Home

We’re home.

It is so good to be home after being away for two and a half of the past three weeks.

We had a lazy, yet somewhat productive at-home day yesterday.

My girls got busy playing. They played “book store.”

Need I say how much I love that they were having so much fun playing book store? That’s almost as good as playing “Library.”

It was the kind of day when lots of things just worked out nicely. The older girls played well together (all sorts of things besides book store). Their imaginations expanded as they became reacquainted with their own toys. My husband got lots of work done in the yard and in our garage. Sis sat on the floor and played with these scarves the whole time I cooked dinner.

Harmonious.

As you can see, the girls were excited to see their things again.

They did have a wonderful time at the Farm too. Imaginary play is at its best when my kids have lots of different, old, and totally unrelated toys to play with.

Different dress up clothes? No problem. Just make up some new characters. Lass became “Princess Petunia” and Miss invented a little boy named “Parch.”

Yes, Princess Petunia wears a red cowboy hat and a Santa apron.

She wanted me to put her hair up in this cap so she would be “disguised” as a boy.

They played with HeMan characters, an old Mr. T doll, two Fisher Price planes, an Etch-A-Sketch, and many more random toys that all came together beautifully in the richness of their play. Strawberry Shortcake was Sis’s fave.

They got some good crafting time in with their Baba too. Miss displayed her task-master side when directing my mother-in-law in the creation of some new dresses for two of my sister-in-law’s old baby dolls. One doll became Rapunzel, draped in purple tulle with golden ribbons extending from her hair, while another just got a “beautiful, colorful, princess dress” made from pink tulle and lots of ribbon tied just so. The girl definitely knows what she wants and isn’t afraid to say so.

My mother-in-law also had two of these Cinderella carriages made from dried gourds for the girls to paint.

It was serious work.

It really was a wonderful trip.

And it is so good to be home. As much as I love going to visit family, and I know we will always continue to do it because it is just important, my life is made so much easier when I can mother my girls in our own space. It’s amazing how much of my day flows more easily because of our routines and the way we have adapted our home to work for us.

But a little inconvenience is a small price to pay for family time. That’s what it’s all about of course. My children blossom amongst the sunshine of those who love them. The more the merrier.

We have some exciting things coming up.

We’re planning some renovations in our house (goodbye 1990s oak and brass, hello new range and pantry and kitchen floor and basement bathroom!).

We’re starting (slowly) our home preschool. This week is “T for Turkey” week. I ordered a laminating machine and some binders to start getting organized. By the way, what is with all the “Binder for Women” comments in the Amazon reviews of binders? I missed the joke, I guess, but I’ve seen links on FB and there are hundreds of these comments it seems. I don’t get it. … Anyway, I’ll let you know how our first week goes.

My hubby and I will be bringing back our “At-Home Chopped Challenge” (in which I randomly choose three ingredients from an Excel spreadsheet my husband has made up and use them to make dinner). If you want a little background, you can check out some of my previous successes (spaghetti squash, merguez sausage, and spinach or raisins and cherry tomatoes) and failures (tofu, plantains, and bacon bits or maybe sweet pickles, bran cereal, and pickled herring) in this endeavor. Even when the dishes have turned out horrendous (just look at some of those ingredients, for pete’s sake!), it has always been a fun cooking game for us, so I’m really looking forward to drawing my next three ingredients. Anyone want to suggest some fun ingredients for our spreadsheet?

 

 

Parenting for an Audience

There was a time, before I had kids and when Miss was very small, when I believed I knew all there was to know about disciplining a toddler or preschooler. I watched other people do it with their own kids, and sometimes thought to myself all the reasons they weren’t doing it right. I didn’t get all caught up in judgement, but did have passing thoughts like, “My kid will do what I tell her, when I tell her,” and “Wow, I would never put up with that kind of behavior,” or “Geez, that mom is so rude to her kids!” I thought I had all the disciplining answers. I am a psychologist, after all. I had studied Skinner and Watson and Hull and Thorndike and could rattle off all sorts of stuff about behavioral principles. I used to teach seminars about the use of these principles with kids and adult patients. I had it all figured out.

