On Friday, I conscientiously objected to Mt. Laundry in favor of enjoying this view:
I love Christmas and Christmas decorations, but I'm finding it hard to stop and enjoy - to really anticipate the celebration of Jesus' birth. Usually my brain is so full of my to do list that there's no room for reflection.
However, I'm trying. I'm imperfect and we miss days, but here's what we are doing for advent:
Advent calendar. Yeah, the candy kind. In years past, I bought the one Starbucks sold. But $30 is a bit pricey for what boils down to 24 pieces of chocolate. Enter Aldi:
Boom. A dollar a piece - both CC and Henry have one so they don't argue over who's turn it is.
As far as something more Jesus centered, we printed out some Advent bible verses to put on a mini tree:
So we read the day's verse at breakfast usually and then put it on the tree -- veeeerry simple, this is what I can manage in the current season of my life.
We are also doing an reading plan for the Jesus Syorybook bible
...taken straight from homewiththeboys.net. Again, we miss days, but we are trying to point out hearts toward the best Gift and not just to the ones under the tree -- if there were any under there (I haven't wrapped yet).
I love food. If you're reading this blog, you probably know me and if you know me, then you know I love food. But then, who doesn't? Can anyone give me an example? Anyway, I thought I might post here some what-I-cooked-this-week type posts.
Growing up, my mom wasn't a meal planner. She'd just go to the store and buy stuff and decide later what to do with it. Dinner was usually a surprise at our house -- a good surprise though. My mom is a great cook.
I remember going to a friends house and being in absolute astounded awe that their meals were written on the calendar for a month. A MONTH!
I aim to plan meals out for our week based on Brian's work schedule and any activities we have planned.
Tuesday: Taco Tuesday (this happens most Tuesdays.)
Wednesday: Egg salad sandwiches, fruit
Thursday: Enchilada soup
Friday: Asian noodles
Can you guess which day Brian worked? Yeah, it was Wednesday -- egg salad day.
We hadeftover hot dog buns from Henry's party (keep in' it real, folks)
I've learned not to plan an involved meal without a baby holder. B is also working tonight -- we foraged and ended up having chicken salad sandwiches and pears.
Oh, I also took a picture of Asian noodles, which is loosely based on this recipe.
It's a family favorite.
I think it might be cool to catalog this from time to time so I'll be better about taking pictures.
Henry's birthday was the day after Thanksgiving this year.
On his actual birthday.
We had a party on Saturday evening. It was mostly family. One of the only shows Henry watches is Daniel Tiger -- for the longest it was the only show he'd watch. He's recently branched out to Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. Anyway, I say that to say that the (loose) party theme was Daniel Tiger.
With the help of some figurines I ordered from Amazon and a Pinterest post,I made a Daniel Tiger cake.
Henry helped.
He has mad decorating skills.
What?! It's tiger striped on the inside!! Let me give you a better look:
With Katerina Kitty cat on top because that's the way CC wanted it :)
Thanksgiving came and went in an absolute blur. Does time move faster with each additional child?
We spent the night at my parents house on Wednesday so we could get up early and Turkey trot!
Dad, Kristi, Julie, and I ran the 5k. Im working on getting back to where I was before Graham. This one was a full minute per mile faster than my last 5k!
Susan and Kristi (again) did the fun run with CC, Carter, and Ella.
We came back. I ate too many sausage balls, showered, put the boys down to rest and got ready for the big meal. Here are pictures that Dad took.
CC and Ella
Brian's parents and our crew. Brian is missing because he was at work -- sad face.
Everyone who was at Thanksgiving! There are a ton of us. I love, love, love that both of my sets of parents and my in-laws were at one Thanksgiving meal. It is truly a blessing to have such a gracious, loving family.
I'm 90% positive that Graham is my last baby. This is evidenced by my terror at the thought of getting pregnant. I'm looking forward to my kids being a little more independent. But I will miss chubby baby legs.
Don't you just want to chew on 'em a little? No? Just me?
I'm thinking of deleting Facebook. For all the reasons you've heard other people say those same words -- it's a time suck, there's too much drama, etc.
I mostly post pictures of my kids and family -- things that I want to document, that I don't want to forget. And I have thought for a while now that it would be more easier to recall if o posted those things to a blog -- even if they were little Facebook sized posts. Truth is, I like the likes. I'm *that* girl. But I'm going to try to break away from social media (is this blog considered social media?) and tell our story here so that maybe I can print it out -- in the distant future when I have time to do anything that is not on my iPhone while I'm nursing the baby.
I let CC sleep with me last night and Graham always ends up in the bed with me (I'm a lazy breast-feeding mama), so I woke up to her talking to him.
She sang to him too. It went some thing like this: "you have strong arms" (as she holds his hand and waves it around) "you could punch somebody in the face."
Not much later, Henry started calling from his bed. As I was feeding the baby,y big, sweet, helpful 7 yr old went to him. I could hear her through the monitor making voices for his stuffed animals, "I'm Teddy P and I want to go see mama. I'm Brett Keisel. Yeah, I want to see mom."
So my morning before Thanksgiving looked like this:
Brian, by the way, had been at work for 48hrs. We were all glad to see him when he got home.
It was crazy (or silly, I can't remember) sock day at school. CC wore her magic moose socks from Alaska. Thanks Granddad and Grammy Roz!
a little blurry.
Henry figured out that he can turn the water to the bathtub on. I let him play with it until I got nervous about the utility bill.
