Three Under Four

I always feel like my babies graduate from the newborn phase at around seven weeks. Lily turns seven weeks old today, so today I’m in a reflective mood. A few thoughts from the first seven weeks with three children under four:

• Going with the flow is the surest path to happiness for children and parents.
• My children are happiest when I only schedule one outing (e.g., grocery shopping, story time at the library, play date, doctor visit, etc) per day.
• Outings are simplest in the morning, before the time when my children should be (but usually are not) napping.
• Non-naps can be a good thing when they result in earlier bedtimes.
• Beautiful fall weather is a blessing.
• Emma has grown into the capable role of the big sister – but she’s still only three and a half years old.
• Johnny has moved from being jealous of me holding Lily because he wants to be held to being jealous of me holding Lily because he wants to hold Lily.
• Baby smiles are the best.
• Children grow up way too fast.

Notes to Self

• Searching every cupboard and drawer in the house may not result in finding your missing sewing project that you stashed somewhere while in labor well over a month ago. However, losing important sewing projects is a strong motivator for necessary home organization. Given that your home is approaching organized mode, here’s hoping said sewing project turns up soon.
• Having two children who can walk/run means you have two children who can walk/run in opposite directions. This complicates supervision since you cannot split yourself in two. Be thankful that your children like to stick together in public so this is only a problem at home. We won’t worry about three children who can walk/run just yet.
• Your toddler is an expert at self-entertaining. However, he may not choose the forms of self-entertainment you would select for him. You would love for him to draw nicely on paper, read books, or do puzzles. He may choose instead to:
• draw on the table, floor, chairs, and walls
• tear pages from books
• throw puzzle pieces
• taking three bites out of each ripe nectarine on the kitchen table
• pull every baby wipe/kleenex out of the box
• If your toddler does any of the above, be sure to remember that he does sometimes choose to entertain himself by:
• completing puzzles nicely
• reading books without ripping out pages
• building block towers
• drawing on paper
• cleaning the house with the baby wipes he pulls out of the box
• If a parenting tip works one day, be sure to thoroughly enjoy your success. The same trick may not work the next day.
• Hugs, kisses, and “I love you, Mama!” are fantastic antidotes for sleep deprivation, general exhaustion, and bad days.

Emma and Johnny Quotes

Emma: I put it [a toy] in my pocket so that none of my friends will get it.
Mama: But it’s nice to share with your friends.
Emma: Well, I share with my dolls.

Emma: The floor is really dirty. It’s only for feet and dancing.

Conversation between Mike and a feverish and coughing Emma at 3am:
Dada: What would make you feel better?
Emma (instant answer): Maybe we could go to Disneyland.

Emma: I wish our house was pink. I think everything should be pink.

Emma, looking at some nylons:
I like those tights. Them look like skin.

Johnny, as the local high school girls’ track team runs past our house:
Hey! Girls! Wow! (climbs up on the couch to get a better look) Girls, girls, girls!

Picnic Table Talk: Summer Highlights

Here is the highlight of our summer – who, appropriately, turns one month old today:

We also enjoyed visits from my parents, a cousin and uncle of Mike’s, two of my brothers, and two of my sisters. Emma asks nearly every day when Aunt K will come stay with us again. We spent hours outside, and plan to continue to do so through the fall. I got some sewing projects done. I picked up some bins to use as workboxes at Walmart last night (they currently have sets of 5 for $3.50, if anyone else is looking for them). We aren’t following the standard workbox system; rather I plan to fill the bins with activities Emma and Johnny can complete with minimal supervision. The bins will be within their reach, and they can choose which bin to pull out.