To be clear, I never went so far as to think another mom was a bad mom, and there were many times I watched other moms in action and marveled at how awesome they were.

But yeah, I really did think I knew how to handle discipline.

Then Miss hit toddlerhood. She turned two, and then three, and Lass started walking and talking, and she turned two, and all of a sudden I had two little people with two very different personalities, sometimes seeming to be coordinating a mutiny, and all the stuff I thought I knew turned out to be crap.

I thought I knew all about disciplining a toddler and/or preschooler.

Then I had one.

Now I have two.

Nowadays it is not uncommon for me to have many moments in a day when I feel like I have no idea what I’m doing.

When Miss flatly rejects something that I’ve asked her to do or looks me in the eye and deliberately does exactly what I’ve just asked her not to do.

When Lass has a super meltdown and nothing seems to calm her.

When the two of them are at each other’s throats and Sis is crying and holy-crap-I-can’t-seem-to-think-of-a-single-effective-way-to-respond-to-this-what-the-heck-is-the-matter-with-me?

Usually I come up with something that works well enough, but sometimes I don’t. I realize my limitations and imperfections on a daily basis.

And all of this feels horribly multiplied when I am in a situation in which I am parenting for an audience. This happens pretty frequently, especially with all the traveling we do, visiting family and staying in the same house with others for a week or sometimes more (as we have been for two of the past two-and-a-half weeks).

I really don’t love disciplining my children when other people are observing me. As much as I may sometimes lose my grip and feel out of sorts when disciplining at home, it all feels so much worse when others are around. Not really because of anything that other people do, but because it seems like almost always one of two things happens:

1. I respond calmly and in a way with which I feel comfortable and good, but second guess myself because I think other people might be looking at me and thinking, “Geez, why doesn’t she do something with that kid?” (because of course none of my children always do just what I say when I say it)

2. I totally forget all the strategies I have learned for handling difficult situations with my girls and end up growling and crabbing and yelling at them, and then I feel even worse than I usually do when I lose my temper with them, because not only have I not responded to my kids the way I want to, but someone else has seen me act like a total jerk too.

And of course also because I remember the things I used to think when I watched moms in similar situations. Oh the irony. Now I know how much easier it is to watch from the outside of a parenting dilemma and come up with a good solution, when as a parent, caught in the emotion of the moment, with others watching me, my mind goes totally blank.

Sometimes it seems there’s some sort of cosmic payback occurring as I flop and flounder as a mom in front of others.

Oh, how I wish I could take back all those moments when I was the audience, and I thought I knew better.

Because the thing is, when you’re watching another parent and not in the heat of the moment, of course you can think of all the good effective ways to handle a melting-down or defiant child. But when it’s your own kids, the stakes are higher and emotions are intense and oh, it can be so hard to come up with the right thing to do or say or sometimes just to keep your cool. And naturally, my kids push boundaries way more with me than they do with anyone else.

I know there will continue to be lots of times when I feel like a total failure as a mom, whether in the privacy of my home, when with family and friends, or out in public. I’ve been the mom in Target with a screaming baby and two preschoolers hitting and scratching at each other, just pushing my cart as fast as I can to get. the. heck. out. I’ve melted down or crabbed at my girls in front of family members and felt so embarrassed about it afterwards (I am cringing thinking about a few examples from the past weekend).

But I know that the most important thing is that I try my best to be the best I can for my kids. Judgements from other people, real or imagined, will never be as important as those from my girls. As long as they know I love them and will always do the best I can for them, I can handle the embarrassment of sometimes missing the mark in front of other people.

 

A Little Bit Political

I almost forgot that tomorrow is election day. Not because I haven’t been thinking about the election (I have). Not because I don’t care about the election (I do). In fact, I already voted, by absentee ballot, last week. I almost forgot simply because we’re at the Farm since last Wednesday night. When we’re here, I have a very hard time keeping track of what day of the week it is. So I forgot, briefly, that tomorrow is Tuesday. The Tuesday.

