The Breakout!

Last night ended a week long snow break. We were able to get the kids outside a few times throughout the week, but for the most part is was way too cold with 15 inches of snow, so we stayed in watching movies, playing games, building forts, jumping on couches (because what else are you going to do cooped up for 7 days with four kids?!), eating snow cream, reading books and doing a craft or two. Yesterday we were OVER it! When church was cancelled we decided we had to get out of the house and do something. So, after nap time, we went to the grocery. Remind me never to do that on a Sunday, at the end of a long snowy week, during seasonal changes in their merchandise, with all 4!!! But we made it and all left with smiling faces. Our next 'breakout' decision.....go out to eat. Of course...it was a perfect idea! We'd take our 6, 5, and 3 year old sons and our precious 2 year old daughter who have been cooped up, mostly in their pajamas all week, and ask them to sit politely at a restaurant for an hour so we can enjoy some time out of the house. Seriously people. I must be delusional!

We have these moment with our kids that we affectionately call "whack-a-mole". You remember the game, right? Our kids occasionally like to behave in such a way that we look like we are in a nerve-racking game of whack-a-mole and last night at dinner was one such occasion. While, generally speaking, our kids are well mannered and well behaved, they are very busy, curious, independent and loud children. It was a steady stream of full on bad comedy.....

"Son, put the knife down"
* preemptive trip to the bathroom with almost trained Elijah
"Don't drink the salsa"
"The straws are not swords"
* Dad, I need to pee
"Come on, why don't you both go?"
* No thanks dad, I don't need to
"Elijah, you can't run off! Daddy's gone to the bathroom with brother!"
* I know! I'm going to catch him!
"SoSo, don't put your drink in the salsa"
"Where is Mason?"
"No, you cannot have a balloon"
* Mom, I need to poop
"Daddy just asked you if you needed to go"
* I didn't need to go then
"Elijah, please sit down and leave those people alone"
* Mom, when is the food coming?
"Son, we haven't even ordered yet"
"Timothy, you do not need another basket of chips"
"Please stop drinking the salsa!"

I mean, seriously!! At one point, I caught Scott looking at me from across the table as I was about to get mad and he chuckled. Chuckled! Usually he's the one to stress out about our public displays of whack-a-mole, but this time, he paused for a moment, probably watching the comedy routine I was playing out, and found the humor in it. Luckily, his charming smile disarmed me enough to realize, that, while I wished they would stop drinking the salsa and playing straw swords, they were actually doing just fine, and we were out of the house together, enjoying one of my favorites. It was then that I realized, with obvious clarity, that the real problem was that my children have all taken after me and my love of chips and salsa! And if I were to be totally honest, they have most likely caught me at home, drinking the last drops of salsa from the bowl before putting it in the dishwasher!!

So, to the lady at the nearby table I caught smiling at us several times throughout our meal, thank you. Your smile so openly showed me either that, 1) You are a mom...you get it. Or 2) You, like I used to be, want to be a mom so bad you would take these whack-a-mole moments any day of the week, just to be a mom. Either way, I thank you for reminding me that it's ok to enjoy these loud, less then perfect outings with my family.  "Hands up kids, food has arrived!"


*No children were actually "whacked" during this outing, or any other time!

SNOW DAY

This is more snow then I think I've ever seen!

It snowed for HOURS (like 15!) yesterday totaling in about a foot of snow. This morning the air was frozen, along with everything else, and was a sight beyond beautiful.

This is day 2 of snow days and being stuck home....all 6 of us, well, I don't know about you...I love my family, but all of us, stuck at home, for this long....we can become a little more like a zoo than we already are. Caged animals those boys become.

Scott is stir crazy for a project. Thank goodness I had a snow day craft set aside!!























Baby girl is cutting teeth, of course. And I'm thinking, can't we just watch Frozen again?!

So, we play outside.

Let the boys do things that differ from the norm...like eating snow cream in the morning BEFORE nap!

Watch a lot of movies and drink hot cocoa.

