Whimsy-ma-blog

CMA - Hairy Expectation Monsters

2012-02-18T09:44:00.000-06:00

Welcome back to Crabby Moms Anonymous. It's been a while, hasn't it? I haven't forgotten though. In fact I've sort of obsessed about what to tackle next at CMA.

Everybody got a chair and some coffee? Good.

(If anyone was unable to make it to the first meeting of CMA, you can catch up here.)

*************

Hi, I'm Janice and I've been crabby for, oh, a solid six months and Reason Numero Uno is Expectations.

To open tonight's meeting I've jotted down a little Expectations Haiku for your enjoyment:

I could write a book about expectations.

But I won’t. I'll be succinct. (I'll pause while you snicker at that.)

For now I will just say that expectations help determine my mood on a minute to minute basis.

To show how serious I am, {please begin reading in a booming voice}

I will now make a law-aw-aw-aw.

1st Law of Maternal Crabbiness: Unrealistic Expectations Will Ruin Your Life.

It's true.

The good news? I'm 100% in control of my expectations. After all, they are mine.

The bad news? Expectations are very, very sneaky so I forget that I'm in control of them. Or even that I have them.

But I've been hunting them out. I've been searching around my mind, flipping over mental couch cushions and such. It's been gross and I've found expectations lurking everywhere like hairy, little monsters.

But I think they can be sorted into three Hairy Expectation Monster Families.

Hairy Expectation Monster Family #1: Expecting that my kids will not be kids.

I do this all the time.

I expect that they will keep their wits about them at the table and not flail about, knocking stuff over. Just because I told them to. Four thousand times.
I expect that Dalton will try to get his pee in the potty. Try hard enough to actually look where it's going in spite of the fact that he has a thrilling white wall to look at while doing his business.
I expect that Belle will be able to dress herself today since she's been able to for the last year.
I expect every single meal that my kids are going to eat quickly so we can move on with our day in a timely fashion. Every. Single. Meal.
I expect that since Liam has been taking great morning naps that he will also take one today. (Excuse me while take a deep breath and turn off the monitor so we don't have to listen to that crying...)

You all know I could go on.

And when these expectations are not met - cue the crabbiness.

I believe I am honestly surprised when I holler things like, “You just knocked your cup off the table again?” Or “Another yellow puddle by the potty?” as though I had never seen one of those before.

So somehow I need to work into my expectations that I am completely and utterly enveloped by childishness. The kind of maturity where

Emotional stability greatly affects motor skills. (A sad girl is incapable of getting a shirt on correctly.)
The world is a never-ending source of fascinating distractions. (A plain white wall is just a blank canvas for the imagination. Or a subject to be minutely inspected. Oh sure, go ahead and lean up close to the wall to inspect the bumps. Never you mind that you are still peeing.)
No one can be expected to both speak and keep track of their limbs. They can either concentrate on the story they are telling with wild hand motions or the location of their cup. Not both.
Speedy eating is impossible. Their lives and mine could be on the line and they would still take a tiny bite, chew 600 times then chatter/squeal/fight/belt out a song for five minutes before taking another. And unless I change my expectation I will continue to sound like a lunatic when I yell, "Will you two stop sweetly singing Away in a Manger together and finish those freakin' sandwiches before my head explodes?"

I have been trying to work on this, but I have a great deal of work left to do.

I wish I could get it through my sluggish skull to stop expecting my kids to be adults - or more specifically to be me.

To have my plans,

my priorities,

my motivations.

So, please pull out your booming reading voices again:

1st Law of Maternal Happiness: Expecting childishness makes it delightful.

Or at least funny. OK, maybe just less annoying...

Regardless, I'm going to try to expect their childishness,

so that I feel less aggravated by it and so that I can remember how precious it is.

I'm going to try to step carefully over the pee and ask Dalton to show me what he sees on the wall. Because it is a true fact that it is more fun to see castles on a blank wall than to think about cleaning yellow puddles.

I'm going to try to look past the fact that the shirt is still not on and focus on warming the sad little heart of the girl who has lost her gross motor skills because she's just heard that it's too cold to go outside and play. Because the minute it takes to hug her will not completely mess up my schedule the way I'm acting like it will and it will make both of us better people.

I'm going to try to remember, when I hear Liam an hour earlier than I was expecting, that the email I'm writing isn't tremendously important (or fun), and that as soon as I go in there he'll gurgle happily at me and his little chubby face will break into a grin that I can't help but return.

No promises that I'm going to remember all these goals in the heat of the moment, but the fact that I spelled it all out for you guys may help...We'll see.

So there you have it, Hairy Expectation Monster Family #1.

I have two more.

You're excited, aren't you? Of course you are.

See y'all next time at CMA.

Highs and Lows - One month 'til my birthday edition! (and my Weekly Goal)

2012-02-13T09:54:00.000-06:00

Ok, so most people are focusing on how Tuesday is Valentine's Day. Some of you know that I don't really like Valentine's Day. Something about the day irks me. So Medman is always off the hook. I don't know if people believe him when he says he's not doing anything for Valentine's Day because I don't want him to, but it's true. If he stops on the way home on Tuesday and buys me flowers for triple the normal price, I'm going to call him an idiot. If you want to buy me candy, do it on the 15th when it's half off. And please don't buy it if it has both pink and red on it. Pink and red should not sit next to each other. Blech.

Oops-Insensitive Rant Alert...uh...I hope you all have lovely Valentine's Days filled with flowers and pink and red chocolates...

Anyway, I choose to find significance in the fact that February 14th is EXACTLY one month before my birthday. Thus my title.

And now...Highs and Lows by topic:

SLEEP:

High:
Liam is working his way up to Favorite Child status. He sleeps through the night, every night. 12-13 hours of uninterrupted sleep. He goes to bed before 7 pm and gets up between 7-8 am. Sweet, beautiful child.

Low:
Belle has decided she does not want to sleep through the night any more. Lots of nights it's just issues like a twisted up blanket that she can't straighten, or more often nothing intelligible. Just needs a hug and to be put back to bed.

But one night earlier this week I woke up to hear her shrieking in her room. It took a while to understand that she was saying, "My bed is opening! My bed is opening!"

My response to this was a hazy, sleepy, open-mouthed stare.

I think she had some sort of nightmare about the back of her crib opening up. Not sure what happened once it opened but the result was that she was terrified of her crib. Her entire little body was shaking. She kept insisting it needed medicine. I admit I was at a loss here, and since the only medicine I had in her room was butt paste, I pretended to wipe that on her crib. But it didn't work, I guess, because the crying continued.

It took 3 hours that night to get her to go back to sleep. I'd like to say that I handled the whole three hours with grace, patience and creative parenting. But it was from 1:30 am to 4:30 am. Let's just say that time period had its ups and downs. Thankfully I had just made her this little pillow bed thingy that she could sleep on so she didn't have to sleep on the floor.

Until now she has loved her crib. Just hangs out in it and sings or talks or whatever. But no more.

That was 5 days ago and she still won't go back in her crib. We'd been planning to get her a big girl bed sometime sooner or later, so I guess we're doing it sooner.

Funny part: The next morning at breakfast she told Dalton the following,
"Dalton, I got to sleep on my pillow bed! I was very, very scared because my crib was opening and even the butt paste didn't fix it."

He looked at her like she was crazy, and behind her back I twirled my finger around by my temple and rolled my eyes around in the universal sign for craziness.

NAMES

Low:
I commented here that Belle had started calling us Mom and Dad instead of Mommy and Daddy. This unfortunately has continued. And now that they are pretending to be pteranodons, it's just getting worse. You see, the pteranodons call their parents Mom and Dad. I'm terribly afraid that Mommy and Daddy are a thing of the past.

sigh.

High:
HOFFENPFEFFER!
Our very favorite TV show is Psych. Endless hours of fun, there.

The other night we were watching an old episode and a woman yelled "Hoffenpfeffer!" at another character. She yelled it very fast in an angry German accent. It's really fun to do. Try it. Go ahead. I'll wait. One more time, faster and louder. Good.

I've decided I'm going to start yelling it when the kids are driving me crazy. It will help me blow off steam without yelling anything that will be emotionally scarring to the little tykes.

Weekly Goal

My friend Erika posts weekly goals on her blog and she's started making it a little party where people can link up their own goals. Last week I picked a goal and it was really helpful to remember to be intentional about something.

I decided that it would be good to have some one-on-one time with Dalton. The biggest change about having three kids is how I never seem to have time for any kid individually. I'm always juggling two or all three of them.

So I kept Dalton up a little longer at nap time (which was a huge deal for me in and of itself) and we did a little craft that involved melting a crayon over a candle and using the melted wax to make a picture. It came out cute and we really did have a good time.

So this weeks goal is to spend one-on-one focussed time with each of my oldest two. It seems like a stay at home mom shouldn't have to be intentional about that, but its very easy to let the busyness of life take over and suck up time that could be spent in better ways.

I'll try to remember to tell whether I met my goal or not next week.

Linking up to

Jen

Cute, Not So Cute 3rd edition

2012-02-12T10:18:00.000-06:00

Backseat driver

Cute:
It has just been the last couple months that Belle has begun to comment on things going on outside the car while we are driving. The first time it happened she looked straight out her window to the side of the road and yelled, "Oh no! We're driving on the grass!"

Just yesterday we were driving and she looked ahead of us and quivering with excitement she exclaimed, "We are going up up up that big hill! THIS IS SO FUN!"

Not So Cute:
She clearly doesn't understand the rules of the road. Or maybe physics. Or something. Because often we will be driving along listening to Dalton chatter about how many points he has for finding Slug Bugs, Mustangs, PT Cruisers or HHR's (You'll only think this is weird if you don't have a little boy obsessed with vehicles..) when Belle will suddenly shriek, "WATCH OUT, MOMMY! THAT TRUCK IS GOING TO BONK US!"

As I look frantically around for this truck that is going to crush us I notice a small pickup truck on the other side of the road driving along calmly in its own lane.

After I stop shaking I try to explain to Belle that not every car that looks like it's coming toward us is going to hit us.

