On Letting Go

Lately I've realized just how quickly time has gone by.  I look at Aric and I know our baby/toddler/preschool days are rapidly coming to an end.  On Tuesday I was online researching information about which elementary he will attend this fall.  I also printed out the application for him to attend Kindergarten Round-Up this April.  It was a tearful day for me.  On one hand I want to hold onto him forever.  On the other I know that I need to teach him to be self-sufficient and let him be his own person.  He needs to learn how to function on his own and not be dependent on us.  Right now I'm praying for wisdom on whether sending him to half-day kindergarten is the best or if a full day is what he really needs.

The truth is he is growing up.  He can read, he can write, he can do math problems and so much more.  Yesterday he learned how to tie his shoes.

...and was rewarded for his efforts:

I want the best for him as he grows up and begins to expand his world.  As a mother all I can do is support him, teach him, pray for him and not hold on too tight when it's time to let him go.  Now if you'll excuse me I need to go cry some more. 

Oh, The Things...

  

...you find yourself doing as a parent.  I would never dream of wearing a tunnel in public, but wouldn't think twice about wearing it to chase a happy, screaming little boy around the house.  I want my kids to grow up knowing that their parents aren't afraid to play with them and make them happy.

(Excuse the blurry photos, but these are all I have to document the event.)

There's The Problem

This morning I had to take the kids to daycare while I attended training at work.  Normally I don't run into any of the other daycare parents because I drop my two off earlier than the others and in return pick them up earlier than the other kids.  This morning, since I dropped them off an hour later than usual, I ran into Biter's older sister and mom.  I'll admit I have a natural dislike for that family since their daughter bit mine.  I'm pretty non-confrontational, though, and tend to put on a good front even when I can't stand being around someone.

Biter's mom casually mentioned Kellyn getting bitten and gave a weak, half-hearted apology.  What really bothered me was this exchange:

Biter's Mom- "I really don't know what to do because she doesn't bite at home."

Biter's Older Sister- "She bit me on the nose the other day."

That right there is the problem.  You have no idea what is going on in your home.

Biter

I'm not really sure if I should be thankful that neither one of my kids is a biter, or mad that one of my kids is being targeted by a biter. 

A week and a half ago as Autumn was helping me put the kids in their car seats after daycare, I looked down and noticed Kellyn had red marks on her arm in the shape of a mouth with teeth.  I asked Autumn about it and sure enough another little girl crawled up to Kellyn and bit her.  Twice.  Autumn told me she would talk to the girl's mom and make her aware of the situation. 

I didn't think any more of it.

Until I was sitting at dinner last night, looked over, and saw more bite marks on Kellyn's arm.  Three different sets of them.  The story I got from Autumn was Kellyn grabbed a shirt that the other girl was holding and in retaliation she bit Kellyn.  Autumn separated them, but in another incident the girl went over to where Kellyn was in a bouncer and bit her again.  That's the point where it goes too far.  No longer can it be chalked up to teething or Kellyn grabbing something that didn't belong to her.   That vicious little girl came up to Kellyn and bit her without provocation.  I'm not a happy camper.

I'm not mad at Autumn, it's not her fault the girl is a biter.  I'm angry at the mom, who isn't working with her child on biting.  The mom who didn't believe that her "sweet angel" could bite anyone when she was told about the first incident.  Her course of action- to read up on the Internet about what she can do.  Um, that won't work unless you work with your child and teach her to not bite.  Apparently the mom also offered to get our kids together to work on teaching her daughter to not bite.  Does she think I'm crazy?  Kellyn has been bitten enough, I'm not about to expose her to this other child more than she already is.

I think I'll go teach Aric how to defend his sister...

Perfect Timing

Ever since Kellyn started to crawl, crawling has not been enough to satisfy her.  She rapidly progressed to pulling herself up to sit on her knees and within the last few days has begun to pull herself up into a standing position.  In one such moment when she was standing up, Ryan grabbed the camera in an attempt to capture a cute photo of her.  This is the photo he took:

Somewhere between him focusing the camera and clicking the shutter, Kellyn lost her balance and went head first over the chair rung.  The same chair rung that caught her and prevented her from splatting face first into the floor.  It seems I have another little daredevil on my hands...

