A Little Recognition and Gratitude

Today I was walking by the white board on the fridge where we keep an ongoing grocery/home repair list and saw this little note from Eliza.  "Thank you Mom for Everything! -Eliza"  It was just what I needed to brighten my day.

Preschool Accomplishment and Parenting Win

Okay, the top picture is showing how Annmarie figured out ON HER OWN how to write her full name.  She is four years old.  I have some preschool students who are still struggling to hold a writing utensil the correct way and not with a fist.  I'm very proud of  her.  She's a smart little girl and I can't wait to see how she takes on the world. 

The second picture is a parenting win.  That is "Anne of Green Gables" playing and two of the kids watching it would be my 14-year-old son and my 11-year-old son.  They watched it until I made them turn it off to go to bed.  But they would never admit it.

Mom Has Fun Too!

Every once in a while, Mom has a fun idea.  This time, while Dad was out of town, we pushed the table into the living room and I let the kids watch TV while they ate.  What were they watching?  Why, Home Improvement!  A favorite show of mine from the 90's.  Sometimes Mom can be fun too!

Band Concert

Westley had a band concert.  Corey was out of town and I didn't want to leave Caleb in charge for so long, plus I thought it would be good for him to watch the concert, since he is also in band.  So I hauled all of the kids to the concert with me.  It wasn't the greatest experience, and, as you can see, I didn't even get any pictures of Westley playing his trumpet (or even holding his trumpet).  But I can now say that I have taken all of the kids to a school band concert for their sibling. 

Another Week of Summer Flying By

I got pictures of Caleb, Travis, Eliza and Jonah cooking this week. Some of the foods that are pictured include muffins, one-eyed toast, hot dogs, beef stew, French toast, tacos, cutting up vegetables, Italian chicken, and grilled cheese sandwiches. We are trying to vary it up by not having the same thing twice in a week. One day a week is always pizza, so the kids rotate days too. I am really enjoying teaching them to cook and they are developing life skills. Plus they are learning how much effort goes into planning and cooking a meal and more appreciative of everyone's efforts. I love this system!

This week our upstairs air conditioning went out.  There were several days between when it went out and it got repaired.  We spent one night trying to bear the heat upstairs but the next two nights, we all slept downstairs.  By the second night, the downstairs AC was having a little trouble too, trying to keep up.  Thank goodness it hasn't gone out yet as well.  It was a costly repair and I'm not happy about that, but I am so grateful that it got fixed.  We made the best of it and the kids had fun sleeping in the front room all together.

I also want to start a weekly field trip this summer.  Every Friday we go to somewhere for a day trip.  This first week we went to White Rock Lake with some of our cousins.  It was pretty warm, but we had a good time.

And of course, we went swimming.  We got a picture of all the Texas grandkids to send to Grandpa for Father's Day.  

First Week of Summer

This summer I have decided that my kids need to learn to cook, so every week the five older kids will rotate through the five weekdays and cook breakfast, lunch, and dinner for that day. I don't always remember to take pictures.I did remember to take pictures on the first day, which was Westley's day.  For breakfast, he made cinnamon rolls.  He made pizza bombs for lunch, a recipe I got off Facebook, but by dinner, we had to go over to Adam and Eve's house because our kitchen faucet was broken and leaking water everywhere, so he cooked dinner there, which was chicken parmesan.

I got an app on my phone where you can play with makeup and hairstyles, so I took a fun picture of Annmarie to play with.  Eliza and I have had fun playing with this app.  We tried to go swimming every day this week as well.  I took a picture of Nathan and I hanging out at Adam and Eve's house.  On Saturday, I took Eliza to a local circus that was in town.  I found some cheap tickets and planned a mommy-daughter date.  We had a great time.  When we got home, Corey and Westley had come home from some one-on-one time as well at a LEGO convention and Westley was getting all the kids in on building with LEGOs.  It was cool to go upstairs and find ALL the kids, even Nathan, in the room while they built together.

Joyful Jonah

This is irresistible toddler cuteness.  I think one of my favorite stages of childhood is the toddler years.  Yes, they can be so difficult at this age, and I definitely have moments where he (and my others did too) frustrates me to the point where I am completely frazzled.  But they live life to the fullest with such enthusiasm.  I have become more relaxed with this stage as each child has come along.  I don't remember enjoying their enthusiasm and passion as much with my older kids, probably because I was pretty stressed out and worried about doing everything right.  This time around, though. even when he throws a massive tantrum, I can find something to chuckle about with it.

