Mama's nose knows

Tonight I send Diva into our bathroom to get into her pajamas.  After a few minutes when she didn't reappear and Imp was suspiciously absent from the living room, my mommy radar started to go off.  It was then that I noticed a curious light fragrance in the air.  Knowing that I didn't have any air freshener or candles going, I knew something was up.  I thought it smelled like baby powder, and mentioned my suspicions to Daddy.  He said, "There's no way you could be smelling baby powder in the bathroom from where you are".  Just as he finished saying that, Imp came walking out of our room, covered in - you guessed it - baby powder!  I couldn't deal with it for a good 5-10 minutes, not because I was upset, but because I didn't want them to see me laughing.  Imp did not appreciate the shower that followed.  I still have to clean up the mess in the bathroom, but I'll get to that soon.  One thing's for sure, Daddy isn't going to live down doubting my instinct for quite some time!

our "Thankful List"

This is a picture of a project I began with Diva this month in preparation for Thanksgiving.  It began with just asking her one day what she was thankful for, then I asked her the next day, then decided to start writing them down.  Since she is only 3, most of the things tended to be whatever her eyes happened upon, but it was still interesting to see what she said each day and how it applied to her in the moment.  The "medicine" day was at the end of a string of days where she and Imp had both been sick.  "Couches" was at the beginning of those sick days.  After doing that this year, I am seriously considering (if I remember to do it!) doing this every November with the kids and saving their lists from year to year and giving them the lists when they move out of the house.  I'm sure it will be interesting to look back on these lists after a few years and see what kind of window these "Thankful Lists" give us into our lives at the time and the children's perspectives of our lives at the time.

not quite right

I was just spending some time with Diva since she's lying in bed not feeling very well.  She wanted to play "pat-a-cake" so I obliged, letting her say the rhyme.  Her version needs a little work.  It went something like "Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, bakers man, put it in the oven and put a baby on top then bake it for Mommy and me".  Not too sure what I think about putting the baby on top then in the oven ...

Days of Thanksgiving

I was inspired by someone on an email mailing list subscription that I am on.  Every day they are sending a message saying one thing they are thankful for.  Yesterday at lunch I asked the girls what they are thankful for.  Diva quickly answered "God!".  Today I got out a piece of paper, wrote the words "We are Thankful for" at the top, glued a few fake leaves on the paper, and listed yesterday's date and today's date.  Beside yesterday's date, I wrote "God" and by today's date I wrote Diva's answer for today, which was "pictures".  Once she realized that I was writing down the things she was saying, she started to list off several more things, but I told her to remember them for other days.  I don't want her to list off everything all at once then not be able to think of anything later on in the month. :-)

I'm going to try to keep this going through Thanksgiving at least, and maybe through the end of the month since it's only 3 more days.  If I remember this next year, I'm going to try to make a tradition of this and keep the papers from year to year.  I think it will be interesting to look back over the years to see what the children were thankful for at the various points in their lives.

new "hobby"

I have started a second blog (don't worry, I won't be abandoning this one) for my newest interest.  I got inspired by a segment on Rachael Ray featuring a woman who wrote a cookbook for things that you could find at the 99 Cent Store.  I remembered how, when I lived in Florida, I used to put together various little gifts using things that I bought at the local dollar stores.  I really haven't put too much into household decorations, so I challenged myself to a bit of "dollar store decor" for the various seasons.  The web address for my new blog is dollardecorating.blogspot.com or you can click on my profile and it is listed there.

my little literalist

Diva never fails to give us something to chuckle about, and I needed the chuckle after the heart attack she gave me this morning when I caught her pushing Bubba in his baby swing so hard that she nearly made the swing fall apart.  But, that's not the topic of this post.  Instead, I thought I would share her interpretation of a conversation a little later in the day.  Since we were out running an errand around lunch time, I made the "executive decision" that we would get lunch at McDonald's and bring it home to eat.  While we were waiting in line at the drivethrough, "Auntie" (their favorite aunt) made some remark about eating McDonald's for lunch.  Diva, in a concerned tone, said that we couldn't eat McDonald's for lunch.  When we pressed her for a reason, she said "You can't eat a building!"

the moon followed us home

Diva spent some time at a friend's house this evening.  When I picked her up, it was already dark out and Diva promptly noticed the moon shining brightly.  She seemed to forget about it on the way home, but when we pulled in the driveway and started getting ready to get out of the van, she looked out the van window and commented "Look, Mommy, the moon followed us home!"

kid-speak

I was working with Diva this morning on her new AWANA verse.  She was SUPPOSED to say "all He had made was very good" (Gen 1:31).  Her version, which I have to admit, had quite a bit of merit to it, was "all He had made was very important!".

