I hear ya-

Small victories.

1. Emma has, dare I say it, mastered the art of being a big girl, and using the bathroom accordingly. Read-doing all of her "duties" in the appropriate place. After a (very long) morning of a battle of wills a few weeks ago, she adjusted her attitude, and it has been getting easier each day. For a week or so, I had to remind her that she could choose the bathroom, or choose to sit in time-out. She tested us one time, and then began to choose the bathroom. Now, I don't have to say that anymore. I do tell her to go, and she toddles off and listens.

I must rip on the new trend of parenting for a moment. Everything that I read while searching for answers told me to wait until she's ready, one day she will just decide, and you can't make her. Just be patient, they all said, and take it in stride. Heck, you'll miss these days sometime in the future. Well, my patience ran out.

I admit that there is some truth in the advice. A year ago, I agreed. But, the girl is about to be 3. When you google our "problem", there are pages and pages of people complaining that they are cleaning underwear, and their little person just doesn't want to stop using underwear instead of the bathroom. Well, of course not!

What my little Emma needed was some old-fashioned, tried and true, hard nosed parenting. She fought. After an hour and a half of her crying in the bathroom I wondered if I had made a big mistake here, and wondered if getting into a battle of wills was really a good idea. Oh, how those internet doctors would shun me. But, we stuck it out, and we won. My tidbit that I want to pass on to you, is don't start a battle and not finish it.

2. After a round of antibiotics, my dear son is sleeping through the night, finally. No more 3 a.m. wakings. A night of solid sleep is doing wonders for all of us.

Growth Spurts

1. Emma has begun to call me "mom" on a regular basis. It took me a couple of days to realize it, but one day, I suddenly stopped and it registered in my brain. I think it is a different kind of mothering. "Mommy" vs. "Mom".

Mommy roles include cuddling, soothing, offering security. Mom seems to be more of get Owen out of the way, fixing annoyances, cleaning up spills and washing favorite clothes. Not that the roles are not interchangeable, they are. It just seems like our relationship is growing into something bigger.

2. Owen is changing all the time. He has decided that maybe baby sign language isn't so bad, and is beginning to talk more. The frustrating part, for me, is knowing that he is capable of saying words, he just isn't very interested. He would rather grunt, cry, point and lunge after what he wants. He communicates very effectively, but I get really exhausted after hearing him be so loud all day long. He really likes to look at books, watch the washing machine start (hey, I like that too0, play with things he shouldn't (that is how the dryer light bulb broke) and walk around when we shop for groceries, rather than sit in the cart. He is a baby at some moments, and fiercly independent and a toddler the next. *sigh* I miss my baby, but am enjoying the ease that comes as he can do more things for himself.

Little joys

I am now the proud owner of a pair of brand spanking new Gingher G-8 8 Inch Knife Edge Dressmaker's Shears.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/images/B000UU6SR4/ref=dp_image_text_0?ie=UTF8&n=284507&s=kitchen
They are pretty amazing. They arrived in a very shiny metal case, with a "holster" for the blade. I was too excited not to try them out. I recruited my husband to help me trace onto fabric to cut, and then took them for a spin. I think that I instantly became a better seamstress. My old 8 dollar pair of Wal-Mart craft scissors were pretty pathetic, and when I used them, the edges of my fabric were embarrassingly jagged. No more. I decided that I like to sew enough to invest a little bit of green, so now I am ready for more projects.

Little lamentations

I realized how much we are paying a year for health insurance. For some reason, most likely denial, I never realized the yearly rate, just the monthly. When I realized the dollar amount, my body did an involuntary shudder and my intestines flipped over a few times. WHAT! THAT IS ABSURD!

The incident that steered me towards this unpleasant revelation began with Owen having an ear infection. The doctors usually, in the past, have urged me to make a follow-up appointment for 10 days after the initial appointment, to make sure the antibiotics have done their job. The kicker is that this requires another official office visit.

Read between the lines, $$$$.

I finally got bold enough to ask if we could just have his ears looked at, and of course, they basically laughed at me, and asked if I wanted to make an appointment. An office visit is at least $100. Checking a child's ears takes about 24 seconds. Now, understand, that I am not an economist, a nurse, a doctor, or an insurance agent. I am merely a mom. Little old me can't understand how anyone can be asked to give you 5 twenty dollar bills for less than 30 seconds of service. This, in my humble opinion, is a system that is really broken. The part that got me even more riled up is when we realized that not having insurance is just risky enough that we don't dare try it. But, what if we saved our monthly premiums in a savings account, and managed our own dumb health care. What if we paid for all medical costs out of pocket? We would save a ridiculous amount of cash, and have an account that should be sufficient for any medical costs in the future.

