It's the little things

This portion was written back in February.
Everyone says that childhood flies by. In an attempt to freeze time or at least capture a slice of time, I spent a few days in January looking at my children and the things associated with their lives at this stage that won't always be that way. Before I know it, it will be a real bus that takes them to school, not just Sam's toy bus that he's been obsessed with lately.

I hadn't taken the time to get all the photos in order until today. Brittany asked for ideas for a blogging carnival and I immediately thought of this post. Now that it's been almost a year since I started this and some of these little things aren't part of our lives anymore. They might not be the most interesting photographs, but for me when I look at them I'm instantly transported to the that time in our lives. They are the little things that make up our days and freeze the kids developmental stage for a moment.

Thomas toothbrushes...


Stuffed animals in their bedrooms...


Art projects from school



Julia's hand in mine.













It's now been so long since I made this post that the original link is gone. Here's another one that talks about not taking the little things we get to do with our kids for granted. (It was written while Tricia was waiting for a new set of lungs. Click on Tricia's name to read the comments and see what other mom's had to say to Tricia.)




Julia, doing whatever Mommy does.












Their first pet, Conor, is getting older. He is someone we definitely take for granted. Poor puppy.







She'll be blogging for herself soon enough and won't be asking me to read to her.






They'll be driving real cars (gulp) in real snow (double gulp) instead of Matchbox cars in shaving cream.


Asking to be picked up....


Shoveling for the fun of it....


Their lives will get busier and will require a more elaborate calendar than this.


The kids won't be entertained for hours by a blanket, their daddy, and a flashlight.





Before I know it the diapers a thing of the past.


Their taste in music and movies will change, they won't need to sit on his knees at the table, and the little plastic cup by their bedsides will be a thing of the past....









This eye sore will be gone...


Julia will want to pick out her own clothes some day. Until then I will dress her in adorable hand-me-downs.


She won't always have to crawl down the stairs backwards to get down them safely.


Her feet will reach the foot rest some day and then some.



The fingerprints on the patio door will get higher and higher and someday, disappear entirely.

My kids won't always live at home.
But while they are hear I will do my best to make the most of every moment.

What My Kids Learn From Making Bread

During the summer (when these pics were taken) we spent part of Mondays making bread in an effort to eat healthier and save money.
I wish I could say I kept up with that tradition, but alas, I've returned to buying bread from the store. (We still make these muffins though.) Without any good way to store the loaves they were getting moldy too fast and I've yet to figure out a way to slice the bread so I can use it for sandwiches. It probably has something to do with the recipe I use, but I don't have a bread board either so I can't use a recipe that requires kneading. Does anyone have a good sandwich friendly no-knead recipe?

It was fun while it lasted and I think the kids got a lot out of it.

They practiced taking turns.
They worked on motor skills when they dumped the ingredients.
They learned that you have to work for what you want.
They practiced their math skills.
They learned to be patient.
























They learned that things you make yourselves always taste better.



If you are new to my blog this post also talks about why we made our own bread and the cookbook that has inspired me.

like mother, like daughter

I'm not the only one embracing babywearing* during International Babywearing Week.

























In the last two weeks Julia's dolls and stuffed animals have benefited from her emerging mothering instincts.
She pats them on the bottom, covers them with blankets (hankies), and sways back and forth. She also cooks them meals in the play kitchen. It was just about this age that Sam's love of trucks, trains, construction vehicles etc. took off. It is so sweet to see where their interests develop.

When I was a child I was always playing "House". Either with my sisters, my cabbage patch kids, my My Little Ponies, or with my LittlePeople. How fun it will be to do it all over again with my daughter.


* There are companies that sell toy slings, but a simple dishcloth does the trick at our house.

1.5

That's all that separates my 2 year old from my 4 year old.
One and a half pounds.

Sam (with shoes on): 38 pounds.
Julia (without shoes on): 36.5 pounds.

No wonder my arms feel like jelly after carrying them at the same time!

Not Me Monday - 8th edition

Today is a good a day as any to talk about the heating issues we've been dealing with. When else could I throw out the following info?

Our house was not 80 degrees on Saturday afternoon.
It didn't get that hot despite having 6 windows open.
We didn't have to bother our landlord on a weekend.
We didn't have to turn off our heat even though it was in the 20's outside.
We don't have to wait three days for the replacement part to be shipped.
It is not 52 degrees in the house when we wake up in the mornings.
(We can turn the heat on for a couple hours at a time but then have to turn it off or the radiators will overheat.)

