A Public Notice…

This is a public notice to my family:
If you, dear ones, do not return DVDs to their proper cases, you will experience full motherly/wifely wrath.

Our wireless router died this week. No router means no Netflix on our Wii. It also means watching movies. Our TV isn’t going all the time, but we do watch a little.

K requested Cars 2 this afternoon. In my search for it I discovered at least 6 empty cases piled up on the DVD player.

Where are these DVDs going?

Is the same black hole that eats socks going after them?

I start checking all the cases while fighting off E, who is pursuing DVDs like a starved jungle cat after the last steak. I match about 20 movies back to their original cases. I finally find the Cars 2 DVD behind the entertainment center with dust, an old remote, and a few other movies.

Really dear family? Setting a DVD on top of the entertainment center to be knocked off sounded like a better plan than taking two seconds to return it to the case?

I set E by her toys for the millionth time and get ready to put it in when I hear, “Mom, I need new pants!” from the bathroom.

I discovered K had leaked on his underpants and gotten water all down the front of him. After showering my begrudging preschooler, I was urging him to get dressed while E protested from the living room.

“Put your underpants on, please.”
“I don’t want Batman underpants! I want Va-vengers!”
“Fine. Here is Ironman.”
“No, I want Thor or Pawk-eye!”

After an angry 3 year old hissy fit, his choices then became taking a nap naked or putting on the underpants and taking a rest.

All because of DVD negligence people…

Don’t we have some left over birthday cupcakes around here?

Hurry up and nap my little darlings.

Dearest E

My Dearest E,

I watched you today, little one.

You gave me tired nose kisses. You loved on the ladies from church. You chased after brother. You desperately wanted to check out the mud at the park and plopped down in protest when I tried to reroute you.

I love you so much, little bug.

A year ago you changed our lives forever. You made our little family of three into a family of four. We fell in love all over again.

I’ll be honest, I worried about how I could love another baby after your brother. Your first sweet cries crushed those fears. Daddy and I loved you immediately. Brother came around pretty quickly too.

You are your own little person. You are our sunshine, our sweet, our little lady bug. Your little smile lights up the room.

You have no fear. You dove head first into walking and climbing. You fall at least a dozen times a day but always pick yourself up. You ran circles at your party yesterday.

You are the prettiest little girl I have ever seen. I love your little twig of a pony tail, your big blue eyes, and your toothy grin.

I love your sweet spirit. You smile easily and love rocking your babies. You say “mama” and rub your nose to mine when you are tired. You make car noises and tackle your brother too.

I hope you always know that you are beautiful. You are precious. You are loved.

Your Daddy and I prayed for you and will continue to pray for you as you grow.

Grow well, little flower.

Love,
Mommy

Minnie Mouse First Birthday!

We just had E’s first birthday!

(Where did the time go?!)

Here are a few pictures of our Minnie Mouse extravaganza…

Here is our cupcake table!

We’ve got ears, say CHEERS! Craft table for the kids.

E’s Bowtique

Hot Diggity Dog Bar.

K and cousin KT decorating their hats.

K showing me his hat.

Cousin T in her hat.

Nana helped E make a hat.

Mmm. Cake!

We had a great time at her party and a great time planning. Here are a few details for those wanting to know.

Cake Table:
We made 4 dozen cupcakes (vanilla and chocolate), iced in red, and then added oreo ears and a fondant bow. The smash cake was made in a small glass bowl. It has a fondant bow and chocolate dipped oatmeal cookies for ears. We also made a collage of all her monthly pictures.

E’s Bowtique:
I made felt bows and bow ties earlier this week. My mother-in-law used the Cricut cutter at work to make the Mickey shape. We hole punched at the top for bows and at the bottom for bow ties. The sign says, “E’s Bowtique. Please take an E custom creation. Bows for girls and bow ties for boys.”

Craft Table:
I used a party hat template to make all the hats. We glued black circles on for ears. We hole punched and tied ribbon in each side. I got various craft supplies at the dollar store for the kids to use on their ears. We also printed out color pages from the Disney Jr. site. The sign says, “We’ve got ears say CHEERS! Please help your little Mouseketeer make a custom set of ears.”

It was so much fun. I can’t believe my baby girl is already a year old!

A few bonus pictures from my phone:

A close-up of the smash cake and one of the cupcakes.

My sister’s cat with party hat.

She was pooped…

If Mama Ain’t Happy…

There is a big trend on Pinterest right now of happy inspirational poems about enjoying your kids. The message is a good one: cleaning, chores, and worldly pressures can wait because children grow up way too fast.

I really don’t disagree with this concept. It has value. We don’t need to micromanage our homes and take our children for granted. Kids need to experience childhood wonder.

I get it.

But I am human, and I have a breaking point. I have days where I just can’t handle the mess of life. I reach a mental state of “if I impale my foot on one more Lego or pull one more petrified Cheerio out of the baby’s hand, I am going to go bat crap crazy”.