But I love how passionate these toddlers are about everything.  And I mean EVERYTHING.  We had strawberries in the fruit salad last week for the first time in months and Jonah was thrilled to death.  He was so excited about his fruit salad because of the strawberries; his whole face lit up and he was practically screaming with sheer delight.  He gets that way when he plays with his matchbox cars (a new love for him), his sports balls, and when dancing.  He loves cars so much that even when we're walking in a parking lot, he wants to touch and talk about every single car and he loves it when one drives by.  Today, a motorcycle passed us by while we were driving and he was so excited about the noise it made. 

Jonah just does everything with so much excitement.  It's such a reminder of how joyful life can be for us.  He loves, loves, loves copying his big brothers.  They love to draw, so he will draw.  He will get five or six crayons and scribble all over a piece of paper with all the colors and then come show it to me.  He will scream at me not only to acknowledge the drawing, but I have to comment on it too or he won't leave me alone ("Jonah, that is so colorful!" or "I just love all the colors you put in it!").  When they go outside, he wants to go outside too and gets super excited when he's able to go play with them. 

Toddlers really do show pure joy and excitement for everything life has to offer. 

Jonah in a Big Boy Bed

Jonah stopped sleeping through the night right around Caleb's baptism, the beginning of November.  It was painful because he'd only just started sleeping all night around the beginning of July, after our big family trip.  Because we had house guests, we didn't want to let him cry, which I think was our big mistake.  He started crying every night after that, expecting us to come in and cuddle and eventually take him back to our bed because we were so tired.  So, after a visit to the doctor for his 18-month checkup (a couple months late), we decided to really start sticking to our guns and only go in once to comfort him without taking him out of the crib and then letting him cry.  The only problem was that the week of Thanksgiving (a couple of weeks into this), he started climbing out of his crib.  So when he'd wake up, he would cry, then climb (fall) out of the crib and then cry some more.  It didn't help him learn to fall back to sleep and I was constantly worried he'd break a limb or his neck falling out of the crib.

So...just after Thanksgiving and our guests left, I took the side off the crib and made it a toddler bed.  The problem was that we had gotten rid of the low side that made it a toddler bed--the rail.  We hadn't ever used this crib as a toddler bed because we had a baby who needed the crib and an actual toddler bed.  We got rid of the toddler bed a couple of years ago because Eliza transitioned straight from her crib to the bottom bunk (she was almost three) and we didn't have room for the toddler bed for storing it.  The first couple of nights Jonah was in this "bed", he would roll off the side and wake up and cry.  I started looking at toddler bed railings online, trying to find the best one for the best price.  Then Corey came up with an idea.

He got a big piece of PVC pipe, about two inches in diameter, and glued the pieces together so they would be the length of the bed.  Then he tied a rope through the pipe and sealed the ends with holes for the rope.  Then I covered the pipe with batting and fabric.  He tied in on the slats at the ends of the bed and we created a bumper to keep Jonah from falling out.  It's low enough that Jonah can climb in and out of the bed on his own but high enough that it keeps him from rolling off while he sleeps.  And Jonah LOVES the ball theme of the fabric I happened to have!

And it was much cheaper than any of the toddler railings I was looking at!  Since I already had the batting and fabric and we already had the rope, it was the cost of the PVC pipe, which was about $6.  Better than the $29 I was looking at!

Since then, Jonah has actually done quite well at night.  He goes to bed without a fuss and sleeps all night.  The first few nights were rough because he would get out and cry and one night he fell asleep on the floor, but for the last week, he's done well.  Now it's naptime battles that we're dealing with.  He eventually falls asleep after crying at naptime, but then he rarely sleeps longer than an hour and previous to this sleep refusal stage, he was sleeping 2-3 hours at naptime.  I am trying to get his naps back because at 20 months, he is not ready to stop napping and I'm not ready for him to stop napping.  We're working on it.  One hour is better than nothing!

Those Moments

You know those moments?  The ones that you want to catalog in your memory forever and ever?  The ones that even a photograph won't do justice?

I have so many moments throughout the day that I know I will forget in five years.  Ten years.  Twenty...and so on.  Moments that I won't be able to conjure up perfectly, but that I want to remember exactly as they are.

You little girl climbs into your lap and puts her arms around your neck, giving you a kiss, whispering, "I love you, Mommy."  She bats her big brown eyes and her golden brown hair is flying all around, slightly messed, but beautiful.

Your baby boy tries to lick your ice cream cone from two feet away.  He sticks his little tongue out, tips his face upward, and leans forward, hoping to get just a little lick, so adorable that you can't help but give him one.

The moments where they say the funniest, most random things as they try to sort out how they fit into the world and to understand the world around them.

Even though I can take pictures and video, I still can't capture the touch of their hands on my hair while I read them a book or the warmth of their breath on my cheek as they lean in to give me a kiss.

Those are the moments I want to capture in my mind forever, the moments I want to relish and remember as I look back on raising my little ones.

