Just a few pictures

So I got out my camera this morning for the first time in ages.

I know! So shocking.
But somehow they still know how to pose.
and keep posing.
and even more adorable posing.
Silly posing followed immediately by a stereo of "let me see! let me see!" Kids love digital cameras.

Matt of course could be nothing but silly. I usually have him tell me jokes to get a natural smile out of him. It's a trick that works for all ages actually. As soon as they know what a joke is, you can get them to tell you one. They forget about the smirk and suddenly you have all sorts of opportunities for real smiles. Love that trick.

BTW, aren't they darling?

In Which Amy Lectures

I have a rant for today. You can skip it if you like. This news story started me on it this morning: Mother cuts off 61 year old son's allowance. It got me thinking about how people put off marriage longer and longer these days. About 20 somethings who think their 20s are for playing around and getting drunk and they'll get serious once they hit 30 and then they hit 30 and can't stay married because their spouse wants them to actually be a grown up. About all the teenagers who are less responsible than I expect an eight year old to be.

Helicopter parenting, that's what's doing this. We have parents who can't let go and want to solve their kids' every problem and they end up raising kids who can't solve any problems at all, kids who are perpetually kids because they've never been given any responsibility.

Pain and responsibility make grown ups. That's basically all their is to it. Stress matures us. If we spend all our time making sure our children are never stressed, never in pain, they won't grow up. You'll find yourself having to do "tough love" on a 39 year old child who still thinks you owe them some kind of support.

Cutting the apron strings is not an abrupt action, or it shouldn't be anyway. Apron strings should be slowly left to fray and tear until all you have left is the last thread. If you desperately repair and rebuild every tear, there will come a day when you have to slash your child away from you and that wound will bleed you dry.

Sarah recently went on a handcart trek with our church youth group. She left the day of her twelfth birthday when she was still emotionally very much an eleven year old. She came back a full teenager. She stood there in front of me last Saturday night, covered in red dust, her hair barely combed, tired, but poised. She grew so much and it hit me within the first five minutes of our conversation. We could have spared her pain by keeping her home or insisting that we went with her to hold her hand and ease her through the experience. She would still be eleven then no matter what the calendar says.

Pain is growth. Imagine how shallow you would be if you had never experienced stress or hard times. Do you want your child to be that?

A brief moment of pride

this evening, Rilla had a concert. They last about 30 minutes and the room is just packed with people. If you show up any later than 15 minutes before the performance, you stand. My kids actually behaved the whole time. I did have an issue with Joshua and his attitude, and a couple of moments of Libby getting restless, but over all, they were good kids. It was so nice. I often dread these things because I hate being the mom of the distracting, rude kids. We've tried hard to get them to behave and it might actually be sinking in.

The second part of the evening, Steve had a scout dinner he needed to be to (he was the entertainment) and I was invited as well. I ran the kids home and went back to the school for the dinner. When we got home just a little over an hour later, every single kid was in bed and in their pj's. They had read to each other out of the book we are doing our bedtime reading out of as well. whew. I had visions of them racing through the living room fighting like cats and dogs and Libby outside digging in the dirt unsupervised. Nope. In bed. Good kids.

We might be near the end of our hired babysitter days. That's a good feeling. It sounds terrible, but it's like a weight has been lifted. It means a bit more independence for me. More date nights too where we actually leave the house. ;) I'm very much looking forward to the years of free babysitting.

Artists in Residance

Libby draws people now:

all over on every piece of paper she can find. big blob. two arms. two eyes. varrying numbers of legs. So close, yet so far.

Rilla took up taping "decorations" around the house, colored and cut out pieces of paper in random places. Steve gave her a notebook and told her it was her "art book." Rilla has now taken up collage art and my walls are safe. She likes to tape in found objects, aka candy wrappers and stray pieces of paper. It still surprises me to think of Rilla as inheriting my crafty/creative side. I don't know why. I just didn't think of her as the one who would. I'm changing my perceptions though so as not to add to her therapy fodder further.

Reaping the Rewards of Neglectful Motherhood

Matt came up to me as I was having my midmorning break at the computer.

"Libby is cleaning up her marker mess."

Major alarm bells began ringing. "what marker mess?"

"the one she made." Three alarm situation here.

Last night I labeled a Christmas box with a red marker before I took it down to the basement. (Ok, so Steve took that one, but I took some of the others.) Aparently, I neglected to put the marker away.

In five minutes my lovely two year old had managed to decorate her own face and hands, a major portion of the dining table, both media cabinets, a laundry basket, and the TV. Luckily it was a dry erase so the TV is safe. We're not talking about the table. Good thing I like red.