I had Lily and Johnny simultaneously napping yesterday afternoon (first time ever), so I pulled out my sewing machine only to find that the project I started right before Lily is born is not where I thought it was. Nor is it in any of the other logical places I may have put it. So, I have some motivation to do some major reorganizing of our closets and cabinets, which needed doing anyhow. Now to find the time…

Lessons learned this summer:

• Do not put away sewing projects while in labor. You may not put them where you thought you did.
• Do not attempt to stop at a playground with a 4-week-old baby, a 20-month-old, and a 3.5-year-old if you left your baby carrier at home.
• Do not go out without your baby carrier or stroller, even if it is just to meet your husband for lunch. You may want to stop at a playground on the way home and will wish you had the baby carrier. You will also wish you had the baby carrier and/or stroller when you arrive at your husband’s work and find your toddler has fallen asleep and refuses to wake up.
• Indoor climbing toys from grandparents are a lifesaver if you have a toddler who loves to climb, particularly if said child attempts to scale very tall furniture in the absence of climbing toys.
• Grandparents are wonderful.
• So are aunts and uncles.
• So are friends – particularly those who drop by at 1pm with a surprise dinner just when you were starting to realize that your sick children were going to remain high maintenance and that you had no idea what to cook that night.

Wordless Wednesday: Affection (plus an update)

Johnny’s diagnosis was downgraded to a simple reaction to illness by our pediatrician at a follow-up yesterday, much to my relief. He’s hoping it was a one-time reaction – I know I don’t want a repeat of Saturday anytime in the near future! He also ate today, thanks to my serving meals in a muffin tin – thank you, Michelle, for the inspiration! Thanks to everyone who left food suggestions in the comments Monday, also – I’m sure I’ll be trying out all of your strategies since both of my solid food consuming children go through phases of considering food optional. I wouldn’t worry about it much except that not eating tends to equal dramatic meltdowns and I don’t care for those…

Month in review and September goals

If you ignore the near-constant sickness, August was a good month. We’ll especially ignore the end-of-month bonus we got Saturday in the form of a LONG day in Boston Children’s hospital for Johnny ending in an asthma diagnosis and the fact that Mike currently has bronchitis for the second time this year. I do want to know, can anyone tell me why the nurses at Boston Children’s thought it was a good idea to try to draw blood from the back of BOTH of Johnny’s hands before finally succeeding in the much-more-common inner elbow spot?

Back to reviewing August… I enjoyed the simplicity of life with two children for the few hours before I went to the hospital to have Lily. The kids got to go to TWO birthday parties August 1st, which would have been impossible with a newborn. Lily has been a joy to take care of, so enjoying having a newborn around has been a breeze. I LOVED having so much family around. It was wonderful to spend time with family members I rarely get to see. I thoroughly appreciated my mom’s cooking, and my siblings and parents spent a lot of time baking with Emma, wrestling Johnny, reading to Emma and Johnny, snuggling Lily, and helping to mow the lawn, paint the cathedral ceiling in our family room, and install a new ceiling fan in the same room. Our final visitor left August 27th, so we’re still adjusting to life as a family of five. Emma and Johnny are learning to share their parents with Lily, and Johnny is getting better at understanding just how gentle you need to be with a newborn. Emma has emerged this past week as an absolutely stellar big sister to both Johnny and Lily. She’s great at comforting both of the younger children and helping around the house.

As for annual goals:

• Find places to keep all those odds and ends that get stashed in random places: ignored, although I cleared out some old toys.
• Potty train Emma: Done. Johnny is still interested in using the potty and sits on it occasionally, but I’m honestly not terribly interested in having two potty-trained children at the moment. If Johnny chooses to train himself overnight, that’s great, but I’m not pushing it.
• Get Johnny to eat more solid food: we’re back to ground zero on this one since the trauma of Saturday. He drinks milk from a sippy cup and not much else. Any suggestions?
• Be more patient with cooking/baking that involves a rolling pin: My mom did this, but I don’t think she had my patience issues to start with.
• Take the kids outdoors more: They were outside most days, sometimes for hours on end. We kept them in most of the time for one particularly hot and muggy week.
• Get the kids to sleep through the night better: Another setback here, I’m guessing due to the combination of new baby and illness. Neither Emma or Johnny is sleeping through the night. They don’t stay awake long when they wake up, but it’s still disrupting everyone’s sleep.