She's started to do it a lot. Sometimes it's just a frantic shout of "MOMMY! BE CAREFUL!" that apparently nothing has triggered. Sometimes it's "MOMMY! YOU MUST SLOW DOWN! YOU MUST SLOW DOWN!" when I'm driving 25 miles an hour through the downtown area of our town.

The big problem with all this shouting is that I don't feel like I can categorically disregard shouts like that from my passengers. So each and every time I have to look around wildly for the source of the supposed danger before I can rule out that there really isn't a fire truck about to run into us.

And it stresses me out.

Pteranodons

Cute:
Ok, I'm working on what is cute about this next one....Hold on...I'm sure there's something...

I know! It is cute when my kids pretend to be stuff. Especially when they pretend to be some other set of siblings and have little pretend adventures together.

Lately they've been pretending to be pteranodons from Dinosaur Train.

Not So Cute:
Have you ever watched Dinosaur Train? It's a little show about a pteranodon family (flying dinosaurs) and their adopted son who is a tyrannosaurus rex.

Fine. They're a couple little siblings that learn about different types of dinosaurs and have barrels of fun comparing and contrasting things.

The Not So Cute part is that these pteranodons make a pteranodon noise. It's like a ear-splitting squawk. A terrible, dinosaur, ear-splitting squawk. And my kids have decided that when we are all "TEAM PTERANODON! HOORAY!!!" that it just doesn't feel real unless they squawk before everything they say to each other. And sometimes after everything they say.

(SQUAWK) Hey Shiney! What are you doing?
(SQUAWK) Playing with trains, Dawn. What you doing? (SQUAWK)
(SQUAWK) Drinking juice
(SQUAWK) Cool.

Hundreds of squawks every day.

And it's driving me crazy.

I've even had to make rules.
NO PTERANODON SQUAWKS IN THE CAR.
NO PTERANODON SQUAWKS WHEN WE ARE IN THE SMALL BATHROOM TOGETHER.
NO PTERANODON SQUAWKS AT THE TABLE WHILE EATING.

I think I hate pteranodons. I am glad they are extinct.

Highs and Lows - Late January edition

2012-01-28T00:36:00.000-06:00

The usual. My list of Highs and Lows from the week.

'Cause I know you're all dying to hear about the exotic adventures we had this week...

High: Liam slept thirteen hours straight the other night. Thirteen. This blows his previous record of ten hours out of the water. And he might have gone longer. I woke him up at thirteen hours.

Low: Liam didn't nurse for thirteen hours the other night. For you girls who have never nursed - or you boys who never will - let me give you a quick medical lesson:

Mammary glands are full of little milk fairies. These fairies just love babies and they really want to make babies happy. They know that babies like milk. So these milk fairies study the baby closely and get a good feel for how often he wants milk. Then, when it's about time for him to get milk, even if he's no where to be seen, the milk fairies start getting all in a twitter and start jabbering at each other things like,

"Is it time yet?"
"Has anyone seen the baby?"
"What if he's been kidnapped?"
"Do we make milk yet?"
"Poor thing must be starving!"
"I'm starting some milk!"
"Me too!"
"Me too!"

And so at approximately the time the little fellow would usually wake for a nip to eat, the mammary fairies produce milk.

When junior doesn't appear, the fairies don't think, "Huh, guess we don't need milk." Instead they get all in a tizzy and start fluttering around in a panic yelling, "More milk! We need more milk! If we make it...he will come!!!"

And as there is only a finite amount of space inside the mammary fairy house, things get crowded. To the point where the fairy house is about to explode.

Did you know that mammary fairy houses stretch all the way up to the collar bone and around into the armpit? And the entire house swells painfully if the baby doesn't come drink milk.

Thus the Low.

Low: Medman had a conference at the end of the week and was gone for a couple days, livin' it up in the big city. Drinkin' Starbucks, shopping at World Market to see if he could find me some mugs (good man), eating at Chick-fil-a and Red Robin. And we were here. Bored.

High: After the first day of feeling aimless I planned about a thousand projects for the next day so I would stay entertained. And it turned in to a fun day of doing stuff with the kids that I wouldn't normally do. We painted sun catchers...

(No the playroom wasn't ransacked by ruffians searching for something very well hidden. Why do you ask?)

...played in the snow...

Well, they played in the snow. I stayed warm inside and took pictures.

...and made race car boxes so we could do Family Movie Night and watch Cars.

Yes, I know they are pretty pathetic cars. Lame little half-wheels, small circle with a number on the side and headlights. But my kids thought they were cool, so I instantly stopped suggesting improvements. And may I highly recommend this? They thought was cool and do you see how contained they are??? It was divine.

No, I'm not letting my 5 month old watch TV. The American Academy of Pediatrics tells me this will turn his brain to mush. Well, maybe that's not what they say, I don't really know. I just googled it enough to make sure it really was the American Academy of Pediatrics instead of some other arrangement of those same words. But it's frowned upon. So, uh, this is the first time Liam's even seen the TV. Yeah.

Side note High - Liam is big enough for the exersaucer. (Please, all my friends who have degrees in child development do not tell me it's bad for him. If he reaches his second birthday and can't walk yet, I'll admit it causes him some problems. Until then I plan on continuing to use it.)

High- Liam has learned to suck his thumb! Once again I do not want to hear any nay-sayers about this. I'm talking to you, Walmart checker-lady who always tells me Belle's teeth are going to grow in three rows one behind the other all from thumbsucking. Thumbsucking is a gift from God. It may be the real reason He gave us opposable thumbs. It's not for grasping tools, people. It's so babies can self-sooth.

High - Liam started solid foods. What a big boy!

Low - This picture is proof that his olfactory sense does not work at all. Because he started solid foods and the stench from this kid's diaper at this moment was unbelievable. No, I don't know why I decided that was a good time to snap a picture. I'm surprised it didn't fog up the lens.

Alright, that's all I got. Super kid-focused and rereading this I can see that I don't seem to want anyone's opinion on my parenting.

Except here are two more cute pictures that I have hanging around and they are whining to be posted.

Dalton proudly displaying Belle's hair which he "made beautiful." And maybe strangling her too.

One of those adorable moments when all three are happy.

Letter to my daughter after watching The Bachelor

2012-01-23T16:12:00.001-06:00

My sweet Belle,

I sat and watched a show the other night where a roomful of beautiful women competed with one another for the love of a man. I watched the drama as they quarreled, manipulated, flirted, cried and triumphed, but all I could think about was you. I saw your fresh face smiling at your baby brother, heard your silly giggle as you told Daddy a joke and felt the weight of your head as you laid it sleepily on my shoulder.

I know your two-year-old mind dismissed everything I told you that night so I wanted to write it down for you. Because someday, Lord willing, you will be old enough to listen and you will be wading through all the confusion that the world will toss at you about these things. Things like beauty, strength and love.

So, my precious girl, here are the things I desperately want you to know.

1. The most beautiful women in the world look ugly when they are mean. Beauty is complex. It involves your hair and skin and eyes, but all of those things are just a shell. That shell is transparent and I promise you that whatever you fill it with will be perfectly clear for the world to see.

Your eyes will always be beautiful when they look kindly at someone. You will have lovely lips whenever they smile a genuine smile. And your nose? Well, noses are tough. You either have a good one or you don't. Luckily for you, yours is adorable.

If you cultivate goodness and kindness and wisdom and strength then not only will that beauty shine out of you but you'll find that you breathe joy and beauty into the lives of those around you.

But if the most beautiful woman on earth lets herself be filled with jealousy and hatred, she will look like a troll.

2. No one, in the history of the world, has done anything out of jealousy and made it look good.

You'll be jealous a lot, sweetheart. Trust me. You'll be jealous of other girls shoes or hair or elbows. You'll be jealous of their friends, their boyfriends, their poise, their intelligence, their humor. (Maybe even of their mother, just don't tell me about it if you are.) You'll be jealous of people you've never met and people you love dearly.

When you focus on that thing that some other person has you stop caring about them at all and only care about the thing. Jealousy will make you act like a child because it is an utterly selfish feeling. Trust me, whatever you do or say when you are driven by jealousy will make you look like an idiot.

So be on your guard against it. When you see jealousy sneaking around (and you will) take a little time to be grateful for the things you do have. And if you can't come up with anything, call me. Because I can see that you have so much beauty and strength and wonder in you that it makes my heart ache and I'd be happy to tell you all about it.

3. Don't confuse SELFISHNESS with STRENGTH

Some of these women said terrible things to each other then defended themselves by tossing their pretty hair and saying, "I'm just being honest. I have to say what I feel."

Well here's a little nugget of wisdom for you, sweetie. Not everything you feel is worth saying. There will be plenty of times when you will have emotions tumbling around inside of you like a litter of puppies on crack. Some of them will be worthwhile but some will be stupid and you should do your best to send them packing.

You'll meet plenty of girls who don't agree with me. They'll claim it is strength of character to blurt out any thought that crosses their mind regardless of who will be devastated by it. But honey, a woman of strong character has the wisdom to shut her mouth until she's thought for a moment about what she's feeling to decide whether it's an emotion that she wants to own, an emotion that makes her into the woman she wants to be or one of those emotions that she should look square in the eye and say, "Yer outta here. You and the hormonal horse you rode in on."

4. Love

This one is a bit complicated, honey. You'll spend a lot of time looking for it and thinking about it and being jealous of it. It doesn't come in the same way all the time and it often ends up looking different than you thought it would.

But I will tell you one thing. If your hunt for love begins with manipulation, jealousy and games, it's going to have a very hard time finding its way to a happy ending. Real love will start when you find someone, get to know him, and you guys spend time being kind to each other.

And if you do it the right way, with the right kind of boy, it will involve a lot less drama than Hollywood says it should and a lot more happiness.

Oh, and one more thing the show made me want to tell you: If there is every a boy who you are - I was going to say "kissing" but the thought of you kissing boys will probably give your dad a stroke, so lets go with - rollerskating with and he is openly rollerskating with several other girls. Like six...or seven...dozen...other girls, STOP ROLLERSKATING WITH HIM.