Reflective

Reflective- that's how I feel today. Two years ago today, Aric was born followed by an F4 tornado. At times it's hard to believe he's already two and other times it seems that he's always been a part of our family.

After two miscarriages I wasn't sure we would ever have children. When I found out we were expecting Aric I gave God control of my pregnancy (not that I ever had it in the first place). After thinking there was a huge possibility that I would lose Aric early on, I came to terms with losing yet another child and took my pregnancy day by day because that's all I could handle. God had different plans for us, though, and Aric grew inside of me. I felt more confident as the months passed and genuinely looked forward to the fulfillment of my life-long dream to be a mom.

Two years ago I checked into the hospital, a week before my due date, to be induced. I was nervous facing the unknown outcome of the day. I'd heard horror stories of being in labor for days, the pain of pitocin, the pain of labor, etc. My labor wasn't easy. I had back pain, front pain and was starving through the whole ordeal. It's funny how you remember the weirdest things or maybe I was just that hungry. After 13 hours and no progression for the last 4, I came to a fork in the road. I chose to overcome fear and have a c-section rather than allow the doctor to screw sensors into my baby's head to monitor contraction levels for another couple of hours. (That still sounds barbaric to me.) It was scary being on the operating table, but I'll never forget the sound of Aric crying (or Ryan's descriptive play-by-plays of my operation). I cried when I heard and saw my son. It seemed unreal to finally have a child of our own. I was terrified to have such a responsibility in my life, but at the same time cherished every feeding, every diaper change and every little snuggle.

Fast forward two years and I no longer have a little baby. I have a little boy. We've had our ups and downs; days that I've wanted to go on forever and days that I've wanted to give him back. Aric is a complete joy, though. I thank God for every day that we have with him. It is fulfilling to view the world through his little eyes and again see the joy in a puddle of water, a dirt pile, or pushing a stroller up a hill and allowing gravity to take over and the stroller to chase you back down the hill. I can't describe the way my heart melts when he calls me "Mommy" or wants to cuddle with just me. He is truly a delight.

Happy Birthday, Aric! Enjoy your day.

What a Week

The week started off well and somewhere around Wednesday it took a left turn towards a bad week.  I woke up Wednesday morning to a gray, rainy day and a large amount of errands before me that needed to be taken care of.  In spite of the weather, they didn't seem too daunting and I was challenged to get them done.  That is until I turned our computer on.  It turned on, but wouldn't load.  It got stuck on a black screen with white letters claiming a system file has been deleted and I would need to insert the program disk to repair the problem.  That would be fine and dandy if I actually had the Windows disk to insert.  After a long talk with Ryan, a lot of whining (by me) about where to take the computer and how it would affect my day, we decided that I should take it in to Best Buy, buy Windows 7 and have them install that and reload the missing system file.  Did I forget to mention that Aric is the deleter of the missing system file?  Apparently if you smack the keyboard enough times you can actually hit a combination of things to do damage to a computer. 

I took the kids to town, dropped off the computer, almost handed over my first-born to pay for the repairs and continued on with our errands.  Errands that were completed in the pouring rain causing my jeans to wick up 6 inches of water from the hem.  I hate wearing wet clothes especially jeans.  We went home and not long after I received a call from Best Buy advising that they could not do a simple upgrade and would need to completely restore the computer to the manufacturer's settings thus wiping out every file, picture and home movie on that computer.  Panic set in and I forked over an additional $100, another trip into town and my external hard drive to save every digitally captured moment in our children's lives.  By the end of Wednesday I realized I had no patience, an extreme amount of stress, no energy and felt like a failure since I hadn't been the best mom to my kids.  I wanted a do-over.  No such luck.

Wednesday night into Thursday morning I decided I would allow Kellyn to cry it out overnight.  There is no need for a 7-1/2 month old to wake up multiple times overnight.  In theory it sounded great, in practice it didn't work out so well.  That girl can cry.  And cry.  And cry.  And cry.  An hour into her crying after checking on her multiple times I decided it would be easier to feed her to sleep.  It worked.  I forgot to mention that I had tried this same thing on Tuesday night into Wednesday morning but had to cave when I realized she was overdressed and somehow breaking out of her pajamas.  After two failed attempts and not much sleep it just seems easier to get up and feed her when she wakes up.  At least I'll get more sleep that way.  Thursday evening I figured out some of Kellyn's issues. She is now the proud owner of two bottom front teeth.