September goals:

• Enjoy New England’s beautiful autumn weather by spending time outside and visiting a farm at least once this month.
• Visit a farmer’s market. My town runs one and there are several others in neighboring towns.
• Make sure all three kids get quality time with both parents. I was baking cookies with Emma last night and she said, “This is fun. I needed some Mama time.”
• Enjoy the return of play dates: we’ve been in self-imposed quarantine for the past month thanks to The Evil Virus That Took Forever to Go Away, so we’re all looking forward to visits with friends this month.

I’d love to get my sewing machine out, so we’ll set that as a bonus goal. I’m also excited about running a review and giveaway from All Modern this month, a store that specializes in contemporary furniture but offers some fun toys for babies and children as well.

What are your goals for this month?

When little ones don’t feel well…

It’s been a month of not feeling great at our house. Nothing serious, just a rather miserable and long-lived virus making the rounds in our family (Lily, thankfully, seems to have been spared the experience). It has, however, gotten me thinking about ways to keep little ones as happy as possible when they feel anything but great. Here are a few quiet activities that have helped to distract from illness this month at our house:

• puzzles
• books (hooray for public libraries!)
• drawing
• coloring
• painting
• play dough
• sidewalk paint
• looking after baby dolls and stuffed animals
• building with blocks
• pattern blocks
• playing with fabric scraps
• playing “school”

I have resorted to television on occasion, but I try to stick to Signing Time DVDs (I did allow a handful of Bob the Builder and one or two Word World episodes). I watch with the kids so we can talk about what they see and to keep myself from using the television as a babysitter. Both my children and I have learned sign language vocabulary from Signing Time, and I learned about greywater purification systems from Bob the Builder. I even looked it up afterwards, and the description seemed reasonably accurate, at least according to Wikipedia…

How do you keep your young children happy when they don’t feel well?

Wordless Wednesday: Growing up so quickly…

Fluff Talk Thursdays: Why Cloth?

When my oldest daughter Emma was born, a couple of my friends were trying to use cloth diapers with their babies. I admired their eco-friendliness but stuck with disposables. We were living in a tiny (under 400 square feet) apartment. We had a washer but no dryer, and I couldn’t face the idea of having stacks of cloth diapers hanging to dry along with all the rest of our clothes. Seeing my friends’ diapers did clear up a couple misconceptions I had, though. I learned that cloth diapers can be adorable, and that you no longer have to rinse them out in the toilet.

When we moved back to the US and into a much larger apartment with a washer AND dryer, I started thinking about trying cloth. Emma’s disposables were always leaking, we were going through tons of disposables, and she kept getting diaper rashes. When I found a good deal on user-friendly pocket diapers we took the plunge and bought a dozen. To my surprise, they leaked less frequently than Emma’s disposables and her diaper rash disappeared. They were more bulky than disposables, but since Emma was a thin baby this was a good thing – her pants would finally stay up! Three years and two babies later, we’re still using the same cloth diapers, although I’ve added more over time and am finally learning the art of making my own cloth diapers.

I’m not a perfect cloth diapering mom. We still buy disposables, just in much smaller quantities. I use them at night (I have found a non-leaking solution with cloth diapers, but not a version that keeps my kids asleep through the night), and if we’re going to be out for long periods of time. But the rest of the time my kids wear fluffy cloth diapers. We have a big enough diaper stash that I only wash diapers 2-3 times per week, and Emma gets to practice her folding skills with our cloth wipes. I’d like to try my hand at making fleece soakers - anyone have a pattern they recommend?

Picnic Table Talk: Writing

I come from a family that enjoys writing. Our love of writing comes primarily from my father, who writes poetry and the occasional story in his (very sparse given his ten children and demanding job) free time. My mother also deserves credit, however – she is the letter writer in the family. She doesn’t write frequently (she does, after all, have the demanding job of mother of ten children – two still at home), but the letters she writes are always long and detailed.

I type more than I write by hand. I enjoy writing with a fountain pen, thanks to intensive handwriting education in French public schools. I type very quickly, but sometimes it’s good to have the extra reflecting time given by my penmanship.