This is not the type of boy that makes a good skating partner. Someone who's really fun to rollerskate with will like you because he sees what an amazing girl you are. He'll never ask you to prove to him that he should pick you over a dozen other girls. He'll be smart enough to know you're the greatest thing he'll ever find.

The only reason you should ever even go near the guy again is to point him out to your big brother so he can kick his #**. No, forget getting your big brother. You do it yourself. Go straight for his...ankles. Those two-timin' rollerskatin' ankles.

I love you, my darling girl. Go back to playing with your trains. We'll chat again about all this in a decade or so.

Love, Mommy

How Pinteresting...Highs and Lows by pin

2012-01-18T10:19:00.001-06:00

It's been a Pinterest kind of month around here. Don't know what Pinterest is? Well, find out at your own risk.

It's an addictive online pinboard where you can pin links to anything you find on the web that you want to be able to find again. The addictive part is that you can browse gajillions of other pins on any topic imaginable.

But this week, I actually did a bunch of stuff I pinned - with mixed results. Thus the Highs and Lows.

First I tried some recipes, but they sorta sucked. Hoped for yummy treats to munch on while the Bronco's let their stress-inducing season fizzle out. Got boring blah. Both the food and the Bronco's subpar performance = LOW. Moving on...

Then I tried to make these cool snow globe things for the kiddos:

Note: If the recipe calls for water, baby oil, food coloring and glitter. Don't

think it will work to substitute Karo syrup for the baby oil and

forget the food coloring altogether.

If you do it ends up pretty lame and your kids keep asking politely, but in a bewildered sort of way, "So...what is this supposed to do?" Another LOW.

But there were HIGHS:

We did some great stuff in homeschool (click on the picture to get to the link on how to do them):

Do you know what happens if you put a little piece of Ivory soap in the microwave? Go ahead, let your family make hypothesises. Hypotheses? Hypothesi? Uh, let them guess. It's pretty cool. HIGH

There was a woman who made a printout for learning about the color wheel

using water paints and an eyedropper.

Fun, educational and not very messy. HIGH.

We used tape and finger paints to paint like Monet.

Quick,easy and looks like a masterpiece. HIGH.

But the coolest thing that I tried was from a post that said you can IRON FABRIC ONTO YOUR WALL AND IT ACTS LIKE CONTACT PAPER. Just peels right off when you are done!

Yup,turns out you can iron on paint and it causes no problems at all. Who knew?

The lady who gave me this idea (and I think she got the idea here,) wrote her son's name on the wall.

But, never one to let a project be simple, I realized that here was the chance to give Belle that huge wall mural of a tree I've wanted to give her but am too cheap to by the vinyl for!

Well, limited by the quantity of fabric and Hean-n-Bond I had, my grand plan was reduced to a branch with flowers, but I like how it turned out.

Besides the fact the photos were taken inside on a gloomy day, what do ya think?

What's more fun that purple swirly branches with pink and yellow flowers?

Nothing.

Nothing at all.

(Want a mini tutorial? Click here for one. )

Cool, huh? If I could redo it I'd smooth out some of the curves (some of them are a little Nightmare Before Christmas-esque), but I'm not going to redo it. It's for a two-year-old's room. Two.

After I finished ironing it onto Belle's wall (which was sort of a weird experience) she said, "Mommy! I LOVE it!"

Of course at nap time she looked at it and started to cry and said, "I didn't want you to put that picture on my wall! Take it off."

Nice. But she's two. I'm banking on her inherent wishy-washyness. She'll come back around to liking it. HIGH.

Fabric Wall Appliques- a tutorial

2012-01-18T10:18:00.002-06:00

My favorite Pinterest-inspired project so far!

Fabric Wall Appliques!

Yes! Just like you use fabric to applique on other fabric, you can create fabric appliques and iron them onto your wall.

And they are completely removable.

Like vinyl.

Seriously, this is the most exciting household decorating DIY thing I've ever seen.

Ever.

Just imagine the possibilities....ANYWHERE I would put vinyl I could put FABRIC.

BEAUTIFUL, COLORFUL FABRIC

FOR SUPER CHEAP.

Excuse me while I stare dreamily out the window...

I got the idea from Sharon at This Thrifty House (and I think she got the idea from Brassy Apple, and that's as far back as my research can take the idea. Megan from Brassy Apple must be the creative mastermind behind this fabulous idea.) The original post showed Sharon putting her son's name on the wall in fabric (and she states that several years after doing this the letters peeled off just fine without damaging the paint.)

Very cute, but I have a teensy problem in leaving projects small and simple. It took about 2 nanoseconds for my brain to jump from "name" to "I can make that gigantic tree mural for Belle's room! The one that I've been dreaming of but have been WAY too cheap to buy from a vinyl wall sticker place." (We rent, so painting a whimsical tree on the wall didn't seem like a viable option...)

Unfortunately I was limited by the quantity of fabric I had (trying to use up my stash) and the amount of adhesive I had bought, so my gigantic tree mural turned into a pretty big branch with flowers. Still a big enough project to be worth doing (and probably messing up.)

This is how it turned out. You like?

So here's how to do it. (This really doesn't require a tutorial. Basically buy the adhesive and follow the directions for creating a fabric applique. Except instead of ironing your applique onto another piece of fabric, iron it onto the wall. But that would be too short of a post for me. I'm wordy. So here's a tutorial.)

Oh, and tutorials are a little boring. So here's a play by play of my project. If you are bored, the actual steps are in bold.

FABRIC WALL APPLIQUE TUTORIAL

Step 1: Raid the fabric stash that takes up massive amounts of space in your (son's) closet but you barely ever use. Realize you can use up the pink swirly fabric that you tried to make into maternity pajama pants but you ended up stuffing the "pants" (for lack of a better word) deep in a box out of shame, fervently thanking God that no one saw you try to wrangle your pregnant body into them.

Step 2: Get some Heat-n-Bond Lite (the purple kind - Sewable for light fabrics). It was under $4 and the sum total of the money spent on this project.

Step 3: Draw a nice little picture on the papery side of the Heat-n-Bond. (If you are doing letters, trace them backwards. Really, it's annoying to ALWAYS forget this when appliqueing letters. Especially when you are making a present and trying to fit "Lena" onto a tiny scrap of the perfect fabric for the wall in our little friend Lena's room. Then you know once you retrace the letters backwards and cut them out and give them as a gift, her sew-savvy mother will see the additional lines on the back and know you traced them the wrong way the first time.)

Step 4: Iron the Heat-n-Bond onto the wrong side of your fabric per the instructions and cut out your picture.

This is not my iron. Mine has that burnt up goo on it from ironing something or other too hot. Which, by the by, I also found out how to fix through Pinterest. Iron a dryer sheet. So there ya go. Edit: That whole cleaning tip did NOT work for me. Just made my house smell like hot dryer sheet. And not in a good way.

Step 5: Peel the papery part off the back of your fabric, place against wall and iron (I used "silk" setting) for about 20 seconds. Presto Magico! Gorgeous wall art. And it does peel off just fine.

Final note: If you decide to do a four foot long branch with lots of curls and swirls, you can use painters tape to position it on the wall until you are ready to iron it. I do not recommend positioning and taping everything up before you remember to peel off the papery backing. I have heard that doing that exactly doubles the time required for this part of the project.

Cool, huh? If I could redo it I'd smooth out some of the curves (some of them are a little Nightmare Before Christmas-esque), but I'm not going to redo it. It's for a two-year-old's room. Two.

Belle's first reaction:

"Mommy! I LOVE it!"

Of course at nap time she looked at it and started to cry and said,

"I didn't want you to put that picture on my wall! Take it off!"

(sigh.)

linked up to:

The beginning of the end...the machines are waking...

2012-01-08T14:10:00.000-06:00

I have a fancy-pants smart phone and I'm suddenly scared that it might actually be smart.

I've never been a huge fan of movies where the machines take over the world and destroy humanity. If we're going to have some dramatic end, let's not have it at the hand of anything as boring as machines. Medman would vote for zombies, my kids are convinced it's going to be monsters, but not machines. Besides, in the movies the machines always end up looking like insects. Yuck.

Anyway, to let my kids play on my phone I downloaded a Kid Zone app. (Ok, this is only for Belle. It's possible that D can already use my phone better than I can.) This app lets you pick which games, videos, etc., you want your child to have access too and they can't get to any of the other parts of the phone. That means Belle can not call Grandma. Again. You have to do something that takes dexterity, like draw a good Z on the screen before it will let you exit and actually use your phone. Great idea, huh?

Yesterday, in an attempt to keep her occupied while I finished my last blog post, I let her use Kid Mode. I even added Angry Birds on there for her. She was in e-heaven as she repeatedly shot her angry birds straight left off the screen, while the green pigs sat safely snickering off to the right.

But then something went screwy. I got my phone back and exited Kid Mode, but it seems my phone was reluctant to let me leave. It did let me get back to the normal functions of my phone, but every single time I tried to exit any application, email, message, phone call or photo it popped up a little window saying, "Would you like to complete this action using Kid Mode?"

No. Not at all, thank you.

So I checked the box that said something like, "Make this my DEFAULT" and then told it I did NOT want to use Kid Mode.

But the next text message I closed? Up popped the cheerful little box. "Would you like to complete this action using Kid Mode?"

NO. Select same choices. Push extra hard on the screen while checking "Make this my DEFAULT."

Got an email, read it, closed it. Up popped the cheerful little box. "Would you like to complete this action using Kid Mode?"

Me: Are you stupid? NO. Make this my Default. DO NOT USE KID MODE.

Phone (cheerfully): OK.

Got an email. Read it, closed it. Yup, you know what happened.

I even went into the settings section to check that Kid Mode wasn't set up as a default. Nope. The Default option was sitting benignly greyed out.

I tried to show Medman my annoying problem and you'll NEVER GUESS what didn't pop up. Sneaky frickin' machine. Just acted totally normal.