Thursday I was brain dead due to lack of sleep.  It affected my ability to multi-task and I was given a stern talking to at the end of the day.  Honestly right now I struggle with having a negative work attitude since my brother died.  I just don't care.  Work is not important to me.  In the grand scheme of life it won't matter.  I work because I have to not because I want to.  Family and loved ones matter so much more.  That is a balance that I truly need to find, since I don't really want to carry a lackadaisical attitude around with me.  I digress, though. 

I did get to pick up my computer on Thursday afternoon completely restored and not missing any of my data.  I have made a mental note to back things up more frequently to avoid any future crises and Aric has been served a restraining order to not touch the computer with a ten foot pole.  My only problem with the computer is needing to find time to learn to navigate Windows 7 and to install all of the missing programs and drivers needed to run the printer, photo editing software, mp3 player, etc.  I don't quite realize what is missing until I want to use it. 

Friday was fine until Ryan came home from work late Friday evening.  I got Aric, who was still awake, out of bed and brought him down to say hi to daddy.  Aric fell out of a chair, cut his cheek open and gave himself a black eye all within five minutes of Ryan walking through the door.  After lots of tears, Aric's very first band aid, ice cream and some quality time with daddy and mommy watching Shrek, Aric finally went back to bed.

On Saturday Aric fell outside while playing, skinned his knee and earned his second bandaid.  He also scraped his forehead somehow in a separate incident.  He's looking a little rough.

Today.  Today is Sunday and the start of a new week.  It's sunny and warm and looking better already.

Does This Mean...

...I should quit talking on my cell phone while driving the car?

A Change

We tried to have Aric and Kellyn share a room.  It turns out that even though they are close in age, they are too far apart in maturity.  We've had to keep the bassinet set up in our bedroom and choreograph how we get the kids to sleep in the same room and how/if they should wake up in the same room.  It's been a little stressful and a typical night consists of Kellyn falling asleep by 7:15pm.  I take her up to our room, put her in the bassinet and make sure the bedroom door is closed.  By 7:30pm Aric usually is ready for bed.  One of us will go through his bedroom routine and put him in his crib.  Aric usually protests rather loudly going to bed for the next 10 to 15 minutes.  Then I work out for an hour.  After working out before I take a shower I go into the nursery and check on Aric.  While there I turn off his nightlight, make sure the heater is on and then get Kellyn from our room.  I very carefully pick her up and move her to her crib in the nursery hoping that she doesn't wake up.  This doesn't even touch what happens overnight if/when one or more of them wakes up.

Ryan has suggested that we move Kellyn's crib to the guest room and so far I have resisted thinking that the room is too small, where are we going to put guests/kids when they visit, and what are we going to do for climate control, etc.  This morning, while lying in bed after going through an unusual night where Aric woke up crying, I was thinking about the guest bedroom again and it occurred to me that the current guest bedroom didn't have to be a guest bedroom.  Then the wheels started spinning and I came up with a plan.  After a couple of text messages back and forth with Ryan he decided to come home early today and help me with my plan.

Ryan moved Kellyn's crib to the guest bedroom and moved the guest bed into Aric's room, which is a much larger room.  It solves several problems and if we have guests they'll just use Aric's room and we'll move him to the pack and play in another room.  Here are some preliminary photos of Kellyn's new room:

Don't worry the Texas decor will be gone.  She has a Hawaiian Noah's Ark quilt which I plan to decorate her room around.

When the weather gets nicer I'll move that dresser out and refinish it to match the crib.  It'll be a good dresser for Kellyn to grow up with.

There's so much more to do and bare walls to decorate but it's a start.  At least tonight we won't have to go through our nightly dance.  It'll be nice to lay Kellyn in a crib and not have to move her an hour later.

