Random-ness

I have just submitted my first Federal Grant. It is to the Dept. of Health and Human Services, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services for the Children's Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act (CHIPRA) Outreach Grants. Wherever you live, your state has publicly funded children's health insurance- that's CHIP. In Florida, it's KidCare. We've been working on the proposal for about two and a half weeks, and it's really been a team effort, but I took the lead on crafting and maintaining the proposal. I am very, very, proud of it. For almost five years now, I've worked for a funder - as opposed to a grant-seeking organization. So it was a good mental exercise to sit on the other side and have to write a grant myself. I feel like our proposal is not only well-written, but well crafted and very strategic. I think that it shows how hard we worked to really come up with a project design that is consistent throughout the proposal. We'll hear back from the feds by September 30th. We are requesting $630K (for 2 years) and contributing our $1 million in insurance outreach programs as match to show that our project is sustainable.

Working on that proposal has really consumed my work for the past week, and as a result I've skipped out of other meetings whenever I could to work on it. But now it's done and I'm happy.

A couple of night ago I decided that we needed to make a more concerted effort at having a bedtime routine for Caleb. I know that Emily swears by them. The time at which Caleb was falling asleep was creeping up to almost 10-ish...I know that's not ok. So on Sunday, I gave him a bath at 7-ish, and then took him to his room, put on his pj's and nursed him until he almost fell asleep and then put him in his crib. He woke up some, but I spent about 10 minutes standing there with him and he fell asleep. We've repeated each night now, and tonight it was a little harder, and I had to go in three separate times because he was crying, but he finally fell asleep at a little after 8. I'm determined to get this right. Plus with that late bedtime I just couldn't get anything done. Last week between Caleb staying up and my working so hard on that proposal there was just nothing to eat in my house and it was messy. Three nights we ate at 9:00 just because it was the first chance we had to heat up leftovers or get take out.

This week is World Breastfeeding Week. I love how beautiful breastfeeding is. It's just one MORE thing that shows me how amazing and creative God was in His design for us. It is so good for babies, mommies and our community.

I think I mentioned in my last post that we started feeding Caleb cereals - that boy loves food. I'm so surprised at how good he is at eating from a spoon, it was really surprising to me. He really enjoys it. He seems to like the spelt/barley multigrain cereal a lot, I tasted it - it's not bad, it tastes like cream of wheat (minus all the sugar I would add to cream of wheat) :)

Okee dokee - that's it for me. Alex is at small group, I didn't go b/c I didn't want to disturb our very new bedtime routine. So I'm going to go enjoy me some time laying down and watching tv