Cool Tools of 2013

--Camelbak water bottles: I wish there were plain ones without the weird graphics, but after having my son shatter several cheap water bottles, this is the one that has survived. The nibs got shredded every time he teethed, but I found the replacement easy to order online at Amazon. Now that he has all his teeth, his nib has remained intact. Over the same amount of time, our older child only wore out 1 nib.

--Real pipe cleaners: These have cotten bristles with some stiffer plastic? ones too. Clean the gross crevasses of kid things very well. Particularly the aforementioned Camelbak nibs.

--Kitchen timer: I know I've praised the kitchen time in previous years for kitchen things, but now we have an owl shaped one for the kids. We sometimes dole out "toy time" when both kids want the same item. 5 minutes each, for example. All too frequently, the first kid doesn't even play with the toy for the full time allotted, but at least the screaming stops. Other times, we give the toy itself time out and neither kids can play with the toy for a bit. I love my timers.

--Emergent Task Planner: I occasionally follow David Seah's productivity blog and found this there. I printout a week's worth of pages on Sunday and line up my calendar for the week. The big win for this thing is that I use it to keep track of what I can do in the nooks and crannies of time I have.

--MyFitnessPal: This year I tried this and the LiveStrong food tracker. I ended up mostly using MyFitnessPal, but I can't say I have a strong feeling between the two. Generally speaking, I found food tracking to be useful for hitting my protein goals for the day. But then again, I like data.

--Sanitaire Vacuum: Can't remember if I blogged this one already, but it's an inexpensive industrial canister vacuum for hard surfaces and low pile carpet which describes the most trafficked parts of our house. Works great particularly for this great price point of under $100. Not super awesome on regular carpet, but we don't have that much of that and we have lots of kitchen/living room cruft. And it is stellar there. Easy to change out the bag and an add on HEPA filter is available which we use.

--Google Calendar Reminders: N taught me this year that events added to Google Calendar can be set up to send an email a certain amount of time before the event. I check my email more than gcal, so this helps me make sure I get certain things done each week like restarting the sourdough. We've also started to use this to make sure to do other things quarterly or semiannually like calling the HVAC people for an AC checkup or changing the air filter periodically.

--WorksheetWorks.com: Alorithmically creates new worksheets in many school subjects. L is only able to do the simplest ones, but she likes doing them, and it's simple enough to print them out. Nice if your kids likes to "play" school. Probably would also be good for elementary schoolers who need more practice on certain topics.

--Local Library: This is the best place to deal with children's books. Children's books are hit and miss in quality. The library is a first line of defense against terrible books. Even then, the library sometimes gets sucked into having bad books. Fortunately, it was a collective taxpayer burden, and you can return the offending book. On the downside, if your kid falls in love with a book, eventually after all the renewals are used up, you have to return the book or buy your own copy. Hopefully, in the next year, I'll be able to go to the library with the kids again. Currently, it's too much to manage two kids in the kids' book section.

Thanksgiving: From life to death and the in between

This year has been so dramatic; it's really nice to wind down the year with a deeper realization of how much I have to be grateful for. Somewhat chronologically, here's my list:

--In the early part of the year, I was working my way through another episode of depression which we treated as seasonal affective disorder and changed up my meds. The new meds had bad side effects, but I did eventually adapt. Between them and a new therapist, the ship was righted. The transition back on the same medication this fall was much smoother and I'm doing way better than I was doing this time last year. I am thankful that depression is not my sword of Damocles.

--Our daughter learned to read before I expected her to. This freaked me out. I'm thankful I've since gotten over it.

--Our son was so severely underweight that he was tested for what seemed like everything under the sun, including cystic fibrosis -- twice. All the tests were negative! Shortly after testing, despite a negative celiac test, we removed gluten from his diet and he has since gained about a pound a month and is back on the growth chart. What an amazing relief! Praise God!

--I picked up a small contract position with Zoobean.com this year as a book curator. I select the best of the children's picture books I come across adding them to the Zoobean library and tagging them so they can go out in personalized book subscriptions for kids. This has been super fun and provides a little "egg money". I'm thankful my new interest in literacy has found a new (non-academic) outlet.

--Speaking of interest in literacy, I'm thankful my paper on mother-infant book interactions has been published. Actually, I only kind of care that it's been published. I'm more thankful that my husband supported my researching and writing a new paper.

--I am thankful for my in-laws. We had a great visit to their neck of the woods this summer. Then, when I decided to go ahead with shoulder surgery, my mother-in-law came to our place for 2 weeks and ran the house while I sat around in a drug-induced daze. They are also wonderful with the kids. One thing I really enjoy is that they regularly send postcards to the kids.

--We bought investment property this year. This was not part of the "plan", but we are thankful for good renters.

--In addition to unexpected surgery and unexpected property buying, my dad had an unexpected cancer diagnosis this summer. A large throat mass became a whatzit, became a we're taking it out anyways, became well, that was cancer. It was a hard period of just not knowing what was going on and having different doctors say different things, but on the other side of it all, we are so thankful this was caught early and currently does not require any chemo or radiation, just periodic scans.

--So my dad's thing was a reminder of the nearness of death. This summer, our daughter's namesake, a former missionary and a mentor of mine, passed away. I'm so thankful that in the past few years she's included our house in her epic road trips. It was a real privilege to have her in our lives.

--And just so we don't wallow in death, a life story! Our dear nephew was added to our family this year. He came 8 weeks early and scared the tar out of an already frazzled family. Thankfully, he was everything you could hope for for a preemie. He was born at a sizable weight with well-developed lungs. He was never in a scary situation during his hospital stay and was sent home before his actual due date. He makes great faces and is super cute.

--In these uncertain times, we joined the many families across the country that received no pay in October although our situation wasn't directly caused my the government shutdown it did coincide with that. During his "furlough", N looked for an found another job for better pay and a shorter commute. How about them apples? No pay is no pay and that was stressful, but we're so thankful for the quick resolution to that issue. So far N has liked the new job, and we're getting back into that work-groove after having daddy home with us for 5 weeks. I am also thankful N's work has nothing to do with healthcare.gov. Those must be some frustrated programmers.

--I should update on this in its own post, but shoulder surgery appears to be a success. I've been out of the sling for 2 months and I can do everything I want with it--household chores like laundry, mom chores like tickling and hugging, sleeping on it, and lifting weights. A good outcome was never guaranteed, so we're thankful that things have knit back together nicely.

I am not a naturally thankful person. I'm a naturally anxious person. Even in the list above, I have my what-ifs and but-that-could-changes, but if the drama of this year has taught me anything, it has taught me to bet on Jesus. I want to predict the worst possible outcome and rage against the "unfairness". But time after time, when I choose to trust, I see and tangibly experience that God is in control and can be counted on. Things don't go according to my plan, but that doesn't mean there isn't goodness to be found and life to be thankful for.