The Obedience Jar

In an effort to try and get my children to be more obedient, I started this "obedience jar". Every time they obey quickly, they get a "fuzz ball" in the jar (they are actually pom-poms, I couldn't find any marbles). I have it organized so each child has their own color so we can see who is obeying and who needs to work more at it. When the jar is full, we reward them with a family outing of ice cream. The person with the most balls gets a little extra something special with their ice cream. In the case of our visit to Coldstone, Caleb got two mix-ins instead of just one.

The first week, the kids were all over it and we filled the jar by Friday night, which was when we went out for the ice cream. However, we have not filled the jar since, and that was back in the first part of July. We've come close several times, but when they are being disobedient, they lose balls, so it's been back-and-forth a lot.

And lately, I haven't been so consistent with it. The biggest problem is that I have to keep it out of reach of the little ones and then the big ones can't help me out with it and I don't always remember to put a ball in the jar, even when I've told them I will.

So I need to work on it more, but it has been helping motivate them.

the punishment fits the crime...

On Saturday, I left the boys unattended for a little bit while I worked on my lesson for Sunday. When I finally went in their room to see what they were doing, I was appalled to discover that they had written all over every wall in that room (plus the furniture) with a purple crayon.

So I grounded them from playing for the evening. They had to sit on their beds until dinner. Then, after dinner, they went straight to bed. I also had them clean off one wall before they went to bed on Saturday night. They weren't allowed to do anything on Sunday (made Sunday a really long day). Then on Monday, they had to clean the crayon off the furniture and two more walls. Today they finished cleaning the rest of the crayon off. They also weren't allowed to have any crayons or pencils until the walls were all clean.

I'm trying to make the punishment fit the crime. Taking away their toys, or grounding them for a very long time just didn't fit. But maybe, if they see how hard it is to get crayon off of walls, then maybe they won't do it again. Especially if they know that they will be the ones scrubbing the walls, not me.

New Toys

I have decided today that the only toys my kids need to have are these:

1) a set of building blocks of some sort
2) some toy cars
3) puzzles
4) dress up clothes
5) books

They don't need anything else. I decided this after spending about 1-1/2 hours putting together a hot wheels "car wash," complete with a real system for washing the cars (not that I'm ever going there, though). The whole time I was putting this together, Westley was with me, trying to play with it. At one point, he even got his finger stuck in one of the pieces. The thing has dozens of tiny parts, all requiring stickers, and the instruction page was such a bad photocopy that I could hardly see what went with what. I finally got it together, and Caleb and Travis got up from their naps. Originally, I wasn't going to let Travis play with it, and we were going to put it away somewhere before I got him out of his crib. But, then I thought, if I watch them really well while they play with it, then maybe Travis won't swallow a piece.

Well, he didn't. But I took a few minutes to answer a phone call and started having a nice conversation with a friend. This whole time, I was in the same room as the boys who were playing with the car wash. After a few minutes, I looked down and saw that they boys had managed to take the whole thing apart and the pieces were strewn everywhere! This after a long conversation with Westley while I was building it about how much work it was, so he was not going to take it apart. Guess he really didn't listen. Or was just too curious to stop himself from taking it apart. When I got off the phone and started cleaning it up, telling them (mostly him) that they weren't supposed to do that, he said, "But Mom, they were having an earthquake and it fell apart!"

So, I can handle blocks falling apart due to an earthquake because most likely, I will not have spent the time I could have been napping putting it together. This weekend I think I will go through their toys and weed out all the ones that are like that--lots of pieces that they always take apart and throw all over.

Anybody want some new toys???

Moments Like These...

Here's a moment that makes me wish I was anywhere else. My 3-year-old is standing next to me at the computer screaming that he wants another snack because his 18-month-old brother took his last fruit snack and popped it in his mouth. I keep saying no, which just keeps making him scream harder. It's moments like these when I realize that teaching school wasn't so bad...at least I could send them home at the end of the day!

It All Happens At Once...

Why is it that when your 3-week-old baby is screaming at the top of her lungs, needing a diaper change and to be fed, your 1-year-old decides to throw his bowl of cut-up hot dogs and bread on the floor and your 3-year-old spills his chocolate milk all over the kitchen at precisely the same moment? At the same time that all this is happening, your 4-year-old decides that he wants to play with the 3-year-old's new Christmas toy and starts badgering the 3-year-old about it. The 3-year-old then starts screaming because he wants his toy back (and he's still covered in chocolate milk), the 1-year-old is crying because he doesn't have any food and is hungry (not that he was eating the hot dogs anyway), and the baby is still hungry and poopy and screaming as well. Then the 4-year-old starts to cry because the 3-year-old hit him for taking his toy. The baby is now getting her diaper changed and is screaming because of the horrible diaper rash she has and the 1-year-old is screaming because now the dog is eating his hot dog and bun that are on the floor (even though he wasn't going to eat them anyway). Your 3-year-old is still covered in chocolate milk, but now is wrestling his older brother to the floor in the fight over the toy.

