Category Archives: Life in general

1. In the evenings, whenever I hear a car slowing down outside, I think maybe my husband is coming home early (he works until 11 p.m., M-F; please don’t come kill me, we have a large, vicious dog) and almost every time, it’s not him. Sad times.
2. We stopped to get $2 kid’s meals at Wendy’s tonight and after I finished our order and said, “Thank you,” Jack yelled from the backseat, “I love you!” When we pulled up, the guy working the drive-thru window gave me this funny little smile. Thankfully, Jack repeated the phrase – wouldn’t want the drive-thru guy thinking I was declaring my feelings for him.
3. I went through my closet and dresser to cull out the old stuff and stuff I’ve never wear, even if it fits again, and I ended up with three garbage bags for donation plus a small shopping bag for the trash. Why was I saving these things?
4. My husband never rarely takes two extra steps and moves his empty pop cans from the counter to the bag we collect them in that’s hanging behind our kitchen door. Why? I’ve decided that instead of being mad about this, I will choose to take that moment when I see the empty can to pray for him.
5. I have a tendency to take my shoes off and leave them in random places around the house. Currently there is a pair next to the stove, in the living room next to the couch, in Liam’s room next to his bed and another by the back door. My shoes do not “live” in these places… I can see how this drives my husband crazy… perhaps he will choose to pray for me when he sees them.
6. Liam’s school musical program is tomorrow, I’m curious about what they will be singing since he’s been singing a version of “This Little Light of Mine” in the car but it’s not a Christian preschool. I’ll let you know how it goes.
7. I love my roses from my anniversary – I wish I always had fresh flowers in the house because they make me happy. Plus, it’s expected they will die so there’s no pressure to keep them alive, unlike the house plants I have that I forget to water.
8. It’s a MOPS week – happy day!
9. Garlic scapes are delicious and have a super short season of availability – if you see them at a farmer’s market, get them and make pesto (garlic scapes, basil, parmesan, salt, olive oil, roasted almonds/toasted pine nuts [optional] – use whatever proportions seem good to you – throw in a food processor, adding olive oil while you are blending and enjoy over pasta or instead of sauce on pizza – freezes great, flattened in a gallon-sized resealable bag; end of super-long parenthetical). Also, share this pesto with me, I will be your friend forever.
10. Jack is going to be the death of me, today* he: a) crawled backwards down a muddy hill, b) brought me the tub of margarine with the lid off and his hand coated, c) spilled Liam’s glass of milk and squirted his applesauce across the table at dinner, d) climbed out of his buckled shopping cart seat at Meijer, e) climbed into the great lakes feature at Meijer Gardens, f) climbed into the fridge and tried to shut the door and g) is currently still awake 90 minutes after I put him to bed. But he is cute and asks to be picked up by saying, “Come here” and holding up his arms and when you do put him to bed, he asks to be covered by every blanket in his crib and says, “Tuck-a you in.”

*And by “today” I mean yesterday – I wrote this last night 🙂

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I want something fancy (a card and/or flowers will do me just fine) but there are certain gifts that are simply not OK for Mother’s Day.

• A collection of boogers (Liam, I’m looking at you)
• A vacuum (unless you are my mother who loves vacuums and owns at least 20 cleaning devices) or any other cleaning product unless it is cleaning services to be performed by someone else
• A membership to anywhere she will be expected to take her children (this sounds awful since Mother’s Day is about being a mother, but trust me, this would be more well-received as a “I was thinking about you” gift on another random day; at least for me but maybe I am an anomaly)
• A photo frame with the image of the models still in it, if you are going to give a mother a frame, put a picture of her kid(s) in it
• Decaf coffee
• Lingerie
• IHOP or Denny’s gift cards (unless she is pregnant and craving food from one of those places; if she is pregnant, then all bets are off and you will get her anything she wants)
• Fat-free anything
• Anti-wrinkle anything (though a gift certificate for a spa where they offer skin rejuvenation services is totally acceptable)
• A magazine subscription to Sports Illustrated
• Clothing from a second-hand store
• Something purchased at a gas station or airport gift shop, especially if it looks like a tourist gift (this can be tricky, there are some nice(r) stores in airports, but in general, avoid these stores)
• Toiletries from a hotel or makeup samples from a department store – unless those are hints that you are taking her on vacation or a shopping spree

Jack, our two-year-old, is a bit of a pill. He’s the kid who gets into everything and is undeterred by traditional parenting techniques of saying “no” and redirection.* He will continue to come back to something he’s not supposed to until he has conquered the obstacle. This was a bit of a problem when it came to our kitchen chairs. We have wood floors and need to protect them from the scraping back and forth of chair legs so we added felt protectors to the bottoms of all the chair legs. This also makes it very easy for chairs to be moved across the floor, especially for a certain child of mine. Jack quickly learned to move the chairs and climb up on them to gain access to things out of his reach – whether that was on the table or the kitchen counter (knives, glass, electronics – oh my!). Enter the bungee cord – or, two bungee cords.

We have a small, square table with one chair on each side and by strategically hooking one end of a bungee cord on a chair and lacing it through the rungs on another and then attaching the other end to the chair opposite the first one we can secure the chairs to the table. Once you repeat this on the other side, all chairs are secured to the table. (In the photo above, you can see the bungee cord hooked to the chairs just below Jack’s armpit.)

