these were 5 cents/each with a limit of 5 per person/household/day, but I lucked out & got a REALLY sweet cashier who, without me asking, did 4 transactions so I could get them ALL for 5 cents each!)
*2 packages of large printer labels (these were buy one get one free)
*5 packages of wide ruled loose leaf paper (25 cents each/limit 5 today)
*1 package of 100 clear plastic sheet protectors

I had a $25 gift card that the PTA gave us last year & I hadn't used. The coupon said you couldn't use gift cards with the coupon, but again- REALLY nice cashier who I thanked profusely!

So, I ended up actually using $24.75 of the gift card & then handed the card with 25 cents left to the guy behind me...figured it was good karma!

Big Changes

In May the county I work for laid off all part time teachers, so I found myself for the first time in my life contemplating unemployment- not fun. I almost became a middle school Family & Consumer Science teacher, probably not the best job for someone whose blog is all about what a mess she makes & how she's totally domestically challenged! I have a very domestically inclined mom AND a best friend who is like the Italian Martha Stewart (who would have been in the room next door- big upside & #1 reason I was pursuing the job)- so I figured we'd have lots of "guest speaking" opportunities. In the end, I got re-hired at my previous school and will be teaching KINDERGARTEN again, full-time. I'm thrilled to be going back to Kindergarten, not so sure about how the full time thing is going to go with the kids & responsibilities around the house. We're all going to have to adjust.

For right now the plan is that daddy has the kids in the morning, we have a sitter come to the house from 12-4/3 days, 1:15ish-5/2 days (Pnut will be going to Pre-School 2 days/week!!- more fun changes!!) and I'll be home hopefully earlier than 4/5. I'm feeling pretty good about the arrangement since the kids will still be with daddy all morning, they nap from 2-4 and then I'll be home. I'll really only be missing 2 "awake" hours with them that I had previously. Of course I'll also be missing the 2 hours that they nap where I got stuff done, but we'll just have to figure that out when we get to it!

In preparation for going back to Kindergarten I've been doing a lot of online research & reading K teacher's blogs, so now I'm going to get to post some of the great stuff I've found & want to use on here! I'm seriously cringing a bit when I think about ALL the stuff I gave away when I left K 4 years ago. There are SO many things I have to re-make or re-buy. I spent 2.5 hours the other day writing out some poems for the poetry center- did 24, filled up a whole $7.50 chart tablet (that I'm now going to bring to my mom to have her illustrate- thanks for volunteering mom!!) and realized that I had only made a very small dent in the poetry notebook. Of course all the research has created additional work/$ spending plans to incorporate all the cool ideas I've found...c'est la vie of the full time Kindergarten teacher! Twist my arm...

H is for...

Hands! Today we traced Pnut's hands (we tried tracing Monkey's, but he's too squirmy!) and I cut them out while my helpers put all the scraps in the garbage can. Then Pnut and Monkey painted the hands purple and red. Some of the hands we put in a rectangular tupperware and threw in some glass beads covered in paint, put on the lid and shook. The hands are drying now while the kids nap & then we'll glue them on our "H". Here are some pictures of the kids painting and Pnut (ahem, Abby Cadabby) shaking.

P is for...

...Puppy dog! Pnut made a puppy dog P today. I gave her the cut out letter, she used a Q-tip dipped in glue to put the black spots, ears, tail, and tongue on. The eyes were pre-stuck. We did talk about where body parts should go (eyes on top, tail on the bottom, etc...), but she pretty much managed to get them where they belonged.

After that we did some dot painting and used our new crayola animal stampers that Monkey got for Christmas from my friend Angela's family. They had a great time, but let me tell you- art projects with a 1 AND a 2 year old are a lot like playing whack-a-mole sometimes. I turned away from him for a second to help her and I look back- Monkey has the blue dot paint stick in his mouth. And no, this stuff apparently doesn't wash off easily. Nice. I think he managed to do more painting on his body than on his paper. C'est la vie!

Laughter Lives Tuesday

I've been doing some blog research & came across the MckLinky site- great stuff for the blog by Brent Riggs. Anyway, on his personal family blog he has a feature called "Laughter Lives Tuesday" where you post a funny story so everyone can have a good laugh. I know that today isn't Tuesday, but since I linked my blog on there to practice, I have to share a story.