Sometimes it seems impossible to make it through the dinner hour without pulling all my hair out and running down the street screaming...

Disciplining Four-Year-Olds

I think that four-year-olds are harder than three-year-olds. They're asserting their independence, and that makes them rather difficult to deal with sometimes. Of course, you need to give them situations where they can be independent yet still make good choices to learn how it feels to make the right choice. It's hard to give them this type of freedom though, especially for your first child. Obviously, a ten-month-old isn't capable of making choices at all, so the parents must make all choices for them. But a four-year-old is capable of making quite a few choices and must be given the liberty to do so.

For example, a ten-month-old just wants to learn about everything. So instead of leaving a house full of breakable and dangerous items, we, as parents, move these items up to higher levels out of the baby's sight and put items lower that the child can play with. Then the child does not have to choose which items are okay to play with and which ones are not. But a four-year-old can decide between an item that is safe and one that is not, like whether they should play with a knife or a toy car. Tempting as the knife might be, a well-taught four-year-old chooses the toy car and knows that he/she has made a good choice when the parents do not scold. They probably have been warned before not to touch the knives in the kitchen and perhaps have even had experience being punished for trying to play with one.

Currently, our four-year-old is giving us trouble. I recognize that many of the issues that we tend to battle about are really just a quest for more independence on his part. The problem is that I don't always know where to draw the line. How far do I let him go before I tell him he can't make that choice? If he makes a bad choice, like talking back to Mom and Dad, is he really trying to be defiant and downright rude or just trying to assert some independence? I'm sure the best way to teach him not to talk back is not spanking, but sometimes, when he goes on and on and won't be quiet, I have a hard time controlling that hand. Or when he acts out because he has to leave the pool before he's ready. I can understand not wanting to leave, and that's a fine opinion to have, but how do you properly teach him that he shouldn't have a wild temper tantrum because he doesn't want to leave? How do I teach him a proper outlet for his frustration? I just don't know. It seems easier than it is. Logically, I should be able to tell him that behavior is inappropriate, of course in his terms, and reward him when he behaves appropriately even though he's angry. But often the problem lies merely in the inability to calm him down. Usually, once he's calmed down, he doesn't even care or really remember why he's so upset. And then it's worthless to try and bring it up because he sweetly smiles and says, "okay, Mom," although I can tell he doesn't even get what I'm trying to tell him.

I guess it's just a constant learning process. Lucky me, I have at least three more kids to do this with. I hear it only gets better...

Raising Kids

Raising kids is tough business. There are so many things to remember, and it's hard to hit everything.

First, we have to make sure our kids get enough exercise. One hundred years ago, exercise happened naturally while kids did their daily chores and walked to school, etc. Now, we have to pencil in time for them to exercise. Even twenty years ago we were able to walk outside, shouting, "Mom, I'm going to so-and-so's to play! Be back by dinner!" Now, we have to keep watchful eyes over our children, never leaving them unsupervised, because the world is a more dangerous place. There are child predators lurking all around us. So it becomes easier to let your kids watch a lot of TV and make them play inside.

Even playing outside in the backyard can be a dangerous plight. There are safety concerns. In our backyard, we have grass, a couple of trees and a rock border. The rocks are a safety hazard--the boys will pick them up and throw them--at each other, at the dog, at the house, into the air conditioning unit, etc. Someone's likely to lose an eye. For Christmas, the boys got a climbing unit--a little fortress with a slide and rock wall for them to climb on and play on. Now it's a safety concern to leave them back there unsupervised, lest they fall and break an arm. Then child services could swoop in, claiming that we are negligent parents and tuck our kids away in foster homes that are far worse than their real home.

So getting exercise is a tough challenge. Then there's eating. With the rise of childhood obesity, we need to carefully watch what they eat in relation to how much exercise they get. My kids will only eat peanut butter sandwiches, grilled cheese sandwiches, and homemade macaroni and cheese. They eat a lot of fat in their diet (the peanut butter, the cheese, etc), and I constantly worry that they are going to be obese. At least I can get them to take a daily vitamin, Usanimals.

Then there's sun exposure. You're not supposed to send your kids out to play without slathering them from head to toe with sunscreen. Having three kids who like to play outside means I spend a good 15 minutes slathering sunscreen before they can enjoy the sunshine, even if they only decide to play out there for 15 minutes. If I don't, they could get skin cancer.

Anyway, I just had to get that out into the universe, some of my frustrations with raising kids. Nobody ever tells you how hard it truly is. Of course, if they did, would you believe them before having kids? Probably not...same as not believing that marriage is hard before tying the knot...