When I reach that place, there will be cleaning because if mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.

I truly believe in learning through play. We do fun messy activities several times a week. But I also believe in teaching life skills.

Cleaning is a life skill. I want my son to actually see the pile of dirty laundry and not just walk around it. I want K and E to realize that no magical fairy will float around behind them to tidy up their messes.

Today the kids decided to pull every toy out of the toy box, fill it with blankets, and use it as a pirate ship.

I let them enjoy themselves. I even snapped a couple pictures.

Aren’t they cute?

But guess who put all the toys back in the toy box? Not this mama. I made K pick up every single one. I don’t think it was too much for a 3 year old. His arms and legs function perfectly, and hopefully when he is a young man out on his own he’ll actually throw away the pizza boxes and ramen wrappers.

You’re welcome, K’s future wife.

Felt Bows and Bow Ties Perfected

So much felt and hot glue today…

Guess what?! Baby E’s birthday is this weekend!

I still have a lot to do but I finished a few things today. We are doing a Minnie Mouse theme and decided to make bows and bow ties as favors.

I’ve posted a tutorial in the past on felt bows but I figured out a technique that drastically cut down on glue gun related blisters. I also did a few multicolored bows.

Felt Bows/Bow Ties:

1. Do an accordion fold in the middle of your rectangle. The back will be the side with the edges showing. Put hot glue in the middle of this side.

2. Clip your alligator clip to your long skinny strip of felt. Put it (flat side down) onto the glue in the middle back of your bow.

3. Wrap the strip around the front and clip into your alligator clip.

4. Turn it around (with the back still to you) and fold down the extra felt from the strip. Put a line of hot glue in the crack it creates, cut off the extra, and fold it back down on the hot glue. (This is the step that saved fingers!)

Done!

Multicolored Felt Bow:

For a multicolored bow cut out the rectangle you want for the top and place it on the other desired color of felt. Cut around it a slightly bigger rectangle of the other color. Follow the regular steps from here.

How cute is that?!

I added a little felt rosette to this one.

I hope the kiddos like them. We are doing classic red, white, and black Minnie. I’ll definitely post party pics this weekend.

I just didn’t know…

E is teething again.

For those without kids, teething is awful. It doesn’t just make their little mouths hurt. They’re irritable. They drool. Their little noses get runny. They can get a fever. They bite and chew on everything (even you). Oh, and it even effects their poop.

I’m not sure what those darn teeth are doing in there to cause so much chaos, but they give E diaper issues.

This morning I was changing one of these troubled diapers when K announces that he needs to poop. He yells that he is done and I tell him to go ahead and wipe himself.

When I walk by the bathroom to check on him and wash my hands from E’s change I see it. He is covered in gross. Up his back, on his hands, streaking the toilet…

I had to clean him up and give him a shower while E voiced her displeasure of being left in the living room.

I had no idea before kids how important poop would become. It gives you a window into your child’s health and if their diet is balanced. You deal with it everyday, several times a day.

I just didn’t know.

If you ever wonder why parents talk about their kids’ gross bodily functions so much; this is why. They can’t escape it. You deal with something enough and it is bound to find its way into conversation. Other parents tend to gladly talk poop with you. Non-parents look at you like you just grew another head.

Sorry for posting about poop but I was reminded of today’s horror story when I was getting K ready for bed. I looked into his sink and found a few flecks of dried yuck from earlier.

Ew.

I failed today. At one point I vacuumed but you can’t tell anymore. There is goldfish cracker dust in the dining room. Dishes out the wazoo. A toy explosion in the living room. I Just (re)cleaned the bathroom but I still have a giant pile of laundry to fold…

Warning: Teething also causes parental irritability.

My shining moment of redemption today was hearing K excitedly talk about his first time at AWANAS last night. He sang Jesus Loves Me all day and memorized his first memory verse lesson. He also wanted to learn the Pledge of Allegiance, which he kept calling “that Captain America thing”.

Maybe I didn’t totally fail today.

Music time at AWANAS. K is in the green plaid at the back. He LOVED it.

Sticky Kisses

Ha. Try getting those kisses off.

Sticky kisses in our house aren’t kisses that leave you sticky.

…

Ok, that is lie. Sometimes sticky kisses do leave you physically sticky. You know, kids are gross and all.

Anyway, here’s the story of Sticky Kisses:

K hit that age. The age when little boys think kisses from their mommies are gross and perpetually try to wipe them off. As soon as your plant one on them, they are wiping. It happens around the same time that boogers become awesome, farts become hilarious, and dirt becomes the coolest thing ever. For K I think this happened around 2 years.

One day I was holding K down and attacking him with kisses, as all good moms do, and I came up with an idea. I told him I was going to give him special kisses that would stick forever. I kissed all over his face and then blew on it to “make the kisses dry”. I told him that he could wipe and wipe but they would be stuck forever.