We escaped the hot temps in our house on Saturday by dropping the kids off at Grandma and Grandpa's and went out on a date. These things did not happen while we were out:

I did not drag my hubby into BabyGap just so I could see in person the cute outfits Brittany was talking about in this post.

I wasn't subjected to 5 minutes of profanity while I waited in line to use the restroom at Macy's. The mother who used the f-word every other word did not have a 6 year old in the restroom with her. She didn't allow her daughter to cut in front of me in line. That same mom didn't say the following, "What's taking so long? Is someone pooping?"
I did not spend those 5 agonizing minutes praying for the well being of that six year old.
We did not spend the first hour of our date just trying to find restrooms at the mall. What's the deal with department stores not having both restrooms in the same place????
We were not sent on a wild goose chase before we left the mall when the sign for the restrooms sent us up one floor only to find out that the men's restroom was located two floors down from the women's.
We were not completely annoyed, frustrated, and mad about restrooms. Nope. Not us.
This is not the second time I've written about bathrooms this week. That's plain gross.

I was not excited to find The Flight of the Navigator at the movie store. Who gets excited about cheesy kid movies made in the 80's? Not me!

Other things I didn't do this week:

I didn't let my kids have play food straight out of the box from the lady I bought it from on Craigslist. I washed and sanitized it all first. Since it's so tempting for them to put their lips on it I made sure it was all germ free first. I wasn't too lazy to avoid getting them sick.

I did not go out to lock the gate twice....in my robe. (I was wearing other clothes too, but the robe offered extra warmth in the cold, cold night.)

Julia didn't come downstairs after her nap wearing a dress, tights, pajama pants, and one sock. Not my little fashion diva.

I have not been treating a yeast infection as if it were diaper rash. Nope not me. I didn't let my poor baby girl suffer all week when the diaper cream didn't work. I took her in to see the right away. Not 6 days later.

I did not turn around and sell a LittleTikes Vanity for more than twice what I paid for it. The lady who bought it didn't live a quarter mile from our old house. The world isn't that small.

Brian did not have to spend an extra hour in the car yesterday driving home to retrieve my work stuff that I forgot to bring to church with me. oops.

We did not sit together as a family in church for the first time in six months. The suckers suggested by my nice readers didn't work like a charm.

I did not lose my cell phone again. It didn't ruin my whole Sunday afternoon. I did not find it in the yard 30 seconds after sending up a prayer for help. (I had dropped a receipt and when I bent down to pick it up the phone must have fallen out of my pocket.)

We didn't revel in warm temps at the apple orchard, splash in rain puddles, and build snowmen and go sledding all in the same week. Not here in Minnesota!

What did you not do this week? Join the fun at mycharmingkids.net

With a Capital "F"

Freedom - I went downstairs to let the cat out and feed him his breakfast this morning an could not find him anywhere. Brian searched. I searched. I searched again. My mind started racing through all the senarios...was there poison in the basement that we didn't know about? Is there a hole somewhere that he got out through (would help explain the mice getting in!), was he stuck somewhere? Finally I went outside and sure enough, there was the cat, trotting up to the front door to get his breakfast.

Fresh Air - We have radiator heat in this house and so far it had been working just fine. I'm bracing myself for the day our built in china cabinet doubles as a freezer. Until then we are experiencing the opposite problem - it's flippin' HOT in here! Two mornings in a row we've woken up in hot, stuffy rooms. The termostat is set at 67, but it is 76 in here. I have always struggled to breath in hot air. Maybe there's a nurse or a doctor out there who could tell me if that's related to my low blood pressure and low pulse (50-55 beats a minute)???
We turned the thermostat WAY down (50) and have a number of windows cracked to reverse the sauna effect.

Free Time - Brian's mom has graciaously accepted our request for a spur of the moment babysitter. After naps we'll drop the kids off at Grandma and Grandpas and head into the 'burbs in search of something fun and free to do. We haven't figured out yet what we want to do with two precious hours of kid-free time. If it's anything like the two hours I spent wandering around Target yesterday (mostly in the toy aisle), it will be filled with talk about the kids, but at least we'll be able to talk in complete sentences and without interuptions. :)

Freaked out - You know all those doors I talked about in our house? Well FOUR of them lead outside. I think our front door is pretty obvious, but the man who was peaking in the door next to the library thought that particular door looked like a good option. I was sitting here at the dining room table blogging away when the dog went balistic. I looked up to see a beared man looking into my house. Talk about freaked out!
I kindly explained to the mailman that he could leave packages by the other door if we weren't home. I hope he got the message.