On the flip side, if God graces us with another child, or we have a serious but rare incident that requires any emergency service, we are in a lot of trouble. Being a home owner is scary in that sense, because if the deck becomes stacked against you, you lose your house. So, we pay thousands of dollars for assurance that a night in the hospital won't leave us homeless so we can then pay the equivalent of 360 dollars an hour to make sure that the last doctor visit, for which I spent 100 dollars, ten days ago, was effective.

Of course, I have little else to complain about. In the grand scheme, I have healthy kids and a wonderful life. That is why I titled this section "Little lamentations".

Big Hopes

Spring comes early.

Hey, big head...;)

This is proof that the kid does smile! It is on his terms though, no smiling for the camera just because I ask him nicely. He is an outdoor kind of guy, really enjoying our trips outside.

This has got to be one of my favorite pictures. The kids are buddies. I have watched Emma treat her brother very nicely. Of course, there are the moments when she gets frustrated with him too, but we've all been pushed around by our siblings, and survived.

Today I took Owen to the doctor. Among the other findings, we learned that he is in the 5th percentile for weight, and 70th percentile for his head size. In height, he is in the middle.

hawing is ok, but please, no hemming.

My life in recent weeks has been somewhat stressful, and definitely intense.

As hard as I try, I don't seem to have enough patience to last for the entire day. I have enough for a few trying catastrophes, but sometimes there are more catastrophes than there is patience, and those are the days when I find myself knee deep in moments that make me want to weep with disappointment for myself. For my lack of patience , my lack of understanding.

One such day was last Friday. This potty-training business is as hard as anything I have done before. Honestly. Literally. Seriously. What about labor you say? Well, with labor, there is a definitive moment when you're done. The baby comes out. That's it. Finish line crossed, battle won. With potty-training, there seems to be no end in sight. Everything was going fine. Then, suddenly, it wasn't.

Last week, it was a challenge each day. I seem to have run out of "tricks", because there was not a whole lot of motivation to get it right. My clean laundry pile was a true indication of how the week went. I washed some socks for my husband, a few shirts and one pair of paints for O man, and a running outfit and some socks for me. Then came Emma's pile. It was three time the size of ours. A ridiculous number of undergarments for my dear daughter. I sighed as I saw the evidence folded nicely on the counter. Yes, it was a hard week.

So on Friday that was it, it was the last straw. I really lost it. I hope that I did a contained version of losing it, but I'm not sure what the boundaries are to constituent "contained". Owen was holding onto my legs, crying to be picked up or paid attention to, and he would not stay out of the bathroom. Emma was screaming because she had had an accident. My ear happened to be very near to her mouth, and the stress barometer seems to rise quickly when the volume goes up. I was telling her repeatedly to "stop screaming", "it's ok", "we'll fix it".

It was a vicious cycle. We were all getting upset. I finally put Owen in his high-chair with a few crackers, I finished with Emma and told her to get dressed, and I went into the garage. I screamed a couple of times, and felt a lot better. The frustration is something I can't describe, but I'm telling you, it was so intense.

Then, the weekend came. It was nice. We spent it at one set of Grandparents, and they watched our kids while we went to a seminar to learn how to parent better. The timing was impecible. Lessons and advice on how to be a better mom, I was desperate for.

Home again, home again, jiggity jig. I spent a few days breaking Emma of her new and terrible habit of screaming at me when she got in trouble. Advice that I heard over the weekend helped tremendously.

But then yesterday came. My mind was racing with things I needed to get done, with ways I could parent better, with questions of what I was doing right, or not right. It was just a rough morning. For one reason or another, I just felt inadequate. Like I just don't have it together, and can't seem to do all of these things that I want to in a day. I want to read to them everyday, I want to read by myself, I want to pray, I want to play, I want to sip coffee, I want to blow raspberry's on tiny tummies and giggle, I want to clean, I want to relax. I want to write, I want to cook, I want to sew.

Sew. Do I really want to learn how to sew? After a few experiences, I can assure you that I don't. I want to know how to sew, but the learning hasn't been all that fun, to be honest with you. My high expectations for myself were dashed as I hung Emma's curtains up several weeks ago, only to find that they were crooked, and the top and bottom of each weren't exactly the correct size. But, I forged ahead. I bought fabric for Owen's room, and began to make his.

The pinning and ironing part is driving me crazy. Last week I spent 30 minutes trying to get it pinned right, and looked at the final product only to discover that it was crooked. Ahh!!

