Filed under: random chatter
How on earth are you 5 years old. I really do think time speeds up the older I get. You are less “little” every week. I can see the big boy you are becoming and the man you will be in brief moments here and there. You are still my daily companion. You are almost always right by my side or at least in the same room as me. Occasionally you will go alone to your room and play for a bit. If you are not calling me every 5 minutes to see something or help you, you might get really interested in what you’re doing and forget you are alone, but as soon as you realize you’ve been gone for too long. You close up shop and get back to where I am.
We started to homeschool this fall. You technically wouldn’t start kindergarten until next fall, but you seemed ready to start reading and writing. So far, you really love it. When Lucas takes his nap, we work on your school stuff. Watching you read your first book was awesome. Your sweet face just lit up when you realized that the words you were reading made a sentence and made sense. You were so proud. Writing is a little harder for you and makes you tired and frustrated. Math is a piece of cake for you so far. You are still always full of questions and you do still talk all day and narrative almost everything.
Lucas and you have hit a rough patch lately. You are frustrated that he wants everything you have and takes every toy you try to play with. He screams and yells at you and you hold strong on your belongings. There are battles. You try to engage him in your games, but he is still too little to understand your rules. You usually get mad and huff away. Lucas usually goes to you and hugs you to make up. He loves you and is always saying, “My-mow” in the sweetest voice. He brings you your clothes and pats your back too. You love to go in his room with him and play and sometimes you offer him your toys as peace offerings. You’ve got a sweet heart Milo.
Keely and you aren’t doing too much together lately. She’s in school all day and your age differences aren’t helping. You don’t want her to think you are a baby, so you try hard not to do anything she wouldn’t approve of. She can be rough on you, but if anything happens to you she is so upset. If you are sick or hurt, she falls to pieces. She loves you. She just wants you to know she is so grown and you are not, right now. You do have your inside jokes and secret meetings in her room. You both love to play old computer games on daddy’s computer and practice wizard works and look for fairies in the backyard at night. You watch the movies she likes and you get into them too. You’re good like that.
Right now you are into matchbox cars and Lego’s. A good section of your bedroom floor is covered in your Lego creations. All you really wanted for your birthday was Lego’s and you got it. That’s a lot of little pieces. You like to invent your own little things to build- mazes, games, animal lands, traps etc. You are also into finding secret treasures. Everywhere we go your eyes are on the ground searching for lost little objects. You fill your pockets with pins, change, beads, and other random bits. At home your dump your pockets to inspect your loot and then dump the goods into your treasure jar. It’s filling up fast. When I ask you if you want to go to a new place you always ask if they will have good treasure for you to find.
You do not have any desire to play with other children outside of our home. You get so upset if another child touches your things or plays with something in a way you don’t want them to. You almost hide from children who are your age in public. You do wave, smile, and say hello to younger children and babies though. You are shy around people you don’t know. You work your way behind my legs or pretend like you don’t see them at all. You are also kind of a germophobe. You got that from me. Sorry about that. Sort of. You have to wash anything that some other person (who you have randomly deemed germie) touched before you can touch it. You do not like your hands to be dirty and you can’t stand if your nose is drippy. You go crazy and beg me to take care of it for you. You also do not like much food still. Very not adventurous in that department. I think you would happily eat the same three meals everyday. Cinnamon toast for breakfast, some cheese/bread/pasta combo for lunch, a sectioned tray of bananas, dried cereal, cheese, and an extra for dinner. I keep trying to slip in new items but you won’t even try anything. Vegetables are the enemy. Thank goodness you like V8 juices and vitamins. Maybe this is the year for new food? I hope.
You are still very sensitive and your feelings get hurt quite easily. It breaks my heart and makes my eyes water when I see your face when your feeling like that. I just have to hug you and pretend to erase the hurt. You do still have your temper too. If you are wronged or if you are asked to do something you don’t want to do, you get so mad. I think I can see the steam coming off your head. Lowered head, frown brow, clinched fists and the meanest look comes from you. Sometimes you will just stand and stare at us and other times yell and tell us how mean we are. Lately you tell me you are mad at me about 100 times a day because I’m not doing what you want me to do with you or for you. That’s fun. I try to acknowledge your feelings, but keep moving on and engage you after you’ve had a pout. Eventually, you come and hug me and apologize and we move on. Lucas has been yelling at you every time you try to sit on my lap lately and I often have to help Lucas with something before you and that seems to be getting to you a lot lately. I think you feel a bit displaced and that’s why you are “mad” at me so much. I’m trying to make up for in whenever I can. Parenting 3 is a wee bit harder than I expected.