I have done very little to teach my children penmanship. Johnny is too young (he does draw circles, which is pretty good for a 20-month-old). Emma has printing sheets, but she’s a perfectionist who only draws the letters she is certain she can get perfectly. I’m fine with that for now. She writes a very nice T, E, L, I, and U, as well as the occasional M and A when she is feeling adventurous.

I hope my children grow to love writing also, and I think there is a lot that can be done in early childhood to foster a love of writing. A few things I remember and try to practice as a parent from my own childhood:

• Read aloud, a lot.
• Write yourself, and let children hear what you have written.
• Write down stories your children tell you before they are old enough to write them themselves.
• Keep a journal and encourage your children to do so also. I’ve kept a journal for most of my life (every single day since September 27, 2003), and all three of my children have journals. Emma and Johnny scribble and draw in theirs as I did in my first journal as a child, and I’m sure Lily will be doing the same soon. I write occasional journal entries in my children’s journals to get them started with a record of their lives as well.
• Sing songs – often overlooked, this is a great way for children to learn about rhyming and the rhythm of language.
• Write simple stories and have your children use them to practice their penmanship once they are reading. My children are too young for this currently, but I remember my mother doing it with me, and it made penmanship practice much more interesting.

Parenting Three

Three things I love about having a newborn:

• simple needs
• soft newborn skin
• can’t get too many cuddles

Three things I love about having a 20-month-old:

• learning and changing so much every day
• adorable grins
• creative mischief-making

Three things I love about having a not-quite-3.5-year-old:

• increased independence and responsibility
• still small enough for lots of cuddles
• conversations that give insight into her mind

Month in Review and August Goals

I met all of my critical July goals – if you make it cloth diaper in the singular rather than plural! Actually, that diaper turned out so well that my only reason for not making more is that I want to see how that one fits and then adjust the pattern; I’m confident I can make more fairly quickly. I even made Johnny two pairs of shorts, although I only blogged about one. The baby clothes are washed (provided we have a girl as expected), and hospital bags are packed. Having my 14-year-old sister and 17-year-old brother stay with us for the last week of July was a huge help in getting everything done, as was having my 14-year-old sister here for most weekends during the month. If only they didn’t live far across the ocean in Europe!

As for those bonus goals:

• Organize some activities to keep Emma and Johnny busy once the baby arrives: I made each child a crayon roll, which makes coloring time more peaceful and better organized. I also used paint chips to make this matching file folder game and this color scheme activity. I also picked up some workbooks, flashcards, and write-on boards from Target’s dollar section, and both kids are loving playing with their “school things”.
• Have the baby: Did not happen, but it was a funny goal to set since I didn’t really have any control over it anyhow.

On to annual goals:

• Find places to keep all those odds and ends that get stashed in random places: Does organizing baby clothes count?
• Potty train Emma: Done. Johnny used the potty a couple times, too.
• Get Johnny to eat more solid food: He’s doing well except when teething…
• Be more patient with cooking/baking that involves a rolling pin: Thoroughly ignored.
• Take the kids outdoors more: It rained a LOT this July, but I think they were outside nearly every other day.
• Get the kids to sleep through the night better: Emma’s doing well at this, and while she doesn’t nap every day she seems okay so long as she naps every other day. Johnny’s cutting 2-year molars, and it seems to be taking forever.

August goals:

• Appreciate the relative simplicity of only having two children for however many days I have left before we welcome our third child.
• Enjoy having a newborn (whenever she decides to show up).
• Enjoy having family around. My mom and dad will be staying with us this week, and my mom will stay until the 15th. My 14-year-old sister will be here until the 4th, and then back August 13-15. My 21-year-old brother (who I haven’t seen for three years!) will fly out to visit August 15-27. And one of Mike’s cousins will be staying here en route to college the night of August 20th.
• Adjust to life as a family of five.

As a bonus goal, I’m interested in making a very large diaper bag – anyone have a tutorial or pattern they love? I’ve never tried sewing a bag before, so I’m thinking sweet and simple.