Do a craft, fall asleep on the couch, watch more movies, play outside again, eat more snow cream....you get the picture. Just survive it. That's the goal. Try to accept that these moments, or days, long as they seem in the moment, are fairly rare. (Over the next 12 years, calculating 5 snow days a year = 60 days.) Over the course of 12 years, that's not many. And I doubt they will let us entertain them with snow cream for very many years. And their desire to watch Frozen more than twice in two days will only go down.

I've done well these first two days, but I suspect we'll be stuck here the rest of the week. I'm trying to prepare myself for this, as they, and I, will only get crazier as the week goes on. So, while we try to be productive, we also accept that moments like these....

Elijah

Timothy

Mason

 ...are more important than a clean bathroom, or a mopped floor, because that's what they'll remember. They'll long for snow days full of hot cocoa after playing in the snow, fanaticize of the deliciousness of snow cream into adult hood, hoping to share that with their children,

and delight in a table covered in a fitted Mickey sheet that can only mean one thing...

....Mom is letting us paint!!!

When 'Parenting' Doesn't Produce

Lying. Sneaking. Stealing. Back talking. A few of the things I used to think  'my kid' will never do. I'd raise them better than that. I'd teach them respect for themselves and others. I'd spank their behind and they would learn better. Well, hello! The saying 'kids will be kids', comes from somewhere. Some will push these behaviors to a greater extreme then others, but to some extent, I'm thinking a little of this is just part of growing up. Figuring out right and wrong for themselves, not just because you say so, and how to handle emotions in these situations.

"I want that, so I'm going to take it. Then I'm going to lie about it so I don't get a spank. Then when you continue your line of parental questioning, I'm going to talk back or yell, just because I'm little and don't know what else to do."

*Exasperated sigh*

Someone please tell me I'm not the only one to have gone through this, nor that I'm the only one who has handled it poorly on more than one occasion! You think, or I have been guilty of thinking, that just because they have never seen us act that way, or because we don't let them watch TV that portrays such behavior, or because you pay for them to attend a private, Christian pre-school, or go to church, or explain why such behaviors are wrong, or just parented well enough....that somehow they might just skip past difficult phases and glide effortlessly and respectfully through to polite, well adjusted young men. Not so much.

At least not so far, not the skipping past these behaviors part. I still have a strong hope that 'polite and well adjusted' is in our future, but we're going to get there taking the more trying road....the road of lessons learned the hard way, over and over, of losing patience and losing heart, of bad parenting moments loaded with anger and yelling, showing nothing more then my inability to handle difficult emotions at the age of 39, simultaneously expecting my 6, 4, or 3 year old to control his. Wondering what I've done wrong to encourage this (not the lack of emotional control, I know where they see that! but the bad choices), then realizing a child's bad choice is not a direct reflection of the mother's parenting, and hoping to learn to accept this truth because I know the bad choices made at age 6 pale in comparison to the bad choices I've made, and what may, in fact, lay ahead.

So, I suppose we keep trying and keep parenting, because 'not worrying about it', or ignoring it is not in our parenting repertoire. I'll try to stop yelling, set anger aside and love the littles through their bad choices, explaining again, and again why we don't behave that way. Pray, pray, pray, that they will see the wisdom of faith in Christ and following God's commandments much, much sooner than I did, and love them. And love them. And love them. Not that loving them has ever been the issue, but it's not the prevailing emotion they see in me during these moments. I'm working on this one. The reality is, I get angry out of my love for them and my strong, perhaps misplaced, desire for them to learn lessons quickly, partly so we can focus on the fun stuff, but mostly to save them, and myself, from still having to deal with these issues into adolescence. The fact remains that many lessons, myself included, take repeated, often painful, attempts to naturally want to choose the right path...the narrow road. While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. For me. This truth is more powerful than I can often comprehend, but it is still truth. And it's in that truth that I hope to find my calm in the storm of parenting.