My Secret Desires Fulfilled or how I got over that dream

This last Saturday, Steve spent the entire day somewhere else. It was rainy and cold and I was in charge of children who had too messy of rooms and too much energy not being put to clean said messy rooms. I also had 12 loads of laundry to do. I'm not kidding.

It wasn't a good day.

late in the afternoon, I was stressed enough I needed a break. I headed for my room (um, stormed might be apropriate, but I'm not admitting to it.) I shut my door forcefully and collapsed onto my bed to read. I had a nice relaxing couple of chapters with Miss Woodhouse who was still getting over her embarrassment for misreading Mr. Elton's signals. After a few more deep breaths I was ready to enter the fray again.

I turned my door knob. Door wouldn't budge.

Turned the knob a little harder and tugged harder. nothing.

Pulled and tugged. nothing.

Kicked it. nothing, but then I wasn't expecting that to help.

Pulled again.

Tried to pull the door knob off and it was pretty firmly attatched.

The door knob, 50 years old and original to the house, had finally broken. I had asked Steve to replace it over a year ago and even bought a door knob which has since disapeared because it wasn't used and that's what things do when we buy them and then don't use them for a year. It's like a time activated black hole.

Steve's points value was swiftly plummeting in concordance with the rising screams of contending children from the other end of the house. The end of the house I couldn't get to because I was locked in my own dang bedroom.

It was at this point that I realized I had the best excuse in the world for spending the rest of the day in bed hanging out with Miss Woodhouse as she trips through her pebble-y social life (not rough enough for rocks.)

Then Libby screamed. again.

It suddenly occured to me that I have two ground floor windows in my room and the locks are conveniently on the inside.

I did wonder as I pushed out the screen what my neighbors would think of seeing me climb out my own window. Were they looking for smoke from the roof? Checking for bruises and an angry husband? Thinking I finally went mad?

I spent the next hour completely ignoring the last five loads of laundry. I was not about to go climbing through my bedroom window again just to get the laundry baskets.

Steve was a smart man and sent me out alone to buy a new door knob while he did laundry. I bought a pretty one.

I could save them time with a repeat button

The other night we were at Walmart buying gifts for cousins and I snagged a Blue's Clues DVD out of the bargain bin. My hope was to add some variety to our tv watching. Libby has reached the Blue Obsession stage of her toddlerhood. We have two VHS and one DVD with Blue and I was getting a bit tired of the constant repeats. I don't know what I was thinking because what has happened is exactly what I should have expected to happen: they watch it constantly. The thing gets over and they hit the play button again. At the current rate of viewing the DVD should be worn out in 2.3 weeks. I'm starting to miss Rugrats. (Babies! Repar! raaarrr! says Libby.)

I do have to admit it is cute when she does the Blue impersonations, though. "bo-bo-bo!" All my kids have done that. They got it from me. Blue is the only "voice" I can do and I do it well. It's such a common thing to hear for them that most of them have called Blue "bo-bo." Yes, it's cute. Have you ever met a 2 year old who wasn't cute?

On the present front: nothing. I'm two days behind on the schedule I made out so I wouldn't stress out anymore. However, the cousin presents are all wrapped. that's something isn't it?

Teddy Libby

Libby has a strange mind. Lately she has decided she needs to sleep with the stuffed animals at night. Now, I'm not talking about a teddy bear or a baby doll in her bed with her. No, I'm saying she wants to sleep with all of them . . . in their bed.

The stuffed animals at our house sleep in a baby cradle my father made. Since we no longer have babies to put in it, we have set it up for the girls to put their stuffed toys in. Libby thinks this makes a comfortable bed.

I just got tired of fighting her on it. She would throw big toddler sized fits over being refused this wonderful experience, so I let her do it. Every night. Yes, I'm a bad mom. We put her to bed in the cradle, carefully cuddled and supported by twenty stuffed toys and the odd plastic doll. Then after putting her back there fifty times, she eventually falls asleep and we transfer her back to her own bed.

The teddy bears seem to be rubbing off on her though. About three or four times a week, she wakes up at 3 in the morning and comes and finds me. She climbs up in bed with me and cuddles close. She used to wiggle and squirm, keeping me awake, so I would have to take her back to bed. Now she lies still, curled up next to me sleeping, the perfect teddy. I love laying there next to her, smelling her sweet, baby scent, just enjoying my last toddler in a quiet moment.

So if putting her to bed with the teddies means she'll stay my teddy just a bit longer, I'm going to keep doing it. I wanted my oldest to rush through growing, to get to the next stage. I cheered her on. My youngest I want to hold back. Don't rush headlong through life. Toddle. Nice and slow. Stay little. Stay sweet. Stay. Just stay.

Learning to Spell

Bubba: Mom. Mom. Mom. I know how to spell Mom.

Me: really? how do you spell it?

