Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Picture Perfect...for about 20 Minutes!




This is my favorite part of the day:morning! The kids are clean, dressed, and hair is fixed. Everything is bright and we looking forward to a new day. Unfortunately, this euphoric feeling only lasts for about twenty minutes and then real life takes over. AAH, I love those twenty minutes!

* I was going to take a pic at the end of the day but they didn't look too bad b/c I redid their hair about 4:00.

Friday, April 25, 2008

Have You Ever Wanted Something Too Much?


So I have been drooling over this bag for years, sadly. But I think this might be the year I buy the darn thing! In orange, of course! I can just imagine all my pool supplies neatly tucked away in this stylish, yet functional bag. I think my life might actually be better with the bag...just kidding...sort of.

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Just for Moms


First photo of all my "Babies"


I was thinking after play group today about all the sweet little children and how we as mothers are all bonded by this wonderful journey we are on. It is so stressful when your kids are little and need so much of you. And I look at Chloe and I so wish she needed me more now. So anyway, I saw this poem on another blog and just cried and cried(So surprised, I know.) Perfect for me to remember, I will print this and keep it out to help with all those I can't believe I have cleaned twenty messes in 1 hour, why am I still wiping your bum, who taught you to talk like that, kind of day. Enjoy


"On Being Mom" by Anna Quindlen If not for the photographs, I might have a hard time believing they ever existed. The pensive infant with the swipe of dark bangs and the black-button eyes of a Raggedy Andy doll. The placid baby with the yellow ringletsand the high piping voice. The sturdy toddler with the lower lip that curled into an apostrophe above her chin. All my babies are gone now. I say this not in sorrow but in disbelief. I take great satisfaction in what I have today: three almost-adults, two taller than I am, one closing in fast. Three people who read the same books I do and have learned not to be afraid of disagreeing with me in their opinion of them, who sometimes tell vulgar jokes that make me laugh until I choke and cry, who need razor blades and shower gel and privacy, who want to keep their doors closed more than I like. Who, miraculously, go to the bathroom, zip up their jackets and move food from plate to mouth all by themselves. Like the trick soap I bought for the bathroom with a rubber ducky at its center, the baby is buried deep within each, barely discernible except through the unreliable haze of the past. Everything in all the books I once pored over is finished for me now. Penelope Leach, T. Berry Brazelton., Dr. Spock. The ones on sibling rivalry and sleeping through the night and early childhood education, all grown obsolete. Along with Goodnight Moon and Where the Wild Things Are, they are battered, spotted, well used. But I suspect that if you flipped the pages dust would rise like memories. What those books taught me, finally, and what the women on the playground taught me, and the well-meaning relations -- what they taught me was that they couldn't really teach me very much at all. Raising children is presented at first as a true-false test, then becomes multiple choice, until finally, far along, you realize that it is an endless essay. No one knows anything. One child responds well to positive reinforcement, another can be managed only with a stern voice and a timeout. One boy is toilet trained at 3, his brother at 2. When my first child was born, parents were told to put baby to bed onhis bellyso that he would not choke on his own spit-up. By the time my last arrived, babies were put down on their backs because of research on sudden infant death syndrome. To a new parent this ever-shifting certainty is terrifying, and then soothing.Eventually you must learn to trust yourself. Eventually the research will follow. I remember 15 years ago poring over one of Dr. Brazelton's wonderful books on child development, in which he describes three different sorts of infants: average, quiet, and active. I was looking for a sub-quiet codicil for an 18-month-old who did not walk. Was there something wrong with his fat little legs? Was there something wrong with his tiny little mind? Was he developmentally delayed, physically challenged? Was I insane? Last year he went to China. Next year he goes to college. He can talk just fine. He can walk, too. Every part of raising children is humbling, too. Believe me, mistakes were made. They have all been enshrined in the Remember-When-Mom-Did Hall of Fame. The outbursts, the temper tantrums, the bad language, mine, not theirs. The times the baby fell off the bed. The times I arrived late for preschool pickup. The nightmare sleepover. The horrible summer camp. The day when the youngest came barreling out of the classroom with a 98 on her geography test, and I responded, What did you get wrong? (She insisted I include that.) The time I ordered food at the McDonald's drive-through speaker and then drove away without picking it up from the window. (They all insisted I include that.) I did not allow them to watch the Simpsons for the first two seasons...What was I thinking? But the biggest mistake I made is the one that most of us make while doing this. I did not live in the moment enough. This is particularly clear now that the moment is gone, captured only in photographs. There is one picture of the three of them sitting in the grass on a quilt in the shadow of the swing set on a summer day, ages 6, 4 and 1. And I wish I could remember what we ate, and what we talked about, and how they sounded, and how they looked when they slept that night. I wish I had not been in such a hurry to get on to the next thing: dinner, bath, book, bed. I wish I had treasured the doing a little more and the getting it done a little less. Even today I'm not sure what worked and what didn't, what was me and what was simply life. When they were very small, I suppose I thought someday they would become who they were because of what I'd done. Now I suspect they simply grew into their true selves because they demanded in a thousand ways that I back off and let them be. The books said to be relaxed and I was often tense, matter-of-fact and I was sometimes over the top. And look how it all turned out. I wound up with the three people I like best in the world, who have done more than anyone to excavate my essential humanity. That's what the books never told me. I was bound and determined to learn from the experts. It just took me a while to figure out who the experts were.
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Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Messy Fun

