Smorgasbord

My folks took off today for a 2 week vacation to Hawaii, so I figured what better reason for taking off some vacation time myself to spend with my most favorite little guy. I'm off starting today and won't return to my office until next Tuesday, which will be a half day at that (woo hoo!). The following week will be heavily office-time reduced as well (Yay!) Which is the whole reason I actually have a moment to breathe and do this (I swear something clicks over to hyper-speed once they officially turn 2! Keeping up with a full-blown toddler is no joke!)

So what have we been up to the past couple months? Well ...

In May I hosted a baby-shower for my girlfriend Nikki (my sister's awesome diaper cake) ...

And Sully and I have still been busy making flannels for our favorite songs and stories. Its one of his favorite things to do now. He'll say "Mama, sit!" and point to the floor in front of the board, pull out a song and start singing it while he puts it on the board.

God forbid I chime in.

That's cause for a level 10 meltdown. It usually involves lots of hands and fingers wagging in my face, "No's" being screamed and occasionally felt animal cut-outs being thrown around the room until I get the picture and shut up - or stop laughing.

Our cute little "Counting Cupcakes" we made out of small scrap felts pieces and hot glue.

(Sully can count to 14 now - and typically always skips over 11 with me. Poor little lonely number 11. I wonder sometimes if he's tried to sing Speckled Frogs too.)

Sully singing Slippery Fish.

One of my favorite things I've completed so far this month.

I found this pirate fleece fabric in the clearance scrap bin at Joannes, along with some golden-yellow fleece that was scrapped out in clearance and they matched perfectly! They sat in my craft closet for a couple months until Sully spotted the fabric one day and started screaming "PIRATES!" and wouldn't let it go until I agreed to finish it. The fleece was normally $11.99 a yard, and even though it was a awkward size, it fits Sully perfectly and he loves it. The whole thing cost me 8 bucks total and about an hour of my time in front of House Hunters late one night.

Its now his new go-to.

Shaun and I are planning to build a vegetable planter in our yard so Sully and I decided to give our green thumbs a go and give actually growing something edible - a trial run. We planted...

Cilantro, Dill, Garlic Chives, Basil and Onions

And while I have no photographic proof that all are in fact alive and doing well (and not a heap of dirt on my patio) all are thriving and have now been transferred into permanent pots from their seedling homes.

I'm pretty sure in a couple months we'll be eating some fresh basil, tomato and mozzarella sandwiches (yummy!)

Sully decided to water himself

Lately, I've been HUGE into couponing, more so than normal. I'm not 'gonna lie, I love the Krazy Coupon ladies. Its my dream to one day walk out of a grocery store with a full card in tow, having had their establishment pay me.

My family is always giving me crap about how I don't buy anything unless its on sale - or how nobody likes to go shopping with me because I'll spend hours debating and calculating in aisles. And while I haven't quite earned my golden coupon badge just quite yet, I'd like to think I'm pretty saavy, enough so that I get to sport around at least a bronze star.

Here are my bags of dog food I scored for $5 bucks each!

My loot from Target. Before all my coupons the total was $69 bucks and some change. I only ended up paying $32 and some change. Target lets you stack manufactuer coupons with their Target online coupons. Plus every week they seem to have some "Buy 2 get a Target card" promotion going on. Its how I got a 100 count box of Huggies for $4.00! What what!?!

Sully's latest food obsession. French's Fried Onions. If he sees this box he goes nuts like a monkey in a cage for a banana - I swear. So far he's swiped 2 cans. (Relax, they weren't completely full)

I'd like to make the disclaimer that the next series of photographs are truly pitiful.

Embarrassingly

pitiful.

Sully turned the big TWO on April 16th. I was so busy running around like a maniac chicken looking for its head, that I had to resign trying to get the pictures done as well, which I relied on my MIL for. I've yet to get those pictures, so here is what I do have.

And trust me, it ain't much.

Sully cares about two things these days - cars and trains. So we went with a Cars birthday theme. We had a nice little gathering of close family and friends this year. It was fun seeing all of his little boy friends in one place, since usually we play date with just one at a time.

The cake came about in a comedy of errors sort of way. Basically I ran out of time to order the cake, and while making the cake was never on my list of things I wanted to take on, it became one of my favorite things.

