It’s finally spring here.

Glorious, beautiful, sunny and warm spring.

I have always loved spring. I think it’s impossible to not love spring when you live in a place where it gets really cold during winter.

Here spring is like a fun new beginning. It’s a time to get my kids outside without it taking 30 minutes just to get dressed to do so. It’s a heady feeling of breathing in fresh, warm air and feeling the breeze in my hair.

Yes, I always have loved spring.

But this year? This year I love, love, LOVE spring. Looooove it.

I have been waiting for it for so long. My kids have too.

This past weekend was our first spring weekend of the year. We did spring this weekend. Yesterday alone, we did almost everything spring consists of in one morning.

My in-laws came to visit and the girls had a wonderful time playing outside with them. My father-in-law spent a lot of time pushing swings.

The swings seemed to throw some sort of magic switch in my girls, especially Lass, as they all sang as loudly as they could starting almost immediately once the swings started going. They all sang as loudly as they could. At the same time. Different songs. It was awesome.

Also awesome is seeing green grass in our yard.

Baby Sis is still not entirely sure of the grass when she first sits in it. She warms up pretty quickly though.

We moved from swings to the trampoline,

to the muddy, but oh-so-irresistible puddle left by the drainage ditch at the side of our yard.

The girls could spend all day in that puddle.

But happily they were ready to move on to other things after a while of “fishing” with sticks and splashing and throwing things into the water.

I said “Bubbles” and they were all over it.

Baby Sis was imitating her sisters and me, really trying to get some bubbles going.

Then we pulled out the chalk and made masterpieces on the driveway and the rocks.

Of course we had lots of rolling and wresting and running and spinning in the grass.

Just look at them go.

Yeah, I think they’re happy that spring has finally arrived too.

Wednesdays are my least favorite day of the week. They are “swimming lesson day.” The day I have to make sure we’re all fed and dressed and ready to go by 8:30 (we are so spoiled now that Miss doesn’t go to preschool anymore). The day I have to break it to Lass over breakfast that we have to hurry and get ready because Miss has swimming lessons. The day she cries because her sister’s swimming lesson means she and Sis get dropped off at the drop-in childcare at our YMCA for an hour (she loves it there when Miss goes in with her, but can’t stand that she can’t come to swimming lessons). The day I am most likely to act like a crabby jerk of a mom because we are in a hurry and Lass changes her outfit three times and Miss has a fit when getting in the car because she forgot to grab the six thousand toys she wants to bring with her.

Man, I hate Wednesdays.

I was not my best mom self today. Hate that feeling. Blech.

Happily, Miss is doing great in her swimming lessons.

She doesn’t like getting her face wet much, and she won’t jump in by herself. But she can swim and float with a float belt on. She’s great at kicking. And she does put her face in the water and blow bubbles, when she has to.

I got really spoiled in the summer when she took lessons from an awesome teacher. Since then I have been really frustrated with her instructors. I don’t want to be that mom who complains to her kid’s teacher about every little thing or tries to tell the teacher how to teach the class. But it is really annoying to spend six weeks taking my kid to lessons with a teacher who is just not really helping her learn that much.

For example, in her last session of swimming, the instructor tried to get her to jump into the water, but he wouldn’t let her grab his hand. Even in the first class, on the first day she met him, when she has no rapport or trust established with this random guy, he wouldn’t let her grab his hand to jump in the pool. She never did seem to feel very comfortable with this guy, and she didn’t learn much during the six-week class.

This time around, her teacher has been pretty much the same about the jumping-in-the-water thing. Today she let Miss grab her hand (pic above), but typically she hasn’t. Not only did she not let her grab her hand in previous classes, but she actually grabbed Miss’s float belt several times and jerked her into the water when she hesitated. I am not a fan. But, though Miss didn’t really like this, she didn’t seem to be too freaked out by it. She enjoys swimming and she liked her teacher well enough, so I never said anything about it. Again, I don’t want to be that mom.

But now we’ve finished six more weeks of lessons and Miss has barely learned any more than what she was doing at the end of last summer. Today she got her “report card,” and there were tons of things on it that she did not “pass.”

Now, I have to say, I truly don’t care if she moves to the next class. I don’t care if there are things she hasn’t learned to do yet, as long as she is learning and progressing and having fun. I’m not one of those parents who sits on the sidelines watching one of my child’s activities and getting all flustered if she makes a mistake or doesn’t execute a skill perfectly. Usually I just smile and nod, give some encouragement, or acknowledge that I’m watching her.