Nuggles

Scott and I are not co-sleepers with our children. We love them dearly, but we also love each other and our literal closeness that only comes when sleeping next to each other, so we committed early on in our parenting journey, not to let them sleep in our bed, or similarly, to lay with them in their beds to help them get to sleep. So far, with four kids after five and a half years of parenting, we've managed to stay true to this commitment we made to each other, although at times, it has been very hard. It's tempting to want to pull a sleepy, snuggly little boy into our bed when, on any given night, one might find themselves patting our arm due to a lost woo-woo, bad dream, wet bed, sore throat, or just because. Instead, we hold them, take them back to bed, find said woo-woo, kiss their head and, after a pause to take in the sound of our very loud boys breathing slow and steady tucked snug in their beds, head back downstairs and curl up close to each other again. There have been difficult patches, such as 3 with strep or the flu, post surgery, or a string of bad dreams, but to be honest (without bragging) we have four amazing sleepers. For the most part, our littles get to sleep and stay asleep very well on their own. Is this due to our 'sleep training'? I have no idea and won't take credit...any 'training' we did was more for reserving our time together then it was to teach them anything.

But, every now and then an article by writers, chock full of their opinions, will find it's way onto my FB newsfeed, or in a magazine I happen to pick up, sometimes about the importance of sleep training for the child's sake (which I have no strong feelings about, since like I said, our motivation is purely about us), and sometimes about the importance or beauty of sleeping with your children while they are little, because after all, 'they won't want you in their bed when they're teenagers'. While I do read the articles, usually I am unmoved, make some mental comment like, 'power to ya mom', and move on to the next article. But a few weeks ago a couple friends shared a blog by a woman who still lays with her son at bedtime. (I wish I could remember who it was....good blog post.) My friends echoed this woman's thoughts, emotions, actions about laying with their own sons so I read the blog. Something about the way she said (loosely quoting) 'if my son needs these few minutes with me to help him calm or quiet then why not', to which I thought...you know, I give everything all day long to them, why not just a few more minutes. She also mentioned how, in these quiet moments, her son will pontificate on things not mentioned in the light of day....maybe a time for those deep thoughts to surface and what a tragedy to miss that!

So, I modified the idea to stay true to the commitment Scott and I made for our evenings together, but also to lay down with each of my boys for just a few minutes each. We call it 'nuggles' and we have all fallen in love with it. It might be one of the most special times of my day with them. All three boys snuggle very differently....Timothy presses his entire body as close to mine as he can and does not move or speak. If I ask him a question, his answers are short and concise. Mason, nuzzles and coo's, squitching around with a grin on his face saying, "I love you mommy" over and over. Elijah is somewhere in the middle, rubbing his legs up and down mine, and kissing me over and over while watching the moon hanging on their wall as it goes through it's light cycles. In these moments I smell them, kiss them...on the head, eyes, cheeks, nose...I tell them briefly about the next day, wish them sweet dreams and tell them over and over how much I love them. My days (like most moms) are loud, busy, fast, and often overwhelming with routine, behaviors, consequences, laundry, meals...the daily responsibilities of raising little people while maintaining sanity and a healthy marriage, and sometimes I fall WAY short on my displays of affection, especially when the 'behaviors' part gets the best of me, frustrating me to my core. This is especially true with Timothy, my 6 year old. He is often my greatest challenge, but in that nuggle, he is still my baby boy and I think, without realizing it, we both needed this time together. These few moments with my sons takes the day away. It wipes our slate clean so when we meet again early the next morning, the last moments we had were nuggles and not nagging.

My MayMay

I'm glad I read that blog and I'm glad I don't have an ideal I try to stand on when it comes to these kind of parenting choices, because I would be sad now, to go back and not have this time. These days are precious, as we all know, and one day, they won't want to nuggle with their mommy anymore, as they have since they were babies.

Baby May

The GREAT Rescue

The predicaments, our very brave 6 year old, Timothy, find himself in, that lead to terrified shrieks of, "Save me daddy! Help!" and sending his little brother in to fetch daddy and his 'gladder to save TiTa', are a combination of frightening, infuriating and funny for this Momma!

