November 21, 2013

Well I confessed/commiserated with a number of friends/moms a couple of weeks ago that I feel like I have a major anger problem.  I know I'm in good company when I say that never did I realize that I could reach boiling point so quickly until a three-year-old showed up in the house.  Thankfully, the past couple of weeks have been better, primarily because I know that there are a few people praying for me.  I hefted out a parenting book I had read when Levi was much littler, before the rubber hit the road, but I THOUGHT the rubber had hit the road, ya know?  It was a good reminder about the value of teaching them to obey the first time, something I sort of have struggled with because in my mind it sounds so....dictatorial?  Or something like that?  In addition to the fact that it's not how the Lord treats me, handing out a consequence if I don't follow His lead immediately (though, now that I think of it, there ARE inherent consequences to not just following Him as soon as we sense His leading).  Anyway, it was a struggle.  I'm learning, though, that it's in everyone's best interest.  I boil over with frustration after I've nagged Levi to do something - Buddy, I keep TELLING you...STOP it...I SAID to...IF I HAVE TO TELL YOU ONE MORE TIME....(thankfully, I refuse to count. I WILL NOT do the "Okay, I'm counting to THREE....OOOONNNNEEE.....TWWWOOOOOO..." thing).  So I told him the new plan is when I instruct him to do something, and he doesn't follow through the first time, he will get a consequence (time out speaks to him...losing privileges or beloved items like his construction jacket does too).  I remain calm, I'm not frustrated, and he's caught on right away to the fact that when I tell him to do something, I mean right now.  He knows that he doesn't have at least two or three more clenched-teeth 'reminders' before he really needs to spring into action (granted, he still tries to see if that'll work a few times a day, especially if he has an audience). So all that to say - I know there are other moms with preschoolers who are nearly bald from pulling out their hair and feeling rotten for getting so angry...if you haven't tried some technique to teach your kids first-time obedience, maybe it'll help a little bit???  I've also tried to be transparent with Levi that I struggle with anger and self-control and that's evidence of sin in my own heart that points to my own need for a Savior....and he has my permission to keep me accountable to that - so if I start to yell or show a lot of anger, he can say, "Mama, please stop yelling." I just don't want to be a yeller.  There are moments when it's necessary to get their attention, but not as a habit.  I want peace in our home, and it sure is hard to teach your kid self-control when you are hardly demonstrating it yourself. :/

I'm learning that it's helpful to teach them WHY they need to obey too.  I remind Levi frequently that I have things to obey as well - first and foremost being God Himself, but also laws and rules and stop signs and traffic lights and policemen - and it's my job to teach him to obey so that he will know how to obey laws and teachers and policemen and, of course, God.  So I'll ask him, "Why does mama teach you to obey?" and he mumbles, "So I obey Jesus and teachers and police."  And then I'm inwardly rolling. LOL

Anyway, on another subject, it is so much fun to approach the holidays with a preschool-aged kid.  Just about every day he asks if tomorrow is Christmas - and mainly because we told him that at Christmas time he can stay up late one night and watch The Polar Express, and he's so excited about that.  We've been learning about Thanksgiving this week and checked out some great books from the library about the Pilgrims and turkeys and thankfulness.

This morning while the boys ate breakfast I made a hand turkey and told Levi that Grandma Mark used to make hand turkeys with me.  Secretly I just take any opportunity to color because it's so relaxing! hahahaha  He wanted to make a turkey as well and decorate it with glitter.  Well that was messy.

We had a turkey hunt one morning - I hid these turkeys around the house and then he had to match them up with the numbers on the cookie sheet.

He's had fun with the rest of his projects - making a Mayflower out of shapes, color-by-number (which pretty much means color-whatever-he-wants), categorizing food and people, and arranging the Mayflowers according to their size.  On our Meijer trip this week I gave him his own "grocery list" and he had to mark off the items with a dry-erase marker as he saw them. He LOVED that and felt very important with his own list.

In other news, did you know that a Pack n Play turned on its side makes a fantastic fort?  The boys had a riot going in and out of their fort, and using their tools to "build" it.  

(I know, Luke's shirt is FULL of drool.  I don't even own bibs though because he won't keep them on.)

We were outside the other day and Levi wanted a shovel.  I gave him one and went into the back yard to do something (we were talking to each other through the fence), and when I came back out of the yard, he had cleaned up nearly half the driveway and piled the leaves together!!! It was awesome!  He's such a project-doer that cleaning up the yard this year has been way easier with his help. :)

Baby Bear loves to help too.  Mostly he likes to ride on the tarp full of leaves when I drag it to the curb.