Head, shoulders, knees, and toes

Here's the rest of the snowman we made this morning.
You can see a close up of the head in
the post below (minus the pine needle hair).



Bearing no hard feelings after his night in the basement,
Houston stayed warm on my shoulders while the kids went sledding.


Both kids, but Julia especially, liked adding snow the snowmen.


Over and over again Julia would get down bend down and pick up snow to add.




Once we pulled out the sleds Sam was done with snowmen. He tried all variations of going down the hill. Feet first, on his belly, and my favorite as a kid - on his knees.





It wasn't really that cold out (I didn't have socks on inside my boots and my toes were plenty warm), but hot chocolate seemed appropriate with snow piling up all around us. I didn't get an argument out of the kids. :) We had a snack and watched Jack Frost (after the part where the dad dies). While it might have been nice to sleep in this morning it was also nice to have the house cleaned, two snowmen built, the sidewalk shoveled, a movie watched, a toy sold on Craigslist, and a meeting with a client all accomplished before lunch.

We were all smiles when we woke up to snow

A night out on the town

I felt like the luckiest girl in the world yesterday after a good report from Sam's preschool teacher at conferences and the first dinner out as a family (I don't count McDonald's) in six months. I made up for lost time by enjoying chicken wild rice soup, chicken noodle soup, salad, pizza, chicken, and cheese bread. Our local pizza joint goes all out for their buffet. On the way home we stopped at the library to pick up a few new books. Sometimes it's the simple things that bring the most pleasure - especially when it means spending time with the people I love most.

Have a great weekend everyone! We're expecting snow and for the first time in over 4 years WE DON'T CARE!!!! (Brian used to plow snow.)

Things that go bump in the night

Houston has been in the house since we let him in with us this morning. That shatters his previous record by...oh.... 11 hours. I don't want him to go soft on us though. With a dog in the house and all, I don't want to play referee all hours of the day or night. He appeared to enjoy the basement when I checked on him throughout the day. Given the alternative (driving rain and swirling winds) I'd take the basement too.

Usually when we let him in he gets anxious to go back out after 30 minutes or so, but tonight when we brought him up from the basement he was all lovey-dovey with me and lounged in the chair instead of sitting on the radiator and looking out the window. At bedtime he followed us all upstairs and despite being rather playful (I forgot how sharp cat claws are!), he showed no indication of being upset with his new digs.

We have a ton of doors in the house so it's easy enough to keep the cat upstairs and the dog downstairs...for now. Ideally they'd switch places, but we're taking it one day at a time. So when I heard a loud thump coming from upstairs I ran up to see what the cat had jumped on, toppled over, or who knows what. But first I glanced at the video monitor and saw my Sammy sitting on the floor. Poor baby fell out of bed. At least twice when I've gone in for my final check of the night I've found him curled up on the floor, but those times I think he rolled out of bed since I never heard anything. The morning we left for the Boundary Waters I found him on the floor with his face touching his clock radio (with the radio on!) He takes after his mom. We can sleep through anything. Yesterday he slept through the weather alert test that blared at 1pm.

So more things don't go bump in the night I'll be putting the cat back downstairs before I go to bed and cross my fingers that he catches himself a midnight snack.

Bonus Buy

I didn't think we'd make it to one apple orchard this year let alone two, but that's what happened. (We have our own apple tree now that produces more than enough apples for our family.) The afternoon with MckMama and her sister, Hilary, was rather impromptu, but not as much as Monday when the kids and I stopped at an orchard that was on our way home from a Craigslist purchase. It's November after all and I wasn't even sure they'd be open.

Not only were they open, we got to take a long, bumpy wagon ride in the warm November air. It was 70 degrees and our sweaters proved to be overkill. As we bumped along the trail I told the kids about their first visits to the orchard (in my belly). Julia pointed out the apples high up in the tree, Sam wanted to know how fast the tractor was going, and I pulled the kids in close for at least 10 snuggles before the tractor stopped.



The kids picked three apples and within 2 minutes we were back on the wagon.
Back at the main building we sampled a couple different varieties of apples before going up to the counter to pay for our apples. I wasn't sure the lady was going to be pleased that we only picked three apples because I think they sell them by the bag. My jaw dropped when she said, "Hmm...just three? How does a dollar sound?"