Even though we have requested he not climb on the outside of the 'hideout' for several reasons that include, but not limited to:
     That's not what it's for.
     Your little brothers will get hurt trying to follow you.
     I don't have time to take you to the ER tonight.
     I don't want to come out in the cold to rescue you.
     It scares mommy to see you hanging like that.
     Sorry bud, you're just going to have to hang there until you figure it out.

he continues to do so. On one hand, I appreciate the motor skills he is refining, he is quite a good climber and I would have done the same thing at his age, but on the other....seriously, I don't have time for a trip to the ER!

So, this is where we found him this time. This one is most certainly the daring-est of the daring dangles he's tried to date. And this time it really scared him.

Disclaimer: No child was hurt in the photographing of this maneuver. Daddy saved him just as quickly as his freshly operated on knee would allow! :)

And with that, Scott and I wonder when he'll try it again.....

A Little Happy in the Fireplace

Yesterday was a blustery, super cold day and it was Monday, which is my grocery day. Grocery days are usually me, the youngest two of the kids and Gram... and enough food and supplies to feed a small army. I have no real issue with grocery day (that I'm going to discuss on here.....serious issue actually with the kid carts always left out in the weather for me to hunt down then dry off while trying to wrangle my kids, then asking them to sit with freezing cold, wet straps around them!) (deep breath, and continue...) Where was I?? Oh yes....I have no real issue with grocery day and actually enjoy being able to help my Gram still get out to town once a week. She just needs me to provide the ride and to haul her groceries....a small, small task on my part to help her, and I'm glad to do it.

So, yesterday, freezing cold, wind gusting somewhere around 20 mph and I'm having my breath sucked from my body by the wind while trying to load the minivan with our weekly rations. I'm really building up the cold here for no good reason, and it's making me laugh a little after talking with relatives in New Hampshire about the storm they just had with around 70 mph wind and 2-3 feet of snow! I'm such a wimp! But, a wimp that was out in the cold on this grocery day, which leads to my story about a little Happy.

I arrived home to my husband, who was four days post knee surgery, opening the door to greet our children, and hold the door open for Gram, telling me he wishes so much he could help. After about five trips in with three to four bags per hand...hands that are now white due to lack of blood flow and freezing temps, he says, "Here baby, let me turn on the fireplace for you! Come warm your hands." Appreciating the gesture, with my now, solid white and mostly numb hands, I made my last two trips then walked over to warm my insides and extremities by our instantly warm gas fireplace.

Immediately, I was met with an odor I have never noticed and a flame in the back that looked more like a 'real' flame then a gas induced one. I hollered at Scott and noticed black puffs as I did....something had been thrown in the fireplace, no doubt by one of the four, and most likely, by the three year old watching us move with a little panic. I turned it off then Scott, lowering to the floor as fast as his wounded knee would allow, blew out the 'real' fire. The questioning began while windows were being flung open because that toxic odor I smelled was now rapidly filling our home.

Elijah calmly informed us that he had thrown his brother's Happy in there because Daisy bit it and broke it. Background....Daisy is our, almost, two year old golden retriever who, no doubt, bit and broke a toy, as this is her usual routine upon entering a living room that has toys left on the floor. Happy. This is Elijah's Happy.....

I don't believe I have a picture of Timothy's but you get the idea...it's a little plastic guy that Elijah named "Happy" when he was first learning to talk. Timothy had one with a green hat that he said was his Happy and sometime this weekend, green hat Happy was bit, broke and disposed of in the fireplace by a little man who knew no better. Now, here we are explaining the right method of disposal of broken toys, trying to dig out a charred Happy from the back of the fireplace, fan out black smoke and rid our house of toxic fumes. I guess my hands were better...somewhere in all this, I forgot they were cold!

This story concludes with a sobbing, devastated Timothy last night in the shower proclaiming his love of the little plastic toy, when upon remembering the tragic events, Elijah ran to the bathroom to tell Timothy his green hat Happy had been bit, broke, burned in the fire and finally, thrown in the trash. The emotions of a six year old....that's a whole other story!

Thanks Daisy, for triggering the devastating ending to a little Happy. We still love you puppy.  :)