You are still interested in nature and watch all the happenings in our yard and the sky through the seasonal changes. You question the hows and whys of it all. I’m glad (at this point anyways) that I usually have an answer. You still collect rocks and berries outside. You call the tiny berries on our Liriope- wish berries. Every time we go to the car- you give me a few and I have to make a wish for each and throw them in the air. Milo’s rules are: If they disappear and you don’t know where they fell, then you get your wish. You don’t like to be cold and go outside when it’s chilly is not your cup of tea. You like to have your head covered but you look stiff and uncomfortable in non-balmy temperatures. However, in the summer your face turns so red and you’re so sweaty that you like you might pass out. I guess your a moderate climate guy. You do like to curl up in blankets since fall is here and are often found perched on our heater vents…the modern hearth.
You still pick out a small stuffed animal to sleep with each night and you still wake up at about 6:30 and rush downstairs to sit next to me. You give the best hugs and you are a wonderful cuddler. Your eyes are just as sparkly blue as ever and your light yellow hair is so gorgeous. Your smile and your giggle lights up my heart. You will always be my baby Milo. I love you so much and I think you are such an awesome, beautiful boy with a very special light in you. I’m lucky to be your mommy. Happy fifth birthday Miggity.
December 3, 2012
So big, so fast. I see the days just flying by with you. I understand why the baby of most families is baby-ed. We try to hang on to the precious young days knowing what is to come. The big kid days have their perks too, but nothing is like the loveable, cute baby ones.
Lucas you are full of personality. You are our most “into everything” baby. You just can’t help yourself. We can’t leave any chairs next to our desks or you are up on them banging on computers and drawing on the screens. You love to find markers and crayons and draw on walls and floors. You very much enjoy emptying out cabinets and drawers still too. If we sit a drink down you are all over it…splashing in it or knocking it over. When you dump millions of things on the floor and I say, “Lucas, what have you done?” You say, “UH OH Daddy” and you tilt your head sideways and put one arm out to survey the mess. I don’t know why you blame daddy,but you do.
You finally are getting some words. Mommy and Mama happened last month and they are so cute. You say, uh-oh, ow, puppy, baby, rain, tweet, rough, meow, cookie, cracker, diaper, drink, milk, blanket, Milo, Keely, and Caribou now. You sing songs too. You laugh a lot and try to make us laugh by being silly. You are so into cars right now. You almost always have one in your hand. You drive them all over the furniture and floor. You try to copy how Milo plays too. You like books with animals and babies in them. You say, “Aw,” to every cute thing you see. When you get hurt you yell, “Ow” really loud and run to me for comfort. You get over your injuries quickly.
Your favorite thing to do is to play outside. If anyone goes out without you, you stand at the baby gate and scream like crazy. Begging for us to put on your shoes and take you too. You love pushing your shopping cart and dump truck outside and carrying around rocks. Sometimes you will lay on the ground and watch the tree branches sway in the wind. Super cute. You also enjoy watching cars out our porch door. Highly entertaining.
You only take one nap a day now and you still wake up at night at least once. You love for me to wrap you in a blanket when I rock you, but you don’t like your feet covered ever! You don’t like blankets on you when you sleep and you love to smoosh yourself against walls. You still hang on to my hair when you fall asleep. You also are starting to like food. You love sitting in your chair at dinner time and using a spoon. You make a mess, but at least you are finally trying real food!
You and Milo get along most of the time. Milo gets frustrated that you take all of his things and mess up his projects though. He does take care of you and cleans up some of your messes. He also shares his cars with you. You give him hugs when he is near or when he gets hurts. You pat his back and say, “K?” You let Keely hold and carry you around a lot. You even reach your arms up for her to pick you up. This just melts her. You love to greet her when she comes home from school do and you two have a special night time kiss you do that makes you giggle like crazy.
You like people a lot. You always want them to look at you and you want to show them things. You yell bye-bye to them when they walk away. You like to go places a lot. You want us to go somewhere everyday. I don’t know why though. You scream and yell at stores still. I guess you just like checking out the new scenes and people….not the boring shopping part.
