5 Minutes for Mom Interview

In case you're interested (or bored).

A Day of All Sorts

My kids woke up early again today (of which I am not a fan). We spent the morning with a stack of books and the Play-doh. And lots of coffee for me, naturally.

Later I decided I couldn’t put off the trip to Wal-mart any longer so we loaded up and headed out. And going to Wal-mart with three toddlers in tow is about as fun as listening to fingernails scratching a chalkboard for a couple of hours. You get a little edgy.

And, oh my, was it ever cold.

Once we were back and the kids were all down for a nap, I was going to do a quick clean-up swipe of the van. You know, remove the thousands of fruit snacks wrappers and other miscellaneous trash, wipe out the cupholders, maybe a quick shake of the mats. However, it quickly turned into an all-out deep-cleaning session (and very much needed, I might add. Kids can sure do a number on the inside of a car. *shudder*) and an hour later I was still vacuuming.

But it was worth it. A clean car is always, well, luxurious.

And then tonight we dropped the kids at the in-laws and took the train into the city to meet some friends for pizza (now a tradition) before the next in our concert series that the guys purchased for us back in December. [For our musical friends who might be interested, it was Stravinsky’s Concerto in E-flat major – “Dumbarton Oaks” I, II, and III; Stravinsky’s Capriccio, for piano and orchestra – I, II, and III; Mozart’s Rondo in D major, K. 382 for piano and orchestra; and Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No. 1 in D minor, Op. 13 (I thru IV).]

I could get used to that.

Anyway, today was certainly a day for variety. Which, as you know, is the Spice of Life.

Eating Applesauce

Less messy that way.

And also, anyone else's kids running around with pants 2 inches too short? Madeline looks like she's sure of an imminent flood...

That time o' year, I suppose.

Need. More. Sleep.

Andy’s first real seminary paper was due today. Which means I was up formatting footnotes at 2 a.m. last night. I knew I had good reason to hang on to that Turabian!

(Inside Covenant joke, sorry. Ahem.)

Anyway, it was nearly impossible to get out of bed this morning, even though I knew Drew and Madeline were out and about. And not even a crazy mess to report on, believe it or not. When I did finally get up and moving, I decided I had a bit of cabin fever and so we had lunch at Chick-fil-A.

Oh, dear Chick-fil-A, how I’ve missed you.

On the way home I had to run into the grocery store for a few necessary items such as Pull-ups and eggs. And then I rounded out my very productive afternoon with

...a nap.

Aha!

A couple of mornings ago we spent a ridiculous amount of time searching the house for Drew's backpack full of his beloved cars. I knew he had hung the bag on the back of his chair at dinner the night before, and I knew he hadn't played outside after that. So they had to be in the house.

At one point he started to get a little frantic and said, referring to his gray and favorite car, "but the red car is its friend!!"

The cars are friends.

And they, collectively, are his friends.

Aha! Got it.

Now I understand the mild possessive obsession with his matchbox cars (and 'mild obsession' may be a bit of an understatement).

And it's no wonder he views the cars en persona, what with the obscene number of times he's seen Disney/Pixar's Cars and all.

Revisiting "Only Madeline"

Speaking of ingenuity...


See the end of that protractor? I found Madeline sitting at the kitchen table using it like a spoon, dipping into the icing like there was no tomorrow. She turned around and gushed, "I'm eating the sugah!"

Like I said, only Madeline.

A quick word to clarify

I feel a slight need to explain some things, for whatever it’s worth. My kids do not have free reign in our house, even though it might appear that way due to my freely reporting on their crazy messes here. (I also don’t think this is an appropriate place for any sort of discipline log.)

They’ve always been overly curious. And a wee bit daring. But it’s more than that. Many of my friends have told me that their own kids wouldn’t even think about doing some of the things my kids do. As in, it wouldn’t even occur to them that you can dump out an entire box of Cheerios and eat them right there off the floor.

Or that it’s a lot of fun to squeeze toothpaste out of the tube. Or unroll an entire roll of toilet paper and attempt to flush it down the toilet all at once (okay, thankfully that last part hasn’t happened... yet). Or eat chapstick by the tube.

But my kids? All in a day’s work. And they're very quick about it, too.

So here’s hoping all this ingenuity will someday pay off.

As if I didn't have anything better to do

Today was the first Sunday since we've been here that we had company over for lunch after church. It's good to be back in the groove.

While us adults were blissfully wine and dining downstairs, the kids were upstairs looking at pictures. (And as you can see, 'looking' is a completely relative term.)

The one about the playgroup

I love having people around. It energizes me. Don’t get me wrong; I like peace and quiet and alone time just as much as the next frazzled mother. But if I had a choice between quietly staying home with a book or going out to dinner with friends, I’d probably choose the friends.

