Here Kitty Kitty Kitty!

We are just over two weeks into our "Kick the Cats Out" project. After almost two weeks of fearing that we'd lost at least one cat, we can happily say that all three cats are still here. Not necessarily happy, but here.

It seems that they are doing the complete opposite of what we expected. The cat we expected to take to the outdoors with no problem (Izzy - the most recent addition), refuses to leave the garage unless one of us is standing in the driveway. Poe (the black one) will leave the garage occasionally, but has yet to get close to leaving the property. He will also continually scratch at the front door and meow his head off. Sort of in a "Ok guys, this isn't funny anymore" way. He also got into one minor fight with a neighbor cat. But it's Jack who is baffling us with his behavior. He hid for a few days and then apparently decided that being outside is the greatest thing in the world. I have routinely seen him happily prancing around the neighborhood up to two blocks away. He hasn't really acknowledged us again since we kicked him out, but at least we know that he comes home every night.

I'm sure once the weather starts to warm up, the other two cats will be more inclined to spend time outdoors. Unfortunately for them, the weather has been bipolar and crazy over the past few weeks, switching between sun, sideways rain and wind, freezing temps at night, and random snow showers.

In terms of how the humans are adjusting to having no cats in the house, there's been some mixed feelings. Sometimes I miss seeing them at my feet as I'm doing my homework and I definitely had a lot of guilt when we thought Jack had gone missing. But I am LOVING having my laundry room back and we're the midst of a laundry room makeover project. We're breathing a little clearer (except for the cold that has been hanging around the past week) and the upstairs is cleaner since it isn't coated with cat hair and cat litter. We're also sleeping so much better. Who knew that having three cats on your bed at night would disrupt sleep so much? Plus, now we get to have my brother in law over without killing him with cat dander!

Our Little Adult

This has been a slightly odd week with Aiden. My normally night owl of a six year old has been waking up between 6 and 6:30am, perky and ready for the day. This is very different from our typical morning routine of struggling to get him awake and dressed in time for school. Instead, he's been waking ME up. On Tuesday, he woke me up by shouting, "I'm going to be late for school!!". Of course, I woke up in a panic only to find that it was 6am. School starts around 8am.

This has been happening all week. He'll wake up, comb his hair (he usually hates combing his hair), get himself dressed, get himself breakfast (he usually doesn't eat breakfast, just like his mommy), and if he's got time to spare, he'll watch some Mickey Mouse Clubhouse or play with Legos. It's honestly made our mornings a lot easier, but I'm anticipating a switch back to our normal routine after the time change this weekend.

Whatever is going on with him, he's been thinking a lot about growing up over the past week. We had a very emotional time last night when he burst into tears and announced that he was afraid to grow up. He begged me to tell him how to keep from growing up and was devastated when I told him that there was no way to stop it. He said he was afraid that he wouldn't know what to do or how to behave as a grown up. Well kid, I'm 28 and I still have no idea what I'm doing half the time. While I hugged him, we had a nice talk about growing up. He's still not convinced that he wants to grow up, but it at least opened up some communication about his fears.

I think I'm discovering that parenting an older child might be more difficult than parenting a younger one.

Saving

As some of you may know, Aiden has been working at saving money to purchase an ipad since last September. He has wanted an ipad since my dad bought one and brought it with him on visit. There are amazing educational applications for it and it's so very in line with Aiden's interests. But, they are expensive and we told him that we couldn't just buy one for him. He was sad, but not long after that, he saw an article about this 8 year old boy who saved money to buy an ipad. He was insistent that he had to do the same. We weren't sure how long a kid Aiden's age would stick with saving money. Would he be able to be patient while he saved? It was worth a try.

Between allowance, doing additional tasks around the house, and some gift money from his birthday and Christmas, he has now saved $100 for his ipad. While he has a way to go yet, we are so impressed that he is willing to wait it out and save. Every time he gets money, he immediately says, "Put it in the ipad fund!". Since John and I know that saving $500-$600 would take a few years, we have decided (without telling Aiden) that once he reaches a certain point - probably around half way - we will match what he has saved, potentially as a gift if it happens to fall around his birthday or Christmas. While it would be fun to see his face as he opens a present to find an ipad, there's also a part of us that thinks he would love to be able to walk into the Apple store with his money that he saved, and have the pride of purchasing the ipad himself.  We'll see how it works out once it gets closer.

I had a hard time believing that he would stick with saving this long, but he's done it. And now that he sees that he's into triple digits, he is even more eager to keep saving. We are very proud of him and it's been fun to watch him learn how to earn money and then put it away for something that he wants.

Breakfast!

I don't usually post recipes here, but we've been trying out all sorts of new yummy creations lately. I have many to share, but I haven't taken the photos off of my camera yet, so those will be in another post. But I couldn't wait on this one. This is what we had for breakfast this morning:

Photo credit: Sugarcrafter.net

That, ladies and gentlemen, is Nutella Swirl Coffee Cake. If you happen to not be familiar with Nutella, it's the yummy stuff inside the Ferrero Rocher chocolates. Jars of Nutella are a tad pricey, but it's something that lasts for a while and we like to have it on hand. Once I saw the recipe for this on Sugarcrafter, I knew I had to try it. That blog is quickly becoming my first go-to place when I'm looking for something sweet to bake.

I would highly recommend this recipe and you can find it here: Nutella Swirl Coffee Cake. I was out of plain yogurt, so I used a mix of sour cream and cream cheese instead (I would used all sour cream, but I was 2 oz short, so I threw in the rest of our cream cheese to get it up to the required amount). It tasted awesome. Sure, it probably made it about 6 times more fattening than it would have been otherwise, but I wasn't going for diet food here. Seriously, a warm slice of this coffee cake along with a freshly brewed cup of coffee was one of the most decadent breakfasts I've had in quite a while. And the kids love it!