My dad came over and watched Henry so Brian and I could go on a date. B brought bagels, we stopped for coffee and we were of to shoot all of the guns! We will categorize this as a 'for Brian' date.
CC has had a loose tooth for months that finally came out:
This picture is after she was happier about it.
Initially, she was a little traumatized.
And we went to family night/breakfast for dinner/pajama party with our small group. We haven't really been able to attend since Henry was born, so family nights are good to reconnect. You know what picture I have? The meat muffins (eggs, turkey sausage, and cheese) I made!
Sometimes your baby wrestles you for an hour before going to sleep. And you want to eat an entire tray of brownies, but you are trying to be healthy...so you put m&ms on Greek yogurt.
Maybe should've taken a pic before I scarfed it down.
(I started this post two weeks ago - must be more disciplined about the blog posting.)
Well, not a promotion in the conventional sense of the word. But this one's been a long time coming. Or it feels that way. Ready for it? On July 11th, I bit the bullet and resigned from my full time job. So, my promotion is home to be with my kiddos.
These are the ones.
For a while now (since March at least), Brian and I have been looking at options that would allow me to work less and be home more. We kept having conversations wherein one of us would say, "we can't keep up this pace." or "we don't have any time margin." but we couldn't find a work situation that made sense to us.
When we just had C.C., it was hard for me to be gone from her and I often felt like my time with her was not enough. Adding in Henry has multiplied that feeling. I know there are plenty of women who work full time - I've told myself this several times throughout the past seven or eight months. I've tried to tell myself to buck up and look at the positive - my current job is only four days a week and it is a job that I can truly leave behind when I go home. But I kept longing for something different.
I believe that God has called me to be a mother - that it is my primary task and ministry to train the children in our home. Part of that will be foster care - we aren't done with that. The other part will be loving the children who are forever in our home.
Anyway, after a particularly rough night of sleep (or lack of), on a Thursday which is my last work day of the week, Brian and I put our heads together. In practice, we weren't playing to our strengths. On the days that Brian wasn't working, he was at home with Henry and also trying to do housework. Meanwhile, I was at work wishing to be home. That day, we decided to take a hard look at the budget and see if we could make do without my income. Since you're reading this, you know that we did figure out something satisfactory to us. It's not without it's sacrifices, but I think it will ultimately work better for our family.
So, here I am, in my last few days of full-time work (for the foreseeable future) excited to shift gears into my other job. For now, I'm going to be working one long shift a week and running the house the rest of the time. I am not naive enough to believe that I'm choosing something easy - it's just a different hard.
Imagine with me if you will...I'm giving the kids a bath. The same one I posted about on Saturday (yep, no baths since then). I'm combing conditioner through CC's hair and trying to keep an eye on Henry so he doesn't flop over.
We'd had a little discipline earlier and always after a consequence, we say "when do I love you?" To which CC knows to respond, "all the time." I'm thinking that's what got her on the following train of thought:
CC: Mom, you love my body.
Me: Yes, I love all of you.
CC: You love my privates?
Me: (feeling like this is a weird question, but not wanting to be shaming) Sure, honey, God made your privates.
CC: Does God have privates?
Me: ...
Oh the joy and entertainment of such an inquisitive little mind. I can't remember exactly what I said - - maybe something about God not being a person. How would you have answered?
Today started with Henry wiggling and fussing a little before six. Brian got up a little bit after that and started getting ready for work.
We had a later night than normal on Friday, so I was hoping that both kids would sleep a little longer. With some prayer, and a good bit of patting on his back, Henry went back to sleep. Except for a brief nursing interlude (in the bed with me) around 7:45, he slept until 8:30. Yay for glorious sleep!
CC was stirring by then too. She had spent the last two days with her cousins Carter and Ella, so she had to catch up on some sleep.
Once everyone was dressed and had breakfast, we headed to the gym. I'm grateful that both kids do great in childcare at the gym. I did some ab work, 2 miles on the treadmill and then 20 minutes on the elliptical. This was followed by some much needed foam rolling - it hurts so good.
Brian met us at the gym in his work SUV and we all went to Starbucks.
Ever get a glimpse of what your kids might look like when they're older?
Henry fell asleep in the car on the way to the grocery store, so we stopped off at the bank/ATM to make his nap last a little longer (call me super mom). After feeding him in the car (who knows how many parking lots this kid has nursed in), we hit the grocery store where Henry sat like a big boy in the cart for the first time:
His expression cracks me up! My friend, Marta, gave us a nice cart cover, but in my hurry to get to the gym before childcare closed, I left it at home. He did well through most of the store. Towards the end, he started leaning to one side.
We came home, unloaded groceries and had a late lunch. Henry and CC had whole wheat noodles with veggies and cheese. I had a wrap. We all split a couple of plums. In the past couple of days, we've been changing over to table food for Henry. I'm a fan - he is too.
This picture is not from today - it is for illustration purposes :)
After lunch, Henry napped (only took 15 minutes to go down!) while CC watched some Disney Jr. Brian commissioned me to make a training plan for him, so I did a little research, threw in some laundry, and made headway on a plan before H baby woke up. Both kids hung out in the bonus room with me while I finished up the plan,
Nursed Henry, then it was time for dinner. We ate salad and homemade pizza - I heart Trader Joe's whole wheat pizza dough. Henry had black beans, mozzarella, and some of my pizza crust.
The kids had another first tonight - their first bath together! Here's a little video that will hopefully not embarrass them forever.
Post bath it was lotion, pjs, a book and bed. Yay.
