Happy Holidays

I didn't take many pictures this holiday season. Luckily some of my family members did.
I should get on the ball and post the ones I did take... But thanks to them you can see us here on Christmas morning....
at the playground holding my nephew on the merry-go-round...
And G's B-day party. Hurray for pictures. It really happened!

kindness

We had a great party today. Wonderful friends and family joined us to celebrate G's 6th birthday. I can't believe it's been 6 years. Thank you.

daughters

Oh the gluttony of how much I love my girls. It's wonderful to be a mom. Wonderful to have daughters. I love them.

Some moments

My brother came to visit. He'll be visiting often, and the kids really love him. It's sweet getting a chance for them to know him. M loves asking him to play hide and seek.
We went out to the little fort and got to ride a boat!
The kids got to ride on these low branches from these beautiful oak trees.
They went all the way to the top of the fort. Baby P and I stayed at the bottom and asked questions of the friendly park ranger.
We set up the Christmas tree but can't find the box that has the actual ornaments. So we decorated it with what we could find. An old camp placard, a happy birthday banner and a hawaiian necklace. 'Tis the season.

Good ideas part 2

So here are some good ideas I've stumbled across recently.

Don't burn the rice pudding: To avoid burning the rice pudding as you go about keeping 3 kids happy, put the burner to heat setting 3. This way as you get around to stirring it every 8 minutes or so, it doesn't actually burn.

Pants for cloth diapered babies: Get your sister to send you a million pair of cute pants for 2T-3T. Then trim them to 2T and 1T length. This way you have the room in the bottom for the diaper. Awesome!

The cup overflows.

stop pretending

"...I need you to love me
and I won't keep my heart from you anymore
and I'll stop this pretending that I can
somehow deserve what I already have."

This is from a song about our relationship with God.

I woke this morning to a baby who had been quiet all night whose diaper was not even half soaked. She was wiggling and smiling as she woke, not crying. What a great baby.

M and G healthy, happy, beautiful.

This life is sweet.

Conversations with M

"I caught the spatula before it hit the ground mama!" she said.
"Wow you are very cooridnated" I said.
"...and awesome" she said.
"And awesome" I said.
"...and gorgeous" she said.
"And Gorgeous" I said.

"What did daddy say?" I asked
"Please close the door" she said as though she were repeating a rote chemistry equation.
So I went and closed the so he could sleep.

"M if you drop your food on the floor what am I going to say?"
"Bummer" she says.

After telling her to go put on a new shirt several times I said:
"M you don't have a shirt on, what does that mean?" thinking she may catch on to the pending punishment in my voice.
"It means I'm naked" she said very matter of fact. Then she did go put on a shirt.

Every day she says things that amaze and amuse me.

Like father like son

Some enchanted evening you will see your son,
You will see him reading across an empty room.
And somehow you know,
you know even then,
the sound of his laughter will ring in your dreams.

Good ideas from my "psychiatrist"

My sister is a psychiatrist so I call her "my psychiatrist" and she does actually help me sort through things from time to time.

Right now she is the aide in the Sunbeam class for her congregation when she's not commuting between NY and CA. Really! But this is the wisdom she imparted to me for class management:

Make a chart so there is a job for each child and they can see that they have a part. You can let them pick their job in order of who is being reverent... This keeps you from always calling only on the 1-2 kids who are good at being quiet.

My other sister said this doesn't work so well when you have kids fight over jobs. That's just part of life I guess.

We use a chart like this for FHE and it works well for our kids. Even little M will teach the lesson when it's assigned to her. We have Prayer, Song, Lesson, and Treat. When PJP gets older we'll probably add some activity. Onward and upward with more jobs and more kids. Whew!

Frequently new ideas hit me and I just need to absorb them.

Uh oh, baby is waking.

Grateful

It's been a good weekend. A long weekend full of smiling babies, all 3 of them.


P took G to the gator game. He's gone to 2 now. P is so jealous of the childhood he's giving his son.


M is an incredibly nice little girl. I frequently can't believe she's my daughter. Not only because I was not such a nice little girl... but because she's so nice it's hard to believe she's not the child of someone much more saintly. She's really awesome. Tonight G and I were play fighting, just block punch sorts of things. M said "Guys don't do that" in a perfectly reasonable calm voice. It reminded me of how when she was under a year old and we were having puppets fight, she started to cry. M has her wild moments. M also has serene times, sweet times, great idea times, startlingly articulate times, and kissing times. She's a great little girl. She loves beautiful things and I try to make her life a happy place.

smilerz

G has this amazing ability to smile great in every photo. I know I'm biased but really, it's great.



He's had this amazing ability since infancy. He has a way of staring at the camera so it comes across as sincere, a private joke, just you and me camera.



M is such a gorgeous child and I can never catch it on camera. OK, like 2 times maybe. Is it the dimple?

infant signing

One of the things I love about signing is that my older kids position baby's hands to make her say things. You can't do that with their vocal chords. A skeptic might say that's not real communication. But the reason we call Mothers "Ma" and Fathers "Da" are because those are some of the first sounds a baby makes, and we added meaning to them.

So a baby clutching it's fist is just something a baby does. If you give them milk every time they do it, they make a connection. And then they have the power to ask for something using a gesture they can make.

MJ

My sister is visiting with her baby. It's so fun.

Lucky haircut

So I did give M a haircut. It was only about 3 inches but she has magic hair so it looks like I cut off more and it looks better than it should.

Then on Monday she had a stomach bug. Gross. But, luckily, her hair cut was just the length to keep it away from her emetic mouth.

It is strange I know, but during her ordeal of throwing up about 10 times I was just so proud of her. Too much information Alert! She always threw up in an easy to clean place like the tub or her plastic sheeted bed. She only cried because she was hungry and she took a nap on the bathroom floor.




I sometimes can't believe what amazingly good children I have. Luckily I'm pretty nice to them so maybe sometimes they feel lucky to have me for a mom.

Civil Servants

G told me a long time ago that he wanted to be a NASCAR driver for Halloween. It was to be 48 Jimmy Johnson and Awesome! Then after I had the white shirt for a base, and felt for decorating... G brought home a fire fighter hat and decided he wanted to be that. So I just sewed some suspenders onto some jeans that luckily (unluckily because apparently he hasn't grown as much as I thought) still fit.



M has told me for a long time that she wanted to be a doctor just like C and B, our friends in Jax. The day we went to the store to get the fabric for that (at $1.99 a yard NICE!) she said she wanted to be an apple. I told her "Sorry honey, Mom doesn't know how to make an apple costume." So a doctor it is and cute!

Beach for all seasons

Living here is pretty nice. Getting to know the beaches has been really fun and I'm not done yet! But these are some of the seasons we've found perfect beaches for:

The season when your 3 year old is asleep in the car so you need a beach that you can drive out on so the 5 year old can play in the sand? Vilano beach, and it's free from Oct-May.

The season when you just want to walk 50 steps and be in the water already? Surfside beach. And if you go note the white hooks installed in the bathrooms and thank P.

The season when you want a playground by the beach and maybe get lucky and have tidal pools? That beach I still don't know the name of with the bridge... and the playground...

The season when you want sugar sand and gentle waves as far as the eye can see even at high tide? Anastasia Island State Park, $8 unless you go on free state park day.

I'm enjoying.