But this morning every time I touched the dang screen, up popped the cheerful little box. "Would you like to complete this action using Kid Mode?"

And after the 500th time doing this I felt my blood run cold and I quickly uninstalled Kid Mode.

It was happening. Hollywood is right. It is going to be the machines.

My phone was

ignoring the rules I set for it,
wanting to stay continually in game playing mode
and had just asked me the SAME QUESTION hundreds of time, even though it knew what I was going to say.

Artificial Intelligence has been born. My phone has reached the intellectual level of my children.

Cute, Not So Cute volume 2 (and homemade powdered laundry soap)

2012-01-07T15:32:00.000-06:00

For about the last three years I've made my own powdered laundry detergent and I know I've chatted with friends who want the recipe (but I honestly can't remember which ones), so I thought I'd post it. It's stupid-easy to make, works great and is practically free compared to store bought detergent. (Unfortunately, I can't remember where I got it to give credit where credit is due, but the recipe is tangled about here and there in the world wide web...)

But a post about laundry soap? BO-RING! So I'm interspersing soap-making instructions with a new volume of "Cute, Not So Cute." (Because we wouldn't want a short post, now would we?)

The soap

I was always irked to finish my grocery shopping by dropping a

$17 box of detergent into my cart (made extra expensive because it was

dye/fragrance free for my sensitive-skinned kinfolk -

why exactly does less ingredients = more expensive?

Riddle me that.)

I had seen recipes online for DIY laundry soap that is super cheap and works great. Cleans well, keeps colors bright, doesn't irritate anyone's skin, yada yada yada.

*******************************

Cute, Not So Cute

Cute: Belle does this hilarious stomping thing where she hunches over a bit, sticks her hands out in front of herself, squints up her face funny and takes tiny steps, stomping as hard as her 22 lbs can do with each step. It's hilarious. Picture a scene where some American Indian, dressed in traditional garb, is doing a stomping dance around a huge bonfire. That's what she does. Like this beautiful girl:

Image credit

And how Belle would love to wear something like that. She's a smidge Cherokee from her father's side and it shows.

Not So Cute: The other night I was trying to calm Liam down and get him to sleep (Any of you notice that I only talk about around three topics on this blog? There's bodily waste products that don't end up where they are supposed to, odd things my kids do and issues arising from getting Liam to sleep. Perhaps I need to branch out...), he was almost dozing off when suddenly there was this BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM and the floor of his room began to shake. His eyes snapped open and I expected air raid sirens to start going off.

I left the now crying Liam in his bed and ran out to find Belle, just inside her room (which is two feet from Liam's room), doing her stomp dance (as though her little legs were commercial grade impact hammers instead of tiny twigs) and singing a chanty sort of version of Away In a Manger. And I didn't find it cute at all.

*******************************

(back to the soap)

Ingredients

1 cup washing soda (sort of like baking soda but found in the laundry aisle)

1 cup Borax

1 bar of plain, old, regular soap (I use Ivory)
(NOTE: The recipe calls for Fels-Naptha soap which can be found in the laundry aisle or sometimes with the regular soap, but I find the fragrance of it foul, so we use Ivory...)

*******************************

(back to Cute, Not So Cute)

Cute: My parents came to visit and gave Dalton Connect Four for Christmas. Then my mom played about a hundred games with him. There was lots of, "Now wait! You have to look at both of our pieces! You might need to block me!" Or "Now wait! You have to look at both of our pieces! Is there a way you could win???" And so Dalton "won" a lot of the games.

Then D needed a potty break and headed upstairs yelling, "Mommy! You play with Grandma while I'm upstairs."

Me: "Do you think I can beat her?"

Dalton: "Oh yeah! She's not really very good at that game!"

And I laughed hard at how cute it was that the thought he was better than her.

Not So Cute: Grandma leaves town and now I'm stuck playing Connect Four. So I continue the incessant coaching ("You have to look at both of our pieces!").

D: I don't need your help, Mommy. I am good at this. I can play you.

Me: Oh, really? Ok. All I'll say now is "You have to look at both of our pieces..."

And he continued to play in his devil-may-care sort of way while I literally bit my tongue to keep from ~~nagging~~ helping him and none-too-subtly stacked my yellow pieces into a line.

Then suddenly his eyes lit up. "I WIN!" he shouted as he dropped in his little red piece completing a line of 4 right in the middle of the grid which I had not at all noticed, being too busy only watching my own pieces.

"Mommy! You have to watch both our pieces."

Not so cute.

*******************************

(back to the soap)

Directions

1. Shred the bar of soap in the fine section of your cheese grater. This is as hard as the recipe gets, which isn't hard because soap grates REALLY easily. So easily, in fact, that you should watch your thumb knuckle and make sure it doesn't hit the cheese grater. I've heard that really hurts.

2. Add one cup Borax and one cup Washing Soda. Mix together.

Viola. That's it. Oh, and the great part? It takes ONE TABLESPOON PER LOAD.

Yup. One tablespoon for a ginormous load of towels or a humongous load of pee-soaked bedding or a monstrous load of poop-filled baby pajamas.

One Tablespoon.

Some fancy math:

Borax < $4/box

Washing Soda < $4/box

Ivory soap < $0.50/bar

That means a recipe of this costs about $1.50 and I get around 50 loads from each recipe.

That's 3 cents per load or

$1.50 for as many loads as a big box of store bought soap.

Yup, that's how ya stick it to the man!

Hmmmmmm, who is "the man"?

Proctor? or Gamble?

PS: This laundry soap doesn't make the water all sudsy. Don't be alarmed if your water isn't. It's still cleaning stuff, I promise.

Highs and Lows - 12 Days of Christmas

2012-01-06T06:24:00.000-06:00

So apparently the rest of the world is back to normal (even though I've decided that I have no interest in having Christmas be over) and Jen's Highs and Lows have started again.

I just discovered that in the liturgical calendar that Christmas goes from December 25th to January 6th (the 12 days of Christmas.) So that means TODAY IS STILL CHRISTMAS!! Yay! (jingle jingle jingle! ho ho ho!)

In fact, let's do a 12 days of Christmas Highs and Lows. No, I have not thought this through until this very moment. And I don't really know how they translate into highs and lows, but that's what I came here to post so I'm sticking with the title, come what may.

Prepare yourself for a mediocre post here. No planning and very few good pictures...You're excited now, huh?

Here goes:

(You know the tune...sing along!)

For the Twelve Days of Christmas my Highs and Lows will be:

TWELVE million presents. (The kids had mountain-of-presents induced ADD as they rushed from one box to the next, barely noticing what was inside before grabbing for another. We did try to curb this enthusiasm and slow them down, but between nursing, trying to keep fires going and general crowd control I'm embarrassed to say that I actually had to ask my older sister what gifts she had sent. Neither child had bothered to look at tags and a dozen of gifts were open before I thought to start reading tags for them.) -High and Low

ELEVEN fires flaming (or approximately that many cozy fires on cold nights.) - definite High.

TEN clicks from camera (but not getting any good shots)- Low

NINE zillion candies (that were knocked on the floor during gingerbread house decorating. All of which were round and apparently motorized. Oh, and the gingerbread was gross...) -Low

EIGHT inch tall mountain (of tissues. As a solution to the crying in the middle of the night of "Mommy! I have a tissue on my finger!" (which means she has a booger on her finger) I gave her a whole new box in her crib. The next morning she said, "I had LOTS of boogies, Mommy. Lots and lots." Note the now empty box in the bed.) -Neither High nor Low, but funny.

SEVEN useless threats (The number of times we told them, "LAY DOWN AND BE QUIET" before admitting that the "Let's all sleep in Mommy and Daddy's bed on Christmas Eve!" idea was a bad one.) -Low for kids who had to go back to their own beds, high for us who got a good night sleep.

SIX dress-up outfits (one doctor and a bunch of princesses.) -High 'cause she's so freakin' cute.

FIVE camping friends. (No, this has nothing to do with Christmas, but it is cute.) -High

FOUR thousand miles (traveled by the gifts from farthest away - Thank you Uncle Bobby and Aunt Christine for our Irish cozies!) -High

THREE yummy fingers- High cause he's cute, might be Low soon because the tooth is coming...

TWO yada yada - ran out of ideas and I need to go take a shower....

and a child born to set the world free. -High.

Well, there ya have it. It's not much but it is my hope that you now have the Twelve Days of Christmas stuck in your head.

Welcome to CMA

2011-12-29T07:06:00.000-06:00

Not the Country Music Awards. This is Crabby Moms Anonymous.

Hi, I'm Janice and I've been crabby for, oh, a solid six months.

Not the normal bouts of irritation when every child in the house wets their beds simultaneously, or when multiple children are up together at night colluding with each other to keep me from sleep. No, this is more of a constant feeling of annoyance.

(Note: Please don't think that because I can laugh while writing a blog post about these sorts of things a couple days after they happened that it means that I encountered the original situation with anything like grace or cheerfulness...)

(Second Note: My husband read a draft of this post and said, "You make it sound worse than you are. You're not that crabby." Then he crinkled his brow a bit and glanced toward the upstairs where I had just finished snapping at D to put on his pajamas instead of repeatedly spinning around and tossing them high into the air then wandering around his room confused as to where they had landed, and said, "Well, sometimes you are a little..." And even though my husband is an amazing judge of character and I often defer to his opinions in these sorts of matters, I feel too crabby so I'm going to continue with this post...)

So I've both invented and enrolled myself in Crabby Moms Anonymous and have decreed that one of my Steps to Recovery is Confession.

If I confessed to my kids the conversations would go something like this:

Me: Belle, Mommy has been very crabby. I'm sorry.
Belle: I'm sorry I've been crabby, Mommy.
Me: No, honey, I'VE been crabby.
Belle (with huge, sincere eyes): I'm so, so, so sorry I've been very crabby!
Me: Not you, Belle, ME.
Belle (starting to look sad): I'm sorry.
Me: Uh...it's ok, honey.
Belle (cheerfully): Thanks! Can we read a book?

-or-

Me: Dalton, Mommy has been very crabby. I'm sorry.
Dalton: Oh, that's ok Mommy. Wanna race?

