Preschool Dropouts

My blog is neglected. Better than neglecting my children though, right?

So Noah has flip-flopped and now sleeps fantastically during the day and not so great at night, and to sleep at all at night he must be held, like a teddy bear. Which is great in the way that I am getting my house clean and organized and cooking dinner on a regular basis. I am starting to wonder how long a person can function on such a limited amount of sleep. Ben probably has it worse, since he keeps getting up early and going to work, and I keep setting out bowls of cereal, turning on cartoons and going back to bed (which doesn't really work most days because the kids start screaming and beating each other up less than 5 minutes into Oomi Zoomi). But we are still chugging along. And Noah is so sweet with his coos and smiles. But if one more person suggests I should just "sleep when the baby is sleeping" or "try to take a nap" without offering to watch both of my other children I'll probably scream at them. Seriously, that may be sound advice when you have 1 kid, or maybe even 2 depending on your kid. But 3?

In case you haven't heard, we made a decision! We are heading to Kirksville, MO, sometime this summer for Ben to attend medical school at AT Still. Most of my fears have been calmed, and I'm feeling pretty ready to tackle the next 7 years of craziness. There are several things that I am really looking forward to. One is moving back to Missouri. I've about had it with these ridiculously long and cold winters where the snow doesn't melt for months. And it's so dry. My lip cracked the other day, enough that blood started running down my face, despite my addiction to chapstick. Korban still has to wear onesies so he doesn't scratch his back raw. Plus we will be closer to my family. My mom is so excited, and Kennady did a happy dance when we told her. We will still be 5 hours from Grandma's house, but that's a lot better than 20 or 12. I can drive 5 hours with 3 kids by myself, in one day, without going crazy. And it's one tank of gas, meaning if my kids slept the whole way (lol) we wouldn't have to stop at all. I will get to spend Thanksgiving with my family! I haven't done that in 10 years, seriously. The other thing that I'm looking forward to is Ben having holidays again! Only in academia do you get 2 weeks off for Christmas. Sure, he will be studying, but I'm still excited.

The things I'm not excited about? Packing. Ugh. I hate it. You'd think I'd be awesome at it after our 8 moves. I'm not. It stresses me out. And I procrastinate. And there's always so much more stuff than you thought there was going to be. There will be no second loads for us this time, since we'll be trying to cram everything into a 17 foot Uhaul. The other thing, which is worse, is that I'll miss my friends and family here! We've loved living so close to Rob and Kristi and their kids, and we will be so sad that we can't just drop in on them a couple times a week. And we've really enjoyed having Marlene and Kaman close enough to come over and play board games with us until way too late/early in the morning. And Dan and Heather and Kristal and Kevin, well they're still newlyweds, so we don't see them much, but we'd like to! Plus only being 12 hours from Ben's parents and the rest of his siblings, they've come to visit frequently, which I'm sure won't happen when we're so far away, and we will miss that!

But we get to move into a real house. That's right, we've signed a contract to rent a real house. For much less than we are paying for our basement apartment here. It has 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, a basement and a garage. It shares no walls, ceilings or floors with any other family. The only people waking up my babies will be my babies. We will have a yard, that we won't have to maintain, as the landlord takes care of it.

Oh, in other news, we are preschool dropouts. We took Kennady out of preschool. I was tired of paying for her to play dress up for 2 hours twice a week. Plus the stress of getting her there and home in such a short amount of time. It wasn't worth it anymore. She agreed that she could have just as much fun at home playing with friends, for free. She still does her online preschool, which is definitely helping her learn how to read. She is so close! She is ready for Kindergarten next year. I'm not sure that I am. I just found out that the Kindergarten in Kirksville is all day! What am I going to do without my Kennady all day? We also got Korban on the waiting list for a preschool out there. He will be going to Kindergarten a year earlier than Kennady (because of his May birthday), and I think he could benefit from a good preschool (this one is fantastic from what I've heard, and half the cost for twice as much time as we are paying for Kennady). I really don't know what I'll do with just one kid for a chunk of the day. Ha, who am I kidding? That will be great, I can think of a billion things I can do easier with just one kid.