So when I moved here I knew I’d better find me some o’ those friends, and fast, or I just might be liable to pack myself up and head back to Chattanooga, lickety split.

After a few weeks of thumb-twiddling, I did a Google search for “[omitting location] playgroup” and, wala! I found one. That playgroup ended up not really working out for us and truth be told, it could have provided far more blog fodder than I actually made use of. (In the off chance one of those members stumbled across this here blog, I’ve stayed far, far away.)

Anyhoo.

But I did meet a couple of fantastic ladies and we sort of made up our own playgroup of our own perfect size and which perfectly fits our needs. I already mentioned we got together yesterday despite the snow (‘cept Alissa, chicken!), but I also wanted to record some playdate highlights. For posterity. Or something.

Such as the kids swarming over this bowl of blueberries. You would have thought it was a bowl of chocolate covered marshmallows sprinkled with cotton candy and a side of gummy bears.


Blueberries, the kids love ‘em.

Or Julia’s toy laptop. One of my kids’ favorites.



They come by it honestly.

And, lastly, after the kids had mostly finished up eating lunch, I glanced over to see Adelaide swiping hot dog pieces off another child’s plate and stuffing them into her mouth as fast as she could.


Baby oatmeal with applesauce puree or hot dogs?

She’ll have the hot dogs.

Only Madeline

"Moriah? You might not want to eat that apple. Madeline was in the bathroom washing it with handsoap and water."

And, it's no wonder we're always out of bandaids:


Okay, totally changing subjects.

A few winter pictures from after playgroup today:


(Still pushing umbrella strollers full of matchbox cars around, even in the snow.)




"Brr, Mom! It's cold!"

The weatherman was right, for once

Out my bedroom window:


Out the front door:


The driveway:



(Yes, I went out to check.)

We're up to an inch and a half. But it's still coming down fairly quickly. Now I wish we had snow pants.

I think we'll just have to improvise.

Tell me this doesn't feel weird

I guess I should stop thinking of her as my tiny newborn baby.




She hasn't taken any actual steps just yet. But she's standing for several minutes and has pretty good balance. Andy says her feet are way too small for walking; I think he's just being difficult.

Yeah, it never ends

Apparently my kids have a thing for toothpaste.

Morning Messes

Usually when Drew does something...uh, questionable...he comes and tells me almost right away. Like, “Mom, I broke the glass,” or “Mom, I touched your camera,” or “Mom, I ate the gum,” (meaning the entire package), or “Mom, I wrote on the wall.” So yesterday morning when he greeted me at the side of my bed with “Mom, look!” holding a bowl filled to the brim with granola – I could only guess at the mess that was waiting for me downstairs.

Oh, the mess.




The toothpaste threw a wrench into what would otherwise have been a quick wipe and vacuum job. (Although, I must say granola doesn’t vacuum very nicely – it pops and pings about the room.) And as soon as I had finished vacuuming the kitchen, I found the kids had spilled an entire box of Cheerios all over the floor in front of the TV.

I think in all, I must have vacuumed for an hour straight. And all before my coffee. I finally came back into the kitchen to brew myself some of that delicious awakening liquid, and did this:



I could hardly believe mine eyes.

At least now when I vacuum, my house smells like a coffee shop. That’s kinda nice.

Back in a Few

I'm going to take a few days away from this here blog. I'm feeling a wee bit discouraged and can't think of a coherent thing to say. For now, though, I did appreciate this post, so I'll just pass that along.

I think this is hilarious because it really is my favorite

You Are Coffee Ice Cream

Energetic and lively, you are always on the go. You're doing a million things at once and doing them well. You tend to motivate others and raise spirits. You are most compatible with chocolate ice cream.

What Flavor Ice Cream Are You?

Relaxing Weekends are Good

Which really just means we did a grand ol' heap-o-nothing. I didn't even do laundry. Andy went last night to trade in our "Blockbuster Netflix" at the store, and took the kids with him. Madeline was a little bit giddy to be allowed to go in her jammies. I even heard her say something like "people will see my jammies!" with a little bit of glee. And she and Drew came home with huge wads of bubble gum in their mouths, obviously from talking Daddy into putting coins in the gumball machine.

Oh, the simple pleasures of being a kid.

I'm sorry, I just can't help it

I could eat that dress with a spoon.

And all the dress fabric is now gone.

*sigh*

Third and last

Okay, I promise I'll stop posting pictures of sewing projects now.

Pillowcase Dresses, Part 2

I realized this morning I had enough of the orange fabric left to make a dress for Adelaide. So of course I did. And she even let me put it on her and get a picture.