-or-

Me: Liam, Mommy has been very crabby. I'm sorry.
Liam:

Since the first conversation would make me crabby, the second takes a good deal of the weight out of confession and the third is just useless, I've decided to confess to you, the faceless masses of my readership. (If all 42 of you, most of whom are related to me genetically or legally, count as faceless masses...)

The Setting:
The past six months have included the last trimester of pregnancy and then life with a newborn and two older kids. I readily admit that those circumstances are fertile ground for crabbiness. Months of ever increasing discomfort leading to the ~~horrific~~ ~~barbaric~~ glorious moment of childbirth which disables and exhausts you and puts all your hormones into a crazed state of imbalance, followed by months of sleep deprivation and never ending responsibilities.

Mother Teresa, had her religious vows allowed conception (or, in this holiday season I would add "had she immaculately conceived"), would have been crabby during the end of her pregnancy and the first few months with her newborn. Especially if she were still trying to take care of all those lepers at the same time.

Yes, there are certainly reasons in my life to be crabby. I know because I have spent a good deal of time mentally rehashing these difficulties as I sit crabbily, hunched gargoyle-like at the kitchen counter glaring at the little people around me who continue to make messes and require my assistance.

The Goal:
But NO MORE. After some therapy with my old friend, Saskia, chunks of good conversation with my husband in the moments between parasitic-interruptions and collapsing into bed at night, and quite a few late night soul-searching sessions as I nurse Liam in a dark room, I have decided that there are a few things that I am doing that are greatly increasing my own crabbiness. And I need to change these things. So, over the next few posts I'll be sharing them with you because:

a) who doesn't like to read other people's dirty laundry
b) it will help me to solidify in my own mind the things I need to work on.

Future topics you have to look forward are:

Irate Expectations: Where I expound on my theory that all happiness in life is dependent on our expectations. And mine are screwy. (Jason objected here too. He thinks it's his theory. But he's wrong. In reality it's a theory the two of us have developed (and continue to develop) over the last 16 years...)
A Bit or a Rudder: Some lose paraphrasing of James 3 where James makes some inflammatory statements about the human tongue. (Yes, those of you who know the passage will get the pun. Just a bit of Bible humor, people...Funny stuff, here. Funny stuff.) But honestly, the points James makes about how we speak are dead on.
Me Time NOW: Where I try to figure out the balance between needing Me Time for sanity and meshing it with reality.

I certainly don't expect to become a constant ray of sunshine who meets messes and normal life with young children as though I were Mary Poppins, but I would like to cheer up a bit and have a healthy dose of patience. Each night I want to feel as though I took the time to enjoy my kids during the day - in spite of the fact that they peed on the floor because they were trying to see into the tub instead of watching the toilet for the five seconds that it took to pee.

So, after making some comments above that Mother Teresa's fans might find borderline offensive, I will leave you with a nice quote of hers:

Let us always meet each other with smile, for the smile is the beginning of love.

Mother Teresa

Thank you for attending this meeting of CMA. We'll meet again next post, same computer. And remember to smile.

Official Xmas Card 2012

2011-12-21T16:33:00.000-06:00

Around October every year I toy with the idea of a Christmas card. I'd like to think that someday I'll actually get one done. But not this year. So, like last year's Official Christmas Card, I'll just post mine here...

And like last year, I do not have any good pictures. In fact, the whole attempt went exactly like last year.

Except last year I tried. For probably a half hour.

This time I just snapped off about 6 shots and then gave up in despair. I'm not even going to edit them except to lighten them up so you can actually see the kids.

Enjoy...

Smile Belle - No! Dalton, don't look at Belle! Keep looking at me!

Belle, no one is trying to steal crazy red-eyed Liam.

Will silly faces help them all smile? Nope, just help them make silly faces. FOREVER.

Dalton looks like he's being dragged away by a zombie into the tree.

Belle still blissfully off in her own little world, Dalton bored, Liam decided to forget pictures and eat the blanket.

This really is the best one. At least they're all looking.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Sacred

2011-12-19T06:22:00.000-06:00

I don't love people quickly. It takes me a fair amount of time and good conversations and shared experiences before I develop a love for someone. Loving someone is deep. And it is costly. There is so much reward in it, but there is also so much of myself given to them, trusted to them, that it is a weighty thing to love someone.

And I feel like I need to reserve the word "miss" for those who I love when they are far away. I miss my husband desperately when he is gone. I have a couple of profound friendships with girls who live far from me and I miss them. Missing someone is more than a wanting to see them to chat. There's a tangible sense to the emotion I have of missing them. A longing to be closer to them. And I know I miss them because I took the time to grow to love them.

And so today, on December 19th, 4 years after my 9 week old baby passed away, I wonder how I can miss someone I barely knew. How I can miss someone who never spoke to me, never listened to my thoughts, barely was even capable of responding to me? How is it that my heart could be wound up so completely in such a tiny person?

One thing Jack's life has made me realize is that even though the missing is so painful, there has never been a question of whether I would rather have never loved him at all to save myself this pain. Never.

An acquaintance had a baby of hers die this last year. Her daughter had a fatal birth defect but was able to come home and live with them for a few short weeks. Her comment during those weeks was that her family was living in a sacred time. That word "sacred" struck me and has stuck with me since. Before I read that, the word "sacred" had awe-inspiring but pleasant connotations. Like sitting in a silent, beautiful, old cathedral. But the more the word rolls around in my mind, the more it feels that it is sacred to face the real essence of life. To notice how different a human life is compared to the things and activities we spend so much time on. To be lifted out of the mundane to face eternal things. To step out of the daily rush of living and come face to face with the infinite worth of a life, even if you are forced to face it because that life is no longer with you.

So December 19th has become a sacred day to me. Not in the sense of somehow idolizing the memory of my son, but in the fact that on this day I can not just let the day go by and not notice how deeply I love my children. I can not ignore how precious this life is that I tend to gloss over on a daily basis. I can't forget how terrifying the thought of losing one of my other children or my husband is. I can't help desperately wishing that I never have to experience the loss of anyone else I love, even though I know that is hardly possible. I can't help noticing how much I admire and enjoy my little family. And I can't escape the full weight of how much I miss my son.

Even though it is sad, it somehow feels more alive to have times like this when I am faced with the sacredness of living. Of course, I wish I could appreciate all this without having experienced pain, but I admit that I didn't. I thought I did, but my comprehension of the preciousness and fragility of our lives is much greater now than it was. So it seems that sacredness, like so many things in life, isn't made up of only pleasant things. It is a mixture of love and pain and longing and joy and anger and happiness.

Today I can't escape the sacred. The loved ones around me are so vibrantly alive today. Their eternal-ness is so evident. My thoughts are drawn to them, to God, to myself, to my fears, to my blessings. Whether that causes me joy, pain, happiness or aggravation, I can't ignore how precious their presence is or or how much their absence is felt.

Although many days I would like to overlook how much I love people so that there's no sadness when they are gone, no fear of losing them when they are here, no worry about them as they grow, that's not life. There's a part of life that sucks. But I do believe in the end God will redeem it all. That life will be set right and all of the pain in it will be done away with so that sacredness will include only joy.

But that time is not here yet, so I'll struggle through the sacredness of this day, knowing the sadness will seem to overcome the joy today and waiting for the day when the sadness will be done away with completely.

Fake Nail and Diaper Goo - the Diaper Part

2011-12-16T07:00:00.001-06:00

... part two of the post started yesterday...

We join the story as I am fumbling around the house with my fake nails making my hands feel like my normal fingers have been replaced with useless, painful nubs.

Sabotage #2 - Dalton and Belle

But according to my PLAN, I needed to get laundry done. And because all of my fingernails were achy (and my middle finger was downright painful since I'd accidentally glued the skin on the tip of my finger to the fake nail which was pulling the skin excruciatingly...) I solved my problem by recruiting help. I perched Dalton on top of the dryer, held up a laundry basket and he tossed his and Belle's clothes into the washer for me.

And that was how Dalton tried to help me but inadvertently sabotaged me. The laundry was started in record time and I smiled in blissful ignorance as we headed back up to do some school only an hour behind schedule.

(No, Dalton, I can't help you peel apart the papers you glued together wrong. I can't use my fingers.)

45 minutes later when we went down to change the load I discovered the problem. When I opened the washer every single item was covered in gooey gel.

Belle's contribution to the sabotage was that she had left a pull-up inside one of her pairs of tights which Dalton hadn't noticed. Do you know what happens when a disposable diaper is submersed in water? The gooey gel inside expands and expands and expands until it explodes out of the diaper and coats every surface it can find - clothes and washer.

So between

Googling "PULL-UP WENT THROUGH THE WASH!" (which returns a surprising number of hits...),
stopping to feed Liam,
brushing off every single small item of clothing that was in the very full washer,
stopping to change Liam,
cleaning as much goo as I could out of the washer then running a load of old towels in an attempt to clean it completely,

I wasted most of the rest of the morning.

Yup, no school done, no laundry folded, no floor cleaned and a nap time looming when I KNOW it's going to take me ten times longer to make each necklace that it would have if I had the use of my fingertips.

And these are the times when I drop my head into my hands (ouch - stupid nails) and think longingly of the days of being a cubical drone in an office. That is until nap time is over and my sleepy girl wants to sit in my lap and read a book and her big brother shows up to help read and the baby wakes up and grins at me.

So I pack up the jewelry stuff, pull the now clean laundry out of the dryer, man up about the finger pain and count my blessings that I have so many interruptions in my day.

Fake Nails and Diaper Goo - Part I

2011-12-15T09:53:00.000-06:00

I had one of those days last week. I kept solving problems and my solutions had repercussions that rippled destructively through the rest of my day.

Since Liam appeared on the scene we've been a bit...fluid with our schedule around here. Before he was born we had a rhythm. Breakfast, school time, lunch, nap, errands, dinner. And yes, Dalton and Belle provided innumerable interruptions and minor emergencies that had to be dealt with during the day, but in general we could keep the Progress Train chuggin' down the track.