Luckily for me, I looked at Facebook tonight. No chance that I would fail to be reminded of tomorrow’s importance after that. Have you checked it out recently? All the political ugliness is enough to make someone (me) feel ill.

I never get political on this blog. I’ve thought about it a few times, when something really fired me up. But I’ve always decided against going there. I guess I’m not really getting political now, except to say this:

I hate this election. Truly. It’s so ugly.

Four years ago, I happily voted for President Obama. I was thrilled when he won the election.

Because pictures of my girls enjoying their cousins make me smile, even when I’m thinking about this election.

Unfortunately, in the past four years, President Obama has done some things that I really don’t support.

Ugh.

Obviously I’m oversimplifying the issues here. I’ve struggled with the decision of whom to vote for in this election for months.

I’m feeling anxious tonight about what will happen tomorrow.

I wish this wasn’t an election in which I had to choose the candidate I find less objectionable. I wish I felt passionate about my vote and fully supported the candidate I chose.

I don’t. I feel kind of ill.

But I still voted.

Incidentally, this post is not meant to be insulting to anyone or spark a debate. I’m writing about the election because it’s what’s on my mind tonight (naturally). I’d love to hear whom you will/did vote for and why, if you choose to share, but please refrain from ugliness. Thanks.

Preschool Dropout

Yesterday was Miss’s last day of preschool.

Recently, my husband and I decided that we would take her out of preschool and just start our homeschooling journey with her now. It was a little hard to make the decision to take her out, but only because I really love her school. It’s such a wonderful little place and her teachers are fantastic. When my husband and I decided in May that we will be homeschooling our girls, I thought that I would want to keep Miss in Preschool until the time for her to start Kindergarten (and send Lass and Sis when they got old enough). My reasoning for this was that she enjoys school and could have some good experiences in a fun learning environment that is more under my control than regular school would be beyond the preschool years. I could choose to send her only two mornings a week. I could choose the days she goes (LOVE this about her school). I could take her out of school to travel whenever necessary.

Additionally, her school is small, with mixed age groups and a really wonderful environment. It’s a mix of Montessori and traditional preschool styles that I think is really great. And I know of at least one instance when the owner of the school, after trying really hard to help a disruptive child, decided that the child could no longer attend because of the disruptions to the other kids. It’s not that I loved the idea that a child was asked to leave her school, but I was super glad that it was an option for her teachers to remove a child who was causing problems, when attempts at correcting the issues were unsuccessful. That would never happen in many other school settings.

I have always felt comfortable with and confident about Miss’s preschool, and at the time it seemed like the right thing to send her back at the start of this school year.

Problem is, her school is about 25 minutes from our house, and this fall juggling the younger two girls while getting her to school just seemed like more than I wanted to do. Sis’s schedule tends to get screwed up on school days. I never had as much time to run errands and get things done while Miss was at school as I thought I would.

Plus, I just want her home with me.

So I decided she would be done with school at the end of October. I talked with her about this, and she was fine with it. Her last day was the school’s Halloween party. It was a fun way to close out her preschool experience. All of us girls were in attendance.

Miss was super excited to show Lass her school.

I love seeing how much their relationship has grown just since last school year. The last time I had Lass at Miss’s school she seemed so much younger than the kids there. This time she fit right in.

They are the best of friends. I can’t wait to see how they grow together now that we’ll be starting “preschool” at our house.

And speaking of growing, our littlest ballerina is getting ready to move.

I’m so not ready for mobility.

Her first Halloween was lots of fun. She snuggled right in to go Trick or Treating with her big sisters. Or as Lass says, “Trick or Tricking”

It was pretty chilly last night, so we kept asking them if they wanted their hoods up. Miss said, “Nope. I like to feel the breeze in my hair.”

They were a little bit shy at the first house we visited.

But after that they were such funny, outgoing little trick or treaters. They actually stepped right into the second house on our route!

We did a quick sweep of our little neighborhood and rushed home to get into jammies and hit the road.