Not too messy...yet!
Now she is getting her hands messy.

It was a slow Tuesday and I was worried about making it to lunch! So I was stalking my favorite blogs(I am not proud!) and I found this little craft to do at Tip Junkie. (I don't know how to hyperlink yet.) You mix 1 1/2 cups of corn starch and 1 cup of water and it makes this messy sort of solid but sort of liquid mix. Mia didn't get that into it but Mallory loved it. She kept saying,"It feels weird!". And she played for, drum roll please, one hour! Mission Accomplished!

Saturday, April 19, 2008

Future Pro Soccer Player

Can you tell Mallory is in heaven???
Mia was really lovin her cupcake!


Cole in action
Who knew Cole looks good surrounded by purple?
These were the coolest trophy's(the soccer ball even spins)
Coach Corey and Cole

Here are some pictures of Cole's last soccer game. Despite the fact that his jersey was purple(Major issue), Cole was able to play a great season and actually scored some goals and kept the other teams from scoring. They had a party after the game and got super cool trophies. Cole was told by his coach he was really fast! The girls enjoyed some of the leftover cupcakes, so everyone was happy! I just added how many seasons of soccer we have done(counting Chloe) and this was our 14 soccer season....Where is our trophy??? Oh yeah, the smile on their face!!!!

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Table for Two Please

More chicken please

Are we serving dessert yet?




Best Friends(for today)



You can't beat a table for two...on your back porch! After all, this dining experience will be short lived b/c a month from now it will be too hot and there will be no mister to cool them off! So we had to take a pic to remember these beautiful spring days that only are here a short time! We are taking reservations!




Monday, April 14, 2008

Lost Treasure Found!




O.K. I am totally LOVING this blog right now. Jen tagged me for my purse and ALL the contents. Well, I didn't want to post is b/c my purse is SOOOOO old and embarrassing. Chloe, my 13 yr old and fashion expert, told me to ditch the diaper bag and try to be stylish.(She said another word). So I have been toting this lame bag while searching for a new purse. And then I got tagged....So now my semi public humiliation has become Very public. BUT I am thrilled b/c I discovered a saved treat from Cole's soccer game in a side pocket and thought I better dump the crumbs before I take the pics of the purse. So I am shaking the seemingly empty purse , when out falls a necklace I lost two years ago! My favorite necklace given to me by my sweet husband for our eighth anniversary. SO, Jen you caused me to find a treasure that I though was only going to be in my memories but is now hanging proudly around my neck!!!!(AND it has four diamonds, perfect for my four children). Also, did you notice I have almost nothing in my purse but I did have three bows!

Wednesday, April 9, 2008

Have you ever noticed...











Have you ever noticed that your kids pick up habits or maybe even addictions from each other? I think I have! And while I am making my point, just to add to the evidence, Chloe was a thumb sucker too!!! AHHH! Don't you know the dentist loves me!

Tuesday, April 1, 2008

Doing What I Love



So, my house is quiet, the girls are asleep and what am I doing? Not cleaning the floors, that look like I may not own a mop. No, that would be what I Should be doing. But instead, I am making bows. Like either of my girls needs another bow in their lifetime! But I LOVE to make them, the instint gratification of something that is beautiful and for someone I love. So the bows win today, maybe the floors tomorrow.....maybe