This would be my best shot any day of the week, but since it is Monday…
I must be all emotional because we just got back from A.’s kindergarten screening, but I nearly cried when I opened this photo up and saw my two squeaky clean lovebugs.
Well, I think I have solved the mystery of my early-rising girls. Apparently no matter how late I go to bed (and it was a very late date night last night!), I still am up ridiculously early. Today, however, the rest of the house is still sleeping and I’m going to try to get a little weekly wrap-up in here before they all stumble down the stairs.
I guess the Friday wrap-ups are just not in the cards lately, blogging kind of hasn’t been in the cards, in fact. We have just been busy. I even missed Crafty Tuesday this week! And I had some good stuff to show and a little contest to share, too. Next week for sure. Maybe I’ll start writing it NOW if I finish this one and my family is still slumbering. While I also haven’t been writing, I haven’t been reading or commenting on any blogs either. But I’ll be back, it just may take a few days.
I just realized that I don’t have a single photo to share from this week. I took some of my phone for a project I am working on with my friend Jamie, and I took my time photo for my team-up Thursday and that is the only time I picked up my camera this week. Boo. That makes me sad, I’m sure the girls have done all kinds of growing up this week and I haven’t even documented it. Seriously, it is amazing to see the seemingly small little changes taking place, yet they all make my girls seem so much older!
Addie is staring her, “how do you spell” phase. I remember when Em started doing that. The other night she was writing a “story.” Addie asked me the other day, “Mama? How do you spell – Once upon a time there was a…” and then she put C-A-T at the end of the sentence and read it back to me, she was so proud of her little story. She also learned how to spell the word dear, so she has been leaving little scraps of paper with love notes on them for us. She left some under J’s pillow the other night and I moved my keyboard on my desk yesterday and found, “Dear Mommy Love Addie.” Yeah, it melted me.
She goes for her kindergarten screening on Monday. I think I’m a little in denial about it. I also think come August it is going to be even harder to drop my last baby off at real school than it was to drop my first baby. But then my first baby loves school so much (and is almost a second grader!!) and I know that Ad will follow in her footsteps too. That makes it a little easier. A tiny, little bit easier.
Speaking of Emma Grace, she just found her way downstairs, so I guarantee Ad is not far behind.
Em is on countdown mode. Her cousins come in 26 days and she could not be more excited. She is also in the church musical and for not wanting a speaking part, she keeps coming home from rehearsal with more and more lines. They are doing the story of Daniel in the lions den and Emmy is a tormenting lion. (Aha! See why lion heads is on my to-do list, Kimberly and Cara?) I have been tasked with sewing 18 lion heads. And I have finished…well, I have all the material now. I had to make a trip to the fabric district downtown LA for fur for the manes. And while at my favorite fabric store, I just happened to find all kinds of other fabric for projects that I probably won’t get finished until the girls are back in school. In the fall!
We already have a very busy summer planned. We are trying to sort out some vacation stuff and I’m already having scheduling dilemmas. So much for lying out at the pool each afternoon with B!
And here comes Addie…well, so much for my alone time. We are off to bagel Saturday and all kinds of other fun today, I’ll be back. Eventually. This wasn’t so much of a weekly wrap-up, but I threw all of my to-do lists away and I can’t even remember what we did this week. I just know that I’m happy it is the weekend.
Hope you are all doing well, have a fun weekend planned and that I get to catch up with you all soon!
If only I could steal a few minutes from Kimberly’s shot this week…then maybe perhaps I could stop moving to-dos from my yesterday to my today.
Oh, like everyone isn’t insanely busy lately, right? But seriously? This was the longest, craziest, busiest week ever. I haven’t had a free moment to think and I just keep moving to-dos from one day of my calendar to the next day and hope that, well…maybe tomorrow it will get done?
In the middle of the mountains of stuff I had to do for both Em’s school and Ad’s school this past week, I started a house redesign project or two. Or three. I started to clean out the play/craft room so I could paint it. I want to do this to one of the walls. How cool is that? And I started shopping for new fabric for the living room because that room needs some serious help. And then, because I am schizophrenic and can’t stop myself, I was sitting in the bathroom while the girls were taking a bath and thought, “I wonder what this wallpaper is like to get off? I wonder if I just pull that little corner where it is coming up…”
Yeah, within 10 minutes I had all of the paper off all the way up to the bathtub. “Mama!” Emma shrieked, “Don’t peel the wallpaper over the bathtub, you’ll get us all papery!” So after they got out of the tub, I pulled off the rest of the paper. It is seriously cathartic to pull down ugly 40-year old wallpaper, let me tell you. But now tomorrow I really need to get that room painted. It would be nice to start the week with at least one project completed.