From later, once I got the ric-rac on:



And on an entirely different note, while we were playing in Madeline's room today she was obviously trying to be extra nice to Drew and said
"yes, sir" in response to something he said. He looked up, surprised, and said, "no, I'm not the boss. Mommy is the boss."

And then a few moments later, "I'm the little boss."

Pillowcase Dresses

When I found out I was having a girl (who turned out to be Madeline), I hightailed it to the fabric store and loaded up on cute fabrics for all the dresses I planned to make. Ambitious, indeed I was.

I don't think I ever actually made anything for her, but that's really neither here nor there. The point is, I've had some fabric sitting and collecting dust these past two and a half years that I finally decided to make use of.

After a quick phone consultation with my friend, Nicky, I made a few pillowcase dresses for the girls. Not that they'll get to wear them anytime soon with weather this freezing.

But spring fever? I have it.

So with no further ado, I present the pillowcase dresses I've made so far:


(made yesterday)


(made today)


Here's what it looks like on:


(I cropped her face lest you be subjected to the post-nap weeping and gnashing of teeth.)

I wish I could have taken the picture with her standing but I didn't want to press my luck. They sort of fall to an "A" line and are fairly long.

Madeline's Valentine pants

I found these at Target and thought they were hilarious. I mean, when can you wear red and pink striped pants and get away with it? When you're under 3, that's when.


(Static hair and all.)


Adelaide wasn't quite so enthusiastic.

V Day

Hope your day is full of sugar-overload, too!

(I'll post some pictures of the kiddie party we had the other day maybe when Andy gets home. You have to see Madeline's Valentine pants!)

I forgot to mention

Andy started seminary last week and loves it.

Our wallet? Not so much.

Happiness is

having older siblings who will put the Cheerios more in your price range.

A Realization of Sorts

I think myself very blessed to have had such wonderful teaching on the vast and varied subject of parenting. We’ve had some great role models and also have been introduced to a number of first-class books and series on the subject.

I say that, however, as a preface.

I think probably everyone has a parenting philosophy, whether they can articulate it or not. It might be a broad-strokes, general kind of attitude towards raising kids, or very pointed and specific one. Sometimes there is confusion between principles and methods. (For example, a principle would be that parents are obligated to feed their children. The method is then how they go about providing nourishment.)*

Principles and methods get confused when someone places principle-worthy importance on a mere method; i.e. breastmilk vs. formula, demand or cue feed vs. schedule feed, etc. One ‘side’ is taken to be the right and only way, instead of merely being one of many acceptable ways. (And, obviously, others have explained this much better than I.)

So when I first had Drew, I fit myself nicely into the camps that I thought I agreed with the most. And, to be fair, things went pretty well. He was a laid back baby and still, for the most part, is an easy-going kid.

Then I had Madeline and I was too busy chasing Drew around to obsess over my child-rearing formulas that would yield perfect children in the end. I had to relax on some things or go crazy.

And that was exponentially true when I had Adelaide. She gets her diaper changed probably a lot less than Drew did as a baby. She doesn’t get fed every 180 minutes (well, okay, he didn’t either). Our family and our days just don’t work that way. I’m not a clockwork person; my kids shouldn’t be expected to be, either.

The ‘camp’ analogy also works well with other parenting topics, such as discipline. It’s an issue with a lot of different philosophies (and therefore many different, and often contrasting, methods). I unconsciously must have thought that I had to conform wholly to one camp and wasn’t free to glean pieces out of another and just add them into my own unique mix. (And I’m not talking about being inconsistent. I’m talking about broadening; being flexible and merciful when it’s appropriate. Also, tightening up when it's appropriate.)

I’m writing all this to say – it finally occurred to me that I don’t have to be entirely in one single camp on any given parenting topic. I can pick and choose certain elements that I agree with and that will work well for my family. My personal methods don’t all have to be from the same philosophical camp.

I’m the mother. I know what’s best for my family (well, ultimately God does) and I make the decisions. I don’t have to stick to every single rule out of some book I read once. Additionally, on the flip side, if I’m attracted to a brand new philosophy/method set, I don’t have to swallow the whole pill – I can pull out parts that I like and leave the rest.

In a practical outworking, I can hold or nurse my baby when I want to. But I can also give my baby a bottle or a nap, if I want to. I can discipline for something, but I can also choose to show mercy if I see that my child’s heart is in the right place.

How very freeing it has been for me to realize all of this! Our particular family doesn’t have to be like anyone else’s. We just have to be faithful.

(*not an original idea of mine)

By the way, a wonderfully balanced and beautifully written (related) post here: Salt and Sugar.

Toofers

That's a newly-popped top one.

Don't you love it when

your kids open fire on you with the squirting rubber duckie while you're sitting peacefully on the toilet (lid closed) and you are so completely taken by surprise that all you can manage is shrieks of laughter instead of a stern face and so now every time they take a bath they feel entitled to soak you yet again with said rubber duckie?