No longer. I have lost long chunks of time to do anything and instead spend the day not-quite-completing a half dozen things that I have attempted a half dozen times each. Like emptying the dishwasher or folding laundry or finishing Dalton's math lesson or (the worst of all when left incomplete) trying to drink my morning coffee.

And every time Liam interrupts the schedule, the older two bolt away like hyper puppies when the front door is opened.

But I decided that Liam is old enough that I can try to plan a little more. So last Wednesday I was up before everyone and got my trusty daily schedule paper and filled it up - conservatively, (I thought) and allowing for a lot of Liam-time. Just some homeschooling in the morning, fold some laundry, sweep and mop the floor. Then during nap time I had a bunch of necklaces to make for my Etsy shop. Cool. Totally doable. After all, I'm the one in charge in the house, right? So I decide what we're doing, right?

RIGHT? (Cue crazy eyes and desperate voice.)

Unfortunately everyone, including myself, was out to sabotage my day.

Sabotage #1 - Myself

I was up early and as I was going to sit down and work on my Etsy shop I snagged my thumbnail on my sweater. Again. You see, I have two fingernails that are broken so far down that they just will not heal. So I decided to buy some short acrylic nails and put them on to give the nail underneath time to grow out. And I'm going to stand by the fact that this was a good idea. At least as far as my nails were concerned.

(Side note: I had fake nails once before for our wedding and my main memory of them was that I basically lost the use of my fingers because my nails felt so unwieldy. I even remembered this fact and laughed at myself...but then kept going...)

So I rushed through putting on nails since kiddos were half a breath from waking up. It took until I was attaching the tenth nail before the mental light bulb went on so brightly that I the kitchen actually got brighter. There I am, holding my last fake thumbnail on with fingers that are now pathetically clumsy, and I froze.

I froze with a stupid slack-jawed expression as the ramifications of my actions sank in. In an effort to fix a couple nails I had just made my hands UNUSABLE. OK, maybe not "unusable", but they did have the approximate dexterity of my two-year-old's hands. And I had done all this next to my computer with my Etsy shop open to the page showing that I had 12 orders for wire wrapped necklaces. Twelve of these:

Because that sure doesn't look like it takes any fine motor skills to make, does it? Oh no. Tiny teardrops, thin wire, tiny rings, tools. Oh crap. I stared at my (admittely cute) french manicured fake fingernails in horror. I even pulled on a couple to see if they'd come back off. Ouch.

And then started a morning of feeling idiotic as I found task after task that now bordered on the impossible. Tasks like:

Typing. It took me about 5 minutes to do a quick email.
Picking up the wire for my necklaces.
Peeling a sticker off an apple
Scratching my nose without jabbing a nail into it so hard I made myself cry.
Picking up the baby without scratching the back of his head.
Moving my hands past ANYTHING without spearing my nail into it causing my real nails to feel like they had been pummeled by a hammer.
And I quickly gave up trying to text my husband about my problem.

And yes, I acknowledge that this was very sad. The acrylic nails were the shortest I could have possibly bought. But still, they were completely debilitating. So because of my own idiot decision, my morning began to grind to a halt.

...to be continued....

Should I be worried... 2nd edition

2011-11-16T07:00:00.009-06:00

This could become a regular post on my blog. I am constantly asking myself if I should be worried about the odd things my kids do. Of course, I think I'm going to write a book about how children hit all the major types of mental illness as they grow. It'll be a best seller for sure and change the way child psychology is viewed.

Baby happily hitting the same dangly toy over and over and over again? OCD.
2-year-old laughing, then crying, then peaceful, then screaming? Manic depressive.
5-year-old LOVES gym class and has the best time ever but the next week hates gym class and cries to go home? Schizophrenic.

See? As an adult it's a mental illness. In a child it's a "developmental phase".

But I digress.

Should I be worried of weird phobias?

A couple times now, in the middle of happily eating bacon Belle will suddenly put down the bacon and say, with a very concerned face, "Mommy, I don't like bacon. It really scares me."

'Cause I kind of am.

Scared of bacon? I'm scared of people who don't like bacon. I love bacon. Will I still love her if she doesn't? I don't know. Probably, but I can't be sure.

Should I be worried that I yell at the kids too much?

Dalton told his sister the other day, "You don't yell at me! Only Mommy and Daddy yell at me!"

'Cause I'm not.

I mean, I'd like to yell at them less, but D seems to think it's perfectly fine that I do it, so why stop?

He looks innocent, doesn't he...

Should I be worried that there is yet another baby-related game going on?

This one is called "Napping" and it consists of one child putting their head down (while never giving any other sign that the game has begun) and when the other one speaks the first one looks up and yells, in as crabby of a voice as possible, "Don't wake me up! I'm napping!"

'Cause I'm not.

Well, I'm not terribly worried about the game. Yes it shows that I am horribly crabby about them waking the baby from his nap, and that may not be a part of my personality that I want to see mirrored, but I really don't want them to wake him up. So any reinforcement of that idea is good, right?

And besides, there's an aspect of the game that is funny. Belle refuses to close her eyes when she's the 'napper.' When Dalton points this out and says, equally crabbily,"You were not napping. Your eyes were open." She show in her response that she still believes something firmly that I thought she had grown out of. "Dalton," she replies condescendingly, "I always sleep with my eyes open."

Months ago she first informed me of this and when I told her that everyone sleeps with their eyes closed she said, "Yup. Everyone but me. And Dalton." But then she dropped it for a long time. Until the napping game started. Then last night when I went in her room 90 minutes after I'd put her to bed to tell her in my most intimidating mommy voice that she needed to "lay down, be quiet, close her eyes and GO TO SLEEP," she replied, "No." Then she must have seen my unhappy face (see last post) because she quickly continued, "I sleep with my eyes open."

(Deep breath) Fine. Lay down, be quiet, leave your eyes open and GO TO SLEEP!

Here she is, clearly fast asleep.

Should I be worried that Liam might not be the cutest baby in the world?

Nope.

"Unhappy" faces

2011-11-15T08:27:00.000-06:00

Belle started a new pastime around the house. She started squinting her eyes and pursing her mouth and saying, "This is Daddy's unhappy face," meaning the face he gives her when she's about to get in trouble.

Needless to say the game immediately caught on.

Apparently their dad and I have very different unhappy faces.

Belle's "Daddy's unhappy" face:

Dalton's "Daddy's unhappy" face:

Belle's "Mommy's unhappy" face:

Dalton's "Mommy's unhappy" face:

And of course once the camera came out and Dalton got wound up,

he decided that Mommy's unhappy face really looked more like this:

I wish. That's way more intimidating than the whole wide-eyed thing.

Highs and Lows - Daylight savings edition

2011-11-07T06:56:00.000-06:00

I was just thinking that when I classify my highs and lows they are always from my perspective (since I'm the beautiful, glowing center of my own universe... and I can prove that because my incredible gravity makes my kids want to be right at my feet all day long) when in reality one man's high is another man's low. Or in my case, one kid's high is a mother's low.

So here's an effort to be more inclusive in my approach to highs and lows...

High for kids - Low for Mommy

The doughnut:
One morning D and Liam and I were up hanging out together. D was eating a sprinkled doughnut (excited about how he didn't have to share it with Belle, even though it was the last one), Liam was chillin' on the floor and I zipped upstairs to get Belle up. Two minutes later I came back down and D was looking sweetly at Liam from his perch up at the table.

D: "Did you say it is alright if Liam eats sprinkled donuts?"

Me: "No, sweetie. Liam only has milk. Nothing else at all. He's too little to eat a doughnut. But it was nice of you to think of sharing."

Then D gave me that look. The one where he's dying to tell me something but suspects that whatever it is might get him in trouble. And he looked at his doughnut - and he looked at Liam - and then back at his doughnut.

Me (looking with growing alarm at my two month old): "DID YOU ALREADY GIVE HIM SOME OF YOUR DOUGHNUT?!!?!?!"

D (looking a little nervous): "Um....yes." (But trying to dig himself out of the hole he senses he is in) "I gave him a bite from the really good part right here in the middle where there's lots of icing and sprinkles."

Me (looking back and forth between the completely calm baby on the floor and my eldest son) "Really? You really gave him a bite of icing and sprinkles?"

D (starting to speak patiently to me like I'm a little slow and pointing at his doughnut): "Yes, from right here."

Me (sort of baffled): And Liam ate it?

D (now looking at me like he's sure I'm crazy): Yup

Me: You SAW him eat it? Because Liam can't eat something like that. He doesn't know how to.

D: Yup, I saw sprinkles in his mouth.

Me: Liam, open your mouth, baby! (Which, by the way he did, immediately. Can you say baby genius?)

And I have to say I saw no sign whatsoever that my two month old just ate some sprinkles and icing. No funny colored tongue or drool. No sprinkle bits in a mouth that has NO IDEA how to eat something like icing and sprinkles. But D swears he ate some.

So, a High for the boys because:

The boys were smiling sweetly at each other like best friends.
My son at least intended to share the best part of his doughnut voluntarily with his baby brother.

But firmly in the Low category for me because:

I swear my son knew not to feed anything to the baby so the amount of worry this opens up in my life is huge.

High for Mommy - Oh, never mind, Low for Mommy

Daylight savings time!

An extra hour of sleep! Yippee!!

Oh no, wait. I have kids and a baby who show complete disregard for the clock on a regular basis. Dang.

So lots of other people get an extra hour sleep but I don't. Crap. May you all be up for various trivial and irritating reasons tonight.

High for Mommy - and no one else cares - which is what makes it a high.

Awake for the crack:
Medman is on a rotation where he has to be at the hospital at a hair past the butt crack of dawn. Actually, it would have been a hair past the butt crack of dawn in the middle of the summer. Now, even with daylight savings it's still half a cheek before the butt crack of dawn. But ANYWAY... he has to be up and so I decided to get up too. Normally being up this early is not good, but I have to say that Liam has been sleeping ok til around 7ish, so suddenly Mommy has an hour or two of absolute peace and quiet. It's fantastic. Weirdly unsettling but fantastic. And since Medman is ready for bed at about, oh 5:45 every night, I'm still getting "good sleep." And since Liam turned 12 weeks old this week, I'm thinking that soon I may even get to stop putting quotations around the words "good sleep".