Picnic Table Talk: Organization

I try to provide my children with as many opportunities to explore their world and express themselves as possible, while maintaining a reasonably clean house. Organization is something I think about frequently, and a topic I have blogged about before.

I haven’t done much to organize learning in our house; I think very young children learn a lot by exploring their world, particularly if parents pay attention to and discuss their children’s interests. I am considering a loose adaptation of Sue Patrick's Workbox System to provide Emma and Johnny with things to do at their play table with minimal supervision when I am busy with the baby. If anyone has used workboxes in this way with young children, I would love to hear about it! Some things I would put in the workboxes:

• Play dough, sometimes on it’s own, sometimes with one of our homemade play mats.
• Pattern blocks, sometimes with templates like the ones I referred to in this post.
• File folder games like this one.
• Their travel felt boards with the activities mentioned in this post.
• Their crayon rolls and paper/coloring pages
• These paint brushes and paper

Have any other suggestions as to what I should put in these bins? I’d love any other ideas!

Here are a few things that work well for us in terms of physical organization:

• Divide craft materials into categories. I have some supplies (colored paper, fabric scraps, and pipe cleaners) that I let the kids use with minimal supervision. The next category is supplies that both kids can use with light supervision (crayons, markers, glue), followed by materials that require close supervision (small beads, scissors).
• Categorize toys. We keep our building toys in a different part of the house from stuffed animals and dolls, which are also separate from books. Puzzles are kept separately from other toys also.
• Make clean-up fun and easy. Each toy has a place where it always goes, and I use containers that are easy for my kids to put toys into. Sometimes they will clean up a toy on their own, but more often I clean up alongside them. If they’re reluctant to help pick up, we’ll sing a song and/or turn clean-up into a game (who can find the most red duplos, who can pick their toy up the most quickly, etc)
• Catch destructive mode before it’s full-blown. Emma and Johnny both occasionally go into destructive mode. For Johnny, this typically means he needs a nap; for Emma it’s a signal that she needs to do a structured activity.

What organizing tricks simplify your life?

Cleaning Tips

First, a link to 66 All-Natural Cleaning Solutions (found via my wonderful sister E). This list of ways to clean using basic household ingredients included several ideas that were new to me.

Then, a few favorites from our house not included in the above list:

• Use a regular rubber eraser to get crayon off of floor tiles and walls.
• Baking soda (coupled with some elbow grease) to get soap scum off of the bathtub.
• When kids want to play with toys that come with many small pieces (blocks, beads, legos), put a blanket or sheet on the carpet and have them play on top of that. At the end, gather up the corners of the blanket and all the tiny pieces go into a pile in the middle for quick and easy pickup. I mentioned this idea to my mother and she pointed out that for even quicker cleanup you can designate a sheet for each toy and put the entire sheet (with the toys inside) in the bin at the end of playtime. Or you can get crafty and make special play mats for all the toys with nice ties to close them up. Maybe I’ll do that someday, but for now Emma knows that toys with small pieces may only be played with on the fleece Monkey blanket.

On the topic of crayon on walls, yesterday Johnny stopped coloring on his coloring page and started coloring on the wall. I told him he couldn't color on the wall and took him back to his coloring page, where I started commenting on how pretty his coloring was. He took my hand, walked me back to the wall, pointed proudly, and said, "Pretty wall!" Looks like we have a ways to go before he gets the whole coloring boundaries thing...

What are your favorite tried and true cleaning tips?

Month in Review and July Goals

I had very simple goals for June, but I didn’t quite accomplish them. I did make one more maternity skirt (and was very happy with how it turned out), but I only made one pair of shorts for Johnny instead of the two I was supposed to. I do love the pair I made, and Johnny wears them all the time after an initial meltdown that I’ll attribute to trying to get him to model at bedtime. The good news is, my absolutely wonderful 14-year-old sister will be staying with us on the weekends from now until the end of the month (another sister gets her during the week). I’m excited to get to spend some time with her - and since, to quote Emma, “Kids love Aunt K.”, I’m thinking I might be able to get a little more sewing done.