She brought another smile to my face earlier this morning, too.  I'm learning to be more spontaneous with her and go with her ideas instead of brushing them off just because I don't feel like doing it right then.  She came up to me this morning while I was feeding Bubba and said "I want to send a Happy Mother's Day card to your mommy."  Her children's church class had made Mother's Day cards back in the spring when it actually WAS Mother's Day and apparently that was a big deal to her.  Every now and then she'll bring up the subject totally out of the blue.  I really didn't feel like putting forth much effort on anything extra today and could have produced any number of excuses to validate a "no" answer (headache, tired, etc.).  I thought about it for a minute and then figured that Grandma would probably enjoy it, so I told her to go ahead and get a piece of paper and make a "card" for Grandma.  She did that while I finished feeding Bubba, then we got an envelope for her to stuff the paper into, and I do mean stuff - she didn't do the greatest folding job on the paper :-)  I addressed it and put the stamp on, then let her trot out to the mailbox and put it in.  It didn't take a whole lot of extra effort on my part but it meant something to her and I'm sure it will make Grandma smile when it reaches it's destination.  I still have my moments when I just can't motivate myself to either stop what I'm working on or put forth the effort to humor all of her little impulses, but I am learning to put my own things and my own feelings aside more often and listen to the thoughts of a child.

"And a little child shall lead them"  Isaiah 11:6

memory making moments

Sometimes it's just fun to be a little spontaneous.  Besides, who knows what blog fodder the girls will give me. :-)  Tonight I decided that the girls and I were going to have a "pajama party".  There was no occasion, no special reason - it's not even the weekend.  I just felt like doing something out of the ordinary.  Around 5:30 we got cleaned up and ready for bed, all three of us in our pj's.  After that, I put the girls in their room with some toys they don't play with very often and I started making "pancake cookies" for our dinner.  Pancake cookies are just small, cookie-sized pancakes that can be snacked on like cookies and don't have to be eaten at the table.  When I had enough made to get them going, I had them pick up the toys then come out to the couch.  They got to watch an Elmo movie while they ate their dinner.  

By the time we were done with that, it was almost dark.  Since one of the parts of the Elmo movie was talking about stars and constellations, we went outside to watch the stars come out.  Imp had given up and gone back inside with Daddy, but Diva and I stayed out for a little while.  At one point, I decided to have a "teaching moment" and asked her if she knew what the time of day when it wasn't quite all the way dark, but it wasn't daytime anymore was called.  She said "yes", so I asked what it was.  She replied, "the big difference!"  I was going for dusk, but that works. :-)  I think she meant to say "the Big Dipper" because we had been talking about that particular constellation.  Oh well, she gave me my laugh for the day.

too smart for her own good

On the way home from AWANA, I was talking with Diva about her night. I asked her if she enjoyed "circle time". She said "Yes, but it was an oval". She's 3! How does she even realize that?

We must be doing something right . . .

This morning I decided to do something new with the girls and made them puppets out of brown paper lunch bags. Diva took two of them, declaring one to be the Daddy puppet and one to be the Mommy puppet. She then had one of them say "I love you so much!" and put them together like they were kissing. I just had to laugh. I guess if that's her perception of Mommy and Daddy we must be doing something right.

Monkey math

The girls love bananas - so much so that they usually share one every morning. Usually I have Diva get the banana then give Imp half. The two halves normally look about the same size, so I had been impressed with how fair Diva was being - until I noticed that Diva's half tended to have a bite out of it already. She has been taking a bite or two of the banana before splitting it "evenly" between the two of them.