We’re at the Farm for the next week and a half for deer hunting.

It will be our first week of home preschool, and we’re going freestyle.

Tonight we watched five deer out the window. We talked all about does vs. bucks and had a cool experience when Miss banged on the window and the buck on the lawn looked right up at her. She was excited when I explained that he had heard her and was trying to figure out what the noise was. We watched him run off a few minutes later.

I haven’t yet decided if I’m going to actually get a preschool curriculum or just go with some of the things that are easily available online, some of the stuff that Miss did at her school, and lots of playing. I’m leaning towards the latter. I’m a little bit nervous about “doing it right,” but I think we’ll be okay.

I’m excited about having my oldest girl home with me full time again.

 

Sewing Past and Present

Miss has really been into sewing for the past couple of weeks. A few days before we left to come to my parent’s house, she said she wanted to get a “Princess Starglow” (yellow star-shaped princess character from a Care Bear movie) and asked if she could use her allowance that she has been saving to buy one. I told her I wasn’t sure if we could buy a Princess Starglow, and looked on the computer with her to see if anyone sold one. No one does. So she asked, “Can we make one?” Well. Okay.

I told her we could. She initially asked to make one with yarn. I told her it might work better to sew one. We made a special trip to Hobby Lobby to get some shiny material. I drew a pattern and traced it on the fabric. I was all set to get it ready to sew, and excited for her to have her first experience with my sewing machine. She looked at it and said, “No Mommy, I want a small Princess Starglow.” Apparently the pattern I made was too big. My girls seem to have a strong affinity for pocket-sized toys and dolls. I should have known.

When she protested the Princess Starglow I had started making it was just a day or two before we left for this trip. So I put the Princess Starglow makings out of sight and put the project on hold until we get home.

She’s been fine with that, but has still had “sewing” on her mind. Today, my mom got the girls to “sew” on some leaf-shaped lacing cards. Miss saw some light blue yarn and asked me to sew a Cinderella Dress out of it. I told her I couldn’t really do that with the yarn. She didn’t understand, since we hadn’t actually gotten to the sewing step in the Princess Starglow project, so she said, “But you could try, Mommy.” Oh boy. I can’t say no to that. I agreed that I could.

Before I got a chance to test my Fairy Godmother skills, my mom brought out something that took my back to the very beginning of my own sewing journey.

I started making this quilt when I was about five years old (that’s over 30 years ago, folks). My mom cut the squares from scraps and traced hearts on each of them for me to quilt.

I worked on it off and on for many (roughly 20) years. Some of the stitches are huge and very wobbly.

Funnily, I was just wondering about this quilt this morning when Miss was asking me about sewing. I haven’t seen it in at least a decade. It was awesome to see it again.

I have finished 19 of 35 squares.

Today I talked to my girls about us finishing the rest of it together. They were really into the idea. Lass repeatedly said, “Yes! We do it togevah (together)!” I think it must have been meant-to-be that I didn’t finish this as a girl. It will be so much better for me to finish it with them.

So, back to the Cinderella dress. I had no fabric. Just blue yarn. I cut the bottom off of a paper towel roll. Shaped it into sleeves. Wrapped the yarn around.

Miss was really excited about it. She loved it. She showed it to my husband. He said, “Oh cool, it’s Toodee!”

Toodee?!

C’mon! Really?

You can see it, right?

All that really matters I guess is that Miss loves it. Now she wants me to “sew” her a Cinderella to go in the dress. I’ve created a monster… .

When Grandma is a Children’s Librarian

We read a lot at our house. I mean a lot.

I read many books to my girls every day. We talk about what we read. Sometimes we even do little activities related to what we’ve read.

When we come to Grandma’s house, things get taken to a whole new level.

She brings home wonderful new books from the library, where she works as the children’s librarian. 

Beautiful books that beg to be read over and over and over. Books that are so well written and illustrated that I actually enjoy reading them over and over and over.

Then Grandma does one better.

She busts out the felt board with all sorts of laminated animals and vegetables and fruits to go with classics like “Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?,” “Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What Do You Hear?,” and of course, “The Very Hungry Caterpillar.”