These bungee cords also make it easy to stick Jack at the table and not worry about him tipping a chair over when he stands up in it – which he does all the time because, a) he has his daddy’s short legs and, b) he’s a pill. We removed the bungee cords when we had people over for Jack’s birthday (because we wanted to look a little classier and of course allow for adults to sit at the table) and wouldn’t you know he tipped the chair over within minutes of finishing his birthday cake.

We’ve also employed a bungee cord in blocking off the steps of Liam’s bunk bed. We got this bunk bed thinking how much easier it would be for a child to climb up to the top bunk using stairs rather than a ladder. Guess what? It’s much easier for a child to climb up to the top bunk, including a child who doesn’t have enough sense to not fall off the top bunk (Jack, I’m looking at you). So we needed to block off the stairs but the stairway opening was too narrow for normal baby gates. Enter: another bungee cord (plus a baby gate). The picture below is exactly like Liam’s bed if it had matching linens and wasn’t covered with a million stuffed “friends.” Ours has the added feature of a baby gate bungee-corded over the bottom of the stairs. So far this as successfully thwarted Jack but it’s only a matter of time before he figures out how to climb over it using the  base of bottom bunk as a step like his big brother does.

In other child-proofing failures adventures, we have one of those six-section baby fences that can be made into a large hexagonal enclosure or stretched out to block off a section of a room. For Liam, we used this to block off our television and related electronics as well as our fireplace with great success; I don’t think it ever occurred to him to try and go behind it around the open ends. As you can see below, it occurred to Jack and he did it on many occasions until we decided to sacrifice the protection of the fireplace for the safety of just the electronics. Now we have a large rectangle enclosing just the entertainment stand.

Above: baby gate fail; below: baby gate win,
though now we have to watch out for toy tubs being used to gain access to things
(he once stacked them 3-high to try and scale the gate blocking off the kitchen)

Sigh.

*Further proof that traditional methods do not keep our kid down, witness his utter disregard for the fridge lock:

This post is linked up to Works for Me Wednesday at We Are That Family.

• One day you will discover that your precious child has decided to store his boogers on the wall behind his bedroom door. He will be very contrite and will obediently try to clean them off with the supplies you give him but they are stubborn and you will have to step in. They never tell you that scraping dried boogers off a wall is in your job description.
• You will be very sad on Easter morning to discover that you can’t enjoy a marshmallow Peep because you have been calling your children’s private parts their “peeps” since they were learning to talk.
• When you hear other children talking about characters from Star Wars or Cars, you will know exactly who/what they are talking about and will be tempted to correct them when they use the wrong name because you are so used to being corrected yourself.
• You will avert your attention for five minutes and your second born sweetie will have managed to shove 8 (!) DVDs in the space behind the adjustable screen of your portable DVD player, making it so you now have a fancy speaker with which to listen to your DVDs. You will consider not telling your husband this happened because you know you could purchase a replacement and he would never notice, so long as it was the same brand.
• After a particularly fitful nap time, you will go into your 2-year-old’s room to find his face, hands and clothing (along with the crib, sheets and wall) covered in blood. You will not panic but instead go get your phone to take pictures because you know he simply shoved his thumb up his nose – this has happened before.
• You will let your kid’s hair grow because you know soon he’ll have an opinion about its length and you will get not-so-secret glee out of having him do the Bieber (i.e., shake his head around so his hair flies out, watch this for reference – my kid is way cuter)
• You will have to say things like, “We don’t ninja our brother/mommy,” with a straight face.
• You will compliment your children on their excrement habits, in fact, you will cheer for them when they poop in the potty and point out to them what Superman ice cream does to their poop. (Yes, I just used the word poop twice in one bullet point – I am unphased.)
• Your heart will feel so full and you will feel more love than you ever could have imagined. It really is the best thing, even when it is maddening.

I’m feeling more like my old self again and though there isn’t one thing that helped make the change, I think it was a combination of the following things:

• vacation – nothing like almost two weeks away from work to give you a breather; I’m not dreading Mondays every Sunday night
• starting a new, I hesitate to use the word diet, but way of eating
• working on finding my voice and nurturing my interests with this blog
• my kids being slightly older and playing together just a little bit more, though I still say, “Stop hitting/poking/touching/pushing/headlocking/
  ninja-ing/tackling/kicking your brother” at least 10 times a day
• rediscovering my love for reading and actually enjoying books instead of television shows in the evening
• quality time with friends – I forget each year that the time from mid-November through April is almost always difficult for me when it comes to getting to spend quality time with my friends and I need that time to feel like me and I miss them so much when I don’t get it. Actually, I feel like we’re not friends anymore because so much time goes by without getting together – but it’s the same every year and then April comes and the holidays are over, the snow has stopped (usually) and normal life returns. I love my girl time.
• Being more intentional about letting people know I appreciate them or am thinking about them – I know I always appreciate the extra encouragement, but I love how good it makes me feel to be the one sending it along to others.
• date nights with the hubs – I love getting away just the two of us; even if just for dinner and a movie, spending time together apart from our kids is the best thing