It was a collective effort. I baked it, my best friend Sam made the frosting, I slathered it on, Shaun decorated the top of the cake (Yes, my husband did that!) and Sam used her hand-dandy writing skills on it. And wah-lah!

Note: Ignore the photo-bombing bonehead in the background.

Sully's Aunt Sam was able to make it out for his birthday this year. We've been friends since we were 11/12! Dude, thats almost 20 years.

He's only seen her a handful of times, but you'd never know it by how he acts with her. (I'm pretty sure it had something to do with the Target shopping binge she took him on for his birthday.)

Hey, whatever gets it done!

We spent Easter Eve's Eve with my sister and her boyfriend coloring Easter Eggs where we collectively and unanimously decided - that shit was a lot more fun when we were kids. I blame the commercialization of holidays.

Or maybe we just need to come to terms with the fact we're no longer 7.

No yeh, I blame the commercialization.

I had way more fun watching Sully play with the eggs and splash and color and make just, a complete and utter mess. He freaked when the coloring wouldn't come off his hands.

Aah, alas, he is definately my child.

Sully and I spent Saturday afternoon at my folk's house and all of the neighborhood kids for the Easter Egg Hunt. (Shaun had to work, boo.) For being the youngest kid there, he held his own.

He found so much loot that we were stuffing our pockets because he quickly exceeded his baskets allowed capacity.

Yeh, thats right.

I totally make my kid dance for candy.

And no, I don't feel ashamed at all by that fact. Truffle shuffle boy, truffle shuffle.

Sunday morning Sully helped me make deviled eggs for daddy. He's become quite the little chef in the kitchen. The counter is one of his favorite places to be anymore.

Some other fun random tidbits from the past couple months ....

• Senator Dutton pulled his proposed bill that would end my jobs funding. We live to see another year!

• As soon as we found out my job was safe, we found out Shaun would be losing his come July. They're outsourcing their department and laying everyone off. Oh, the irony.

• I've been trying to get Sully's Two Year pictures taken for 6 weeks now. The photography gods are not in our favor. Week One - It rained. Week Two - Sully got really sick with a virus. Week Three - It rained. Week Four - Our photographer got really sick. Week Five - Sully fell off our bed and wrecked his pretty little face. I'm skipping this week in hopes it'll trip up the bad juju.
  
  
• Here's a fun fact. I've killed 5 fish in two months. I'm pretty sure I've become the John Wayne Gacy of Petco fish. Don't worry, I'll keep this lie up as long as he believes fish can transform shape and colors.

• Sully had some x-rays done on his legs at his two year checkup. His bones at his knee stick out a little funny - and the last thing I expected was being sent to the lab for a workup, but rest assured, our little guy is fine. It's just how he is! Everything came back clear.

• We've rescued 4 different lizards from our yard in 1 month. One actually made it all the way inside and took refuge under our couch. Now Sully is obsessed with finding lizards in the yard. And so the dirty boy shoving frogs in his pockets begins ...

• I've been working on this post for 3 flipping weeks. Trains, and chalk and "Mama c'mons!" have taken priority.

I'm pretty sure this is what it feels like when your brain vomits.

Difference of opinion

Someone left an anonymous comment with this directed link after my post about my job with First 5 and the threat of eliminated funds.http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=102984666452249

Not one to ever shy away from a debate, I've decided to post it and respond to some of the issues that was presented in the, "article", post - opinion post. I was going to leave it as a response comment but it was too long and wouldn't allow me, so here's my response to the article the link will take you to.

And if this was sent by anyone I know - oh come on, you can give me an opposition piece better than this people!

"I'm a little disappointed with whoever posted this link, and the fact it could be someone I know - not because your opinion differs with mine; I'm perfectly okay with that and welcome it and think it’s awesome we can have a difference in point-of-view, even when it means MY ass could be on the line ( I take it all in stride and jest, I swear)- but that the link you sent people to was so bad, misinformed and based on opinion so much more than fact.