I love you so much Lucas. You bring me so much joy and I love being your mommy. I want you to stay little awhile longer so slow down please. I need to cuddle with you and rock you to sleep more. I need you to run to me full speed with arms reached out and a giant smile on your face some more. I want you to be happy sitting on my lap and leaning on my shoulder for many more days to come. You have your whole life to be a big person, so let’s soak up these little one days more.
October 29, 2012
Hey! I just got a grandma couch! There it is. We’ve had our old couch for about 10 years and it was looking sad. It was super comfy and down stuffed, but it was dumpy looking. We didn’t want to spend lots of money on a couch that our family of 5 would quickly destroy. Our living room is heavily used by all three children. The couch is their main flopping, jumping, cuddling land and there’s no getting around that. So last weekend I spotted this lovely Granny at a thrift store and it was next to a wall of windows and looked mighty fine and firm and no back cushions to get smooshed down. It was tufted, had nice lines, was in such great shape, and was cheap. We just had to get it.
Once we got it into our living room it looked MUCH golder, not cream like it did at the store. Hmm. I’m not a gold person. So now I’m trying to make it look LESS gold by removing all things yellowish from the room. How’s that working for you? said in my best Dr. Phil voice. The children have already gotten a handful of spots on this lady in the week that we’ve had it-dripping wet hair, chocolate mouth smears, over wet diaper, etc. Yepper. Welcome home Granny Couch. It’s like 50+ years old and had not a spot on it until it entered our land. Ah well. I am debating whether or not to paint the dark wood white/cream or not. Could be disastrous. I’m trying to go for a more coastal look here, not formal parlor. Hmmm.
Yes, we have much bigger problems in our home, life, and family but I go to organizing, rearranging and decorating to cope with stress. The living room is my current target.
Oh yeah, I picked up this real Herman Miller shell chair for $4.00 from the sweetest old man’s yard sale.
Awesome sauce, yes? The children also love this chair and fight over it. Thankfully, they can not ruin this one. I’m on the hunt now for two matching club style chairs that are kid proof-ish, but comfy still. The living room is in the middle of a cheap-o makeover. Stay tuned. Anyone have the tullsta chairs from Ikea? They are slip covered so I’m thinking that might work.
May 23, 2012
We’ve had beautiful weather here, so Easter was perfect. The kids colored eggs, got giant filled baskets, had an Easter egg hunt, and a grandparent visit. A good day for them.
Last year I came up with a color coded Easter egg hunt and continued it this year at their request. These two are obsessed with fairness and boy can they fight. The hunt would have been ruined had I not intervened with this over protective, meddling, helicopter parenting, coddling, somewhat ridiculous solution.
Milo only finds/gets the blue and green eggs and Keely only gets the pink and purple eggs. That way they are not screeching and tackling each other whenever an egg is spotted. Also, they will get the same number of eggs, so no one feels like a big ‘ole hunting loser with sad basket of 2 eggs while the bigger kid has 84,000 and is laughing maniacally at their wonderful luck. It works beautifully and makes for a much more feel good time. Yay! Judge me if you must, but we will continue this tradition for.evaaaah.
April 10, 2012
Sooooo, I was thinking I might “shop for” customers. Ya know if there was something you were looking for but haven’t been able to find it or didn’t have the time to dig around in flea markets? You could drop me an email and let me know. Give me a price you’d like to pay for it and then I’d keep my eye out. So, let me know if there’s something vintage that you have been dreaming about. It just might turn up. 
March 28, 2012
You cute little guy. You seem to grow before my eyes now. Each time I look at you I just can’t believe how big you are. You are shining more and more each week. You’ve got spunk and preferences and silliness and sweetness all wrapped up in your yummy little self.
You often come over to us and wrap an arm around us for leg hug or flop against us for a quick cuddle. We all freeze and take you in when the moment comes. Even the siblings now how sweet those times are. Sometimes you are very still and we get to cuddle and rub your skin or just breath you in and that is wonderful.
You love getting into drawers and cabinets. I can’t believe the quickness of your disasters. You try to reach into anything that looks interesting. I put a few latches on a couple of cabinets, but mostly we just have to let this stage pass. You spend most of your day toddling around opening up things finding interesting items carrying them around banging on things and then pushing your wagon around.