Funny stuff happens around here all the time, but yesterday I happened to have the camera close at hand. I was helping Pnut get dressed up as Abby Cadabby in the living room and Monkey comes walking out of the playroom, fully dressed, with his diaper stuck to his pajama bottoms. He's 1, so I know he didn't get his pants off & back on by himself. As far as I could see while he was in there, he was in there playing with the Little People. Somehow he managed to get his diaper off and out the leg of his pants. I have to say, he was QUITE pleased with his little achievement & ran away from me squealing when I tried to catch him to put another diaper on him. Apparently our playroom isn't just for playing with toys! Boys!!

Learning to Live Dangerously

Lesson #1- let your child eat chocolate pudding with no bib. I hadn't really even noticed he didn't have a bib on until Jimmy pointed that fact out to me. Ha! Nothing like working without a net! Spray & Wash is supposed to be a "laundry additive", isn't it?

Nothing Says "Fun" Like...

Going to the grocery store with 2 kids in tow. Wonder if bribing them with mac & cheese when we get home will work? First we go have to go to Walmart & then to Kroger. At Walmart there's only one seat in the cart, so Addison gets to walk. This makes everything take twice as long. The upside is that I'm no longer that harried looking woman with a baby strapped to her body screaming his head off from the time we set foot into the store until the time we walked out (for some reason, the overhead lighting perhaps?, Sullivan HATED the grocery store with a passion for his first few months of life). Yes, in those days complete strangers walked up to me & offered to help me with my shopping or my baby. I'm sure mostly to just make. it. stop.

At Kroger there's at least a 2 seat cart, a sample of turkey lunchmeat & a free cookie from the nice bakery lady. Ahhh... Can't wait till we get to Kroger! I've literally spent 2 hours cutting coupons & looking online at the Kroger sale ad. Hopefully I'll save some $ this week!

I guess I should go get the kid who napped when he was supposed to and the kid who played for 2 hours before crashing for 30 minutes. She should be all kinds of fun!

I'm thinking dinner is going to be veggies, applesauce, $3.99 Kroger rotisserie chicken & some of the "bribery" mac & cheese. I'm already exhausted thinking about shopping.

On a bright note today- my sweet husband moved the TV that's been hanging out on our bedroom floor for months downstairs to it's new "holding" place on the dining room table. I'm thinking it'll be much harder for me to get a daily bruise on my thigh from smashing into it in the dark there. :) That's what we do here- move things from one holding place to another (yet another example of why I named this blog Ignore the Mess). I did manage to get rid of 2 bags of clothing from my closet over my vacation & went through the pile of coupons today. Small victories.

**Update: saved $8.34 with coupons. For some reason though not all my coupons doubled at Kroger, so now I have to go back there & find out why. With 2 kids. More fun.

Sunday Bread (aka "Easter Bread")

Today I made my 2nd Zopf...it's delicious. This is traditionally Sunday bread in Switzerland, where my mom is from. The funny story is that the entire time I was growing up I thought it was Easter bread, because that's what my mom called it & that's the only time she ever made it. My brother & I took a trip to Switzerland a few years back & when we stayed with my cousin Karin, she made it for us. Our reaction was of course and awed, "Oh, you made Easter bread for us!!" And her reaction was of course loud & prolonged laughter followed by the explanation that in Switzerland people make this bread on Sundays. Every Sunday. Not just Easter Sunday. As I'm sure you can imagine my mom was quite amused that her ruse had been discovered...and she still only makes this bread on Easter.

The first one I made went to my parents house the other day. My brother was here visiting & after all the cooking my mom did for Thanksgiving I thought it would be nice for her to have something special made for her for breakfast the day after. I got one piece to see if it tasted okay the day after they had it (because you can't always trust that your family is being serious & not just nice when they say it turned out great)...but of course that wasn't enough, so I had to make one for our house...and after all, today was Sunday!