BUT it really frustrates me when her teacher says that she hasn’t learned to do essential skills for the class, but the teacher never attempted to teach those skills. Especially when they’re skills that Miss learned to do, and passed, on her “report card” from last summer.

This time around, she didn’t pass bobbing three times under water. The teacher never tried to get her to do this. She did it last summer.

She didn’t pass learning to dive from a seated position. They were never taught this during this session of classes. Last summer, with authority:

This time she didn’t even pass floating on her back by herself for five seconds with a float belt. She certainly did that last summer, and I think in the fall as well. This time her teacher never attempted to have her do this, until today. Before today they spent way too much time floating around the pool lying on their backs on these ridiculously huge “kick boards” with just their feet dangling off the ends so they couldn’t really even kick effectively.

Today when Miss’ teacher finally tried to get her to float on her back by herself, of course she did it, and her teacher looked at me with this proud smile and said, “We have a floater!” I just smiled back and gave a thumbs up, while what I really wanted to say was, “You think you taught her that??? She’s been doing that for nine months!”

She didn’t pass “jump in pool and swim back to the side, unassisted.” This is probably her very least favorite thing to do, and I’m not sure if she would have passed it this time, no matter who was teaching her. But last summer she was really making progress on it and becoming more comfortable, instead of getting super nervous because of being expected to jump in, with no help, with a person who was essentially a stranger, at least at first.

One of her old teachers helping her learn to jump in and swim back to the side:

I know, even with all my protesting that I’m trying not to be “that mom,” by writing this post, I’m kind of being “that mom.” And I’m really not saying that her teacher this time around (or in the fall) was a bad teacher. She connected with the kids and Miss had a lot of fun with her. She was extremely encouraging. In her defense, she didn’t know that Miss had previously competed these skills successfully. I’m sure she had her reasons for doing things the way she did.

And the thing is, as I said above, I’m not frustrated that Miss didn’t pass to the next level or that there were things on her report card that she isn’t able to do yet. I’m not trying to say that my child is an amazing swimmer and should be moved to the “Eel” class right away. I’m not saying (or thinking) that her teacher is an idiot for not recognizing her skill.

What frustrates me is that I truly don’t know what her skill level is, or could be, at this point. Her teacher did not help her to reach her potential, so I don’t know what she can do. I do know that there are things she was never challenged to do, that her teacher said she did not pass, but that she has passed in previous classes. I want my kids to have the experience of being around people who bring out the best in them and challenge them to reach their limits, so they can expand those limits.

In the grand scheme of things, I know this is not a big deal. Miss doesn’t know the difference, because I’ve never even talked to her about “passing” to the next class. She doesn’t care. She loves the water. She enjoyed her class and is probably becoming a stronger swimmer simply through more exposure to swimming. She’ll take the same class again, and that’s okay.

And I’ll sleep better tonight for having vented all this ridiculous “swimming lesson drama” here.

One thing Miss did get from this class that she was too scared to do in the summer was a trip down the water slide.

She was terrified of that thing in the summer. This time she was a little bit nervous the first time, but then practically dragged her teacher back up the stairs for another turn. She told me at bed time it was her favorite part of her day.

I’m happy someone loves Wednesdays.

We girls have been on our own since Thursday morning.

Daddy is out of town for a few days.

We’re holding the fort.

Though we miss Daddy like crazy when he’s gone, I try to make things extra fun (and extra easy) when I’m on my own so we can all stay sane.

Okay, so I can stay sane.

We eat easy meals. We have picnics in front of the TV with a movie on. Tonight we went to buy some Easter dresses (it just occurred to me that we need these this year since we’ll be going to church, and Carter’s is having a 50%-off sale) and hit the Culver’s drive through on the way home. They ate dinner while watching Snow White.

Easy.

During these girls-only days I’ve been finding such joy in watching and listening to my girls play. Even more than usual for some reason. It’s probably in part because I’ve been trying to just slow down and be more mindful. I also think it’s because the two older girls are playing together so well these days.

And because Little Sis’s personality is just so fun to watch. This girl is turning one in five days!

The pretend play of Miss and Lass is so creative and funny I could listen to them all day. A favorite game this week has been playing veterinarian. They discuss at length the various ailments of their stuffed animals and how they are going to heal them. Miss gives orders. They say, “Let’s…” and “What if…” a lot. They’re learning so much just from playing together. Have I ever mentioned how happy it makes me that they have each other? As my husband says, “It warms the cockles of my heart.”