Good clean fun

I accidentally discovered a new toy tonight, much to the delight of Imp. The girls were playing with the squirt guns again, but Diva had the upper hand. She has more patience than Imp to let the water gun fill in the bin of water before she tries to use it. Since I had just emptied a large bottle of dishsoap into the smaller one that I keep at the sink, I decided to give Imp the advantage by filling the bottle with water so she could squirt it at her big sister. Because there was still soap in the bottle, by the time the bottle was half full of water, the other half was full of soap suds. I figured that was enough water to get her started and took the bottle outside. When I squeezed the bottle, the first thing I got was a huge spray of thousands of tiny bubbles. Imp's eyes lit up like she had just seen the most wonderful thing in the world. Did I mention that Imp has an obsession with bubbles? This was like Christmas for her. The best part - shake the bottle and it's ready to go again. They both got totally soaked, but they thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it.

Never trust a kid with a water gun

The weather today has been absolutely gorgeous, and since Daddy fixed the gate on our porch yesterday, I let the girls play outside a lot today. Today seemed like the perfect day to re-introduce a toy from the beginning of the summer - the water guns. I took the water guns out and a rubbermaid shoebox container of water for refills. Just a little bit ago, I took out a pitcher of water to refill their water supply in hopes of keeping them entertained until dinner. I squirted a few rounds with them and as I was heading inside, Diva says "Wait a minute". I stopped at the door and asked what she wanted. "I want to give you something", she said. Foolishly, I trusted her. I should have known by the sparkle in her eye that she was up to no good. The "something" that she wanted to give me was one last good squirt from her water gun.

I really do feed them, despite what they may say ...

Conversation between myself and Diva a few minutes ago ...

Diva: "Momma, what are you doing?"

Me: "Cleaning the table."

Diva: "So we can eat?"

Me: "Yes, so we can eat."

Diva: "Today or tomorrow?"

Ulterior motives

Ok, I admit it. Sometimes I buy toys that have potential to work to my advantage. When I was doing our shopping today, I found something I had been trying to find for a while. Diva loves to try to copy me and use our broom and our mop. The problem lies in the fact that they are twice her size and the top of the handle swings dangerously around as I hold my breath and hope she doesn't break anything before I can get over to her and take it out of her hand. Today I found a child size broom and dustpan set AND a sponge mop at WalMart. The best part was that each one was less than $3! The girls love their new toys for now - we'll see what they think when I have them sweep and mop the kitchen floor tomorrow. :-)

Those two are so funny anytime they get something new, though. I also bought them new toothbrushes today. We've all been sick throughout this week (thus the neglected blog) so I bought replacement toothbrushes today. (I have heard that you should always use a new toothbrush after being sick so you aren't putting the germs back in your mouth once you are better). They were so mad at me when I told them to hand over their toothbrushes while they were getting ready for bed tonight. That didn't last long, though. Their eyes lit up like it was Christmas when they saw the new ones. They grabbed them and ran into the bathroom to use them for the first time. If only it could always be this easy to make them happy . . .

Mission Impossible ...

to keep two little girls quiet while Daddy tries to sleep. Daddy is on nights this week because of a special project. He started this shift overnight last night. He was able to get less than an hour of sleep this morning before he had to head out for a day of jury duty. That lasted until after 6 pm, and exhausted doesn't even begin to describe how he felt when he got home. He ate dinner and crashed, leaving it up to me to entertain the girls and keep them quiet for the hour between dinner and their bedtime. Oh, did I mention that I'm getting sick, Bubba has been fussy all day, Imp was sick this weekend and Diva woke up from her nap not feeling well at all.

I am SOOOO glad that I bought an art easel with the last of Diva's birthday money when we were in WalMart on Saturday. This thing is absolutely wonderful! One side is a chalkboard and one side is a dry erase board. I just put each girl in one of Daddy's undershirts and let them have at it. Diva shocked me tonight by actually intentionally writing a letter "A" without any help! They quite happily colored with the dry erase markers, chalks and chalk paints until bedtime. They were having so much fun that the real challenge ended up being getting them to bed with a minimal level of screaming on their part. Now I appear to be the only conscious one left in the house, and my level of consciousness leaves a lot to be desired. Once Bubba gets his last bottle, I have a date with my pillow.