Now I just have to work at the braiding part- she makes a cross & then somehow braids the 4 strands. I watched a video online, but they did it too fast; read several explanations online & tried to re-create those with string- again, a disaster; so I opted to do a 3 strand braid like you might do hair. It's the only way I know. So my zopf isn't as pretty as it should be (until I get my mom to show me with dough in person!), but it still tastes perfect!

Here's her recipe:

500 grams all purpose flour

1 package dry yeast

50 grams butter (1/2 stick)

1 egg

1 dash salt

1 grated lemon rind

1/4 liter milk (just a hair over 1 cup)

All ingredients have to be room temperature.

Sift flour & yeast together into cuisinart (I did it in Kitchenaid…turned out fine), cut butter into small pieces on top of flour, add next 4 ingredients, turn machine on to mix everything well, then add lukewarm milk slowly.

Mix for 3 min.

If dough is soft or sticks to bowl, add 1-2 tbsp flour & mix again.

Cover with plastic wrap & let rise in warm place till doubled (about 45 min) My mom heats the oven to 140 degrees, then turns it off & lets the dough rise in there.

Braid.

Put on greased cookie sheet (or better yet, parchment paper), brush with egg yolk.

Bake in center of oven for 30 min. at 400 degrees. Enjoy!

Housekeeper of the Year...Ummm...That Would Be a "No"!

Yeah, I'm never going to win that award. 4 dogs, 2 kids. Enough said. By Friday every week the house is a wreck- fur everywhere, sink full of dishes, piled up laundry, nose prints & finger prints everywhere...so you'd think it would be time to clean it all up. Probably. But then the weather today was just gorgeous- not a cloud in the sky, warm enough to not wear a jacket- so being out there definitely looked better than being in here. Cleaning can wait. While the kids ate breakfast I packed a picnic lunch- ham & cheese sandwiches, juice, yogurt, goldfish & some cookies and then off we went.

I parked at my parents & we took a long walk in the stroller to the playground, enjoying the fresh air & sunshine. Then we played at the playground with our sand toys- me, 2 kids (and of course all the other assorted kids that wandered over to join in the fun). We made castles, moats, knocked down the castles over & over. When we got tired of the sand toys we played on the swings, slide, ran in the field till Addison announced that she was ready for a picnic. They ate way more (& more enthusiastically) than they usually do. Then we played some more before walking back to my parents house.

It was one of those perfect days filled with sunshine, laughter, smiles & all-around happiness. One of those days that you know you're going to look back at when they're grown up and remember happily (hopefully in a general way, "Remember all those times we _____" because there have been many of them).

Perfect day. Coming home to a messy house didn't even stress me out. :)

Tot School Trays

These are our new Tot School trays that I got from Oriental Trading. The shelving unit is "new" for us too...thanks to my parents for doing some redecorating in their kitchen. Ignore the mess on the kitchen counter above- there's always something up there (grrr!)

On the shelves I'm keeping some of the kids' more "educational" items. I got the Tot School idea from Carisa at 1+1+1=1. If you're interested, head over there for lots of great information.

Basically each day I put out about 5 trays of activities for Peanut. These are all learning activities (although she calls them her "games"). Shown here L-R are foam stickers to put on a paper (fine motor, and believe it or not, stickers are one of the hardest things for her), M & Ms to sort by color (and then eat), animal mommy/baby puzzles to match, mommy & daddy name puzzles. All the activities are pretty quick, which is perfect for a 2 year old.

Peanut has caught on to sorting by color really well and LOVED having a special M & M treat. Now my challenge is figuring out some things for Monkey to do while Peanut is working! Having a little brother is great, having a little brother who is in constant motion & trying to get into everything you're doing- not so great. Peanut and I have actually started calling him Bulldozer because of his ability to go over, knock down, and destroy things. :))

Sand & Vomit

Yep, it's 2 pm and that's been my day so far! Had the kids all ready to head out the door by 9 am for a walk & then to play at the playground (because the later you wait in the day here in ATL, the more like Hades it becomes- hot, hot, hot!) when I discovered one of the dogs had broken into the playroom and vomited all over the place. I didn't mention that in my initial post. Dogs vomit. I'm usually the one that discovers it & get the joy of cleaning it. The best part is that our playroom is covered in these big soft puzzle pieces, so they too had to be washed. I ended up deciding that all 60-some of them needed a "spring cleaning" (yes, I know it's summer!) and pulled them all up. Washed the ones with vomit, threw the rest out on the front porch & away we went (an hour later). What were the kids doing during all this? I threw them in their chairs at the kitchen table while I was performing this triage and gave them some cheerios & daddy's apple jacks for entertainment. Mom 'O the Year!