They make up all sorts of scenarios with their princess dolls. They go far beyond your typical princess stories.

They’ve been listening to the “Tangled” soundtrack this week. We usually listen to it in the car, but yesterday we played it loudly in the house, and they decided they needed their hair braided like Rapunzel so they could dance.

(My braiding skills have come a long way!)

The dancing Rapunzels:

They’re all growing up so fast.

We’re eagerly awaiting the return of the Daddy.

When I’m parenting on my own for a while I even brave the ugly basement. The girls love the basement.

Sis loves walking back and forth across the open area of floor with this lion. When she gets stuck, she gives me this look:

So I turn her around and she goes again.

Yep, they love the basement.

Easy.

Daddy comes home tomorrow. We can’t wait.

P.S. I’m typing this post during the commercials of the movie “Blind Side.” I tend to watch chick flicks (and Golden Girls, and Friends, and Days of Our Lives on Soap Net) after the girls go to bed when I’m home alone. I’ve never seen this movie before. Love this movie.

It was a wonderful vacation.

After the first few whirlwind days cram-packed with traveling and activity, we settled down for the rest of the week to a slower pace. A pace that felt a bit more vacation-like.

I like a slower pace.

We spent lots of time in the pool (I have hardly any photos of this, because we all went in and played in the water together).

Wednesday morning we took a nice long walk around the marina looking for manatees. We didn’t see any this trip. But when we got home, the girls were very curious about manatees. Lass was asking all about the sounds they make. I actually wasn’t sure what they sound like, so we pulled up some You Tube videos to find out. We watched this one several times and then checked out this one. The girls asked to watch the second one over and over and cracked up laughing each time.

Thursday was one of my favorite days of the trip. We had a lazy morning and then went out to a nearby bird sanctuary. It’s a place where they house injured birds that cannot be returned to the wild. I loved seeing the birds up close, especially these two majestic bald eagles.

There was a playground right outside the sanctuary on the waterfront.

It doesn’t get much more “vacation” than this. The girls played in the sand a bit and then we went to a local restaurant for lunch and a little ice cream shop for dessert. And, Sis stayed awake during the ride home (with a little help from me) so we even had good naps afterward.

Friday was the real beach day. We got going fairly early in the morning for the drive up to this lovely beach on the gulf. It was a beautiful day, though a bit on the windy side.

I have a love-hate relationship with the beach. I love the air and the sounds and the smell. I love the sun and how it sparkles on the water. I love the endless blue of the water and watching the sea birds swooping and gliding looking for food (I’m talking about pelicans here mostly, I am not a huge fan of the seagull). Unfortunately, I really, really don’t love the sand. Oh, how I loathe sand. In my younger days of going to the beach to “lay out,” I didn’t mind the sand too much. I could always manage to keep it contained and minimize the annoyance of it when it was just me, a few friends, and a huge towel or blanket.

With kids not so much. This stuff gets everywhere.

But oh how my girls love to dig and play in the sand. As much as I despise the it, I love watching them in it. So I just had to get over myself.

The finished castle that Miss made with her Papa:

I love dipping my toes in the water at the beach. There’s something about the pull of the surf on my feet and the swirling of sand around them that makes me smile. Even if the water was frigid this time of year. Miss really loved standing in the water. Lass didn’t want her feet in it at all, but she liked to look at it.

Baby Sis had her first experience of the beach and seemed to enjoy it quite a bit.

She seemed to like the look and sound of the waves and the feel of the sand, though she freaked out when the water washed over her feet.

 It was a lovely vacation.

Once it was over though, we. were. done. It’s amazing how, no matter how fun the vacation, when it’s time to get home, I want to be home.

We traveled all day Saturday to get here. Literally. “All day” as in we left at 8 am to drive nearly 2 hours to the airport for a two-and-a-half hour flight. Then we got our vehicle from my husband’s sister’s house and drove another five-and-a-half hours. We got here a little after 8:30 pm, so it was a very long day, but so worth it to get here and just be home.

Back to the grind today. Grocery shopping. Snowy weather. Homeschooling. We are recharged from our trip, so it was good.

I love to cook. Love it.

I love creating something to feed my family that is healthy and tastes delicious. This makes me happy.

However, I don’t love cooking dinner most nights. Really, I rather loathe it in fact.