Emma said to me, “Every time Daddy comes back we have some new project to show him! I don’t think he likes it when we do that all the time.”
But I think he does like it – it means less stuff on my list for him to do!
J. was gone the whole week to New York and usually that makes for a long lonely-ish kind of week, but our week was so packed that I only had time to miss him when I was crawling up the stairs each night to climb into bed and I only then would I remember that he wouldn’t be home. Thankfully he returned yesterday safe and sound and we had a super sweet date night last night.
We celebrated J’s brother’s engagement. Oh? Haven’t I mentioned that he proposed to JB, she said yes, and they are getting married?? THEY ARE! And we couldn’t be more excited. We adore JB, obviously love Jeff with all our hearts, and seeing the two of them together and happy is, well, it is just perfect. So we celebrated last night. A lot. And I needed a whole bunch of coffee this morning, apparently I am too old for this partying stuff any more.
Other things that I may be too old for…Em’s little ant hill. Come to find out the ants, once they started crawling around and building their tunnels, are HUGE! And crawly…ick. The good news is they only live 2-4 weeks and I’ve already prepped Em on their eventual death.
Someone asked about their care – you feed them a popcorn-sized bit of carrot, apple or celery every 3 days or so and that is the ONLY time you open the little top (and ONLY Mommies can open the top – ha!). And the ant, um…poo? I guess it just gets swept out with the dead ants in the end.
If you want to try something with kids, I highly suggest the Butterfly habitat first. It is very easy and much more exciting. That was my favorite habitat so far. Growing the ladybugs was kind of labor intensive, with the always needing drops of water and bits of soaked raisins and such…shesh. It was too much like having 20 little kids!
Just trying to get through this post has made me so very sleepy. I think I need to get some zzzz’s while I still can. Hopefully we’ll jump into next week all nice and fresh and will have a much calmer week.
We decided this week to turn the cameras over to the kids and see what they could come up with for our theme of Mom.
M: Hey Emma would you like to use Mama’s camera and shoot some photos this afternoon?
E: Sure! What do you want me to take pictures of?
M: Um…how about Mom?
E: Okay. Where should you be?
M: Well, where would you like me? What do you want me to be doing in your picture?
E: Um…can you do a hula hoop?
Yeaahhh. So Kimberly has a gorgeous portrait of her (see her down there?) shot by Bryce…her FOUR year old. And I get a crazy photo of me putting my hips into it. But, that’s what you get when you give up control, I guess.
E: “Daddy! My ants came today! 50 of them!”
D: “Um…aren’t we generally trying to keep ants OUT of the house?”
The Ant Hill was one of Em’s purchases with a birthday gift card. We anxiously awaited the arrival of the ants through the mail, and once they finally came, Em studied the instructions to make sure the ants got into the Hill with no incidents.
And we’ve just been waiting for them to get accustomed to their new surroundings.
They’ve provided hours of entertainment already…
…and have even inspired this week’s creative writing entry for Em’s homework.
Clearly it is the most exciting thing going on around this place.
I had very good intentions of using some of our unscheduled weekend for tackling my ever-growing mountain of fabric that is beckoning me, begging me to create some new stuff. But instead, we did nothing. It was wonderful, but doesn’t give me much to show-off today.
I did put together an art purse for one of Em’s friends last week. I am loving these little bags, Jen! Thanks so much for putting the pattern out.
I actually made this one a little bigger than the ones I made for Em and Ad.
I wanted to put a bigger tablet inside – and markers and stickers. Avery really liked it and her Mom asked me to make some aprons for her girls, so it was a success I think.
And that is all I have to throw out today. But before I go…a few inspirational birthday gifts I got last week. Check this out…
Yes, that is the back of my iPhone. HOW cool is that? My friend Vic “borrowed” a photo from me and had the skin made from Gelaskins. I love seeing my babies every time I pull out my phone.
Emmy picked out this for my birthday…
Yeah, I think she is telling me something. Our oven has been on non-stop for the past week and looks like it will be on most of this week, too. Might have to try out a cupcake or two in there somewhere.
And Addie picked out this one…
God love those girls. They know what their Mama likes. This book has…well 101 projects that I can’t wait to try!
What sort of projects did you try this week?
“When I’m a mom, I am never going to do that to my kids!”
“I will never tell my kids – ‘because I said so, that’s why!'”
“I’m not going to do what my mom/dad/parents did to me!”
Ok all you Moms out there, tell the truth. Think back to before your adventure in motherhood, and tell me you didn’t say a version of one (if not ALL) of those statements to your own Mom, or at least think it on occasion?
Oh, I said them all. I was going to be an enlightened, understanding and ever-so patient mom. I would never snap at my children or yell in frustration or tell them, “go find something to do, or I’ll find something for you!”