Daylight Savings Time

Until I had children of my own, I never gave daylight savings time much thought.  I don't like it so much.  It does strange things to them:

Well, except for the missing pants.  That's his own doing.

Good Parenting

There are times as a parent when I'm busy making dinner, cleaning house, etc. and I suddenly realize that things don't sound right.  Like today when I realized I could hear the sounds of the jumperoo while Kellyn was in her bouncy chair in the kitchen with me.

Sometimes that kid is too clever for his own good.

Genetics

I was born in Hawaii and lived there for the first few years of my life.  Due to the warm climate, the majority of the time I lived in diapers and didn't wear much else.  It wasn't much of a problem until we moved to Seattle during the winter.  My parents love to regale people with stories of their embarrassment when they picked me up from Sunday school.  I was always in only a diaper and my teachers apologetically handed them a pile of my clothes saying, "We tried to keep them on her".  My parents would then dress me out in the hallway while everyone walked by in their winter coats.  It would only seem fair that I would pass on those same genes to my child. 

It started a couple of weeks ago when Autumn handed me Aric's shirt one day when I picked him up from daycare.  He apparently took if off repeatedly during nap time until she finally gave up and let him leave it off.  Early this morning Ryan found Aric in bed unzipping his pajamas and trying to get out of them.  Later on Ryan checked on Aric after realizing how quiet he was and found Aric in the kitchen trying to remove his clothes again. 

Hopefully it's just a phase, but I'm sure my parents would think it was payback if Aric decided to strip in Sunday school tonight.

Sabotage and Other Tidbits

After discovering that our new treadmill is not working (it thinks it's working but the treadmill belt won't move an inch), I called NordicTrack to get it fixed.  They ordered a new motor for the treadmill, but the motor is backordered until mid-March.  I am convinced Ryan arranged this to sabotage me winning our fitness challenge.

While spending time this morning baking banana bread, doing laundry, calling NordicTrack, talking to my mom, dealing with a naughty 20 month old and planning menu ideas, I seemed to have neglected someone a bit:

She fell asleep like this in her bouncy chair.  What a precious little girl.  I never get bored looking at her.

While I was busy, Aric entertained himself by reading, playing and making a mess of the house, typical toddler activities.

Finally, yesterday I came home to find a package waiting for me.  I was confused when I realized I mailed this package seven years ago to a friend as a birthday gift.  It was returned as unable to forward.  Too bad I no longer stay in touch with that person and I am unable to use the item since it's a maternity shirt.

Hello, My Name is Aric...

...and I like it when Mommy lets me pick out my own clothes.  My camouflage pants are my favorite.

...Because everything goes with camouflage, of course!

Nuffing

The other night as I'm sitting in the family room on the computer and Aric is down the hall doing who knows what in his room, I hear a loud crash.  I get up and walk down the hall to see what on earth he is up to. 

Aric is standing in the corner of his room by his nightstand looking down at the floor where his aquarium light is now lying.

"Aric, what are you doing?"

Aric pulls his arms in to his chest, turns towards me with a horrified look on his face and in a small voice says, "Nuffing".

All I could do was walk away laughing.

Catching Up

I know I haven't written anything in awhile, but I have been exhausted.  I thought I was just uninspired, but I really think I've just been too tired to even think.  Thankfully I'm feeling a little better with some bonus free time this week.

On Wednesday I had an unexpected free day when the little boy I've been watching stayed home with his dad.  It was so nice to get out of the house and run errands.  I felt so productive buying Aric new shoes for his quickly growing feet, mailing birthday packages, returning something for Ryan and even managing to squeeze in a visit with a friend who has never met Kellyn.  I was tired from taking my own two kids out, but I felt free, which made me realize how I've felt trapped by my own commitments.

After an extremely difficult day at work yesterday, I've been "blessed" with a day at home.  I say "blessed" because the price for staying at home today is a sick little boy.

Aric woke up this morning crying, congested and running a fever.  He's currently napping in bed.  Poor guy!  Hopefully he feels better soon.

Even though I've been tired, we have been busy playing, getting Aric to try new foods and just enjoying our little family.  One of our recent victories was Macaroni and Cheese.