Largely this is my own fault, because inevitably the days I dread the approach of the dinner hour are the days when I’ve hardly given a thought to what I’m going to cook that night and have no protein thawed and panic begins to set in right about the time my husband asks, “So, what’s the dinner plan?”

Ugh. I cringe just writing about that moment. Note to self: Get better at meal planning.

*****

I really, truly, absolutely love the artistic mind of my oldest girl. I love that she wants to create things and that she has a clear vision of how she wants her masterpieces to turn out. I love that, when she asks for something and I tell her we don’t have one, her mind will often go directly to, “But we can make one!”

I don’t so much love when said girl determines that she, oh say, wants a Cinderella Dress “sewn” out of a single piece of blue yarn,

or a Rapunzel made from some purple and gold pom poms, or a Goony Bird drawn just so, or a Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer made out of a bunch of random wrapping paper scraps.

Because heaven forbid the adult who helps her attain her creative goal is not totally in sync with her vision. She is very particular, that girl is.

Just today she went through at least three pieces of construction paper to “practice” drawing a snow man. Love.

*****

Finally, I love the stage that sweet Baby Sis is in right now. Love. It.

She is becoming so much more interactive and her sweet little personality is starting to shine.

She is doing some signs (“more” and “all done”), she plays little games, she responds to her name, she does this crazy, adorable I-just-want-to-eat-her-up head nodding thing that totally melts me every time, and she’s crawling everywhere.

And, oh yeah, she’s crawling everywhere.

You may think I’m a horrible mom for saying this, but I as much as I L-O-V-E this baby phase, I really don’t love this baby phase.

I do not love that I can’t set her on the floor for five minutes to make a coffee in the morning without her crawling away while my back is turned and me realizing it and panicking, “Crap! I don’t think I vacuumed under the table after dinner last night!” and running to get her just in time to save her from aspirating some petrified chunk of the previous night’s dinner that was dropped on the floor by one of her sisters (just one of many reasons I miss having a dog, by the way).

Repeat a variation of this scenario in any room of the house, any time I set her on the floor, all. day. long.

She wants to move. She wants to be where her sisters are and do what they’re doing.

She wants to explore.

I know, I know. Of course she wants to explore. I just wish exploring in this phase didn’t have to include putting every darn thing she sees into her mouth. As you probably know if you’ve read many of my previous posts, I have a wee bit of a choking phobia.

And it doesn’t help that we recently had a bit of a choking scare with her and now I am pretty much afraid to put her on the floor at all if I can’t be watching her like a hawk the whole time. I’m developing tendonitis or something in my elbow from carrying her 22 pounds of adorable around all day long. I’m serious. Neurotic much?

So far with all three of my kids, this time between 9 and 18-ish months, when mobility is advanced so much more than reasoning, has been my least favorite phase. Perhaps I shouldn’t admit it, but oh it is so true!

I suppose that’s just the nature of motherhood though. Even though there are some things about it that I really don’t love, don’t like, can’t stand, etc., in the grand scheme of things, I love it. I don’t love everything about it. But oh, how I do love it.

Exercise and not enough sleep and wine out with friends last night makes for a tired mama today. Whew. I’ve been dragging all day.

Thankfully, my girls decided to have a dance party tonight. This is truly one of my favorite things. I love watching them dance.

They were really feeling it tonight.

Their enthusiasm is utterly contagious, and it’s really impossible to not dance with them when they’re feeling it, tired or not.

So we danced.

We busted out our ribbons and twirled and stomped in time.

It brings such joy to my heart that my girls love music and dancing. They are totally un-self-conscious and are so happy to just move to the beat.

Now I’m even more tired, but savoring the evening of laughter and fun with my girls.

Today I wrote a guest post for a lovely blog, 2dayswoman. 2dayswoman is wonderfully written by Raquel, and is focused on providing information, inspiration, and support for women all over the world (Raquel is in New Zealand!). Raquel was kind enough to feature my post in her blog’s section on marriage.

The guest post is called 11 Strategies to Ditch the Anger and Love Your Husband. It a bit different than what I usually write here. I put on my “Couple’s Therapist Cap” for this one, inspired by this guy:

Enjoy.

When I was pregnant with Miss, I read everything I could get my hands on about being pregnant, labor and delivery, taking care of a baby, the necessary gear to take care of a baby, and so on. I joined a support group for breastfeeding moms before she was even born. I extensively researched every baby item I bought, learned all about making my own baby food (bought several “cook books” for this in fact), and obsessed over having the perfect nursery. I had waited a long time to have a baby (I was almost 33 when Miss was born), and I was kind of a fanatic about wanting to do it right.

