Kids at play

Play kids, play! This week, Jay seems to have lessened his passion for preschool already. Every time I asked him if he wanted to do the calendar this week, he said “let’s have playtime first.” We still managed to at least move the “today” marker each day, but I’m happy to go with Jay’s flow. We just incorporate random facts into our regular conversations instead of doing structured official preschool. Just what I hoped for! If we’re talking about apples at lunch, we talk about what letter that word starts with and what sound it makes. Easy lunch-lesson! Jay doesn’t even know he’s getting schooled either, hee hee. I like easy going, especially because there’s only so much time left before Jay will have to do school. Childhood is fleeting! We try to enjoy it around here. In spite of my stuffy-headed Sudafed-ed week, I still managed to pull out the camera at a few key moments.

We nearly have enough little wooden people to fill a pair of Costco egg cartons. Jay and Rose quite enjoyed carefully placing each person in a little purple slot and then rearranging them over and over.

We made a checker board this week out of cardboard, paint, and milk carton lids. I couldn’t resist having Jay and Rose pose for this picture, like they were thinking hard about their next move. I taught Jay the basic rules of checkers, and then we played. He loved jumping my pieces. I ended up beating him on accident. Today we played a family game of checkers: Daddy and Rose vs. Mommy and Jay. Jay and I got creamed. Jay was a little surprised that we lost so spectacularly, when he had such confidence in me—I had beat him and he had “beat” Jeff previously so he thought he was on the right team! I had to inform him that I’m actually quite bad at checkers—I always have been. Sorry!

Playing Doctor:

Rose’s FACE! She was awesome at pretending to be a patient. Jay even tied a bandage to her ankle. He recently learned how to tie a simple knot and has been putting his new skill to good use.

These actors were so entertaining.

The best thing about our homemade stethoscope is that I did NOT think of it. A few weeks ago Jay, Rose, and Spencer wanted to play doctor. I cut up a few old strips of fabric for them to use as bandages, and then they tried to persuade me to go buy a stethoscope. Ha! I told them to look around the house to see what they could come up with and then I’d help them make one. Spencer took the handle off of an ice cream bucket for the earpieces and Jay found an old Simply Orange juice bottle lid for the other end. All I did was poke a hole in the OJ lid and tie the two pieces together with yarn. I was so impressed with their ingenuity. Inspired by Jay’s recent doctor visit no doubt, Jay and Rose got the ole stethoscope out this week for some doctoring.

Poke! Jay loved giving shots in the thigh to someone else for once.

Rose laid there and made that face for at least 10 minutes straight. What a ham!

Rose has recently upped her stubborn 2-year-oldness to a whole new level. I have to phrase requests very carefully and even then it’s a toss-up whether or not she’ll comply with my wishes. By the end of this week, she was going into time out two or more times per hour due to sheer stubbornness. Yarrrrg! Luckily, after 1 or 2 minutes of crying in the dark bathroom (time out), she would always do whatever I had asked her to in the first place (simple things like pick up her socks or use the potty). She seems to enjoy asserting herself. But it’s a huge strain on my patience. Every refusal sucks my daily patience allotment drier, requiring lots of deep breathing and prayers for help (with the occasional hiding behind a locked bathroom door myself) to make it through.

Jay and Rose are so ready for cooler weather. We got Jay a new sweatshirt at Costco this week and he and Rose keep trying to wear their cozy long sleeves in spite of the 90-plus degree heat. We are SO ready for fall. I’ve been wanting to do a “summer recap,” so how about now? Summer is over. It was a good one. Every time I see Mt. Adams on the horizon, I remember climbing it with Jeff. I think to myself, “I stood on top of that.” It’s a very satisfying reflection. I loved drinking in the beauty of the Olympic Peninsula too. I want to go back! We had the back to trek fireside 2 weeks ago, where we saw a video of the highlights. That was a fun, exhausting time. It was also wonderful to reconnect with so many family members at the various reunions. I’m glad we’re done with long drives for a while.

