maybe I should start posting again

This past week I've been angry with Blogspot, sitting in a corner and sticking out my tongue at it, angry that it won't let me post my pictures of sweet McG's birthday party. But I had to check my blog everyday so that I could access my friend's blogs, and the frustration would get to me. So today, I'm working my way slowly back to posting. Maybe in a few days I'll try again with the pictures.

Our plans for the day: play nice and make-up. As in make-up for the very bad day we had yesterday. McG has been a little obstinant ever since he turned four. I blame myself and Hubby for this: we were all "You're such a big boy!" over and over and over again that he started believing us. And in his mind big boys don't have to listen to their parents. So yesterday was a bad day, filled with lots of quiet and stern talkings, time-outs and even a spanking. Yikes. So today I'm taking the kids to Exploration Place so that we can all remember that we love eachother. Even after bad days.

Then my parents are here tonight! Right now I'm trying to decide if I force the kids down for a nap so that they'll last past their 7 o'clock bedtime, the time we'll invariably be out to dinner. The downside is that then they'll be up very late. Or try to force them to be kind through dinner even without a nap so that we can put them to bed when we get home and have a glass of wine with my parents and sister and bro-in-law. It's a tough call.

Peace out! Have a nice weekend in this beautiful weather and I'll talk to you peeps later.

grrr

Have any of you other bloggers been having trouble with Blogger? I have been trying off and on since Tuesday to post pictures of McG's birthday party but Blogger keeps freezing up on me. So I'm here, thinking of you all and wanting to show you all what's been going on, but it hasn't been working. So I'm giving myself a day or two and then I'll try again.

a birthday cake

The night before his birthday party, McG, Little Missy and I mixed the cake batter and poured it into ice cream cones before baking. I told them we'd decorate them with frosting and sprinkles the next morning after they woke up. The next morning I came downstairs and found them ready to go. They'd pulled up a chair and a stool to stand on and were patiently waiting at the counter:



So I pulled out the ice cream cone cakes and frosted them. They added the sprinkles:


They're good little helpers!

superfoods

McG (like G's new name? Feel free to comment or add suggestions) is a wonderful eater. He eats everything we put in front of him and if he sees something unknown on our plate it's "What's that? Can I try it?"

Little Missy is a terrible eater. Her diet consists of oatmeal, fruit, cheerios, raisins, chicken nuggets, yogurt and milk. Of course, she also loves chips and sugar, so we try to limit having those items in the house. Hubby and I go through periods where we will force her to try something new -- replete with numerous trips during dinner to her step / time-out, lots of screaming and tears on her part, near yelling on our part -- then during other periods we'll fix her anything she wants just so the rest of us can eat in peace and harmony.

The other night we were at McDonald's when she had to eat her apple slices. She loves apples. So Hubby suggested she dip her apple slices in the caramel as a treat. "No," as she shook her head.

"But it tastes like candy," Hubby reasoned with her.

She vigorously shook her head. The girl didn't buy it, because of, you know, all the times we've told her something tastes like candy only to give her bleach to drink.

"Really, Little Missy, it's YUMMY. Try it!" McG tried to help out from across the table.

We left McDonald's without her ever having tried the yumminess, but McG dipped his finger in the caramel and licked as much of it as he could after his apples were gone.

Later that night, during bath time, I walked into the bathroom to find her drinking the bathwater. Because, as you know, drinking the tepid water of your own filth is much yummier than caramel.

D-D-D-Dora!

Little Missy loves her Dora the Explorer Candyland game. I do not love it. So I hid it in our hall closet. But like the smart and observant daughter I hoped she would be, Little Missy found it when I was putting away towels.

"D-D-D-Dora! My Dora Splora game! Can we play it? Can we play it?"


"Sure! When Daddy gets home!" I wasn't going to struggle with two toddlers playing this game all on my own.

But at least I got some cute pictures of the kids. Good thing there's not audio for these pictures, or else you might have heard some frustration coming from the adult side of the game table. With these pictures you are spared the gritted teeth and you get to see the happy parts. What cuties.

Fredonia Part One, or Homecoming 2008

Two weekends ago we went to Fredonia's Homecoming. Homecoming in Fredonia is very little about the high school students but most everything about the town. There's a parade, carnival, craft fair--and that is all on Saturday. During the week there is stuff like the Homecoming Queen competition (to which I would definitely go if I lived there and not Augusta) and things that have to do with iron tools. I'm not sure of the specifics but it sounds super fun.

Here we are waiting for the parade to begin:

Now it's G's turn to hang out on Daddy's shoulders.
Little Missy and G on the carousel:
G and Little Missy on the helicopter:

But here is the best part of the day, and the best thing that has happened to G in the past two years: a train ride. All G talks about is trains. He tells his friends over and over that he is going to be a train driver when he grows up; he has explained to his daddy and me that he will drive his train through Augusta and pick us up and we can sleep in the coach car when we get tired...you get the point. The last time he rode a train was when Thomas came to OKC two years ago and we went with Nana and Grandpa and Leelee. G can still tell us the specifics of that day: Uncle Todd was not there, Daddy and Little Missy and Grandpa only rode the first time while G, Nana, Auntie Leelee and I all rode a second time. The boy was not quite two and he remembers all this. So getting to ride a train again was huge.

As we waited in line to board:
Little Missy sure loves her hat and purse:
He punches tickets just like they do on "The Polar Express":
Soaking it all in:

the many faces of Little Missy

cleaning

Hubby and I cleaned out our basement today. Edit: Hubby and I started cleaning it out and he finished it, but who needs to know that I escaped upstairs to read books to G and hide from the boxes and spiders.