You love to say uh-oh. It usually follows you throwing things where they shouldn’t be repeatedly. Uh-oh. Uh-oh. AAAAAAAH-ooooooooooh. You think you are funny. You also clap a lot and say, “Yay!” You love music too. You drop everything to find the source of it and listen to it. You’ll do a little swaying dance too. You hum songs that you know and will listen to any tune that comes your way. You prefer women’s voices. You do not like to be sung to though. I try lullabies with you, but you won’t have it. You fight against nap time almost every day. You scream and protest no matter how tired you are, no matter what time I try to help you to sleep-earlier, later- you just must protest loudly. I won’t miss that passing. You love to find noisy objects to bang on other noisy objects too. You watch our faces as you do it.
You still love climbing on people. If you see a body on the floor, you are ON it. Usually, you lay across our heads. You love to pet Milo’s hair now. He loves that. You’re very gentle about it too.
Music has you very interested. You hum songs that you know and will listen to any tune that comes your way. You prefer women’s voices. You do not like to be sung to though. I try lullabies with you, but you won’t have it. You fight against naptime almost every day. You scream and protest no matter how tired you are, no matter what time I try to help you to sleep-earlier, later- you just must protest loudly. I won’t miss that passing.
We adore you Lucas. You make us all smile with you sweetness and all your little ways.
March 27, 2012
I finally finished the star pillows set. They are well loved by all the children. The biggest one turned out ginormous! It’s like a monster starfish.
Now pillows are great for laying on, but the boys mostly carry them and throw them around. That big one is bigger than Lucas, but he sure tries to fling it.
Look at that ugh! face.
March 26, 2012
I decided I’d pretend like I knew how to paint yesterday. It didn’t turn out too bad. I may try another next week. Spring is here for sure now. There is pollen covering every surface. Ryan came home last night and said, “What, do we now live in Pollenesia?”
We just finished up watching Downton Abbey and now it’s just over? We have to wait until September for more? What the what what? What do we watch now with our one hour of t.v. time? Lucas loves the intro. music to the show and will drop everything to come and see and hear it. He also hums along with it. I can’t stand the extremeness of that cuteness. But seriously, what can we watch now? Any suggestions out there?
I was looking for some new recipes and then came across some reference to New York Style Salad. What is this? I must know more info. I love salads. So I ended up at the Pioneer Woman’s site and read her description and now I am obsessed with having myself a big ‘ole salad party. And why can’t we have a salad restaurant in our city? These vegetarians have a hard time getting some decent “fast” food when we’d like to.
Also, have you seen the little video where it’s all snippets of movies that are pieced together to sing some of Lionel Richies, “Hello”. How long did that take? Speaking of Lionel, this poster still cracks me up. It is making my eyes water right now. I need help. I don’t even know why it makes me laugh so much.
March 23, 2012
Happy first day of Spring! We woke up to so much fog. All the blossoms look so dreamlike against the heavy, cloudy air.
I decided in honor of spring tonight is “Bring Some Bunny To Dinner, Any Bunny Will Do.” That’s right. Everyone must bring some kind of rabbit- a stuffed one, a picture of one, a drawn one, a mask. Whatever you like. Happy Spring!
March 20, 2012
So Saint Patrick’s Day is upon us. We haven’t really done much before for this little holiday, but I’m thinking this year we should. We need some silly festivities. Luckily, 0ur neighborhood is on the end of the route of a really large St. Patrick’s Day Parade so we’ve got that going for us. I’ve already spray painted some rocks gold. Cool, right? I’ve got to find a little bucket to fill up with gold nuggets now. I thought it would be fun when the kids are older to spray a whole bunch of rocks and then go around the neighborhood and leave them in peoples yards, porches, by their cars. Ha! Imagine their confused faces. That’s on my future list.
Alright. So, I’m thinking of having a healthy family breakfast of some Lucky Charms. The kids would be surprised because we do not buy that kind of cereal, ever. Then, maybe we could go all healthy and try a rainbow inspired fruit snack…like this. Then green beer, cabbage, potatoes & soda bread for dinner maybe? Nah, Irish dinner doesn’t sound too appealing. My apologies to all of my Irish ancestors. My children wouldn’t touch any of that food. Pizza it is then!
We could school the littles and ourselves a bit on the history of St. Pat’s here. There’s lots of neat stuff, information and videos. And when we are around the house or eating our un-Irish dinner we could tune in to Pandora’s traditional Celtic music station. Of course, we shall wear green & use shamrock pencils and all that stuff too. Sound good?
Happy St. Patrick’s All.
March 15, 2012
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