In general, I’m a little worn out from all the adventuring we did this summer! I’m ready to settle down and have apples and cider, crunchy leaves and pumpkins, wear scarves and boots, and have frost and rosy cheeks. Costco has started baking pumpkin pies, and that festive smell plus the Christmas decorations and sweaters they had on display about made me pass out with excitement for the next season! We just have to survive a few more weeks of sweating first. Fall will come—I have to keep reminding myself that it will. Meanwhile, I have already gotten a head start on my Christmas shopping. Weeee!! I love toys!

Speaking of toys, who needs a balance board when you have a Dad? I just turned around and saw Jay walking on Jeff. Ha! So this picture is fresh and brand-spanking new.

A few nights ago, I went in to check on the kids and Jay had carefully laid out his Yellow blanket to make a bed on the floor, where he slept soundly all night. The next night, Rose wanted in on the fun. So both kids had a sleepover on the floor of their room. I love how they don’t care if they’re on a soft mattress or a hard floor. Maybe we should just get rid of those bulky beds entirely, ha ha.

Sigh. To quote Dawsey Adams (from The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows), “It was easier before she could talk, but not nearly as much fun.”

A “Share”

This past week, I had a stuffy, throbby head. I didn’t sleep well, and every time I was asleep it seemed like a child woke me up for help using the potty or help finding a bunny. SO, I was running on empty for the last half of the week. After we painted the little people, I couldn’t settle to anything, and little things started to IRK me. I became the tired version of myself, grudgingly doing the bare minimum and not finding the same satisfaction in my day with my kids as I wanted to. Plus, I felt bad about feeling cranky, thus getting trapped in the all too familiar cycle of tired-impatient-wishing-I-wasn’t.

It was a battle to be patient and calm. There were still plenty of happy moments, and I was tempted to post pictures of them and never mention my cloudy mood here on the blog, but I want this to be about our REAL life, not the life we wish for! I’m not going to post every single thing that happens, but I don’t want to only post the perfect stuff either. I want to remember the good and the blah. It makes everything better to remember both the ups and the downs. Hence the story of my sinuses. I’m not saying things are suddenly easy-peasy (are they ever), but my sinuses have finally stopped pulsing so painfully. Things are at least looking good again. It’s up to me to MAKE them good, of course.

Motherhood is amazing—one second you’re in seventh heaven with two sweet perfect kids and the next second you want to hide in a dark quiet closet. I think the trick is expecting the ups and downs and embracing them. For example: ok, so today we had an awesome morning and did 15 projects but now the afternoon is looking bleak. Time for a little quiet reading time and a snack to re-charge! Time to make grilled cheese for dinner. Time to ask for a massage from my husband! Time to turn on Sesame Street so I can recoup. It’s ok! It’s way easier to write this than to believe it and do it in the moment!

Whew, thanks for letting me get that off my chest. Now, for the real purpose of this post:

Every now and then on Facebook, I click on links to articles shared by my friends. It all depends on the friend and what they say about the article and what the article is about. I read another good one today, and since some of my favorite people don’t use Facebook, I thought I’d share it here too:

O Alma Mater

It’s written by a non-LDS woman who graduated from Princeton University and decided to stay at home to raise her kids rather than get a high-paying job. She’s responding to a claim that graduates of ivy-league schools who do not enter the workforce are wasting their fancy degrees. Although I have never felt undervalued or “wasted,” I found her perspective on the whole MOM thing very refreshing. I simply loved her calm confidence in the face of so many worldly claims, criticisms, and expectations.

The quality of her writing alone makes me wish there were more bloggers/pinners/social-networkers out there with Princeton degrees. She writes like I dream of writing—she doesn’t have to resort to made-up words or intentional grammar-faux-pas or puns or alliteration to make herself crystal clear. She doesn’t even use big words or overdo it on the adjectives. She just uses tight, well-structured sentences grouped snugly into meaningful, flowing paragraphs. Eloquence. Fully-educated, full-time Moms inspire me.

Here are my other favorite life-commentaries, which I’ve posted links to before but thought I’d add here as well because they count as inspiring, happy “shares” too:

Drops of Awesome

To my husband from your stay at home wife/mom

Dear ole life. There’s always something.