Yeah. Me, too.

Amen.

"Dear Jesus, thank you for this day and for food. And cars. And for Daddy, Mommy, Madeline, Drew, and A'laide. In Jesus' name, amen."

Hairbows, A Treatise

I had a commenter the other day who said she didn’t understand the appeal for hairbows and it just added time to the morning routine and who would want to do such a thing as that?

Honestly? I would! Because they are pretty.

But it’s more than that. Without getting too philosophical, though, I think it’s a good thing to fuss over our children a little bit, maybe even especially over our little girls. Let them have and wear pretty things... Show them in small ways that they are special and are tenderly loved... A tiny way of bestowing good things on them as well as perhaps teaching them that masculinity and femininity are different and each should be celebrated, albeit in different ways.

Obviously we teach them inner beauty is of greater importance – that goes without saying – but outward adornments are just that. They can adorn and enhance. To me the hairbow is that little touch that says, “I love you and here’s a little kiss to your outfit today. You are worth the extra thirty seconds of my morning time.”

Now. Does Madeline wear a bow in her hair every single day? Of course not. I don’t do my hair every single day. Sometimes I’m lucky if I get her hair clipped back before she smears it with egg yolk. And other days it’s stuffed into a ponytail while she runs around the playground like a wild child.

And I’m also not saying that if you don’t put bows in your daughters' hair, you don’t love them. I’m merely talking about my own particular relationship(s) with my own particular daughter(s).

Well, and also I use them because they are simply a whole lot of fun.

Last night, looooooong overdue

A couple of weeks ago it dawned on me that what I’ve been missing in my life was a girls’ night out. When we lived in Chattanooga, I had a group of girlfriends that met occasionally for dinner out, usually in honor of someone’s birthday. (I use the phrase ‘in honor’ very loosely because quite frankly it was just an excuse to go out and we used every excuse we could get. Plus we always paid for our own meal, regardless of birthday-honoree status.)

And then there were the occasional spur-of-the-moment dinners out with single friends who could be flexible and didn’t mind eating dinner with me and a couple of hooligan toddlers. We always went to Andy’s restaurant and I’d usually pawn one of the babies off on him or the staff anyway so clearly, those were fun times out.

However, in order to go out with friends, you have to have friends to go out with. Which may take a while when one moves to a new place. Or so I’ve heard.

But guess what? Now I have friends! That will go out to dinner with me! And sit and gab for hours on end and pretend like they have nothing better to do than sit and gab! For hours on end!

(Well, and be completely oblivious to the fact that we're the only ones still sitting and gabbing, even after the waiter has flipped the chairs up onto all the tables around us. We're very quick with the hints.)

And I had left Andy with only one real instruction, “please do not wait until I get home to put the kids to bed.”

I thought that was very magnanimous of me.

At the risk of appearing to be a photo blog...

We love us some cheeks 'round here. (Pun absolutely intended.)



These were taken Saturday when we took the kids to the playground (before Andy got struck with a bout of food poisoning). Today was warm and we had no need for cute pom-pom hats.

WFMW - Favorite Online Shops

I realize I've linked to her shop before, but I'm going to do it again strictly for WFMW purposes. Bellaroses Boutique is the best internet shop for hairbows I've found. And I've done a lot of looking.

Also, I've found the best deals for online baby gear at Albee baby. We've bought three carseats (different stages) from this site because the sale price was significantly cheaper even than Wal-mart.

Electronics: I found the best deal on the internet for both my digital camera and our Macbook at Abe's of Maine.

Best nursing bra ever. And with that I've probably scared off all my male readers. Ah well, most of you are girls anyway.

Also, while on this favorite subject of shopping, this is probably common knowledge for my generation (and younger), but for the few it might be helpful for, I think some of the best shopping search engines are Shopzilla and Bizrate. You enter in whatever product you're looking for, and it tells you where to find the lowest price on the internet.

And I'm all about the lowest price on the internet.

Taxes?

Done.

Bring on the returns, baby.

For Your Viewing Pleasure

And, another funny one. I'll just be thankful my very proper Nanny probably has no idea what a weblog is.


I'm sorry. I couldn't help it.

Sunday Best

Sometimes I look down and realize I dressed all three of my kids alike. (Must be according to my mood or something.) Anyway, today was one of those days.


It's rather difficult to take a decent picture of three squirmy kids. Bytheway.

...and a little gum visit...

Those were brand new!

BohoBaby, oh yes

Welp, it looks like I'm going to be assisting WonderGirl with BohoBaby Slings. We figure, between the two of us, we know a LOT of babies.

Stay tuned...

Hm. I wonder who paid me a little bathroom visit.