Should I be worried...

2011-10-27T15:14:00.068-05:00

Should I be worried....

...that this has happened more than once: If I'm trying to get an antsy and wiggly Liam to fall asleep with shush-ing and singing and humming and gentleness and one of his dear older siblings busts into his room (in blatant disregard of the "IF LIAM'S DOOR IS SHUT AND HIS LIGHT IS OFF DO NOT ENTER" rule, I might add) I make all sorts of overly dramatic faces and hand waves at them to GET OUT QUIETLY. Usually they recognize the crazed look in my eye and hightail it out of there. But a couple times they haven't and they've decided they must speak to me immediately. I will try several minutes of frustrated whispering in an attempt to not ruin the soothing atmosphere for Liam, but finally I end up snapping loudly at them in that exasperated-mommy-voice something like, "That is it! OUT! NOW! Don't make me tell you again!" and when the child leaves I glance down at Liam....and he's asleep.

Yes, it seems that I use my "you're in deep trouble" voice so often that my baby finds it soothing.

...'cause I'm not.

Did I mention it causes him to go to sleep?

Therapy can be dealt with later.

For now sleep is good.

No matter what.

**************

Should I be worried....

...about this?

Today during school, D and I read part of a children's version of The Odyssey while Belle played with trains. Somehow Homer was left out of my education or I would have known that The Odyssey is pretty gruesome and perhaps not fit for a children's version. But, never one to deviate from a plan, we have just forged ahead through a man-eating cyclops and a dreadful storm to reach today's cannibal giants. I did have to explain that a cannibal was someone who ate people but D seemed sort of unimpressed by this horror so we read on as Odysseus' men were eaten. (You are all applauding my mothering skills right now, aren't you?) Anyway, after we were done the kids went off to play something and I went upstairs to get Liam and when I got back D said, "Belle drew a picture of a cannibal giant!" What? I thought she was playing trains, not having her innocent 2-year-old psyche marred by Homer!

"Yup," she says cheerfully, showing me her bubblegum-pink paper and pointing to the little circle things, "and these are the people it's eating."

...'cause I'm not.

OK, I sort of am. But seeing as she usually draws sweet things, I think I'm going to choose to think of it as the fact that my two year old has begun illustrating classical literature instead of that she drew a cannibal giant actually caught in the act of cannibalism. And yes, I threw out that picture during nap time and wished the cute picture she drew of me on the chalkboard was savable. I think tomorrow we'll read Winnie the Pooh.

**************

Should I be worried....

...that D created a new (wildly popular) game called Throw the Baby? Before you panic, the babies being thrown are baby dolls who, granted, have big clunky plastic heads and bean-baggy bodies making them spectacular projectiles. For two days now a substantial amount of time has been spent by Belle and D launching their babies down stairs, over railings and into baby swings (empty swings, don't worry).

...'cause I am a little.

Frankly this is the worrisome one and has left me making many statements like, "I don't think you guys are allowed near Liam!" or "Now, you guys know we never throw real babies, right?" To which D rolls his eyes and says, "Of course we would never throw a real baby. This is a game for toy babies." You bet your tush it is, kid.

But any game that encourages so much happy play between D and Belle (really, peals of laughter for half hours at a time...) is worth it. At least I hope it is...

Taking it to a whole new level...

2011-10-26T14:07:00.000-05:00

Please tell me I'm not the only one with kids who excel at the argument. You know, that one that is so cliche that you can't believe they're doing it? Yup, That one.

"No."

"Yes."

(start scowling at each other)

"No!"

"Yes!"

(Start glaring at each other)

"No!"

"Yes!"

(Nostrils flaring)

"NO!"

"YES!"

(smoke and flames shooting out of various facial holes)

"NOOOOOOOOO!"

"YEEEEEEEEEEES!"

At which point the argument stagnates can be repeated for hours. I admit I don't know exactly how long they could keep it up because I usually intervene before my head explodes.

My husband finds these altercations amusing. So do I. Well, except for the times when it makes me want to run screaming from the house. Screaming mature things like, "NO ONE GIVES A FLYING CRAP!! SHUT UP!!" And I'll tell you right now, if I ever do start running, I'm not stopping until I reach somewhere tropical.

So this morning we had one of these arguments. It began like so...

Belle: Liam is crying.

D: No he's not.

Belle: Yes he is.

D: No, I can't hear him.

Belle: Yes he is.

D: No, Belle, if he was, we would hear him. But we can't. He's not crying.

Belle: Yes he is.

(As you can see, my kids have two different approaches to disagreements. D feels that logic and persuasion are the way to carry his case. Belle just digs her heels in and repeats, with the exact same inflection, her position ad infinitum until her opponent either gives up or goes insane.)

At this point it resolved itself into the usual argument.

Belle: Yes he is!

D: No he's not!

Belle: Yes he is!

D: No he's not!

... you get the picture. Pick two opposite opinions and stick to your guns come what may.

And this went on for at least a day and a half.

But here's where they took it to a new level. Belle got confused, I think, or maybe she had just gone on autopilot and her mind shut off because this started:

D: No he's not!

Belle: No he's not!

D: No he's not!
Belle: No he's not!

D: No he--- WAIT! Belle, you're supposed to say "Yes he is!"

Belle (pauses and considers this for a moment but decides to stick with stubbornness over logic.): No he's not!

D: Belle! Say "Yes he is!"

Belle: No he's not!

D: I say that! NO HE'S NOT!!

Belle: No he's not!
D: BELLE! STOP! YOU SAY "YES HE IS!"

Belle: No he's not!

D: NO HE'S NOT!

Belle: No he's not!

D: NO HE'S NOT!

Yup, now they have chosen two identical opinions to argue. D passionately, Belle smugly.

D got a little weepy and begged Belle to go back to her "yes" position. She continued to blithely chant, "No he's not!" and the argument continued oddly morphed from the original argument, into arguing about who was going to argue which position.

And I'm going to choose to commend my children for not settling for the status quo, but pushing the boundaries of normal sibling debates and moving more into the realm of intellectual property rights.

So glad my kids are too young...

2011-10-23T09:00:00.018-05:00

...to object to which pictures I post. Here are some good ones from recently....

D ready to weather the day after I mentioned it was "sorta cool out" one morning. I had just meant he should wear long pants instead of shorts. Liam was wrapped up ready for a nap but D wanted a photo op. Liam seems unimpressed by the whole situation.

Belle's impeccable fashion sense.Winter hat, mittens, rain boots, safety goggles and a hammer. All while still in pink pajamas.

Sporting Hollywood glasses while weighing down (sort of) Liam's bouncy chair.


This is for real. Belle called my downstairs yelling, "I did it ALL BY MYSELF!" When I got there I saw she had drawn THAT little letter "e." Not kidding. No one else had been there. Unfortunately her next attempts were much more along the lines of a 2 year old. But I'm keeping this picture for posterity anyway.

And my FAVORITE...

On my little phone screen this looked like such a cute picture of both of them smiling. But when I saw it on the computer it really looks like a crazed Liam is about to chomp down on Belle's unsuspecting shoulder. He looks like some evil mastermind who's about to execute his devious plan. And it's made me laugh all morning.

Highs and Lows - sorta

2011-10-22T10:52:00.000-05:00

I don't have a concrete set of highs and lows this week. Most of the week seems sort of pleasant and unremarkable to me and Sunday would have been Jack's fourth birthday which raises way too many emotions to be able to resolve into highs and lows.

So this week instead we are going to play a new game I like to call, "Cute...Not So Cute." I think you'll pick up on it pretty quickly.

Liam

Cute: The child has the goofiest huge grin. It's all gums and a huge open mouth that looks like it's trying to eat a huge piece of cotton candy. Goofy is the only word for it. And it is just the happiest face you've ever seen. It makes me laugh every time I see it.

Not So Cute: Well, almost every time. Usually when I am up at some ungodly hour nursing Liam he conks back out before finishing leaving me with the eternal struggle of whether to wake him up a little more to finish eating or just run off to bed as fast as I can. The other night he did just that and I chose the run-away-as-fast-as-I-can choice, like usual. But when I tried to put him in his crib, the second his body gently touched his bed, his eyes shot open like I'd dunked him in ice water - which was annoying. So I calmed him down and tried again - and you'd think the crib was electrified. His eyes sprang open unnaturally wide like some sort of freaky baby in a horror movie. Really, it was creepy. And he was fussy. Super fussy. And I was tired. So I tried my best not to scream and wake all the other kids up and picked him up and tried again. This time, against my putting-baby-to-sleep policy, I held him til he was COMPLETELY asleep. And guess what. Yup, barely touching that soft, smooth sheet jerked him awake AGAIN. AHHHHH!!! But this time instead of fussing he looked sort of frantically around until he found my face (which I had been cleverly hiding 12" directly above his own...) and the little turkey catches my eye and grins. His huge, goofy grin. And coos. And bites at the air with his gigantic grin. But now we're at half past ungodly and even though it settles my rage a bit, I look him straight in the eye and say, "Sorry buddy, right now? Not so cute."

Belle

Cute: Little Belle's little colon has some constipation issues (You're wondering how this is ending up in the "cute" category, aren't you...) You don't want details, but it got to the point that if there was any emergence of poop it was greeted by cheers, shouts, candy and a full blown parade by the rest of the family. Thankfully we are out of the proverbial woods now and she's much more regular. So now at each instance of her being victorious she comes to me bursting with pride and whispers, "Mommy! I pooped A-GAIN!" Then the ritual continues by her making a super excited face (think along the lines of an overly dramatic mime...) and says, "And it didn't hurt! It just POPPED right out!" And her face and her high pitched little voice always make me laugh and wish I'd video taped her.