Playtime and Shaina-mania

Every now and then when I find a project that GRABS me, I dive right in and loose myself in it for a few hours. A week or two ago, I painted a few little wooden people into fairy tale characters for Jay and Rose. I only got about half way through our list of “fairy tale guys,” as Jay and Rose call them. Yesterday I was creatively recovered enough from that first paint job to finish the rest of the people. I experienced a bit of Shaina-mania when I started painting. Jay and Rose sat on stools by me and watched me paint for HOURS! Every now and then they got down to get something or play a little, but they always came right back. I was surprised that they were so interested in my slow-poke color-mixing and paint dabbing. I was at it for more than 4 hours!  

When I painted Jay’s wooden toy soldiers last March, I didn’t think about painting something for Rose too.  When finally I had the idea to make these fairy tale people, all of the nearby craft stores AND Amazon were not selling little wooden people for any kind affordable price. My search led me to a website that sells wholesale wood craft items. Yay! We ordered a boxful, and I got a-painting. I have 6 bottles of acrylic paint: white, black, red, yellow, blue, and brown. So I had to do a lot of color-mixing to get the necessary hues. When I finished the people, I sprayed them down with acrylic paint finish to protect them from wear and tear. It was so much fun! I mean, Rose kept trying to steal my paint and paintbrushes, and Jay kept asking me if he could play with the unfinished people, but we still had a pleasant few hours sitting and talking while I mixed and painted.



The knights, with Jay’s classic toy soldiers behind them. Jay adores the knights (I used a fine-tip Sharpie for the faces and other details).



Left to right: Rapunzel, Rumpelstiltskin, a princess, a queen, a baby, and a king.


[Rapunzel’s hair]


Cinderella people, left to right: 2 stepsisters, Cinderella, and the purple-haired fairy godmother.

 
Cinderella is two-sided: her work clothes are on one side and her ball gown is on the other.


Left to right: a wizard (Jay says it’s Gandalf, I say it’s Merlin), and the Beauty and the Beast peeps—Maurice (Belle’s father), Belle, and the Beast (the marker ran a little on Maurice’s eyes).

 
The Beast is two-sided. Kind of creepy and Professor-Quirrel-ish, but still. I felt clever thinking that up.


Left to right: Jack and the Beanstalk people—Jack, Jack’s mother, the giant, and the giant’s wife. To the left of the giants, we have Gollie and Bink (from one of our favorite books), and Granny and Little Red Riding Hood.


Left to right again: Awesome Man and Professor Von Evil (from another one of our favorite books), a generic witch/bad fairy, Sleeping Beauty, and another prince.

 
You guessed it, Sleeping Beauty is double-sided.


16 toy soldiers plus 12 knights makes quite the phalanx.


I also made a few accessories: some extra removable capes and two paper/tape hats.


This weekend we moved all of the toys down to the big empty extra room in the basement. When we moved into this house last year I had high hopes of a happy messy playroom where all the toys could lay “scattered and free” for weeks, with the very occasional clean-up. But Jay and Rose brought all the toys upstairs so often that I gave that dream up after a few weeks. Well, the daily chaotic messes in our upstairs living area were getting out of control (we love blocks), and the nightly cleanup was becoming a huge ordeal. So we tried the basement plan again and IT’S WORKING! I told Jay and Rose that if they didn’t want to clean up the toys every night, they needed to keep them in the playroom. Any toys outside the playroom have to be cleaned up every night. It’s working like a charm. Jeff is a little sad that we had to move the ping pong table out to the garage, but really there’s more space for it out there anyways.


The playroom! I think 90% of our toys are blocks. 9% are homemade, and 1% are “real toys.”


Yesterday morning after breakfast, Jay and Rose ran down to play in the playroom and left me in a quiet, clean family room upstairs. I read my scriptures in silence WHILE the kids were awake. It was oddly lonely! But oh so nice.

And last but not least, I must share the fairytale land the kids and I constructed on the bookshelf today. I had so much fun making it! We put all of the fairy tale people in one community. The beanstalk is growing up on the right.


On the top shelf at the top of the beanstalk, we have the giant’s castle and Sleeping Beauty’s room.


The middle layer has Rapunzel’s tower, the king’s castle, and the Beast’s house.