He started calling them sticky kisses. Now our whole family is in on it. He exchanges sticky kisses with his Nonna and Nana. Even Baby E expects us to blow on her after kisses. We do get weird looks occasionally when we blow on our kids faces after kissing them, but we also get weird looks because our son wears a clip on bow tie almost everyday. You get used to it.

Does your family have any fun little traditions?

I am not a table!

After a long morning of chasing the toddler and wrangling the 3 year old, I finally sink into my big arm chair to feed E. We snuggle up and she falls asleep eating. Soon I zone out too. I drift off into a pseudo-sleep and dream of coffee, David Tutera weddings, and massages.

When I come crashing back to reality I look like the junk lady from the Labyrinth.

Ever feel like this?

I now have about 50 assorted toys, an empty juice cup, a used tissue, a sleeping baby, and a stream of drool piled up on my lap.

I’m not sure why, but K thinks I am his personal toy box/table/junk pile. He runs by all the time and just leaves things on my lap. It is one of the great unknown mysteries of the ages- why does mom make a better container than the toy chest that is only a few feet away?

I have a lot of commonly used phrases:

“Put your underwear on!”
“We don’t paint sister.”
“No sir/ma’am. Don’t touch that.”
“Please sit on your bottom.”
“Have you lost your mind?!”
“What are you doing? Are you supposed to be doing that?”
“What would be a good choice right now?”
“If you don’t stop (insert behavior here), you are going to go take a nap.”

Today it has been, “I am not a table.” This is followed by the immediate loss of whatever he dropped on me.

There is a good size pile of treasures building up on the end table today. Maybe he’ll learn.

Sleep deprivation rears it’s ugly head

I’m pretty sure every parent has lived this scenario:

You are sitting and talking to a friend… a childless friend.

Maybe they are married. Maybe they aren’t. They could be a student. It doesn’t matter.

Suddenly they start telling you how tired they are. Working overtime, studying, late night with friends, just not sleeping well- again it doesn’t matter. They have suddenly become public enemy #1.

You put on a polite smile but the few non-fried neurons you have left are screaming.

Really? REALLY?! You want to talk about tired? Are you sure friend? I don’t think you want to get into it with me about tired. I have kids. You can’t even begin to understand tired. Tired is trying to put a dirty diaper in the fridge and leaving the baby’s bottle sitting on the hood of the car. Tired is not getting a full night of sleep for months on end. Tired is hearing “mommy” for the billionth time in a two hour time frame. Tired is being a human tissue every day. It is being covered in snot and having Cheerios in your hair. Tired is getting comfortable and snuggled down in bed and then hearing a squawk come across the monitor. Extremely tired is when you are so out of it you try to nurse the pillow in your sleep when you hear the squawk from the monitor. So do you really want to tell me how tired you are?!

Hopefully, you don’t really say this to your childless friends.

There is a lesson in this though…

Not-yet-parents/not-planning-on-kids folks: Take it easy on your friends with kids. The patience they used to have is gone. It gets used up on the kids. They just don’t have much left for regular people. Cut them some slack and remove any stickers or cereal they may have stuck to their clothes. Avoid comments on the dark circles that have taken up permanent residence under their eyes.

Parents: Cut your childless friends some slack too. They just don’t know. Their lives are tiring too. When you were in college, you griped about staying up for a week during exams. You probably complained about lack of sleep plenty of times during your pre-kid years and, if you are reading this, I’m guessing no parents shanked you for it.

Remember to love each other!

Today I actually did bring a diaper to the kitchen with me… Oh, and I managed to put a huge dash of cayenne pepper into the pan today instead of cumin. My kids are almost 1 and 3 years, imagine someone with a newborn.

No more butts

I am very tired of naked little boy bottom showing up in my living room. I’m also tired of grimy unwashed potty hands touching things and stuff being left in the toilet.

K has gotten bad about running out of the bathroom post-pee and giving me a blow by blow of events. While I am proud of him for going potty, I really don’t need to know his progress between each step.

“I need to go potty mom!”
“Then go potty…”
“OK!!!!”
…
“I pottied mom!”
“Don’t touch that toy. Go flush, get dressed, and wash your hands.”
“OK!!!”
…
“I flushed!”
“Put your underpants on and wash your hands.”
“OK!”
…
“I’m dressed!”
“Did you wash your hands?”
“No, I’ll go wash them.”
…
At least five times every day.

It gets exhausting. He knows what he is supposed to do but won’t do it without prompting.

I’d finally had it up to my eyeballs.

I am not an artist at all but I decided to make him a reminder. He can’t read much yet but he knows “stop”. I made it simple and easy to follow and added pictures.

Here it is:

We went over it a few times. I set it up like a role play. We pretended he went potty and went through his steps before he leaves the bathroom.

He picked out the construction stickers to hang it. Here he is with his biggest goober smile:

It was fun for him and (hopefully) sanity saving for me. It is another example of teaching your children. You have to make it interesting for the little ones or it won’t stick.

Anyone else have an aspiring nudist?