Yes­ter­day, I posted about want­ing to model thank­ful­ness and grat­i­tude for my chil­dren.  Then, I felt guilty about that post, because today I’ve spent a lot of time think­ing about how much I want a cou­ple things for myself.  A dif­fer­ent van would be so nice, one with the LATCH sys­tem and seat back teth­ers.  Also, a nice, new cam­era would be so won­der­ful.  Our cam­era is a lit­tle too slow to catch three fast mov­ing boys.  Many of my pic­tures are happy blurs instead of memories.

Dur­ing this time of year when I want to think about being thank­ful and grate­ful for what I have, I find myself doing the same thing as my kids.  I, too, am mak­ing my “I want” list.  So, I sup­pose my first step in teach­ing my chil­dren about thanks­giv­ing is to model it myself.

We had a con­ver­sa­tion tonight at sup­per that has left me won­der­ing how I can do a bet­ter job mod­el­ing grat­i­tude and thank­ful­ness to my chil­dren.  I know that they are 6, 4, and 1.  They are pretty young, and it’s nor­mal for them to think a lot about them­selves and a lit­tle about oth­ers.  I just want to make sure that as they grow, I’m able to help them make the tran­si­tion from being self-focused to includ­ing oth­ers in their focus, too.

I’m not quite sure how to do that or where to start though.

In my house, we have sev­eral dif­fer­ent styles of eaters.  Jason eats pretty much any­thing, and he likes almost all of it.  I’m a some­what picky eater, but I usu­ally try to stay away from the things that I don’t like while still mak­ing sure that my fam­ily eats a vari­ety of healthy foods.  Jonas eats a huge vari­ety of foods.  He doesn’t like a few foods (like many types of pasta), but he eats so many foods that both Jason and I enjoy.  Kael and Asa tend to be cau­tious eaters.  They often assume that they don’t like some­thing.  Many times I hear, “I don’t like that.  What is it?”  That used to drive me nuts, and it still does from time to time.  How­ever, at some point in Sep­tem­ber, I had a revelation.

“They” often say that it can take a per­son 15+ expo­sures to a food before that per­son decides whether or not he or she likes the food.  I don’t meal plan in a way that would demon­strate that.  I choose new foods all the time.  I like the fla­vors in Mex­i­can food, Indian food, Ital­ian, American…

I’m sure that’s fine as long as it’s work­ing for every­one.  Unfor­tu­nately, it was not work­ing for us.  Jason and I were doing alright.  Kael and Asa were not.  They were eat­ing fruits, veg­eta­bles, breads, and some other side dishes.  They were not touch­ing many most of the main dishes I made.

I decided that instead of try­ing new foods all the time with a rare sta­ple thrown in I would make one meal plan for a month.  Every Mon­day we would have the same meal.  Every Tues­day would be the same, etc. etc.  for a month.  In addi­tion, I decided to make foods that were more famil­iar and like things they were already inter­ested in eating.

For the last month, this has been our sup­per meal plan:

Mon­day:  Kael’s choice
Tues­day:  Chili, bak­ery break, spaghetti squash
Wednes­day:  Asa’s choice
Thurs­day:  Tacos mixed with black beans and rice, whole grain rice with toma­toes and black beans
Fri­day:  Chili Mac, roasted and fresh cau­li­flower, car­rot and raisin salad
Sat­ur­day:  Slow cooker taco soup, salad, rice
Sun­day:  Pot roast, roasted green beans, bread

I’m sure it’s not a mir­a­cle cure, and there are def­i­nitely days when sup­per is a flop.  I’m hop­ing that those days occur less and less often.  Hope­fully we will work our way back into my more tra­di­tional meal plan where we’re not on a repeat­ing weekly sched­ule.  Until then, though, I’m happy to see both Kael and Asa try­ing more foods at supper.

In the later part of last week, I received an email from Ama­zon that they had unveiled their new Kin­dle Owner’s Lend­ing Library.  They were excited to announce that Ama­zon cus­tomers who were Prime mem­bers and Kin­dle own­ers would have access to their new lend­ing library.

I’ll be hon­est and say that the con­di­tions of the lend­ing library (one book at a time, and only one book per month per per­son) left me a lit­tle under­whelmed.  How­ever, I looked through the books, and there were a few I was inter­ested in read­ing off the bat.  I maneu­vered my way through the menus and attempted to access the book I wanted.

Jason and I have been Ama­zon Prime mem­bers for many years.  Hav­ing Ama­zon Prime allows us to receive free two day ship­ping on most of the pur­chases we make from Amazon’s site.  It also means that many times it’s eas­ier to pop onto Ama­zon and make a few clicks to make a pur­chase than it is to get into the car with one, two, or three kids and run across town to buy some­thing.  We make very good use of our Prime membership.

So, when I attempted to access the lend­ing library with my Kin­dle, I was dis­ap­pointed to find out that Ama­zon is only allow­ing the pri­mary account holder to receive this ben­e­fit of Kin­dle own­er­ship and Prime mem­ber­ship.  I con­tacted Amazon’s cus­tomer ser­vice, and I was told that I would be able to access the lend­ing library if I chose to asso­ciate my Kin­dle with Jason’s Ama­zon account.  I sup­pose I could do that, but that means I would likely lose most of the 100+ books I cur­rently have on my Kin­dle that are asso­ci­ated with my account.

Sure, Ama­zon could be con­cerned that peo­ple might try to take advan­tage of this and add friends or other fam­ily mem­bers to their account to receive the ben­e­fits.  In my opin­ion, this would be eas­ily solved by say­ing either that Prime mem­ber­ship must be lim­ited to either a par­tic­u­lar num­ber of accounts/email addresses or to ver­ify that account mem­bers share the same phys­i­cal address.

Jason and I are long time cus­tomers.  We aren’t try­ing to take advan­tage of the ben­e­fits of any of these mem­ber­ships.  I would like as the non-primary account holder to receive the same ben­e­fits as Jason does.  Right now, between the lim­its on the book lend­ing and the lim­its on the mem­bers, I’m really frus­trated with Ama­zon.  It seems more like a pub­lic­ity stunt than an attempt to give loyal cus­tomers addi­tional rea­sons to remain customers.

*I’m sure this is not nec­es­sary, but I’ll add it any­way.  All opin­ions expressed are my own and have not been solicited by Amazon.

Or maybe four or five.  I’ve lost count.

I’m count­ing rounds of ill­ness in our house.  Kael came home from school on Sep­tem­ber 15th with a cough and a fever.  Since then, every­one except Jason has been sick for most of that time.  We’ve had stretches of 2–3 days here and there where every­one seems mostly bet­ter.  It’s start­ing to make me a lit­tle bit crazy.

We have thrown away all the tooth­brushes and tooth­pastes in our house and started new.  Every­one has their own cup in which they store their tooth­brush with the tooth­paste next to it.  I also washed all the blan­kets in our fam­ily room.  One night Jason sprayed down our toys with Lysol (yuck!).  I think we’ve done a few other things, too.

Every­one in our fam­ily takes vit­a­min d.  I bought some echi­nacea the other day.  It’s in a drop­per though, and it tastes TERRIBLE so I’m not sure I’ll be very suc­cess­ful in con­vinc­ing any­one to take it.

This week, I felt like I was fight­ing off a cold, and I thought I had suc­ceeded until this morn­ing.  I woke up with a sinus headache, a runny nose, and was sneezing.

Sigh.  Wash, rinse, repeat.

Any sug­ges­tions on other ways to germ proof our house?  I know it’s pretty hard to stop a bug once it’s in the house, but this is get­ting ridiculous.