Walk went great- exercise for me. Peanut walked about 1/2 the way, stayed on the sidewalk & was a good listener. Lots of stopping to admire trees & tell me they were "mommy, daddy, Peanut, or baby" trees. Played at the playground with our sand toys- had a wonderful time making towers and moats and tunnels. Then it happened. Peanut had a shovelful of sand and quickly turned- throwing sand right into my face...and wouldn't you know it, my eye happened to be wide open right at that moment. A whole new kind of pain for those of you who haven't had the pleasure of having this experience yet. I wear contacts & I believe you've probably never seen anyone rip one out of their eye so fast. Stuck it in my mouth (how else was I supposed to get the sand off?) and proceeded to sit there & let the tears "wash" the sand out of my eye while keeping my good eye open & on the kids to make sure Monkey wasn't eating rocks and Peanut wasn't walking in front of any swings. Finally got that sucker back in my eye (no other option- I'm so blind without them the eye doctor likes to joke when he takes off my glasses, "Find the wall! Ha, ha, ha!!") Continued on with fun at the playground, but I will be much more aware (read: paranoid) when we are playing in the sand in the future. Maybe I'll wear ski goggles for those outings. Hmmmm...

Adventures

Jimmy said to me the other day that it sure is going to be tough when I go back to work and fun mornings with mommy are replaced with Barney, snack, & juice with daddy snuggling in bed. Awww, come on, they LOVE that too! (I know I do!!) Peanut is waking up every morning and asking, "Where are we going today?" OR with the inquisitive, "Adventure today?" Pretty funny the standard that I've somehow set in the few weeks I've been off work for summer vacation. Hey, I must be doing okay if the kid thinks every day is going to be an adventure upon waking!

The big goal around here right now is potty training for Peanut who is now 2~ and she's doing quite well at it. The first 2 days were rough- more accidents and holding her pee until nap time when she excitedly exclaimed, "Pull up, I'm so happy to see you!!!" I've read so many things about potty training & it seems the advice is all so conflicting (and then there's my own mother's advice- apparently I was some kind of pottying wunderkind & was easily potty trained, day & night, significantly before the age of 2. I think time may have faded the memory of her potty training struggles!) I sensed that Peanut was stressed at the underwear only approach & I was stressed at the thought of leaving the house with her in underwear only, so we're doing a combination underwear at home, pullups at nap/night and out of the house till she gets better at it. On day 3 I guess she finally figured I wasn't going to let her have her beloved diapers back and I stopped asking her if she needed to go to the potty and just started saying 100x/day, "Let me know if you have to use the potty"~ and VOILA! She started asking to go & actually doing something on there!! Woo hoo!! She's also gone out in public on her special folding potty seat (love that thing!)- resulting in a run across the WalMart a few days ago with her yelling, "Here we come potty, here we come!!!" at the top of her lungs. I just didn't make eye contact & concentrated on getting there as fast as we could. She made it there dry & peed in the potty. Woo hoo again!! It's just amazing to me how riveting another person's bodily functions can be once you're a parent. Peanut has also stopped asking for treats (this must just be a gift from God, he must know I don't need another thing to have to wean her off of!) Apparently wiping, carrying the pot, emptying it, flushing the big potty & saying, "Bye bye pee pee!!", then washing hands with special purple "Barney" soap, & replacing the pot is enough excitement for her (or all those steps require so much concentration that she forgets there was once a prize of 2 skittles involved the bribing her to go in the first place). I am absolutely wiped out at the end of the day from all this potty training business. I think it's really more about if the parent is willing to commit to the pain in the butt, time consuming, patience testing experience that potty training is than if the child is ready! I will survive...and then I only have one more to go!!