I love that she makes many of our old favorites come to life in new ways.

Last night she brought out a bag full of camels with different numbers of silly-looking humps, from five down to zero. She taught the girls a goofy song about “Sally the camel.” It was a little math lesson too, with her number of humps decreasing by one with each round of the song.

Miss got really into it and cracked up laughing every time the song ended with Sally having “no humps” and the revelation that she was a horse. She thought that was pretty clever.

Lass totally didn’t get the words, but she sang at the top of her lungs anyway.

I love this stuff. I laughed hard last night with my girls and my mom.

This week has promoted good bonding for my girls with each other and with Grandma and Grandpa.

We went as a family to story time at my mom’s library yesterday. I asked my husband to come with us, but then felt a little guilty about it.

I second-guessed my request that he join us right before we left and told him he didn’t really need to come. He was entirely willing to come, but I was still feeling bad and thinking, “Why did I ask him to come? I should be able to take my kids to story time by myself, for pete’s sake” (Mommy guilt is so stupid). He came anyway. And of course I did have reasons for asking him, knowing that the timing of the story time coincided with Lass’s second feeding of the day. It would have been a little tricky to help my older girls with the activities I know my mom packs into her story times (in yesterday’s story time they colored, heard two stories, used finger puppets and needed help to get them on their fingers, did a group numbers puzzle, had a craft project, and ate a snack) while nursing a baby.

And yes, I could have done it by myself.

But it turns out it was really good he was there. He held Sis so I didn’t have to wear her while sitting with the big girls on the floor. And of course in the middle of the second story, just after I had helped Lass get ten little monkey puppets onto her fingers, she announced that she had to go potty.

And Sis needed to eat right after we got back from that bathroom trip. So Daddy and Grandpa helped out with the craft project of the day. I just know that if my husband hadn’t been there, Lass would have waited to announce the need to potty until I was in the middle of feeding Sis, in the middle of the second story, right after getting ten monkey puppets on her squirmy fingers.

It was a little reminder that, even though I can manage to do all sorts of things by myself with my girls, sometimes it’s cool to ask someone to help. Having my hubby there made the morning infinitely easier. Thanks hubby.

This week is coming to a close way too quickly. Tomorrow we will be visiting with my brother and his family, and all too soon we’ll be heading home. I so wish my family lived nearer. My girls are blooming this week. Grandparents rule.

Leaves

At home, we are well past the peak of fall color. Things are starting to look a bit brown. It’s getting cold and I can feel winter coming.

But this week we’re visiting my parents. They live 10 hours south of us, and still have lots of wonderful color and nearly-80-degree weather to enjoy.

It’s warm and beautiful. And we’re taking full advantage.

There’s lots of room to run at Grandma and Grandpa’s house. And I just can’t resist taking pictures of my gorgeous girls in these gorgeous leaves.

Of course, my girls love playing in the leaves. I got them searching for big, different, colorful leaves.

We collected a bunch of leaves and then the girls went to town playing in them.

I was really excited to have the girls do some leaf rubbings after their naps.

I helped each of them do a maple leaf, but they were much more interested in just coloring. I tried to talk to them about the differences in the leaves and the types of trees from which they came. We had collected maple, oak, dogwood, and something else. Hickory, I think. I was really excited to get into the leaves. I thought I was going to have one of those super-fun-and-totally-educational-awesome-mom experiences with them.

They just wanted to color. Oh well.

It was a fun afternoon. And we’re at Grandma and Grandpa’s. My girls are laughing like crazy and getting tons of love from my parents. Can’t beat that.

Best Halloween Craft Project Ever

I am a huge fan of Pinterest. I pin stuff all the time. Tons of recipes and home decor ideas and great craft projects for my kids. I have a whole pin board of fun stuff to do with my girls.

I have never done any of it.

Until now.

Recently I made a vow to actually get into my “Kid Stuff” pin board and do some of the projects. The first one I picked was this Ghost Garland.