The fact that my 18-month-old owns only two pairs of shorts would be more of a problem if we were having proper summer weather instead of near-non-stop rain and highs in the low 70s. I turned the heat on at least four times in June, and we never set our thermostat above 67...

Anyhow, on to annual goals:

Find places to keep all those odds and ends that get stashed in random places: Didn’t do much on this, but my house was clean for most of the month.

Potty train Emma: Another great month in this department. In fact, Johnny used the potty four times, but it seems to have been a temporary interest. I wasn’t too keen to potty train him this close to a major family event (addition of a sibling) anyhow.

Get Johnny to eat more solid food: He’s doing really well in this department, eating most of what the rest of the family eats. And his stomach issues seem to have resolved themselves, hooray!!!

Be more patient with cooking/baking that involves a rolling pin: Thoroughly ignored this month.

Take the kids outdoors more: June was a month of rain, rain, and more rain in Massachusetts. We did go outside, but my silly children dislike getting muddy for some odd reason, so they don’t like going out in the rain. We’ll have to work on that, particularly if summer weather doesn’t appear soon!

Get the kids to sleep through the night better: They are doing great at bedtime, but naptime has become rough… They only napped every other day for the past two weeks, and they didn’t nap Tuesday or Wednesday this week. Anyone have brilliant suggestions for getting toddlers to nap? They will lie down and rest, but they aren’t sleeping – and they frequently get into mischief instead of resting! I’m really missing my “at least one child is unconscious so I have a little more freedom to do what I want” time.

July goals:

• Make some newborn cloth diapers (I may have designed and sewn my own wedding dress – including the satin and lace bits – but I’m terrified of sewing cloth diapers and procrastinated that task this month by serging baby wipes instead)
• Make Johnny at least one pair of shorts
• Wash baby clothes
• Pack hospital bags

July “bonus” goals:

• Organize some activities to keep Emma and Johnny busy once the baby arrives
• Have the baby – definitely not a given, but something I would love to see happen this month!

What are your plans for July?

Emma (and Johnny!) Quotes

Trying to regulate a sibling dispute:

Mama to Emma: You can’t have the [stuffed] squirrel and the red pen. Which one do you choose?

Emma: But I have two hands!

Emma talking to her sidewalk chalk, who are lined up on the pavement: You guys have one leg. I have two legs. I have head, arms, belly button, shirt, shorts, underpants... You guys have no shirt, shorts, underpants, belly button, arms... You guys are red and yellow and brown and green and purple. All the colors.

 

Emma’s really into marriage lately. Here’s an excerpt from a recent car conversation about Johnny getting married:

Daddy: Should Johnny marry Nora (one of Emma’s friends)?

Emma: No.

Daddy: Should Johnny marry Ava (another friend)?

Emma: No.

Daddy: Should Johnny marry Cinderella?

Johnny (very enthusiastically): Yeah!

Emma: No, Cinderella already have a prince!

After Emma pinched Johnny:

Mama: Emma, you can’t pinch Johnny.

Emma: But, I can say I’m sorry!

2009 Goals: May Review and June Goals

I had several goals for May; here’s how I did:

• Make at least three items of maternity clothing: I finished the top I had cut out at the beginning of the month, and that’s it. It’s been cold enough that it hasn’t mattered (winter maternity clothes work fine so far, although I know that won’t last).
• Make/buy Johnny some summer clothes: I bought him three white t-shirts, intending to iron on some cute transfers my aunt gave me. Didn’t happen, but he has worn the t-shirts several times. He’s in desperate need of shorts, luckily for me it’s been cold enough for him to wear long pants nearly every time we’ve gone out.
• Take control of Emma’s theft of her brother’s clothing: This I have done quite well at, largely by threatening to let Johnny wear her clothes if she wears his.
• Do something about the 500 or so flagged blog posts in my Google Reader: I actually did go through several flagged blog posts, but then flagged about 200 more. I clearly need a blog flagging regulator.
• Figure out what to do about our leaking boiler: Fixed, so long as it passes inspection - after discussing the problem with multiple neighbors, my plumber uncle (who sadly lives on the other side of the country and so had to figure out the problem based on my undoubtedly horribly inaccurate description of what was wrong), and several of Mike’s coworkers - by replacing the boiler with a furnace, water heater, and an entirely new heating system for the house that involved cutting holes in every room. Which resulted in an unplanned hole in the ceiling (someone fell through, thankfully they weren’t hurt!) and a broken doorbell (both to be repaired). And a couple holes in the playroom wall to patch where we yanked out some long-defunct space heaters.