Bubba: A . . . M . . . Y

Me: : )

My Protege

I have a few talents. Things I've worked hard to improve on in my life. I can take pretty good photographs. I make a mean chocolate chip cookie. I can ignore housework like nobody's business. However, the talent that bemuses my husband the most is my ability to stack dishes in a dish drainer.

He and I both grew up in homes without a dishwasher. (Ok, my parents got one when I was a teenager, but that still counts as doing dishes many years without.) You would think he would understand the usefulness of such a skill. Nope. He teases me about my leaning tower of dishes and the pots and pans that bump the bottom of the cabinet (my cabinets sit about two inches lower than average.)

I can see why he's so fascinated with my stacking skills, because the man can not stack at all. He sticks the tall plates in the middle of the drainer and the big bowls in front of the small bowls and can't figure out why nothing wants to stack for him. In other things he's got great spatial perception; he just doesn't use it when standing over a sink of hot soapy water.

Lately, my stacking skillz have been allowed to rest because I have passed the dishes torch onto my oldest. I'm only doing a couple of batches of dishes a week and it's heavenly. Most of the time, she does a decent job. Every once in a while she tries to have her water too cold and we end up with greasy dishes, but other than that, she's not bad.

One area she's managing to excel: stacking. Her dish drainer sculptures make my heart proud. The other day I went to get a dish and almost took a picture. She had carefully stacked a pot on the backing racks, extended them out over the edge of the drainer, and set something else on the other end, perfectly balanced.

She has learned well, my Grasshopper.

Grapes

I have grape juice in my house. Lots of it. 20 quarts. I processed 7 quarts of juice. I also bought six boxes of pectin to make jelly. I've never made grape jelly or cooked jelly of any kind, so I'm a bit nervous. It should be interesting to say the least. I always put off my Holly Homemaker stuff to late and the stores are sold out of canning lids. I have to hunt some down today.

I'm not ready for this.

Sarah is in middle school this year. Sixth grade. She informed us at the beginning of the year that there would be dances at school. We decided that she wasn't old enough to go to school dances yet. She's still young. She has her whole life to worry about boy/girl stuff. We don't need to rush it.

So Friday she came home and told me about her day. One of the boys at school asked her to go to the dance with him. An eighth grader. She told him she wasn't allowed to go to the dances. She then said she would have told him no anyway because he was so much older than her.

I guess we have been neglecting part of our parenting. It never even occured to her that going to a dance with a boy is a date and she's definitely not old enough to do that.

But hey, it's nice to know she's not attracted to older men. I sure hope that lasts, at least through high school! LOL

You Know You are a SAHM When:

-You can recognize a new episode of Barney after 15 seconds.

-Nap time is a ritual that must not be interfered with for any reason.

-Library reading hour is your big outing for the week.

-Walmart with kids is considered "fun."

eleven

Sarah. today.

I still remember the exact time she was born. It's one of the very few things I remember from her birth. (It was difficult for me.) The doctor said, "make it 8:23" and two minutes later they gave me blissful oblivion in the form of general anethesia.

Today, she is eleven. She has three friends over and they are camped out in my livingroom. I offered a movie that none of them had seen before, and they turned me down for board games. They didn't need me to entertain them; they had it all worked out themeselves.

Which is good for me. That's my favorite type of party. One where I can actually relax.

I gave in

I've been avoiding the word verification feature on my blog for a few reasons. Today, those reasons became insignificant in the face of the onslaught of spam in my comments. I spent 2o minutes getting it all off. From now on you guys will just have to use the word verification. sorry about that. :( I wish people would just buy their own advertising instead of trying to use my blog.

permissiveness strikes again

Did I mention my son will grow up to be a used car salesman. He's got a great mind, very intelligent, but he could sell a sedan to a cowboy.

This week my salesman is sporting a mohawk. yup, sides shaved, long on top. It's as ugly as hair can get. And I let him do it. He wanted one so he worked on us for weeks. Every time I talked about cutting his hair, he would mention how I was going to cut it into a mohawk. This is his system, by the way, he talks about his wishes as if they are fait acompli. There is no "If" in his brain. It's always when.

I am going to shave the ugly thing off tonight. I may let him do it up once just because his hair is so perfect for the punk boy look. It's so corse and thick it practically stands on it's own. Then it's gone. Six days of fun I could handle.

Now that he's got his way on this, we're steeling ourselves up for the next battle on the horizon. It should come around about the end of August. It seems he's convinced himself that his father is going to give him $150 at the end of the summer. He's already started talking about it. Planning what he's going to buy. I'm ready to hide my wallet because there's no telling how much he'll be able to talk us out of.

Analgesic Bandaids

You know, you don't have to buy special ones to get this. All bandaids have analgesic properties, but only in users under the age of ten.