The bottom is the most crowded: Cinderella and her stepsisters with the fairy godmother watching from above, Little Red Riding Hood, a green forest, Merlin, Bink and Gollie (with Gollie’s treehouse and Bink’s cottage), Granny’s cottage (on the other side of the woods), and Jack and his mom’s house, with the beanstalk growing to the left and Rumplestiltskin hanging out front.
These fairy tale people are so handy because if Jay and Rose really want me to play with them, now I don’t have to invent lame stories. I can just act out a fairy tale story and call it good. It gives a time limit to me playing (very nice for days when I don’t feel like it). Plus, the kids can help play along.

Golden

For 3 mornings in a row this week, Jay and Rose SLEPT IN till 7 or 7:30am! Compared to their summer-long 5:30-5:45am wake-ups, this was pure luxury. Of course I was getting up early so I could run before Jeff left for work, but I basked in the peaceful hour and a half before chaos hit. I enjoyed the sunrise. I went on a peaceful jog and showered. I read my scriptures in the morning! And it was quiet the whole time! Astounding. This brief stint of sleep-ins has already ended, but at least they’ve only shifted to a 6am wakey time. I’m hoping the pre-6am wake-ups are behind us now that the sun isn’t rising as early as it does in midsummer.

It’s been five months since I’ve had my kids all to myself during the day. Starting last April, I babysat baby Layne till school got out, and then every time we were home over the summer, we watched Spencer. I wouldn’t change the last 5 months, and we’re looking forward to having Layne back again at the end of September, but this week I rediscovered the pure JOY of being a Mom to my own two kids. Jeff was at work, and it was just us 3 here at home together. Golden.

There’s one thing that doesn’t happen much when there’s a visiting child, or even a Daddy at home: Jay doesn’t play with Rose as much. I was glad to see them giggling and playing the days away together this week. I could barely find time to squeeze in our 10 minute “preschool” calendar routine amidst all of their happy playing. Yes, they still had their disagreements (and screams and attacks), but they spent more time than I expected simply playing nicely together.

One of their current favorite games is to be invisible. Jay knows all about Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak, and that was his inspiration for this game. They made a pile of blankets, burrowed into them and call out, “Mommy, can you see me?” We played invisibility cloak peek-a-boo for a solid half hour the other day, probably more. They hid under their blankets and giggled while I wondered aloud where they were. [“Oh my goodness, I can hear Jay and Rose, but where are they? –giggles—Wait, what is that lump over there?—more laughing— Why is it moving?” etc.] Then I’d either let Jay pop out and “surprise” me or I’d yank the blanket back and act surprised to find them there. Seriously, these kids love to laugh. And they love to be found. It’s great.

Invisible.

Aha!

Those FACES.

Such hearty laughter. It’s the best time to take pictures. REAL smiles are my favorite.

Under their invisibility cloak blanket.

Also:

Jay had his 4 year old doctor checkup (3 months late) this week. He weighs 39.5 pounds and is 43.5 inches tall. He got 3 shots and he made the same scared, shocked, sad face and cry he made as a 4 month old newborn during those shots. It was tragic. But he perked up almost instantly afterwards. He didn’t want to talk about the shots at all for the rest of the day. He wouldn’t even tell Jeff that he got shots (“I don’t want to talk about that, Mommy.”). But so far he’s being his normal resilient self—knock on wood, but Jay and Rose have never had any lingering issues with or reactions to shots. Lucky us!

We went to the Tri Cities together on Thursday. It was tiring.

And we made puzzles—print off picture, color it in, glue it to cardboard, and cut it up. Insta-puzzle.

I was stoked to find this vintage coloring page on Google images. Jay let me color it.

Jay wanted his puzzle cut into squares. It’s actually kind of a tricky puzzle because he didn’t color much of it. Whiteguys can’t be colored because they’re white, Jay learned. He tried coloring his first set of whiteguys black, and was majorly distraught (wobbly worried cheeks and big sad tears) to find that he couldn’t see the picture any more. So we printed off another one to try again. I could barely persuade him to color the trees after that first catastrophe. It’s always risky letting them use markers. Normally it’s washable crayons only in my kitchen.

Rose picked ponies for her puzzles. I cut it into strips so she could do it herself—when the picture isn’t colored uniformly, all those black lines make for a surprisingly difficult puzzle. The strips turned out to be the perfect level of difficulty for her.

Golden hair, days, times, etc. I love them all.