Yesterday, I tried again, and guesed that it was acceptable. After I hemmed one side, I inspected the hem closely and saw that I had missed the fabric on the backside. Good grief. I redid it. I had to rip it out once before because the thread had gotten all tangled up, and it was showing the bobbin thread, rather than the blue thread. Then it got stuck.

The second side went a little better, but the fabric ended up kind of bunched up, and I didn't have the heart to do it again. I carefully measured the bottom, and ironed it, and gleefully put in the last hem.

In that sequence of events, the iron fell onto the carpeted floor, and of course a bunch of stuff got glued onto it. I had to spend about 10 minutes getting the carpet gunk off of it. Thankfully, I didn't ruin our iron, which is the second one I have had in this marriage.

After I hung up the curtain in Owen's room, I stepped back to inspect my work, and really could have cried. It was crooked. It wasn't right. It was terrible. I tried, and yet again, I failed.

Emma got up shortly after. We played some songs, and we all danced around together. Then, we all marched to Owen's room so I could change his diaper.

Emma was chattering away, and as she turned the corner into the bedroom, she stopped dead in her tracks. She looked up with her little face at that curtain, and she looked back at her mama, and she poured out her little heart. "Owen" she said, "you have a new curtain! It's so pretty. It looks so great. Mommy made you a curtain!" Her sincerity was genuine. She loved it.

It was a clarifying moment for me. All of the frustration I had melted away, all of my doubt about my qualifications for this job fell aside. She was really happy for me, and she was proud of me. She doesn't care if my dumb curtains look ridiculous. Just like she doesn't care if I do all of the things the books tell me to do, they don't care if I am super organized, and they surely don't care if I am caught up on the unending housework. They are learning how to be people from me, and I am learning how to be a mom from them.

I was reminded that my children need to see me venture out, to try new things. They need to watch their mom learn new things, and they need to see me fail. They need to watch me fail with confidence. They need to know that it's ok not to be perfect. I need to teach them that being imperfect is ok, that trying again is more vital to character than trying the first time. Part of being a good mom is being me, and I am more than wiping bottoms and sweeping cheerios and washing a ridiclous number of underwear in a week. A good mom is accepting of the learning process, and she shows her children that learning is hard, and not doing it as well as you had hoped to is hard, but you don't throw a tantrum about it, and you don't have a pity party. (me, I don't throw a tantrum about it!)

All of this stemmed from my little Emma's words.

The icing on the cake came later, as I was telling my husband this story in the kitchen after he came home for the day. In the midst of my recounting the events, little Emma sprang up from her seated position, and tried earnestly to tell her daddy...something. All we heard were bits of words and sentences. "Daddy....Owen...pretty..." On her way past him, with her little legs pumping as fast as possible, she threw out the only word she could get a handle on.

"RUN"!

She screamed it in excitement on her way to her brother's room, in great anticipation of showing her daddy what her mommy had made. Her joy seeped out of her, and we could not help the grins that showed themselves on our faces.

That, my friends, is the joy of mothering. And it makes all the crap I put up with worth it.

Often times we sit and remember the past year, and soak up how much easier it is now.

Past-While attempting to watch a movie or show, I would have to get up several times to comfort the baby. Many times, I would just take him back to the living room, because it was easier. Quality time was definitely a scarce commodity, and let's not revisit the worn out subject of very, very sleepless nights.

Present-Bedtime is often times one of the easiest parts of the day. After finishing some milk and cuddling for two or three minutes, Owen decides that it is now time to go to bed, and he lunges and twists for the mattress. A kiss and a pat, I leave, and don't hear from him for hours. Sometimes it is not as many hours as I would like, but we always have an evening to ourselves. Emma typically reads a few books, and kisses the last page goodnight before literally scampering down the hall to her room. She climbs in, and although she may not be asleep quickly, she is as happy as you could believe. She sings several songs, and talks with her butterfly and baby, and drifts off in her own good time.

Past-Emma in all of her sweetness was just a baby herself. She needed so much hands on help. She was beginning to master her spoon usage, but needed help. She was probably feeling like she got nudged out of the nest too early, and wanted to be the baby for a little while longer. I remember the stress of trying to keep her close to me while we were out. For the most part she did very well, but there were a few horrific instances that involved me leaving a screaming (honestly, if you have heard him, you know) baby in a car seat while chasing a very quick 18 month old, who giggled the entire time.