I pulled this little table up from the basement to see if it would fit in the play area. It was my table when I was little.  Levi wanted 'his' (old, not super-functioning) laptop on it (Luke loves to play with the little Fisher Price one).  Cracks me UP because I sat at this very table when I was about this size, "typing" on one of my dad's old Commodore 64's.

I love, love, love this space.

November 13, 2013

I am pleased to say that it was a delightfully uneventful day.  No plans, wore sweats - wait, I wear those every day, never mind - no huge meltdowns (only the usual ones).  Score.

Levi runs out of his room every morning now to see what his "project" is.  This morning was just the dig-the-numbers-out-of-the-rice and match them to the numbers on the kangaroo (I admit that coloring the kangaroo last night was a relaxing outlet for me).  He enjoys that...but what he enjoys even more is gathering his trucks afterward and digging in the rice.

Then he glued jewels on a crown to put on his foam "K" - but he wanted to crown Luke first.  Remember when we used to call Luke "The King?" hahahahaha  I keep remembering some of his kingly demands from when he was a young baby, and at the time it seemed like it would never end.

Made banana blueberry muffins this morning. Levi was in charge of banana mashing.  Luke was tired and wrapped around my knees so I strapped him on my back.  When he started to snore I put him to bed.  Some mornings you just still need a nap.

I'm not gonna lie: Luke sleeping + setting Levi up with a learning app = a surprisingly refreshing few minutes to myself! (And clean up the kitchen.)

I have noticed lately that I am no longer called "Mama."  I am "Heymama."  Heymama, where is my water?  Heymama, what's for lunch?  Heymama, is it nice outside?  Heymama...Heymama....Heymama...

After every single ingredient I added to the muffins, Levi ran back into the kitchen (because he runs out as soon as I turn on the mixer.  I like Aunt Mary's mixer better.  It's quieter, he says) and asked, "Heymama, are the muffins ready to eat yet?"  No, Levi, I just added the baking soda.  Heymama, are the muffins ready to eat yet? Nooooooo......

It was well worth our while to bundle up and head out today for a little bit. 

He has dirt on his nose because he licked dirt off a plastic shovel.

November 12, 2013

Luke's fourteen months old today! And he had his first haircut!!

 

 He screamed the whole time loved it!

I just have to pause and say that this pretty much sums up the boys' personalities.  Levi did not love his first haircut, but he quietly accepted it with a slightly distressed look on his face. 

(Levi's first cut, December of 2011 - almost the same age as Luke)

 

 Luke screamed while I got MY hair cut AND his...until Amber started popping Smarties in his mouth.  Thankfully, even though he was loud about it he sat still.  He just made it very apparent that he didn't LIKE it.

Poor little warrior. He was so tired from crying that I nearly had to hold his head up.

The Smarties were like magic.  His face is broken out and blotchy because he's cutting molars. :(

 

 

 He does look very handsome now.  I feel like I put my baby on the chair and pulled a little boy off when it was done. :(

Speaking of, we moved the oh-so-faithful rocking chair out of the living room last night to make more space for the boys to play where the toys are stored.  We LOVE our rocking chair but we aren't rocking babies to sleep anymore, and every little bit of space counts.  I put the town/road rug out that we bought when Levi was a baby but he never got into it...and funny enough, now that it's in a new location, both boys were SO into it this morning.  The rocker is upstairs where Luke sleeps adjacent to our room, and when he moves in with Levi we'll use that space as a little reading room.

 

 

 Love this of Luke.  Except the drool coming off his chin, which is pretty permanent right now.

This was Matt's idea this morning: match the letter with the object.

Levi was only mildly interested at first, but said he wanted to leave it out so he could work on it later...which he actually did do.  So I guess it was a success. :)

November 11, 2013

A popular snack in our house is nuts and chocolate chips.  Yesterday Levi was asking for a bowl so he could 'make' a snack, so Matt handed him a bowl thinking that Levi was going to pretend to make a snack.  OH no - he did it for reals.  Matt motioned for me to come into the kitchen, and we witnessed firsthand what Levi really has in mind when he asks for nuts and chocolate chips:

That's a pile of animal cookies underneath. Note the token almond on top.

On Friday we had our neighbor Felix over for a few hours in the morning.  He is SUCH a sweetie - yet why oh why is it your own child who is such a stinker when friends are over??  They had a good time though, doing art projects, watching Levi's tractor video, and taking a wagon ride outside (I estimated that I was hauling 90lbs of little boy in that wagon).  After his sitter picked him up, she called pretty shortly thereafter because Felix was asking if Levi could come and play with HIS toys now. :)

If you read Friday's blog post, clearly I was a little discouraged.  Today is much better, which I know is only the eye of the hurricane, but at least some days are less challenging than others.  Everyone warned us that the two's were nothing and the three's are...something else.  We'd have to agree.

We are learning the letter K this week. Levi's verse is very fitting: Be kind to one another (Ephesians 4:32).  So we've already talked quite a bit about kindness today, and I remind Levi over and over again that Mama needs to remember to be kind as well. :/

If anyone is looking for a fun learning app, Monkey's Preschool Lunchbox and Monkey's Preschool Fix It have been a huge hit here!!  The Fix It one is slightly more challenging for Levi, but he loves it and is picking up on shapes and numbers more quickly because of it.  He only gets to play for about 10min a day, but it's a perfect way to keep the natives quiet while I make lunch.

We scored some foam blocks on sale at Meijer today.  The boys LOVE them, which kind of surprised me because they don't always go for blocks.

Every night I sing "My bonny lies over the ocean" to Levi, only I change it to "my Levi lies over the ocean."  In turn, he sings "My Lukie lies over the ocean" to Luke when Luke goes to bed.  Anyway, Luke loves music. He dances right away when he hears music, and a lot of his chattering is sing-songy enough that I think he's probably actually singing.  He doesn't say more than one or two words yet, but he jabbers quite a bit.  Today I heard him repeating the same thing over and over again...and realized he was singing the "bring back" song (as Levi calls it)!  As he was playing, he just kept saying, "Baaaa-BA!  Baaa-BA!  Ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-..." I would start singing it, and he'd complete it again.  Absolutely hysterical. :)  Love that kid.

November 11, 2013

Was Levi's birthday party a week ago?  

Oh yeah.  It was.  What's taking me so long?

I am ever so slowly coming to the conclusion that I cannot do everything and do it well.  At all.  I cannot keep my house clean, make nearly every meal from scratch (except lunch...I can't consider peanut butter and jelly from scratch), exercise (barely started that up again), 'lesson' plan, come up with awesome projects, conjure up awesome themed book lists to get at the library, spend time with the boys, appropriately discipline the boys, keep a running blog, and maintain my sanity all in one day.  And I'm very, very frustrated by this.  And then I get angry.  There are so many things I WANT to keep up with, and I can't do it all well.  So I'd like to say that I had a cathartic moment where it all fell into place and I suddenly felt free to be okay with a messy house, but I haven't had that.  I'm still stuck in the frustration stage and still trying to figure out if perhaps I CAN do all of those things well...this week.  And I see everyone else (this is dumb, thank you Pinterest and Facebook culture), and I'm like, 'well how does SHE always dress cute?' and 'why can't I can 80lbs of tomatoes' (*cough*Koets) and 'Are there people out there who are seriously that organized?' and '_____ went on a 9 mile run?  whattheheck.  She has (pick a number) kids.'

So if you're in the throes of frustration, here's the kleenex, I haven't quite used them all up yet.

Anyway, Levi's party WAS something that was pulled off well.  Because I turfed off the cake and paid to host it someplace other than my own home!!! haha!!  And it was GRAND!!!

The cake Aunt Mary made. :)  It was perfect AND gluten-free amazingness.

And this is the kind of friend she is: she made cupcakes with the extra batter and set them aside for the candles, because she knows that I am utterly grossed out by the whole blow-out-the-candles routine (at least when it's little kids doing it...particularly during cold season...).

We really had the place to ourselves.  Usually it's nutty crowded.

Levi found a Home Depot handyman apron and wore it the whole time.

I think this was the most fun Luke has EVER HAD.  Toys everywhere.

Why not pull up a chair to the side of the lighthouse and hand out money?

He was a little awkward about being sung to.  I think the baby was a deflector shield.

Snacks and cake enjoyed by all.

The babies. :)

The engineers overseeing the big building project.

We managed to do some letter J stuff this week.  I made jambalaya.  Levi did a couple projects.  He really liked this one, having to glue the pictures on the side with the corresponding letter. The craft supplies that I left on vacation finally came back to us last week, so he was thrilled to have his dot painters, water colors, and cookie stampers back.  When we went to the library he marched up to the librarian and told her they needed more books about jets.  I have no idea where he came up with that.  So she helped him find some books about jets and he was very pleased.  I'm glad he was confident enough to ask, but we'll work on the delivery.

The weather was exquisite again one of the mornings this week, so the boys and I did a lot of yard work.  Have I mentioned that Lukie LOVES leaves?

YES, HE'S WEARING A CHRISTMAS SHIRT.  But it's so cute!

That's our Lukie J., doing what he does best: hit the sidewalk and start running.