Preschool Graduation

My dear Tyson,

Nine months ago I hesitantly left you- my very little and very young baby boy- in a huge classroom full of strangers. We were both nervous. You showed it by keeping your head down. Clinging to my hand a little tighter.

You didn't cry the first day, but I did. In the parking lot of your school with my sunglasses on and head down-just like you.

For the first few weeks, I religiously showed up 15 minutes early for pick up hoping to catch a glimpse of you walking in line or sitting in circle time. I smiled when I saw you holding hands with a new friend and beamed as I watched you follow in line back to your classroom.

In the past nine months, you have learned how to write your name and cut out shapes. You can sing songs that I don't know the words to. You can count to ten in Spanish. You know the days of the week. You play with friends better. You know about fire safety and the seasons and bugs and church. You celebrated Jesus's birthday and wore your pajamas to school! You went to the zoo and the apple orchard. You planted bean sprouts and read books.

You have learned things I would have never thought to teach you. You have met friends that I could never have introduced you to. You made art projects that I will cherish forever.

Today, I watched you-my big preschool graduate-confidently stand in a room full of friends listening intently to your teachers and sneaking proud smiles back at me.

Today I know for certain what it feels like when your heart swells with pride for I could feel my heart expanding when they called your name, I sat a little straighter to see you walk to the front of the class, and, thanks to miraculous restrain on my part, I managed to only shed a few tears as Miss Debbie handed you your preschool diploma.

I am so, so proud of you baby.

Happy preschool graduation.

Love,

Mommy

This Is The Winter That Never Ends

Dear Mother Nature,

As you probably know, the 2012/2013 winter in Minnesota has lasted roughly seven months. Congrats-that's what I call perseverance on your part. Just this week we got 8 inches of snow. On April 22nd! Really-that's going quite above and beyond.  As much as I want to book the first ticket out of Minnesota to a beach locale where we could live as bums in flip-flops for the rest of our lives, I'm trying to remain positive. For the kids. And also my sanity.

Staying positive has involved staying busy. And wine, lots of wine. Since you can't drink wine during the day (I hear it's frowned upon), I've tried to do a new craft with the kids each time you've graced our presence with a big snow storm in the last few weeks. Thanks to you, we've been quite busy. All of the projects involved snow and were big hits in our house.

Here's what we've done so far to stay busy:

Project 1: I had seen the whole microwave an Ivory soap bar all over the internet and was excited to try it with Tyson. Good clean fun is something any Mom can get behind, right?  Even Mother Nature, right? Per the instructions, this should only be done with plain Ivory soap. We placed ours on plastic wrap, pulled a chair over to the microwave and watched our soap turn into a giant "snowball."

Pretty cool, right? Unfortuantely, this excitement only lasted about two minutes. Your snow storm in March lasted longer.  Hoping to elongate my sanity, we decided to turn the snowball into flakes by hitting it softly with a small shovel over a giant bowl. Then, we added water to the soap flakes slowly until it was the consistency of dry dough. Tyson helped roll out the dough and used cookie cutters to make his own personal dinosaur soaps for bath time.

Project 2: This one might have been my favorite. Snow ice cream!! I could eat my misery away. We collected some CLEAN snow during a snow fall and then followed this simple recipe:

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Snow-Ice-Cream-II/Detail.aspx

We made ours with chocolate milk and it was better than I thought it would be!

Project 3: This one was slightly depressing. Using an empty gallon of milk, we made a snow collector. I cut off the top and had Tyson help me measure out the snow guage and decorate the container. We put the container outside before the storm and waited in anticipation (and dread) for you to bless us with more snow.

Sadly, we collected more than the 5 inches of snow the gallon would hold. I'm reconsidering the whole booking a flight to a tropical destination.

All this is to say, thank you. Thank you for the additional opportunities to bond with my kids over winter arts and crafts. Extra thanks to you for all the abundance of supplies you provided. Tyson and Mila have loved the snow projects that we've done as I've tried desperately to hang on to the last bit of sanity I have left. 

Also, I wanted to let you know that I'm fresh out of snow crafts. If you continue to do your extra credit work and extend winter into May, I'm fairly certain I'll end up in some sort of padded room far, far away from my kids. I think they would miss me.

If you could throw us a bone and send us a 70 degree day in the near future that would be great. I've got some awesome spring crafts up my sleeve that I'm dying to use.

Thanks,

Mommy

Easter

There's a reason Easter only comes once a year. I'm sure part of it has to do with the whole celebrating Jesus rising from the dead (which apparently only happened once) but the other part of it is likely because every parent can only handle picking up the plastic eggs 900 times once per year. ANND the sugar. Don't even get me started on the sugar.

I mean this in the nicest most Christian way possible. Good riddance, Easter.

At least we got some good pictures in return for my misery:

Look! My kids aren't wearing clothes! Again!

Five minutes after his basket was filled the eggs were spread all over the house for me to play 900 egg pick up. Which, if I haven't mentioned it, is my FAVORITE game. 

Waaay more interested in catching her brother in the butterfly net then finding any eggs. 

Practicing sharing. 

This rare picture brought to you by good naps, bribery, and Grandma Pat. 