Worn out!

Saturday has become our normal shopping day. Shopping always seems to take a lot out of me, so I was expecting to be tired, but we really packed it in today. It started with our neighbor's yard sale. They started at the unthinkable hour of 6 am, so after Bubba had his morning bottle, I took him next door with me just to see what was there. They had some good deals and I had some cash in the house, so I went home and got the girls up. I got them dressed, handed each of them a pop tart and their water bottles and we headed over to shop. Apparently in their world, it meant that they would stand there and play with the toys that were for sale while Momma held their pop tarts and water. They eventually did each settle on a "new" toy to bring home. Imp got a new doll (she is obsessed with dolls right now) and Diva got a puzzle. I also got them each a generic MagnaDoodle knock off and a castle Duplo set and my real steal of the day was that I got Bubba's next car seat for $4!!!!

After that, the girls and I got our things together and went for our real shopping trip. We made a few extra stops today. I finally decided that it's time to really start to work on making our household and grocery budget stretch as far as it possibly can. First, we went to the farmer's market and picked up some fruit and vegetables. After that, we explored the Dollar Tree store here in town just so I could see what all they had available there. They actually had a few things worth picking up, so I got those while we were there. By that time, it was noon, so we stopped for lunch. We still hadn't hit either of our regular stores at that point. We finally got home close to 3 pm and all of us were totally exhausted. The girls went straight down for nice long naps and I really wished I could have joined them today!

She's a Slob

Tonight when we were playing outside, Diva asked me to lift her up so she could hang from a low tree branch. When she was hanging we had a conversation that went something like this...

Diva: Look, Momma! I'm a slob!

Me: You mean a sloth?

Diva: Yes! I'm a slob!

At least she admits it . . .

Multi-tasking

It's always nice when something can serve more than one purpose, especially when it makes housework a little bit easier. I stumbled upon this idea earlier this week while trying to make it easier for Imp to clean herself up after meals. I figured it was easier to give her the capability to do it herself than to deal with her screaming at me when I would try to do it for her. I recently had picked up a few of those Rubbermaid "shoebox" containers at WalMart. I got the bright idea yesterday afternoon to squirt a little bit of dishsoap in it and fill it with warm water. Imp LOVED it, but of course got water everywhere. I had actually kind of planned on that since the floor needed to be mopped anyway. (By the way, did you know that sponge mops fit into those containers quite nicely? I had always disliked mopping the floors with a sponge mop b/c those things just don't fit into any bucket I've ever tried with them. I'm seriously considering stashing one of those containers just for that purpose.)

Today both girls played in the water for a little while after their naps and had a wonderful time. Although, Diva seemed to think the goal was to splash as much water OUT of the container as possible. At one point she even asked for more water! Once they started getting too hyper and were at the point where they could get hurt from being careless, I just handed each a bath towel. Presto! The kitchen floor got cleaned two days in a row!

Discoveries

It's easy to forget that things that we take for granted may be something new and exciting to a child. Today I swiped a piece of bubblegum from Daddy's desk. I was absentmindedly blowing bubbles when suddenly Diva and Imp were in front of me, totally enthralled by the bubbles I was blowing. Each time a bubble popped, they both shrieked in delight. Diva would yell "Do it again, Momma do it again!" and Imp, who isn't really talking yet, would yell what sounded like "Blow! Now! Now! Blow!" They had me laughing so much at them that it was hard to blow the bubbles for them. Who knew that a simple piece of bubblegum could provide so much entertainment!

Preschool Politics

I'm beginning to think that Diva has inherited some of Daddy's interest in politics. I already mentioned her thinking she saw Barack Obama on my computer. This past weekend she saw a campaign commercial that began with pictures of Obama. She immediately stopped playing and exclaimed, "Barack Obama!" As the commercial went on, it turned out to be a McCain commercial. When they began showing his picture, she commented, "Oh, John McCain". I relayed this story to Daddy on the way home from church on Sunday. He teasingly asked her who she was going to vote for. She thought for a minute and said "John McCain!". Lest you think she will grow up a staunch republican, when her uncle asked her the same question later in the day, she proudly answered "Barack Obama!