Just in case that wasn’t enough excitement for the month of May, we also had a clog in the sewage pipe between our house and the street that was finally fixed via our toilet through a vent in the roof. For a slightly less astronomical price than the price on the bill. Which goes to show, if a price seems Truly Outrageous, say so – they cut nearly 25% of the initial bill without my having to argue with them beyond pointing out that it seemed overly expensive given the work done.

One benefit of the Month of the Expensive Home? Our house is now fully heated for the First Time Ever.

Now, on to annual goals:

• Find places to keep all those odds and ends that get stashed in random places: I cleared off the tables in the kitchen, and have actually kept them clear (quite the accomplishment, since they had become the household junk repository). How exciting, to have tables in the kitchen that can actually be used!
• Potty train Emma: Stellar performance here, which is a good thing since she refuses to wear pull-ups ever since a girl at the playground called them diapers. We do sneak them on for nighttime, but it is literal sneaking (once she’s asleep).
• Get Johnny to eat more solid food: The boy got weaned this month, so he lost his favorite food source. He now eats bread, grapes, and frozen applesauce. And occasionally refried beans and broccoli. Also anything that might be really bad for him (super salty, deep fried, artificial flavors/colors, super sweet). He is still doing great drinking milk, and his stomach seems to finally be tolerating solid food in general, so maybe we’ll escape allergy testing for now.
• Be more patient with cooking/baking that involves a rolling pin: I used my rolling pin this month! I made mini pita bread, which turned out okay. I’m not sure it increased my patience with a rolling pin, though…
• Take the kids outdoors more: We missed several days in May thanks to cold rain, but the kids are still spending a lot of time outside.
• Get the kids to sleep through the night better: HUGE improvement in this area! Johnny now sleeps through the night if I let him sleep in my bed. He starts out most nights on a mattress on the floor, so hopefully I can gradually move him into his own room. Some teeth that have been bothering him for ages are finally breaking through, so that could help a lot!Emma is sleeping pretty well also, she gets the occasional nightmare but otherwise doesn’t wake up much at all any more. Maybe we’ll get a few weeks’ rest before welcoming a newborn into our home!

And, to conclude the Longest Post Ever, my goals for June:

• Make at least one more maternity skirt
• Make Johnny at least two pairs of shorts

I think I’ll stick with a short list this time!

Destructive Mode

The work of one three-year-old, left alone for three minutes:

…

Still, a vast improvement over yesterday (she and Johnny emptied their toy chest and every single article of clothing from their dressers while I cooked dinner)

This morning’s destruction even brought some benefits:

More Emma Quotes

Pointing at the toilet seat: “Look, oval! Kind of like an egg.”

To Johnny: “Do that one more time and our won’t get a Gameboy!” Okay, I really am confused on this one. We don’t own any video games, and to my knowledge Emma has never seen a Gameboy – but this is definitely what she said (I asked her to repeat herself).

Around 2pm: “It’s 29 o’clock and we need to cook dinner!”

After I complained about a not feeling well: “Don’t worry, Mama, it’s just Lily” (Lily is what we plan to name Baby #3)

We’re were all lying on my bed – or I’m lying on the bed and Emma and Johnny are trying to climb/jump on me. I tell them to stop, to which Emma replies: “Well, just close your eyes and go to sleep.” Now, why didn’t I think of that solution?

To Mike: “When I big girl I going marry you.”

Greatest Gifts a Mother Could Ask For

  

 

Happy Mother’s Day!