Last night Joshua hurt his foot. Steve gave him a bandaid and Joshua went off happily to bed, content in the knowlege that his scrape would no longer hurt just because there was a bandaid on it.

This morning Joshua is up and roming the house for an hour with no problems at all. Then suddenly, he starts hopping on one foot and moaning. He had just noticed his bandaid had fallen off over night. He hopped to Steve to show him the sore, which Steve declared healed enough to go without a bandaid. Joshua argued with his dad about that; Joshua's main point: it still hurt. Of course, it didn't hurt before he noticed the bandaid was missing and technically the bandaid wouldn't help that anyway. Joshua didn't think his dad was using logic at all. Steve distracted him with a minor biology lesson and Joshua left content, if not completely satisfied . . . but not hopping.

Makes me wish bandaids were still magic for me, too.

Lasts and Firsts

Steve found a a cute toddler bed at a yard sale this weekend. Since the crib was worn out, we decided to make the switch right away. When the bed got brought into the house, we introduced Libby to it. She sat on it and thought it was the best thing ever.

So I took Rilla and Josh to their ball games and came home to the crib in the trash and the new bed in place. She had napped in her crib but Daddy had neglected to take a picture of her last time sleeping in a crib. He doesn't think like a scrapbooker. Her first night in the bed was hard. She didn't go to sleep until eleven and then was up twice in the night. Sunday she just didn't nap and then at bedtime fell asleep on the floor. I woke up this morning to this:

on the floor again with an empty bed. She refused to sleep in it. At least she didn't wake me up to tell me about it. LOL!

the transition has been harder for Libby than it has for any of the other kids. This is the youngest we've ever made the switch and it shows. She just wasn't quite ready for the bed. I konw she'll love it in a week when she's used to a bed she can get into and out of by herself, but right now, it's not what she's used to so she's resisting.

Part of me wishes we could go back to the crib. I wasn't ready for her to make this switch either. As long as she was in a crib, she was still a baby. She's in a toddler bed. She's a little girl. It's weird to think that I will never have need for a crib again. Right now, Libby is napping in her little bed, too tired to resist the bed anymore. Laying peacefully on her pillow and catching up on all the sleep she shorted herself over the last few days. I think she's starting to transition. It's a bittersweet moment.

Summer Hits

and I mean that quite literally. Summer always hits me between the eyes. I don't see it coming. I'm happily enjoying the beauty of late spring, the flowers, the weather, the bird song, and then BOOM! it's the last week of May and my peace is at an end.

Summer is in full swing in Bedlam. We have been doing baseball/softball/t-ball (which I always call baseball and woe betide the nitpicky child who knows what I mean and still chooses to correct me when everyone is yelling and three people need to be in three different places involving a sport of some kind at the same time.) We have a few weeks left of _____ball. The kids are enjoying it but then we don't take sports seriously around here.

We also have a pool pass. I'm still using it in the mornings, but there are times when I think life would have been easier if we had bought an individual pass instead of a family pass. This moring we went to swim lessons, then to lunch at the park and then back to the pool for free swim. By the time we were done I was done. I'm almost ready to start ingesting caffine just to get me through the summer.

So does Mountain Dew taste as bad as cola? ;)

They Grow in Spurts

Sarah participated in a talent contest on Tuesday night. She loves this competition because it's basically her only chance to sing for a crowd. She spent two months working on her number and then came down with a cough a week before the show. It gave her a scratch throat and that high E that she was already having difficulty reaching suddenly became almost impossible. She did well though. She didn't place, but she performed well and really wowed the crowd. How can you not be wowed when you hear a 10 year old belt out "Defiying Gravity" from Wicked? Ok, so maybe if you are a judge and tend to be overly enthusiasic about 7 year olds playing simple songs on the violin, but otherwise, really, how can you not be impressed?

It struck me that night as she was getting ready how old she is. She's been in my life for more than a decade. Just recently, she's started really caring about making sure her lip stays waxed and she plucked her own eyebrows. I'm sure that soon she'll want to shave her legs and I'm not ready for that. (She inherited her father's dark body hair.) She wore her new lavendar skirt and white sweater with her silver sandals. She looked so pretty and grown up as she sat and visited with her grandma, leaning in with one leg crossed over the other.

Last week, she wasn't that old. I swear she wasn't. They don't grow gradually, flowing from one age to the next in a coniuous process. They jump and hop in their ages just like they jump through life, moving along in spurts so one minute they are small and the next they are entering junior high.

I don't normally get wistful about my kids growing. I know I've said that before and I mean it. I rejoice in their getting older and growing as human beings. However, Tuesday night my heart couldn't help hurting for that little girl I used to have.

She still will fly at you to give you a hug and that little girl thing I hope never leaves her.