Happy Valentine's Day! Yes, that is G&W with their heart pancakes for breakfast on Valentine's Day! Ah yes, the commercial holiday that most everyone either dreads, embraces fully, or ignores based on their views. We hit all three depending on our moods and the year. Yes, we love each other every day in our family, but we did talk about how it is fun to have a special day to say and show it with G and did a few special things to celebrate! Now G LOVES holidays and goes nuts talking about them and playing pretend and wanting to do everything related to the holiday. We first experienced that last year with Halloween. And you can't ignore these holidays because they are everywhere! If not the stores and even PBS kids shows, they will hear about them from their friends at church! So we talk about how Halloween and Valentine's Day are SILLY holidays and we can have fun with them, but they are not important. Christmas and Easter are IMPORTANT holidays and we hit that importance hard with her. So last week we talked about silly Valentine's Day, and I showed G how to cut hearts out of paper. She had great fun doing that, and then I found a heart cookie cutter in my drawer and let her trace it and color hearts on paper. I did not mention that it was a cookie cutter to her, but when I was telling S about it when he got home that evening, I said cookie cutter. G heard that but didn't say anything. The next day at lunch she asks me about it. "Momma, you said that heart thing is a cookie cutter? Does it really CUT COOKIES? CAN WE DO THAT?!!!!" I don't know whether I was having a weak moment or whether the excitement and joy in her face got to me, but I said "Sure, honey!" Where the "Are you nuts?" comes in is that S had to work all day Saturday, so I was going to try to attempt this while being home with all 3 kids by myself. Luckily Baby C did a lot of sleeping that day, but it still took forever and the process was interrupted multiple times! But it was a lot of fun for the most part, and no major melt-downs happened. =)
mixing the batter - G was thrilled to spill flour on her new apron from Aahma B!
look at my big helpers!
G wiping the counter off getting ready to roll out the dough (done unprompted too!)
G cutting out hearts in the section of dough she rolled out
this was G's favorite part by farThere are no pictures of the cooked or frosted cookies because as the day wore on, so did my patience and G's mood and we also had more interruptions. But we had them all baked and enough frosted by bedtime for her to hand out to her Sunday school class and teacher the next day.
The other part of "Are you nuts?" which I heard from a number of people when I told them how we spent the day, was that I also got "Christmas" cards and Baby C's birth announcement pictures ready and printed. We did not do anything for Christmas cards or pictures because we were going to wait until Baby C joined us! And now that he is here and we are incredibly busy, you would think that I would tell myself that I have a good enough excuse to just skip it this year, but no! I had in my head a Valentine's day deadline, and being the good procrastinator that I am, I wrote a letter on Thursday, had auntie C come and take pics of the kids on Friday, (turned out awesome!) and tried to get them all ready and printed on Saturday so that we could put most of them in the church mailboxes on Sunday and get the rest ready to mail out Monday! Ok, the church mailboxes thing happened, but the rest of the letters and pics are still sitting here waiting to hopefully go out today or tomorrow. I could post what the "Christmas" card and announcement look like here, but I will wait and let you be surprised by snail mail! =)
So part of my adjustment to life with 3 kids and S back at work is figuring out a balance of what I can accomplish during the day. There have been a few days this week where I haven't done anything as I kept waiting for the next crisis or kid break-down to happen. There have been a few days when I have gotten a few things done and felt really good about it, and there have been a few days where I have wanted to get things done but didn't get anything accomplished due to dealing with kids all day. That is the nature of my job as a mom. =) I read a good piece of advice a couple months ago. When you stay at home with kids all day, the tendency is to just unload when your hubby comes home with all the bad things that happened that frustrated you! This article said to make sure you remember 5 things that made you laugh or smile to tell your hubby first before unloading the rest. With 3 little ones to take care of now and life being crazy, I really have been trying to remember this as it is easy for the frustrating things to overshadow the little good things. For example, G wanting a drink of milk while I was putting W down for a nap downstairs the other day and knowing that she can't pour it, she brought the cup and the milk carton all the way down the steps to me so I could do it! This wasn't a huge thing that I would write down in a baby book, but it was cute to see her lugging it my way and although it interrupted getting W down, I appreciated G's thought process and her not pouring it by herself all over the kitchen floor and needed to remember to tell S about it since he is not around to see all of those now. I love being a mom, but there are days when I feel like this too:
The other part of "Are you nuts?" which I heard from a number of people when I told them how we spent the day, was that I also got "Christmas" cards and Baby C's birth announcement pictures ready and printed. We did not do anything for Christmas cards or pictures because we were going to wait until Baby C joined us! And now that he is here and we are incredibly busy, you would think that I would tell myself that I have a good enough excuse to just skip it this year, but no! I had in my head a Valentine's day deadline, and being the good procrastinator that I am, I wrote a letter on Thursday, had auntie C come and take pics of the kids on Friday, (turned out awesome!) and tried to get them all ready and printed on Saturday so that we could put most of them in the church mailboxes on Sunday and get the rest ready to mail out Monday! Ok, the church mailboxes thing happened, but the rest of the letters and pics are still sitting here waiting to hopefully go out today or tomorrow. I could post what the "Christmas" card and announcement look like here, but I will wait and let you be surprised by snail mail! =)
So part of my adjustment to life with 3 kids and S back at work is figuring out a balance of what I can accomplish during the day. There have been a few days this week where I haven't done anything as I kept waiting for the next crisis or kid break-down to happen. There have been a few days when I have gotten a few things done and felt really good about it, and there have been a few days where I have wanted to get things done but didn't get anything accomplished due to dealing with kids all day. That is the nature of my job as a mom. =) I read a good piece of advice a couple months ago. When you stay at home with kids all day, the tendency is to just unload when your hubby comes home with all the bad things that happened that frustrated you! This article said to make sure you remember 5 things that made you laugh or smile to tell your hubby first before unloading the rest. With 3 little ones to take care of now and life being crazy, I really have been trying to remember this as it is easy for the frustrating things to overshadow the little good things. For example, G wanting a drink of milk while I was putting W down for a nap downstairs the other day and knowing that she can't pour it, she brought the cup and the milk carton all the way down the steps to me so I could do it! This wasn't a huge thing that I would write down in a baby book, but it was cute to see her lugging it my way and although it interrupted getting W down, I appreciated G's thought process and her not pouring it by herself all over the kitchen floor and needed to remember to tell S about it since he is not around to see all of those now. I love being a mom, but there are days when I feel like this too:
Just as long as there are not too many times during the day when all 4 of us are crying, I think we will make it. =)
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