Anyway.

Last year I got a giftcard from the Gap for Christmas from my in-laws and with that free money I decided to buy some expensive jeans. Most of my jeans come from Bitten and are $15 at the most, so I bought some $60 jeans (on-trend with cute back pockets) that I would never splurge on with my own money. And I bought a supercute silver shirt. I got home and have worn that silver shirt quite a few times but have never worn those jeans because I lost them. Lost. Them. I went throught the bag of clothes that I've been thinking about giving to Goodwill (notice that I've had that bag of clothes since last December and it is now October), gone through the corners of my car's trunk, emptied my drawers. They haven't been anywhere.

Last night I was sitting on the couch, looking at the knees of my jeans, noticing how they're almost worn through and will soon have holes, and again I wanted the expensive jeans with the cute pockets to replace this pair of jeans with the cute pockets (Sassy Engineer, you know the jeans of which I speak). And again I was frustrated that I lost a really cute pair of jeans without ever taking off the tags.

So today, before I excused myself upstairs, I found a Gap bag WITH THE JEANS.

Good things come to those who clean.

picture

self-expression

Hubby thinks it is hi-larious to let Little Missy pick out her own clothes. But he doesn't just let her pick out her entire outfit, he kind of pushes it along to craziness by picking out the first article of clothing and letting her go from there.

Last week she ended up wearing this:

...with her purple flowered & ruffled jeans, bracelets, her tulip ring and the ugliest Princess shoes ever. The Princess shoes are partly my fault because she picked them out after the four of us had been at Target for way too long, trying to find shoes that I liked and were actually in her size, with G and Little Missy laughing and running in circles and touching every shoe they could and some that were out of their reach when I capitulated: "Yes, she can have the ugly Princess shoes and I will buy her some better ones another time." Well, I'm not going to buy her any more shoes, no matter how ugly they are, until she outgrows them, so I try to limit her wearing them to appropriate times when they won't stand out. Although I'm not sure which of her shoes would have looked better with this ensemble, but the Princess shoes make me cringe.

When I found out what she had worn outside of the house Hubby smiled "But the people in the store (library? I can't remember the particulars because my horror was clouding my hearing) thought she was so cute."

HONEY. They have to say something when their eyes are grabbed by the little neon mess walking around.

outside play

read this stuff

My friend Niki has a blog and her husband has a blog. Check both of them out, specifically the post "A Somewhat Serious Post About the 'Right' to Health Care" (hers) and "I'm sorry but I need that pen back" (his). Very interesting reading as we make our decision for whom to vote in November!

http://theunconventionaldoctorswife.blogspot.com/
http://unconventionaldoctor.blogspot.com/

more kids?

When Hubby and I were engaged we both knew we wanted four kids. I always thought big families seemed like so much fun, he is from a family of four brothers who are all still close friends, so four was the only option for us. And we were going to have them close together.

So we had our first little blessing--G. He was a beautiful, easy, eventually very happy baby. Right on time and according to plan Little Missy entered the family. G loved his sister, no sibling rivalry, Little Missy was another beautiful, easy, very happy baby. But we were busy. Having two children does not double your work, it quadruples it. As Hubby said, the first six months were easy because she was sleeping all the time. But then she began staying awake more and more during the day and demanding more and more of our attention, then she started crawling and walking and one day we looked at eachother and realized that we had no time to ourselves. NONE. Quietly, mostly to ourselves and in small little jokes to eachother, Hubby and I both started questioning whether we wanted to double the number of our children.

Coming to terms with the fact that I was only able to handle two children -- only capable of being a loving, calm, not-constantly-screaming mother to only two children -- was difficult to come to terms with. I remember walking into church one morning behind a gorgeously put-together pregnant mom with her three adorably put-together children and her handsome husband, all quietly and peacefully walking into the building together like it was no big deal. I'm not sure if all four of us had bathed that morning. I looked at that mom and wondered why she was able to keep it all together with three and one-on-the-way when I was barely keeping it together with two.

Now I am comfortable with the knowledge that I am not built that way. I want to be an excellent mother, capable of calmly handling all my children's requests and needs, giving them lots of individual attention, all while having plenty of time alone and with my husband. The sad part is that when I have an amazing husband like I do, asking him to be okay with the fact that, at least right now, we cannot have any more, is not a fun conversation. At the end of working 10 hours a day, after not having a day off in weeks, he walks in the door, gives me a kiss and immediately plays with the kids. He takes them outside, roughhouses inside, reads them books, gives them baths, puts them to bed. Hubby would be an excellent father to many more children, and he is an excellent husband for understanding that his wife wouldn't be an excellent mother to many more.

We are both okay with this. Our family is beginning to feel complete, we're enjoying their personalities and how they interact with eachother, we're loving their growing independence. So of course now is the time G is beginning to ask questions. A few months back we were walking down the stairs when he asks me why some mommies and daddies have lots of kids. As the answer was coming out of my mouth I KNEW to shut it, wait until I had come up with a better answer, but "Well, I guess it's because they have lots of love to give so they want lots of kids" comes spilling out of my mouth. I held my breath, hoping he wouldn't process what I just said, but then I saw it register.

"So are you and Daddy going to have more kids?"

"No." And then I redirected his attention to food. I'm not eloquent on the spot.

Last night he asked me if any more babies were going to grow in my tummy. I looked at Hubby. "WHAAAAAAT?" I mouthed to him. Hubby whispers across the room that G had asked him if we were going to have any more babies. I look at it as he loves his sister sooo much that he wants another sibling to play with. And I'm hoping he stops asking questions.