Then she was born, (after a labor and delivery in which nothing went as I had so carefully planned for it to) and I was a hot mess of anxiety and worry. I got nervous about everything when we brought her home from the hospital. My husband set her car seat on the counter and I freaked out. What if she falls?? I set it on the floor and worried, what if the dogs lick her?

I worried all the time and went through all sorts of possible catastrophes in my head and what I would do to minimize harm to her if they occurred. For example, if I fell down the stairs while holding her, I would simply throw my own body under hers so she would not hit the floor and I would not land on top of her. Seriously. I visualized this every time I walked down the stairs while holding her. Or up the stairs. Or near the stairs.

I was never one to worry before she was born. Afterwards, I could not seem to stop.

As she grew, I continued to worry and obsess. I never put her on the floor without a blanket under her. I didn’t want her playing with plastic toys. I never let her wear socks for nap time in case she took one off while out of my sight and shoved it in her mouth and suffocated (yes, really).

I didn’t let her eat anything crunchy until she was 2. Once when she was about 14 months old, my nephew tried to give her a little pretzel stick at snack time (while I was anxiously discussing with my sister-in-law whether it was okay for her to have yogurt made with skim instead of whole milk; I was that crazy). I screeched, “Noooo!” and lunged across the kitchen to prevent him from handing it to her. I’m sure I scared the crap out of the poor little guy. I don’t even know what I thought would happen if he gave it to her. She’d poke her eye out? Choke on the skinny little thing? Who knows? I was utterly insane in those early days.

I could go on to list all sorts of crazy first-child moments like this. But I won’t (any more than I already have). Because eventually I started to relax a bit. I had another baby, and I began to lighten up.  I had to.

Happily, though some of my decrease in anxiety came from necessity once Lass was born, much of it came from a realization that I sort of knew what I was doing. See, when Miss was a baby, I felt totally clueless. I always doubted myself. I had read so much about every little thing that I was supposed to do, that I was nearly paralyzed in the face of the real life decisions that needed to be made. Okay, not quite paralyzed, though it sure did feel that way sometimes. But after going through that trial by fire, I felt so much less worried when I had to do it all again with Lass.

With Miss, I worried about whether she was getting the right amount of sleep, at the right times, in the right places. Was she on a good schedule? Was I ruining her sleep forever by letting her nap in her bouncy seat? Was she becoming horribly spoiled because she woke often at night wanting to eat, so I nursed her, even after she was four months old and my pediatrician told me she should be able to make it through the night?

With Lass, if she slept, it was great. She napped in her swing for months, and I didn’t care. Well, I cared a little. I still worried a little bit that if I let her sleep there for too long she’d never be able to sleep in her bed. But more important to me was that she was sleeping.

I was learning to just do what worked and worry about the rest later.

Everything did fall into place too. It worked out just fine. I realized that mistakes are not catastrophes and it all turns out okay in the end.

When Sis was born, even more of my uptightness melted away. These days, I really don’t worry about where she sleeps as long as she does it at the same time her sisters do for afternoon naps.

I am no longer worried about feedings. I used to try to nurse Miss and Lass in private whenever possible. Now I nurse Sis while walking around the state fair, the farmer’s market, Target, wherever. With two other small children, I can’t afford to be uptight about where I nurse. In fact, much of the time I can’t even afford to be sitting down while I feed Sis. Quite often I have to do other things simultaneously, like making sandwiches for her screaming hungry sisters, coloring, or adjusting dress up outfits.

I’ve learned that all the things I thought were so stressful and anxiety provoking when Miss was an infant are child’s play compared to trying to figure out the best way to discipline a preschooler. That’s not to say that the anxiety I had with one baby was less real or less important than what I sometimes struggle with now. It was just different. I’ve changed as a mom. I used to feel worried all the time. Now I have less worry and more frustration and fatigue and doubt. So many things that I used to fret endlessly about, I now consider to be no big deal. I find myself worrying now about character development and modeling good behavior and maintaining connectedness with my kids in spite of sometimes temporarily losing my sanity.

I still worry about my girls. I know that I always will (truth is, I still sometimes visualize throwing myself under Sis if I happen to fall on the stairs while holding her).

That worry will always be changing to fit the developmental stages of my kids and myself as a mother.

Motherhood is an ever-evolving state of being.

They grow, and I grow. I do my best to make the most of where I find myself each day.