Be careful what you wish for!

Did I seem displeased with yesterday being a normal, ordinary day? I wish today had started out that way. Instead, we woke to Bubba crying for his morning bottle. Daddy, wishing for a few more minutes of sleep before having to get up and start the day, gently nudged me until I could no longer ignore him or the crying and had to get up. After getting Bubba fed, I handed him off to Daddy and opened the door of the girls' room so that they could come eat some breakfast.

That's when I began to wish for uneventful and boring. Diva had apparently thought it was too much bother to tell us that she had to use the bathroom. She is potty trained and she knows that, although she cannot open her bedroom door from the inside, she CAN call to us to let us know that she needs to use the bathroom and we will oblige her request. When she came out of her room, she was still dripping . . . and that wasn't the worst of it. I won't disgust you with the nasty details, but she ended up getting hosed down in the shower.

After getting through that little bit of morning drama, it was approximately 8:15. Diva is in her underwear, just starting in on her poptart (I know, not the healthiest of breakfasts, but when time is of the essence, you do what you have to do), Imp has finished her poptart and is doing her best to be in the middle of whatever action she can find, Bubba is fed and burped, but not happy about having to wait in his bouncy seat. I have not had my shower yet and Daddy has not started to get dressed yet. Did I mention that church starts at 9? Thankfully, our church is not far from our home. Somehow we managed to get everyone out the door and walked into church just as the service was starting. I noticed as we were headed to the car that I had forgotten to brush Imp's hair, but at that point, it didn't really seem to matter.

Meet the clan

Today was just an ordinary Saturday - hyper children, too much time on the computer, not enough time on the housework. Because today was so ordinary and nothing particularly humorous or blogworthy jumped out at me today, I figured this is as good a time as any to introduce our crazy little family.

I will be known simply as Momma on this blog. I know, not the most creative bloggy name, but oh well. You all will just have to deal. :-) My husband's bloggy name will be on the same creative level - he will be known as Daddy in this little blog world of mine. The children's names have a slightly higher level of creativity. The oldest, our 3 yr old, will be known as Diva because, well, she thinks she is one. She actually went up to Daddy a few weeks ago and a little too proudly announced "I'm a drama queen!" after having donned a stray Burger King crown that had been lying around the living room. Our middle child will be known as Imp. This child has the frustrating and annoying capability to get her pout "just so" when being scolded, thereby making it extremely difficult to keep a straight face at times. The littlest one will be Bubba. For some reason, that's what I find myself calling him, and since it's not exactly easy to peg the personality of a seven week old, we'll just stick with Bubba. We may revisit his bloggy name at some point in the future if his personality warrants it.

I could introduce the cats as well, but I'll save that intro for another "ordinary" day.

My personal theory on evolution

Evolution cannot be true. If it were, mothers would be very different. We would have more arms and hands. Don't believe me? Then you try feeding a baby, chatting online with a friend on the other side of the country and taking the lid off of a toddler's cup so she can go fill it up from the tub faucet all at the same time! Don't even get me started on the extra pairs of eyes that we need . . .

Introduction

This is my leap of faith into the world of bloggers. I have been enjoying reading a few blogs for a while and things are always happening around here that I feel the need to just share with someone. Since I am a SAHM to three kids, ages 3, 21 months and 7 weeks (yes, I know I'm certifiable), I don't get much "grown up" time to share those things. I still need to come up with clever names for the children, but as soon as I have time to think that clearly I'll introduce the rest of the family.

Have you ever noticed how kids pick up on things that you had no idea they even paid any attention to? This afternoon my 3 yr old came up to me as I sat at my computer and said "Barack Obama is on your computer!" First of all, he wasn't, but there were a couple of politician pictures on the side because I was checking the Cal-Fire website to see if they had bothered to update the info on the fire close to us right now. Second, how the heck does a 3 yr old know who Barack Obama even is? Maybe it's because his wife was on Rachael Ray this morning, maybe I've been watching the news too much. I don't know. But it sure was fun teaching her to say Governor Schwarzenegger. :-)