I used styrofoam balls from Hobby Lobby instead of paper, so I could put the ghosts outside. And I cut an old chenille bedspread to use as the ghost “sheets.” I gave each of the girls a sharpie to draw the ghosts faces.

I love how they turned out and the girls had a blast making them.

They named them and then played with them for quite a while before I put them up.

We gathered them up to make them into a garland.

That part didn’t work out so well. I couldn’t figure out how to do it without ending up with a hopelessly tangled mess of yarn.

So we hung them individually.

No glue. No paint. No glitter.

Easy. Cute. Love.

Milestones for Sis

This little snuggly peanut just got her first tooth yesterday.

Okay actually, I can’t be sure that it first popped through the skin yesterday, but that’s when we noticed it. Er, my husband noticed it.

I have been checking from time to time, thinking that she would be getting a tooth soon. So I know it hasn’t been too long since that little chomper broke the skin. I’m just not 100% sure it was yesterday.

But yesterday is the day that will go down in her baby book as the day her first tooth came in. Is it awful that I don’t know for sure? That I haven’t been checking every day like I did with the other two (or at least with Miss)?

Thing is, she’s just such a happy baby she hasn’t even been fussy. She’s been chewing pretty hard on her toys for a while. And she’s been pretty drooly. So I thought she might be getting kind of close to a tooth, but she never acted like her mouth bothered her. She’s such a mellow girl, I just didn’t know. Now I do.

In addition to her new tooth, she’s been trying out some new food.

So far, she’s not really a fan. She has had avocado (that’s what she’s eating in the pictures), applesauce, and mashed banana. She hated the applesauce (sour puss face and huge full-body shudders and all) and flatly rejects the banana. She ate the avocado pretty well.

Not that you can tell from these photos…

We’ll be trying sweet potatoes and some squash soon. Maybe she’ll like those more.

 

Our First Homeschool Field Trip

One thing I was nervous about when trying to make the decision about whether to homeschool our girls was finding a local group of homeschoolers with whom we would fit. It took a while, but I eventually did find a group and was really excited to start going to functions and meeting other homeschooling families. Then I realized most things the group was planning were geared toward older kids or took place during nap time. So I’ve been stalking the group’s FB page, waiting and hoping for an activity that I could get to with Miss, if not all three of the girls. Today, we made it to our first field trip.

We went to the fire station.

The trip occurred during nap time, but I got a babysitter for the two younger girls and told Miss she could skip her nap today. While we were driving to the fire station, Miss asked me why Lass and Sis couldn’t come with us. I told her that they were too young to skip their naps. I said how excited I was to have some time to spend just with her. Know what she said? “Yeah. But I wish my sisters were with me.” Love this girl.

She got a big kick out of the firefighter in his “robot” suit.

After our lesson on fire safety, we got to take a tour of the fire station and look at all the trucks.

I loved this. It reminded me of many, many visits to the fire station to see my Dad when I was a girl. I talked to Miss about how her Grandpa was and her uncle is firefighter as we walked around the station. I told her that Grandpa’s fire station had a pole that the firefighters slid down when the fire alarm rang, and that I used to slide down it (okay, just halfway) when I was little.

She got to check out the engine.

It was a good afternoon with my oldest girl.

I must admit I was very nervous going to this field trip. I felt like the new kid in school. I really wanted to meet some other families we could connect with on our homeschool journey. Unfortunately, the situation was not really conducive to lots of visiting with other moms. I did meet one other mom briefly, but there was no chance for chatting or bonding. I had fun anyway, and I can see us doing this regularly. Except for the nap skipping thing. That didn’t work out so well come bedtime tonight.

After our field trip, Miss and I rounded out our special afternoon together by getting some ice cream. This girl takes after her mama. She loves some ice cream.

And this ice cream was good.

I loved sitting with my girl and chatting over ice cream. She’s funny, my girl is. She was singing and laughing and making up silly stories.

She was eager to go next door to the book store and check things out. She is her mama’s daughter. This one loves books. Books and ice cream. Yep.

It was a great afternoon.