Monday Morning Nonsense

Part I

Every morning, Connor makes muffins for breakfast. He does most of the work, as it is pretty simple.

I preheat the oven to 425 degrees.
He picks a muffin mix out.

I give him a muffin pan and 6 muffin wrappers.
He puts the wrappers in the pan.

I get a bowl, open the muffin mix and measure out 1/2 cup of milk.
He pours it all into the bowl.

He mixes it.
I pour the batter into the cups.

The oven beeps to let us know it is ready.
I put the muffins in and set the timer.

The timer beeps.
I get the muffins out.

See, not too hard at all. But more work than I wanted to do this morning, as I am really tired. Monday morning tired. I really wanted to pour him a bowl of cereal or open a Nutrigrain bar and be done with breakfast.

So I asked him, "Connor, do you want a fruit bar or cereal for breakfast today?"

A. "You're giving me jokes, Mom, you're giving me jokes. I want muffins."

So, we made muffins. Strawberry.


Part II

I am really tired this morning. This is due in large part to the fact that Kevin and I stayed up really late last night to work on our federal tax return. Barrel of laughs, right?

We got finished with one draft of our 1040. If we just use the standard deductions and don't contribute any extra money to our IRAs for the IRA deduction, we still owe the federal government a little more than $1,200. I guess now the plan is to figure out what we could deduct if we itemize.


Part III

I am really tired this morning. This is due in large part to the small boys in our family waking me up multiple times at night. You know that I expect Connor to wake me up at least once a night. But Lex, my perfect sleeper Lex...what happened?

For the first three months of his life, I could count on Lex to sleep at night. When he was four months old, he started waking up occasionally at 3:00 AM to eat. It was more occasional at first. Lately, it was every night. I am okay with one night feeding, honest.

But, since he turned five months things have been bad. Seriously, for the past two nights, he has awoken and wanted to eat every TWO or THREE hours. It's just like when Connor was a baby. In fact, Lex woke up for his first feeding last night when Kevin and I were still awake working on the taxes. Then he woke me up three more times.

Is he going through a growth spurt? Is he finally ready for more than just milk in his diet? We've been working on eating rice cereal, but he only gets a few bites each time. Maybe I should buy some cereal nipples and try to give it to him a bottle before bed?

Is it a separation anxiety thing? About two weeks ago, he cried every time I left the room, but I forgot to mention it before now, because it only lasted for about 48 hours.

What is going on? And when will it end?

Tuesday Madness

On the one hand, I can't believe that it's only Tuesday, as I have been so incredibly busy so far this week.


On the other hand, I'm glad that it *is* only Tuesday because there is still a lot that I want to get done before my cousin and her fiance come to stay with us Friday evening.


*Happy Note: My baby shower is on Saturday!!*


Today is the deadline for taxes, so last night I spent about 2 hours organizing our files and making sure that we had done them right, and copying them out onto forms neatly (since our printer is not working currently). Then, I wrote out envelopes and checks and got together the W-2s, and today I got them in the mail. Hooray for being done with taxes this year!


Unfortunately, we owed a lot this year. How often do you think that the IRS misses the need to calculate the estimated tax penalty? I'm kinda hopeful that they don't notice that the amount we owed was more than 10% of our total tax due (it was 23%!), and that they don't send us a bill for the penalty. But, I won't be surprised if we get one. I'm not sure how much to expect the bill to be, though, having never had to pay it before and not being willing to look at the "complicated" form to try to figure it out myself.


Something that I really need to do is go out and buy some new maternity clothes. The pants that I am wearing right now are too tight to be worn again, and I really shouldn't have worn them today. I tried looking around at some places this weekend, but since I only looked at Target and Wal-Mart, and they didn't have anything (big surprise), I didn't buy anything. I guess I will just have to go to the mall. The mall is fun, but exhausting. Especially Easton, because the parking can be so far away from the stores sometimes.

Today is Wednesday

And tomorrow is Thursday, and the day after that is Friday, and I have no plans for this weekend! (Well, except for figuring out our taxes, once and for all, and working on the blanket that I'm making for my grandparents' 50th anniversary.) Hopefully this weekend will be nice, and I'll get to work on my flower garden, too.

I'm still reading that same book, Labyrinth. It usually doesn't take me this long to finish a book, but everytime I get into the story line, the author does something gruesome to one of the characters, and then switches to another storyline, which completely yanks the rug out from under me, and then I put it down. The book is due back to the library on the 10th, and today is the 5th, and I have no idea if I'll finish it before then. It's a good thing that library fines are cheap for books.

The most expensive library fine that Kevin and I ever paid was about $150. I had put a bunch of CD's in a bag next to the front door, so that we could take them back. Then, Kevin put the garbage bag next to the front door so that he could take it out to the garbage can. Needless to say, by the time he got his shoes and coat on, he also picked up the bag of CDs and threw those out, too. I didn't notice that they were missing until later when they were becoming overdue, and by then it was too late to do anything about it. We replaced some of the CDs ourselves, but we still had to pay the library a fortune. It stunk. Now, I never put library materials in any sort of bag, just in case they get lost.

Ooh, I just remembered that Kevin and I made plans to meet Shawn and Carrie after work tomorrow at Don Pablos. Good thing I remembered today, and didn't leave them sitting there in the restaurant waiting for us!

Today was definitely Monday

I have been so busy at work today that I could hardly think, which is pretty unusual. I think a lot of it has to do with all of the coporate taxes that are due tomorrow, because I've been getting about a million forms ready to be filed. I don't know how the federal, state and city governments expect small businesses to handle all these different taxes, because it seems to me like each small business should have one dedicated tax analyst.

On a related note, Kevin and I finally got all of the forms that we had been waiting for, so now we can start what is going to be the most complicated tax return either of us has ever filed. But, we both refuse to pay someone else to prepare it for us. If the government thinks that I can do it, well then, I'm sure I can do it. (Even if I have to amend it later.)