Are you kidding me? That's all the money I had in my wallet (besides my bank card). More than the weather turned out to be perfect that day.

Election Day in Numbers

5 - the number of miles I had to drive to get to my polling place
3 - the number of minutes it took me to register to vote
0 - the number of people ahead of me in line
25 - the number of ovals I had to fill out on my ballot
21 - the number of people I voted for that I know nothing about
2 - the number of times I had to go to the polling place (I had to go back and vouch for Brian.)
150 - the number of people who had cast their ballots before me (I voted at 9:15am)
373 - the number of people who cast their ballots before Brian (He voted at 4:00)
23 - the number of people who looked at Julia when she started belting out Twinkle Twinkle Little Star in the Echo-y town hall
45 - the number of seconds it took me to usher the kids outside
15 - the number of steps to the top of the ladder at the park behind the town hall
I heard myself saying to Sam, "Sorry Sam, that slide is too dangerous for kids. It's only for grown ups." A slide. At the park. Geepers Carrie. But it WAS way too high for him so we played on the newer equipment and left the slide that was probably installed in the 70's alone.
0 - the number of political ads I'll have to endure after today.

Not Me Monday - 7th edition

This past week was a blur. I hardly remember what we did except of course meeting Stellan.
His Mama is the one who created Not Me and the subject of my first Not Me of this past week.

I did not leave my four year old in charge of my two year old out in the hallway of the special care nursery so I could meet Stellan. That would be irresponsible of me.

The dog did not puke on Monday.
He didn't puke on Tuesday either.
He had NO puke left for Wednesday....or so I thought because it was NOT dog puke that I slipped in early Wednesday morning.

I did almost die when I saw a mouse run into the room I was in (living room) and hide under the love seat. I did not scream bloody murder even though it was 12:30am and everyone was asleep. I did not think I was going to have to spend the rest of the night standing on the couch because the mouse might run out from under the love seat while I was running to the stairs. (The mouse made the first move and left the room.)
I did not sleep with the light on and a movie playing the rest of the night.
I didn't let the cat in the house the very next day.

I did not accidentally let the dog and the cat meet in the kitchen with no means of escape. (In my own defense, we have no less than 19 doors in this house. I was bound to forget about one of them.) The result? The dog did not end up with scratches all over his face. There was not blood. I didn't feel terrible about my mistake.

I did not miss the memo about daylight savings time. It was not 5 minutes before we left the Halloween party that I overheard someone talking about an extra hour of sleep that I found out that we almost wasted the ONE TIME A YEAR we get to sleep in.

I did not come very close to showing up early for two different meetings on Sunday.

I did not come up with my Halloween costume when I was rifling through my sister's good will box.

This is not an outtake from an impromptu family photo session*.



* The term session is used very loosely: Turn on the timer, put the camera on a bucket, run back to the family, and try not to make a fool of yourself







I did not get stood up by a woman who was suppose to meet me at the children's museum to buy a winter coat that never fit Julia.

I did not have an antique table ($75) posted on Craigslist for 3 months without any takers.
I didn't get five inquires when I changed the posting to "Make an Offer".
I never would have accepted an offer of $125. Nope not me!

I am not at a complete loss as to how to get my kids to sit in church on Sunday mornings. No, not me! My kids are perfect angels. (That's the hardest part. They ARE good, well behaved kids - until we slide into the pew at church. Anyone have good ideas on ways to keep kids quiet, consequences for misbehaving at church, reward for good behavior etc. ?)

I do not reserve the right to update this post as I remember more of the crazy things that happened at our house this past week.

on the catwalk

After a day filled with photo shoots in the unseasonably warm November air, I took the kids out for a walk on the boardwalk. Houston decided to join us. It was fun to see the reactions of people who were out walking their dogs when they saw the cat trotting alongside the kids.








Huey is really a nice kitty. Sam adores him. All week at bedtime it was Houston that Sam was thankful for.












"I love Houston really really much," he says many times a day.














I think the feeling is mutual.





















Julia was a little jittery about being on the boardwalk again. She hadn't been on it since she fell off and ended up covered in green algae.

Not very many people can understand what she's saying, but that doesn't stop her from getting her point across. She talks and sings all the time. I love that about her.
(Happy 25 month birthday sweetheart.)