Not So Cute: I change her vile, stinky diaper trying not to breath (what is in that medication???), take it outside to the trash holding the thing downwind from myself, walk back in and around the corner she comes, bursting with pride and whispers, "Mommy! I pooped A-GAIN! And it didn't hurt! It just POPPED right out!" Seriously? I JUST changed you! NOT so cute.

2011-10-16T22:57:00.000-05:00

Dear Jack,

Happy birthday, baby. I can't believe it's been four years since you were born. And I can't believe it's been almost that long since I held you. You're little brother, Liam, is nine weeks old. Sometimes I forget how tiny you were and how short your nine weeks were.

I loved your little face and how inquisitively you looked at everything. I loved how sweet you were and how all the nurses were in love with you. I wish could see you turn four. I miss your little face and how you looked at me from your cute little eye. But I'm glad you are not sick any more. I'm glad you are somewhere where you will never have to have another surgery or test or tube. And I hope you had a great day today. I can't wait to see you again someday.

I love you.

love,

Mommy

Highs and Lows - October 3rd

2011-10-03T08:33:00.000-05:00

High: Last night Liam only woke up once to eat! (This, of course, instantly raises my hopes of it happening again tonight ...Stay tuned for next weeks lows...)

Low: IF I had been able to do the usual dimly lit, quiet room where I don't barely make eye contact with the kid and certainly don't speak to him unless absolutely necessary, I might have only been awake for 30 minutes TOTAL last night. But, since this is a low, you know it didn't happen that way. On the way into Liam's room at 2:16 AM I literally ran into Dalton who was standing in the dark hallway, which was very confusing for both of us. After the prerequisite three askings of him as to why he was awake but very sleepy in the hallway, he declared he had a booger on his finger. Why that had brought him out of his room when he slept by a tissue box, I did not know, but I let him follow me into Liam's room so I could calm the hollering baby. Unfortunately, once D was awake enough to speak coherently it seemed that the real problem was that he needed to blow his nose and was having no luck on his own. So I tried to help D while nursing Liam, which did not work well for any of us. Dalton took forever to deal with his nasal problem and then launched into an INCREDIBLY long-winded story (again, I have no idea where he gets that trait...) about the time when he was quarterback for the Green Bay Packers and Daddy was quarterback for the Denver Broncos. There was a play-by-play of how each team scored and the points they got. Like how D got one touchdown "In the middle of it by that big yellow U, not over by the side, so it was worth 10 points." And all this time Liam's little eyes were getting more and more awake. So instead of finishing nursing in a semi-comatose state so I could toss him right back into bed, he just laid on my lap and smiled at me and cooed. All very cute, I know. But really people, nothing is quite as cute at 2 am. I'd be hard pressed to find a baby bunny snuggling with a kitten cute at 2 am. The whole process ended up taking an hour and a half. No kidding.

High: Fall weather. Lovely. Kids playing outside, bickering outside, playing noisy games outside. Lovely. Really this high deserves more space and uumph, but I don't have anything else to say about it except, LOVELY. I also can't find an outdoor picture. So here's one that just shows happiness.

Low: Belle is making a concentrated effort to call us "Mom" and "Dad". ugg. No cute "Mommy", now if she wants something it sounds like I have a teenager. "Mom? Can I have the car?" NO! Not unless you call me Mommy. But I can't say that to Belle. Oh no. Not to Miss Contrary. She'd just smile her irresistibly little smile and try even harder to eradicate "Mommy" from her vocabulary.

(Side note: "Contrary" is actually a part of Belle's vocabulary now. I guess too often we've had this conversation:

Me: Belle, show Daddy how you can (fill in any action here...)
Belle (looking mischievous): No.
Me: Yeah, go show him. He'll love it.
Belle (giddy with power): No.
Me: You are contrary.
Belle: No, I am NOT contrary. I'm Belle.
Me: Same thing, child.

My hope is that I vividly remember D going through a "Mom" and "Dad" phase, but it ended and he still calls us Mommy and Daddy.

High: Liam got weighed last week and he is already over 10 lbs! That's a 3.5 lb gain in 4 weeks. That plops him firmly in the 50th percentile! Biggest baby we've ever had. :) No one would think of calling him chubby, but I'm considering calling him Tank. Compared to his older brother Dash and his "big" sister Wispy, the kid is huge. I'm pretty sure he'll outweigh Belle by February.

And that's really all I can think of. I'm sure more happened this week, but have I mentioned the lack of sleep? It seems to seriously affect my short term memory.

High. Oh - almost forgot! PE class started for the homeschoolers in town. The university physical education students put on a gym class for all the homeschooled kids on Friday mornings. D was in heaven:

fun with the parachute

In heaven on a scooter. Clearly gym equipment never changes. These could have been scenes from MY kindergarten PE.

It must have been a good week when my lows were more annoying than bad. Hope everyone else had a good week too!

Embrace Plan B, C, D

2011-09-22T14:50:00.000-05:00

I think my new motto needs to be "Embrace Plan B (or C, or D)". I'm not good at embracing any plan except A. I have a plan. It's a good plan. If the world would conform to my plan, things would be all sparkles and rainbows. But why, oh why, does the world not want to do this?

Please understand that when I say "world" I mean my children. I understand that many of you have a more varied and expansive concept of the world, but not me. Yes, my husband makes up a significant part of the world too, but he's very easy to get along with, is influenced by logic and quickly grasps any reasonable plan. The rest of my "world" is cut from a different sort of mold.

And they delight in destroying Plan A.

Last Saturday morning's Plan A = relax and enjoy peaceful morning with family.

For some unknown reason my mind has ignored reality and still functions under the belief that Saturday mornings are time for sleeping in, eating a yummy breakfast and bumming around in pajamas. Yes, I realize I now have 3 children at home, but in my defense D would gladly sleep in til around 9:00 if we let him and Belle is very content to sing in her crib for hours on end - to the point where she objects to being taken out of it too soon. And yes I have a baby, but he's only been around for five Saturdays and somehow that's not enough for my brain to re-categorize Saturday mornings as "exactly like every other morning."

Last Saturday Liam was gracious enough to sleep til 7-ish so I thought we were in for a leisurely morning. Unfortunately, when I picked him up he was soaked through. So I changed him, his blankets and his crib sheet while he howled about the fact that not only was he hungry, but now he was naked and cold.

The peaceful part of Plan A begins to crumble slightly. I could have switched to a new plan here, like "Plan B:Enjoy a typical morning with normal interruptions and bodily fluids. Because my life is all about bodily fluids."

But I carry on blindly with Plan A, get him dressed, calmed and fed and we're back on track. Knowing Belle should be up by now I am headed to her room when I hear a desperate, "MOMMY!" which confuses me because I SWEAR it was D yelling, not Belle. I stick my head in his room and he's standing in the middle of his floor looking like someone just poured ice water down the back of his monkey footie pajamas. "I had a REALLY big accident!" he says, looking like he's about to cry. I calm him down (without touching him since his entire front is soaked in pee) and send him off to the bathroom to disrobe and throw all wet clothing into the tub. With a big sigh (and possibly some muttered cursing), I start to strip the second mattress of the morning, again trying not to touch any of the warm, wet places, which frankly doesn't leave many places to touch. That boy must have a bladder the size of a hot tub.

The relaxing part of Plan A is teetering precariously now too.   Again, this would have been an opportune time to consider embracing a new plan. Something like "Plan C: Try to laugh at something that may be funny later."

But I wasn't seeing the humor. Liam was now objecting to the fact that I had unceremoniously plopped him on the floor in the corner of D's room. I finally got the bed clean and head to the bathroom to help D get the rest of himself clean. Somehow, still hoping to recover Plan A, I thought maybe he could just be cleaned off with a washcloth instead of doing a full bath. No, no one who saw the enormous puddle of pee on his bed would have thought that would work, but the Plan, people. I was still clinging to Plan A. Fixing a bath while holding a fussy baby wasn't leisurely. So I wiped him off, tossed a towel at him and told him to go get dressed while I got up Belle. If we could only get downstairs I was sure the morning would get back on track for Plan A.

I enter Belle's room and she's standing in her crib looking at me with big eyes saying, "Look! My tummy is REALLY wet!"   Are you kidding me? HER TOO? Pee everywhere. I have no idea how her diaper did such a poor job at collecting pee, but I'm considering suing Pampers. Again, from pits to knees she was soaked and her sheets had a huge soggy spot just as big.

Forget relaxing and peaceful, at this point I'm wondering if it's even still morning. I should have just resigned the morning to "Plan D: Try not to touch any pee."

Toss Liam into a new corner, who by now is getting seriously fussy as he needs a nap, peel Belle out of her pj's, change ANOTHER set of sheets, commandeer a hamper to fill with a metric ton of pee soaked bedding and night clothes, and try not to scream. (OK, I may not have bothered to try not to scream.)

At this point D walks in still in a towel, feeling like he wasn't adequately underfoot while he was in the bathroom, and I notice that he still smells strongly of pee. I inform him he's getting a bath and to stand out of my way while I make Belle's bed. Which he does for a minute before making some sound like, "Uuuauahh!" and running for the bathroom. Yup, he'd just peed a little on the floor.

Clearly I was clinging to Plan A while the little turds were clinging to Plan P.   They won.

Nursery painting

2011-09-22T14:27:00.000-05:00

Hi all,

Little break from the norm here. I painted a little dealie for Liam's "nursery", which is sadly just a corner of a very cluttered craft room and in desperate need of some sprucing up.

I mentioned in this post a while ago that I loved the quote:

“It is not a slight thing when those so fresh from God love us.” ~ Dickens

I also really liked these little 3D rain decorations from goshandgolly's Etsy shop.

So I went to Walmart in search of some little canvases and found these canvas boards, painted them blue then spent a long time cutting and gluing together little 3D clouds and raindrops.

What cha think?

The swirly paint is shiny and pearly. And so are the clouds, except I couldn't get that to show up in the pictures.

As soon as I figure out a way to hang them...

...they're going up on Liam's wall!

And since the canvas boards were 3 for $6 and I had everything else already, this little project cost under $5! Yippee!

Linking up to a couple parties: