A Toast to Simplicity

At least once a day, I daydream about how different life will be in ten years. The kids will be 10, 12 and 14. We will be done with diaper bags, sippy cups and car seats. They'll all be able to brush their own teeth, dress themselves, clean their own faces and make their own lunches. They'll be able to clean up their own messes and do the chores that I dread like folding laundry and cleaning the bathrooms. Everyone will be able to walk and talk and sleep through the night. ahhh . . . . .

I know that I will miss these days, but sometimes in the midst of chaos, ten years down the line seems so much easier!

Every once in a while, I look at the news and realize how wonderfully simple life is. Here is what I am thankful for . . .


I am thankful that "bad words" on television are words like "stupid" or "shut-up" and aren't on any of Luke's favorite shows anyways.

Pineapple slices are still considered a dessert.

A big punishment is losing the 30 minute tv show before naptime.

Topics of the boys' favorite songs are farm animals and trains.

Even though Olivia only wants to cuddle when I want to go to bed, at least she wants to cuddle.

They believe that we know absolutely everything about everything.

The meanest characters Luke can make up for his stories are the "guys that don't listen to their Mommy and Daddy".

Going out to eat with us is considered a big treat and not an embarassment.

My biggest clothing battles with Olivia are trying to keep her socks on her feet.

Trashing the house means spilling the puzzle pieces all over the living room.

Constantly using their phones does not incur any extra charges on our Verizon bill.

Drowning their sorrows can be done with apple juice.

A high-five is plenty of reward for a job well done.

You sniff markers to find out if they smell like strawberries or peaches.

The greatest injustice in their world is not owning a Scooby Doo movie.

The only money requested for a trip to the mall is a penny for the fountain.

"You have stinky feet," is the dirtiest joke they know.

Four and under are still free at lots of places.

We can still spell in front of them and they have no idea what we're talking about.

They still say words like "pasketti", "melmo" (Elmo) and "Go-Gi" (Yogi).

Hide and seek is ridiculously easy because hey always hide in the same spots. Even if they don't, Ben always lets us know where Luke is.

We never have to guess what the boys are thinking because they think out loud.

They have no concept of war, famine, predators, homelessness, terrorism, unemployment, suicide, eating disorders or school shootings.

Here's to the simple things!

Always a Bridesmaid, Never a Bride

We usually don't allow the boys to bring their toys out of the car. They are guaranteed to get lost. There are certain toys that aren't even allowed out of the house unless we are on vacation or the boys are spending the night somewhere. I know that the boys love these toys so very much and we would have tears for days if they got lost. My other reason is a little more selfish. My parents gave me a hope chest for my high school graduation. There are certain toys that I know I'll keep for a long time in the hope chest because they will always remind me of the boys at these sweet ages.

When Luke was a baby, my grandma would come over to watch him while I went to work a few days each week. Whenever she put him down for a nap, she put a Curious George doll and a little stuffed duck in the crib with him. George and Duckie became Luke's best friends and he dragged them around the house all day long. George, however, was always the main guy (and really still is). George and Duckie were around for every nap and bedtime, but now he just cuddles up with George. He came to Luke's first dentist appointment and first day of school. When Luke had surgery on his thumb, the nurses gave George a little hospital bracelet and put him next to Luke when he woke up from anesthesia.

When Ben was about one and a half, Luke gave him Duckie. Ben was thrilled. He already had his good friend Stanley the Turtle and was quickly becoming attached to his little Elmo doll, but getting a toy from his brother made him soooo cool. Duckie, however, is now playing second fiddle. Sometimes I see Ben cuddling with him, but Elmo and Stanley are really his primary loves. He still insists that Duckie is there for bed, but I think he just needs someone to prop up his pillow to his prefered height (which is where I found Duckie this morning).

Will Duckie someday find his home with a new owner?

George, Stanley and Elmo will definetely have a place in my hope chest, but so will Duckie.

There was a reason I had forgotten this . . .

In the past 7.5 years that we've owned our house, our living room has had at least ten different setups. Aaron loves to rearrange the furniture. He loves to find ways to make the room feel bigger, cleaner and more conducive to everyday life. Before he moves the furniture, he always lays out his plan to me in great detail, assuring me that everything will look wonderful and be more functional for my everyday life. Due to that fact that I've never been an auditory learner and my distaste for change (after all, I just got comfortable with the last furniture rearrangement), I pretend to understand what he's trying to describe and then immediately explain why everything should stay just where it is. We discuss and debate for a few days and then I eventually give in. After a couple weeks, I get used to the whole design and wonder how we ever lived without it.

Well, this week I decided to make a change all on my own. I changed my Facebook design to Timeline. Yes, I live on the edge. After poking around a little bit, I decided that I love it for one particular reason. I can see all of my old statuses and relive all those little memories from the past few years. I am loving all of the little snippets of day to day life that I had forgotten, including a little story from the spring of 2010.

Luke was a little over two and Ben was about 2 months. It was a Saturday morning and Aaron had to work, so the boys and I went out to breakfast with my parents, my sister and her husband. We, of course, went to IHOP which is still one of Luke's favorite places on earth. Looking back, I remember that Ben and I had coughs which turned out to be pertussis, but that is a whole other story . . .

After breakfast, my sister and her husband came back to our house to play with Luke. His first order of business was to show them everything that he owned. He brought out all of his toys, gave them a tour of his room, and proudly showed off his new fish, Dorothy, that he had been given at his cousin's birthday party just a week or two earlier.

It was finally nice enough to venture outside, so Luke and my brother-in-law went out to play. My sister and I stayed inside to hang out, chat and cuddle with little Ben. After a few minutes, he fell asleep, so we set him in his crib and started to get ready to go outside.

As we walked through the living room, my sister looked at the top of the piano and said, "Where did the fish go?"

I came over to the piano and looked. No fish. I looked around the bowl, but she was not there. I stepped back to look on the piano bench when I felt something. Under my toes. In my bare feet.

We learned that day that filling up a goldfish bowl with too much water is a very bad idea. Who knew that suicidal fish could learn to jump?

Thirty mintes later, my sister returned with 2 new fish and a bigger bowl.

Save The Drama for Yo Mama

Yesterday, Luke had a friend over from school. This was not just any friend though. We are talking about one of the friends. We hear about this little friend every single time I pick him up from school. I had made the mistake of telling him a few days before that this friend was coming over and he asked me about it constantly. You would think that after four years of being a parent, I would know not to say anything about a play date that far in advance, but it made it sooooo easy to get him to do anything all weekend. (Let's clean up these toys. We want it to look nice when G comes over. Eat up those green beans. You want to have your energy when G is here.) Yes, I am aware that these tactics are not recommended in any parenting books, but it was soooo convenient!

Of course, the night before his play date, Benjamin got a fever. We had our last 3 play dates canceled due to sickness (either ours or theirs) and I just couldn't bear to cancel this one. He had been looking forward to it for four days and he even ate all of his green beans! So, my dad came to our rescue and watched Benjamin for a couple of hours while Luke's friend was here (Ben of course did not mind a bit. One on one time with a grandparent is always a major treat).

Anyways, the Luke and his friend had a wonderful time together. They played cars, made a boat and ran off energy for about an hour and a half. They had a blast together and it was a very special treat for Luke. None of the kids were ready for it to end, but G's mom and I promised that we would try this again soon.

On the way out the door, G's mom mentioned that the kids could watch a little Scooby Doo movie on the car ride home. As they pulled out of the driveway, Luke waved from the window and then turned to me with a look that I know all too well.

This particular look is one that you might see if someone had shot your dog. He stared at the floor with his saddest eyes he could muster. He slouched his shoulders and walked so, so slowly with his head hanging down.

a re-enactment

"What's wrong Luke?"

"I'm having a rough day."

"What? You just had your good friend over. You played and had a wonderful time. You even got to have apple juice and animal crackers. What could be so bad?"

"I don't have a Scooby Doo video."

Seriously??

Nice and Clean

Friday morning, Aaron called to check on the family. He let me know that he was coming home early because he had already fulfilled his 40 hours and needed to avoid overtime. We discussed what we needed to do this weekend and negotiated what to have for dinner.

The kids and I had a pretty busy day. I had a doctor's appointment, so the boys got to spend time with their cousins and run off an amazing amount of energy. My sister-in-law has a wonderful route around the living room where her son and my boys run laps while screaming at the top of their lungs. It is a wonderful game because I don't have to be there to supervise. By the time that I picked them up, they were fully exhausted, hungry and in complete meltdown.

We got home and made it through lunch, had a little time for the boys to unwind while taking out every toy that we own, and then it was NAPTIME!! I ushered the kids to their napping spots and went downstairs to work ( I work part-time from home). I was enjoying the silence when I heard someone walking through the house. I yelled to Luke that he better get back into his bed or else. . . ., but the steps kept coming. Just as I was getting up to put Luke back to bed, Aaron's head peaked from around the corner. I had totally forgotten that he was coming home early.

Let me explain how our evening usually works. After the boys get up and have their "wake-up apple juice" (think coffee, but for preschoolers), they play until about 15 minutes before Aaron gets home. During this time, I'm making dinner and cleaning the kitchen. We have the timer set and when it goes off, everyone straightens up the living room and snack bar/art center so that it appears that we have had a highly productive day of cleaning. After a busy day at work, who wouldn't want to come home to a semi-clean house with dinner on the table? (I'll let you believe that this happens everyday.)

Anyways, on this particular day, the house was pretty messy. Thursday had been a pretty rough day, so I had put off straightening up and Friday was just really busy. I had planned to give the boys and myself an extra 10-15 minutes for our evening clean-up. Really . . . I did . . . When Aaron came downstairs, I could see that the chaos of our house was really overwhelming him. He suggested that I take the whole morning on Saturday to go into work to do some paper work while he and the boys cleaned the house on Saturday morning. Ummmm . . . yes!

When I got home on Saturday afternoon, the house was on the way to being spotless and by Saturday night, the job was finished. It was pretty much glowing.

This is what our living room looked like by 9:15 the next day.

I think the whole 5:30 clean-up plan is making more sense to him now!

By the way, the boys are in charge of helping during the day too. For instance, I asked Ben this morning to take all of the stuffed animals to his room. This is what I found as I went into the boys' room.

I think I need to be more specific next time.

My epiphany

Today has been a pretty typical Sunday morning. Normally, we are at church every Sunday, but we have had to stay home from church so many times this winter because we have been hit by an insane number of cold bugs. I'm not sure that we've really had much of a break this season; Luke is in his first year of preschool and has managed to bring home every cold and stomach virus known to man. He even managed to get adenovirus, a nasty cough, cold, pinkeye, vomiting disease that we had never heard of, yet managed to spread to at least 10 family members who at least pretended to be understanding and laid-back about the whole deal. Really, our family only seems to have strange medical issues (rotovirus, adenovirus, whooping cough, toddler trigger finger . . . ). So in order to not infect the entire preschool department of our church (the kids are in 3 different classes), we stayed home in our pajamas.

Anyways, Olivia was sleeping while Luke and Ben were playing with a box in the living room. Aaron's co-workers had bought a beautiful rocking chair for Olivia and it came in a wonderful, jumbo size box. Perfect! Luke was putting on a play and the box was serving as a boat. He was bringing toys from downstairs and was throwing them into the box while narrating the story. I love his stories because they usually combine at least 3 or 4 different stories or movies into a very confusing adventure. He still narrates the story as he goes, even if he is just playing by himself. Ben was dutifully following his brother's example and adding his own little flair to the production. He was feeling so big and important to be playing with his big brother.

That was when it happened.

Luke came over to me and said, "Mom, I'm going downstairs to get more animals."

Now I know this doesn't sound like anything life changing. It really isn't. But as a mom, I realized that a little chapter of Luke's life is closing. For the past 2 years (since he was able to speak somewhat clearly), he has loved his "am-i-nals." He enjoyed eating "aminal" crackers and playing with stuffed "aminals" and seeing the "aminals" at the zoo. Aaron and I had always exchanged a little smile when he said it because it was just so stinkin cute! We even found ourselves slipping and saying it in conversations with other adults! But now that phase is starting to end and it won't come back. Ever. In about a month, we won't even notice that it is gone.

It was at this point that I decided to start a blog. I read somewhere about being a "keeper of memories." Luke, Ben and Olivia are at ages where they won't remember but little snippets of this period of life. Granted, there are some things I don't want them to remember (example: the way the house has looked much of the time during these first couple months of having Olivia home). My three ridiculous kids say and do some of the wackiest, strangest, drive-me craziest, sweetest things and someday they'll have children who are also an enigma to them. I want to keep records of these moments so that they don't disappear.