Present- Emma is a true little girl. She still needs help, of course, but is mastering many new tasks. Not only potty trained now, she can put her underwear and pants on by herself, and has manages with her shirt a few times as well. She feeds herself very well, and is learning to be patient. She plays by herself more, and is furthering the concept of pretend more all the time. This afternoon she "washed my hair" before "putting in a ponytail", and she made me some "juice coffee" a few days ago. She is beginning to truly earn my trust. Last week, we went to a favorite eating establishment that houses a fantastic toddler play area, and as we unloaded under the big arches, I plopped her down on the sidewalk in front of the van, and told to wait there. She didn't budge. In all her excitement, as she looked for her promised friends to arrive, she stood on that little square of cement and giggled and talked and pointed and waved, but, most importantly, she waited and she didn't move.

Past- Our old basement was a disaster, as we ever so tediously decided what to unpack. Unsure of our future housing arrangements, we didn't dare to unpack everything. We had bare, white walls and a cold, cold winter. We were short on square feet and overflowing with baby paraphernalia and toddler gear.

Present- I have let out a sigh and settled in. After three moves in less than two years, we gleefully threw away our boxes. Our walls now surround us with color, and we have put nails in the walls and curtains on the windows. The baby paraphernalia and unending trail of toys, books, pretend kitchen items and various real kitchen items that I have surrendered to the children still threaten to take over at times, but are much more easily managed thanks to a basement and some storage furniture upstairs.

I find that the days go slow but pass quickly, and I must force myself to be in the moment sometimes. Emma says darling things all day long, and Owen is learning at the speed of light. She'll say "How was your afternoon?" to her daddy, and Owen can go get items and bring them to you, and he communicates very effectively.

It has been a wonderful year, though much has changed. I feel really lucky, and am as content as ever.

xyz

Raking leaves.

Old man pj's

I thought that she resembled a cockier spaniel, with the hair.

Rock on man.

Success! This is post 5k run. My partner was a trooper to run with me, because she was definitely faster. It was fun, and I am sure that I'll try again next year.

Giggle me Elmo

The joys of a content and simple life are abundant for me here. There is little that I would rather do than have moments like these. A good belly laugh from your kids is pretty unbeatable.

Emma waking from nap is cause for celebration

It all seems worth it at times like these. My only question, will she like this as much when she is 16? Regardless of what the future holds, I am quickly and systematically becoming a third wheel around here.

And now...the rest of the story.

Miss Emma feeding "Baby".

O-dawg at 9 months. He now has 4 teeth, and is beginning to balance without holding onto things. I see his bright smile more than not. He is a happy little guy, and has amazing tolerance with his sister.

The cat made friends quickly. She is trying to resist the charm of the children, but who can resist them?

Emma got used to her new home quickly. I believe this was a day or two after we moved.

And for all of you who can relate, and for those who tolerate crazy moms, a crazy baby shot. He loves avocados!

Don't make me gag

A few days ago I was in the bathroom. And, as many of you can relate to, my children inevitably end up there with me more times than not. On this particular day, Owen discovered the toilet paper stand, which is a free standing type. It was great fun for him, and as hard as I tried I could not convince him otherwise. He pulled it down and I grabbed it before it bopped him on the head. Then, as I was occupied (for like 7 seconds, I swear) he pulled himself up and figured out how to unroll the toilet paper, which was much more fun. Emma thought she needed a turn too, so it wasn't long before there was toilet paper everywhere and a baby who did not want to sit down.

After I had the toilet paper rolled back up, I noticed Owen chewing. Oh boy. The standard finger sweep in his mouth did not produce anything. Clearly, he had ingested some of that wonderful t.p. The boy does not have a stomach capable of handling all of his impromptu snacks, so it was a matter of seconds before he began to gag.

The amazing thing was my reaction. As he began to make to sounds associated with eating things that should not be eaten, I calmly held him and instructed Emma to take a step backwards. I held onto my son and made sure that he was positioned on the rug, and as the toilet paper came up, I had the presence of mind to wait for round two, which came a moment later. I then plopped him on the floor, wiped him up and gathered the rug up to throw into the washer. My blood pressure did not rise, I didn't yell at Emma, I didn't freak out in the slightest. I was calm. Calm! No panicking. I marveled at this uncharacteristic approach of mine (I am the one who once ripped my husband's head off because Emma "is bleeding!" and he was calm while I was not) and was pleased with the conclusion that I came up with for this phenomenon.

I am officially the mom of...a boy.

pig's

A few weeks ago I put Em's hair in pig tails for the first time. She seems more like a little girl all the time. She is watching her first movie for the first time right now. It is a veggy tale movie from a good friend.

Over the weekend we took family pictures with my family. Successful? I don't know. Owen slept really poorly the night before, and didn't take a nap that morning. His eyes looked red and puffy, and he looked so tired. But they'll do. It was all in all a pretty good time.

Our life has settled down into a routine again. It feels good to be back to the day to day stuff.