I would like to say that Proposition 10 was elected in by voters of the community. While anybody is welcomed to state their opinion that "Money spent on Medi-Cal for kids is 10 times more important than anything First 5 spends money on", I'd like to point out that most of the population disagrees, or maybe just the population that cares enough to vote about how and where money is spent. Prop 28 was defeated in 2000 and Prop ID was defeated in 2009. Last year a bill never made it to ballot as it was stopped prior, mainly due to the appeals of the public to keep First 5 funds in place to serve children in the community, how the communities deem fit. While I agree health care is of utmost importance, especially for our young children, I'd be hard pressed to say what we do isn't important, because it is. You can look to any of the previous posts on First 5 to see the magnitude of services we provide for families. I believe what we do is important, or I wouldn't be doing it. I've worked as the MPSVNFL Scholarship Coordinator through First 5 for seven years now, and I can promise you, I make nowhere near 100k, and neither do my coworkers. If I was hauling in that kind of income my husband and I could actually afford for our son to be home, instead of with his grandparents so we can work to provide for him. I'd be interested to know what supervisors/community managers/presidents/chiefs of Medi-Cal make, you know, since we're just throwing around salaries of what top employees of organizations gross. I'll bet you it’s more than me - by a long shot.

It took some time to put strategic plans in place because no First 5 is set up the same. We are not authorized to issue or our own funds, so getting set up with school districts and administered organizations that could take us on as our "agents" took some time. You know what else takes time, building programs from the ground up, which is what each and every single one of us did with our programs. There were no blueprints for us to use, and when you're building something from scratch, it takes time. I can't tell you how many nights I spent with folders and information and spread sheets and budget plans and and and ... well you get the picture; all spread out on my floor at home, pouring over proposed plans - all on my own time, to get this program up off the ground. In addition, each county is set up individual to meet the needs of that specific community, and within that the cities etc. In Ventura County alone we have 11 Family Resource Centers, each one different than the next, because we serve different populations of people who have different needs of what they do not receive within that community. We basically try to fill some of these big holes in areas of service. We work hard to collaborate with other organizations to fund raise and bring in self sustained money. I'm not some a-hole with a gold plated name tag on my desk writing expense checks for the crazy expensive lunches I'm taking every day wining and dining my parents and providers. Dude, I make $0.32 for every mile I travel as a reimbursement. Yeh, totally sounds like I'm working and living the life of luxury with the bennies I'm rollin' in. We work with school districts, mental health organizations etc so we can work together to provide the best services possible for families. And we do track our data, for those concerned. It would take a tremendous amount of time to break down each individual program we offer that tracks data, but for my program specifically, data is gathered on a monthly basis and every time that a parent attends a parent education class my program requires of them. The provider's I work with are required every 6 months to complete a DRDP (Developmental Desired Result Profile) on each child at their facility. This information goes straight into our database and is used to track the developmental growth of each child since starting preschool until they exit our program. Majority of preschools do not use this tool, which they should as well as a complete yearly profile kept on each child.

The belly dancing issue. Sure, I'll go there. I can't speak for San Diego, and while it seems they did in fact fund a program to offer belly dancing classes to high risk pregnancy teens, a lot of the free classes and services we offer are given by instructors who volunteer their time. That’s right; they do the classes for free. What I can say about the belly dancing issue is that with teens, especially high risk, sometimes "alternative" methods need to be used as an approach to get them to take in information. Go try to talk to a raging hormonal teenager about anything and see what sinks in, I'll wait. Our goal is to get them into the centers, get them information and provide them with services and referrals to ultimately help them plan for a healthy baby. The focus is being placed more on the class, and not the means to end the result, which is appealing to young minds in a creative manner so that they can be provided with an abundance of services and resources to help them and their unborn child in a multitude of areas. As a tax payer I'd rather pay for a belly dancing class than the NICU bill for an underweight, underdeveloped or high risk child. As a parent, I'm willing to give anything a go that helps any parent lessen their chances of having a high risk pregnancy. Would we be having this discussion if it was prenatal classes, or prenatal yoga that was being offered?

I'd be interested to see a factual report with actual data and evidence that states which commissioners are getting the bulk of the funds, and if so, which organizations they work for. Without evidence that "back handed deals" has been made, such information is not factual "reporting" in my opinion. It’s just that, assumption and opinion, which even the most ill-informed people, are entitled to. Even when after 7 years they're still stating we're low income, when we are NOT an income based program or organization. We help families, no matter where they fall on the spectrum, end of story.

I said it before and I will say it again - I'm very proud of the work that we do, of what we have accomplished and the people we have helped over the past 7 years. I think our cause is just as deserving of acknowledged importance as the next. I take it a little personal because it is personal. I'll tell you what I told the Senator,

"I never took this job on because it's where I would make my millions, or because it was an easy sell. I took this job on because I believe in what I do."