And then? Well, then motherhood came and slapped me upside the head. And I was so surprised when something I swore I would never say to my children, slipped so easily out of my mouth.
Now I’m not so surprised, but I have found that I am much more enlightened on what it takes to be a mom. My mom? Now I can look back and see that she did a pretty amazing job. Her “way” seems to be a pretty darn good way of doing things. And also? Being a mom is hard work. Every single day. And my Mom has been doing it for 38 years, and for three kids.
So today I not only send you wishes and gifts of love, Mom – but I also give you thanks for providing me an example of a good Mom to live up to, and a rough draft of a “Mom Handbook” to try to follow.
And when my girls tell me, “When I’m a mom I’ll never…,” I will just smile and know someday they too will figure out the Mom secret. Because I think you can only really fully appreciate something after you’ve lived a bit of it.
To all the hard-working moms, and especially mine, I hope you have a beautiful day and can truly relish in the awesomeness that being a mom brings. Love to you all.
Happy Mother’s Day!
Helllooo there! You been wondering where the heck we have all been? Besides the occasional Crafty Tuesday or Dipy Thursday we’ve been a little absent, but definitely not idle. So what has been happening?
-We’ve been entertaining.
Nana and Papa stopped in for a little weekend visit. It was great to have them here and Papa had a whole new (upright) view of LA, since last time he was dreadfully ill the entire time. I think he may have seen an entire part of our house, that he had completely missed, too. Plus, we got to take Nana to the aquarium and Papa to the Jay Leno show, so it was a packed and fun weekend.
-I’ve been finding missing persons.
When your parents tell you “if we are not back from our walk in 30 minutes come looking for us,” just hand them your phone with the GPS. Trust me.
About 45 minutes after Nana and Papa left, I got my shoes on. After about five minutes of driving the route they were supposed to be on, I get a phone call. “We are sitting on the curb…” about 12 blocks from where they were supposed to be. Now granted in giving them directions I may or may not have forgotten to mention the crazy street where the name changes. I only wish I had my real camera, I really don’t think the iPhone truly captured the moment.
-I’ve been celebrating.
Yeah, another one of those pesky birthdays popped up this week. I didn’t even need to “milk it” though. My sweet girls and Jam brought me Starbucks and breakfast and showered me with awesome gifts and love. Emma climbed in bed with me and said, “Happy Birthday, Mama. I’m so glad you had me.” Huh. Okay…
Anyhow, I got tons of good wishes, phone calls, a terrific lunch and I was even serenaded (complete with ice cream cake!) by Em’s entire first grade class. It was a very good birthday. Thank you all for thinking of me.
-I’ve been certified.
Or made certifiable, maybe? My friend Jamie and I took the C.E.R.T. (Community Emergency Response Team) training through our fire department. It was three nights last week and three nights this week. I may drive J. crazy with all of the stuff we need to do to make our house all emergency-proof, but at least I feel prepared in case some sort of emergency does happen.
-We’ve been appreciating.
This week we’ve been appreciating all of Em’s teachers and staff, and next week it is Addie’s school. So we’ve been making all kinds of signs, notes, picking flowers, baking goods, etc. I still maintain that teachers have one of the hardest jobs, ever. Makes my job look like a piece of cake most days. So thank you to teachers everywhere.
-We’ve been field-tripping.
Finally Addie got a field trip that Emma didn’t get to go on. And Mommy got to go with her. She is always asking “When are you going to come help in my class, Mama? When do I get to go to a field trip? When can you stay at school with me?” So we got to go see a Max & Ruby theater show this week with her class. She thought it was all very cool.
Is it any wonder that we have all been just falling into (or near) the bed each night?
This weekend, we have almost nothing on the docket and I have been promised two days of a bit of pampering. The weekend has never looked so good. Hope yours is terrific as well!
Ok. I admit this one (from me, at least!) was a bit of a stretch. I didn’t have a single idea all weekend for our theme and we have already done the theme friends, so we couldn’t even play along with Melody and Megan today. I told Kimberly, “Um, I am just stuck! Hey, let’s just throw stuck out there and see what happens.”
Well, what happened was Kimberly came up with a very clever, colorful and graphic photo clearly depicting a great stuck. Me? Well, I was running around a little like a madwoman, not even thinking of my beloved Thursday post, until Addie was trying to keep up with me yesterday and sneak through the bars of the gate in the courtyard.
Yes. Through the bars. She likes to slide through without opening the gate.
And then she called out, “Oh, Mama! I’m getting so big! I’m almost stuck!”
Stuck? Wait. Hold the gate! I’ll go get my camera.
So no pins or glue around here this week (although you’d think in our house there would be, right?), just my little girl getting too big and “almost stuck!”