Heaven & Hell

A month or two ago, I took Tyson and Mila to a funeral. We met Daddy there which means I magically dressed all three of us to look somewhat decent, fielded 900 heaven questions on the way there (No, we don't take a plane to Heaven. No, Florida is not the same as Heaven even though we took a plane there. No, you won't get to really see Jesus today. Yes, you will go to heaven someday too. Yes, you can play with Willow and Jesus there.No, not today-when you're old. No, not old like Daddy, like really really old. ) and herded both kids three blocks into the church by myself (in heels).

I came prepared. I had suckers and crayons and snacks and bottles. All of which came in really handy on the bathroom floor. Fifteen minutes into the service,  Mila was crying and Tyson was, well, let's just say losing his marbles. My normally well-behaved, quiet, people pleaser lost his sh-t. There was kicking at windows, screaming to bring Daddy back, and yelling that he wanted and didn't want to go home. It was quite the sight. I (in heels) carried the crying baby in one arm and the kicking and screaming toddler in the other to the nearest bathroom where I promptly locked the door and sat down to cry myself. 

I'd like to take this time to address the church usher who knocked on the bathroom door shortly after we locked it to ask if everything was ok-no, everything was not ok. Clearly. 

Mila apparently liked the change of scenery and quit crying shortly after we entered the bathroom. She found her snack trap and sat down to have a nice little snack of cheerios on the bathroom floor. I realize I should be ashamed of this fact, but, frankly, I was just pleased that I was down to one crying offspring.

Thankfully, after enjoying 30 minutes of screaming and kicking on the bathroom floor, I was able to talk him down from the ledge and escape (relatively) unharmed. In other words, I totally bribed him with ice cream if he would walk nicely to the car.

Tyson was terrified and confused that day. The 900 questions on the way there should have been my hint. Since I didn't pick up what he was throwing down with the questions, he decided to spell it out for me by screaming and crying in the back of the church. I got the message, buddy.

Today we will attend another funeral. Dan's Aunt Judy passed away. She was an amazing woman and I wish my kids would have had the opportunity to know her better. She adored her husband, put together awesome scrapbooks and was at every family event with a camera to document the occasion.

Please pray for her (and for us) today. We've done a lot more talking about funerals and heaven lately. I'm hoping this kind of preparation will be more useful than the suckers and snacks I'll still pack.

Sick.

This is the face of our sick little peanut.

The culprit? A double ear infection. Her first (times two). Little sister is a warrior though-lots of sleeping and not much crying through the whole ordeal. Despite having completely opposite personalities when well, she seems to follow in her brother’s footsteps  when sick-sleep & more sleep-minimum fussing. Momma is lucky.

We’re hoping a few rounds of amoxicillin will give us back the cute little troublemaker we’re missing at home.

Having a 13 Month Old Girl is Pretty Much Like Having a Parrot.

It’s official. We have a three year old son named Tyson and a 13 month old parrot named Mila. As of now, I can pretty much tell her to say anything and she’ll do it. Except Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. She can’t say that.  

Don’t get me wrong, her vocabulary is still only probably 40ish words deep, but her parroting? It’s out of control.

And while we’re on her vocabulary, she certainly has had some quirky first words.

“GOT IT!”-announced whenever she picks anything up. This phrase was said before Mommy or Daddy. Weird, right?

“PRETTY!”-yelled at anything remotely pretty. Jewelry, shoes, bows, flowers. She likes her pretties. Last week she spent 15 minutes before nap time yelling “PRETTY!” at the new bow holder we hung in her room. I don’t blame her though-it’s really that pretty.

“YEAH!”-said constantly. No really, she will walk around saying “yeah!” to herself (and anyone listening) for no reason.

And the newly learned, “NO! NO!” said complete with a finger wave. God save us.

Other happenings at 13 months include:

Singing and dancing to “Hot Dog! Hot Dog!” thanks to Mickey Mouse. I swore I would keep this show off during the parenting of our second child to save my sanity, but alas, Mickey’s powerful Clubhouse wins again.

Peeing on the potty. WHAT? THE? I’m not complaining. She goes about 60-70 percent of the time we put her on it. Sometimes she asks to go on it. It’s odd. By documenting this, I’m sure she won’t be fully potty trained until she’s 4. I learned my karma potty training lesson the first time.

Pooping in the bathtub for the first time.  I’m complaining. Some firsts are clearly not as awesome as others. (Mimi- We spent a lot of time documenting Tyson’s bowel movements during his first year-it’s only fair that we do the same for yours. Your prom date won’t read this blog, I promise).

Feeding Lola all of her food. Again, not as awesome. Especially because Lola’s dinner of barbecue chicken pizza ended up all over the bottom half of our bed. At 3 AM. See above regarding the newly learned phrase “NO! NO!” Yes, this is where she learned it.

Giving kisses. Amen. My favorite part of this age. The open mouthed sloppy kiss. This makes up for the poop and the puke noted above every single time. She’s generous with the kisses too-her babies, her brother, Mommy, Daddy, herself.

13 months is fun.  And really, really busy. We’re loving every single minute of it with our little parrot.  

Easter Bunny Stare Down

We took the kids to see the Easter Bunny yesterday.

Tyson has clearly he has grown out of his stranger danger phase and was quite proud to pose with the rather large and slightly intimidating bunny. For the record, Mr. Bunny,  I'm not sure that posing with your hand on your hip was the best idea. Doesn't exactly scream warm and fuzzy to the three foot crowd waiting in line.

In fact, I'm pretty sure that the above stare down was partially to blame for the below melt down.

I can't say I blame her. 

Oh well, at least she looked cute.