I wouldn't have thought there was a need to call Macaroni and Cheese a victory.  I thought that it was just typical kid fare.  Nope, not at our house.  Basically Ryan had to trick Aric and throw a macaroni into his mouth for him to even try it.  After the initial freak-out, Aric realized he liked the taste and has since eaten Macaroni and Cheese on two separate occasions.  (He absolutely refuses leftover Macaroni and Cheese.  It's okay, though, I could do without that, too.)

Stealing a creative idea from a friend, Aric and I enjoyed working on this project:

The card is currently in the mail on its way to the recipient.  I thought it was a fantastic idea to allow Aric to play create art and something that I know our families would enjoy.  I'll have to keep that in mind for future occasions.  Thanks Carmen for the inspiration!

I'd be remiss not to mention Kellyn.  She's such a sweet baby and is so alert lately.  She loves to smile and talk at herself in the mirror.  She's also very aware of babies, her brother and faces.  Sunday was her last night of sitting with us in church and next Sunday will be her first night in the nursery.  She wasn't fussy per se, but she was LOUD.  Kellyn didn't want to sit still through the entire service.  She wanted to look around, shriek, and coo at everything in sight.  Normally it's very cute, but when you're trying to keep her quiet in church the cute factor vanishes rather rapidly.  My baby is just growing up too fast!

Advice Solicitation

Aric isn't quite ready for potty training, but we thought we should take some steps towards getting him familiar with the potty chair.  Does anyone have any great advice on potty training?

Of course I'm not fooling myself.  I realize that given children's temperaments, genders, and maturity levels Kellyn could be potty trained before Aric.  But I hope not!!

Merry Christmas from Our Family to Yours

What better way to start Christmas than with a photo in front of the tree?

Too bad no one wanted to cooperate.  Sadly, this is the best photo of the bunch.  Aric was also quite mad when we took away the cup to open presents.  (And yes, we gave him a potty chair for Christmas and I'm a horrible mother because I didn't wrap their presents.)

Aric's year was commemorated with Rocket from Little Einsteins.

"Pat, pat, pat, pat... Now raise your hands as high as you can and say 'Blast-off'."  He loves that show and will "Blast-off" when we're in the car, going down the slide, etc.

Kellyn's year was easy to commemorate.

She wasn't too aware of what was happening, but she was awake through it all.

...And apparently terrorized by the happenings.

Aric wasn't overly excited about any of his gifts (he was pretty excited about Kellyn's gifts) until he opened these trucks which brought on an excited laugh.

They also brought him "Nose and Toes" to the wall when he decided to deliberately throw one at Kellyn's head.

The rest of the night we hung out and watched Aric play with his toys and Daddy put them together.

Kellyn was pretty peaceful watching everything happen around her.

While Aric tore apart the house.

We hope you have as much fun as we did!  Merry Christmas!

Dear Starbucks...

Dear Starbucks,

Will you please deliver?  I'm sitting here half asleep dreaming of a tall gingerbread latte.  I really think one would brighten my day.  You see, it's been quite an ordeal already.

In the wee hours of this morning my daughter woke up hungry.  I dragged myself out of my nice warm bed to change her and feed her.  After being up with her for an hour trying to soothe her back to sleep, I heard a small voice down the hall say "Uh, oh".  I laid her back down and went to tend to my son.  I think his room was too cold and he woke up.  It's been snowing outside and the house is quite chilly upstairs.  I turned up his heater and brought him back to my bed to warm up.  In all I think I was up for two hours overnight tending to my children in a drafty old house.

Since waking up this morning I've dealt with a little 18 month old tornado, who almost gave me a black eye by head-butting me and who colored his face blue with a crayon.  Yes, apparently you can color your face with a crayon.

I love that wild, blue tornado, but I really do think a tall gingerbread latte would make it all better.  I would go get one myself, but it's snowed quite a bit and we do live fifteen miles out of town.  The thought of driving that far is wearing me out.

Yes, it does look like my driveway has been plowed,  (My "helpful" neighbor just came by and did plow the snow and $3000 worth of gravel onto the side of the drive.  It's going to be a long spring raking all of that gravel back into place.) but it still is fifteen miles to town.

So please, consider adding delivery to your services because it might just improve my day.