Life Lessons Learned

Dear Kids, 

It's been a busy past 2 weeks and I think during this time, we've all learned or are in the process of learning some pretty important life lessons. So this post, I'll be focusing on each of you at a time as we go through these lessons. 

Sharing is caring. 

Hailey, I've noticed that you are not very good about taking turns, so we recruited the family and did our traditional turn-taking lesson with ice cream. This pretty much involves everyone in the family taking turns with taking licks off of an ice cream cone. To some, this may be gross, but hey, in 10 minutes, you now know how take turns and you now understand that if you give something away, you will get it back (especially when someone is yelling, "my turn!" 

Shovels and pails at playgrounds makes fun times. 
I used to be that mom whose kids bummed toys off of other better-prepared moms at the playground. That $3 sand play bucket from Target has made you one of the cool kids at the playground. And since you know how to share, that's just extra popularity points right there.

Spaghetti sauce and eczema don't mix well. 
The lesson here is...use a napkin. Your belly is not a great spot to wipe your sauce stained hands. Things get itchy. I know I make a mean spaghetti and you are doing your best to scarf everything down in a lady-like manner, but just use a napkin. No biggie.

Sunglasses make sitting on the sideline, cool. 
Twice a week we wait on the sidelines while Nathan and Hannah get to do the fun stuff: martial arts. Sometimes we have company and friends to play with. That particular day, you two were very interested in our sunglasses. It was just cute not to snap a photo.

You can claim all of the doughnut holes if you take a bite out of each one. 
While we were waiting for our car to get worked on, we went to hang out at a doughnut shop. You sat down and started taking bites out of each doughnut hole.

 Well, you know what? I'm ok with sharing family germs...so there!

No really means no. 
I feel like this week I finally had to start putting my foot down when you ask for the 3rd helping of ice cream, or when you ask to say goodnight to Nathan and Hannah for the 3rd time in the evening. In the past, I would usually cater to your requests because I wanted to let you know that we understand what you are trying to communicate, but lately, your requests have gotten to be too ridiculous, so I'm afraid that you will be hearing these two letters more often.

Pretend play is fun.  
You are really enjoying pretending with sound effects. You will make chewing noises when you feed your dolls, wooshing noises when you are at the sink and then smacking noises when you kiss us or your stuffed animals. Right now you sleep with 3 stuffed friends in your crib. Sometimes I will walk into you pretending that they are talking to each other after you wake up from your nap.

Puzzles are super fun. 
You love puzzles. Right now you can do all of our wooden puzzles. I just introduced these to you last week and now you are pretty much a pro. You will dump out the pieces, put them back and then tell me, "A-Done, more!"

Putting on sunscreen means fun is about to start.
This past week Nay nay and Na Na have been going to water camp. Every day I lather them with sunscreen before we head out to drop them off. You will whine until I put sunscreen on you too. Today we went to a splash pad and when I put sunscreen on you, you pretty much shrieked with excitement. But then when we got there, you just stood there, frozen, mesmerized by the fountains.

If you are going to eat anything remotely messy, going shirtless is the way to go. 

Apparently I'm not the only one who does this. We had some friends come over for spaghetti dinner one night. One of their kids starts to take off their shirt and that pretty much signaled me to let you all do what you were thinking all that time. It's almost routine, Hailey will get her hand washed, and as you walk over to the table, you start to lift your shirt over your tummy. You are a well oiled machine! 

Bubble wrap is still fun. 
One of my roller derby friends gave me a skate bag and inside that skate bag was a whole bunch of bubble wrap. I divey'd it up between the three of you and watched you all go to town. Hailey, you weren't quite sure what to do with it at first, but it didn't take you long to go crazy on the bubble wrap.

You can't have fun until you clean up your mess. 

The older kids, you two have been working on cleaning up after yourselves. Nathan, you actually do a pretty good job regularly, but Hannah, to tell you the truth, you could be a little less lazy about it. I know it's not as fun, it's BORING, but if you want to be able to find your things, you just need to clean it up after you are finished with it. 

When you are bored, draw. 

Hannah, lately, you are in love with painting, particularly princesses and mermaids. Here's one that I'm really proud of: a princess mermaid! 

 And one day you came home with some sheep...too cute. I kind of want to make a print out of this.

When you can't decide on something, just get the opposite of what your brother wants. 

I've been worried about you always just doing and getting what Nathan gets. This week I've seen you choose your own flavor of milkshake and kids meals. The problem now is that it almost seems like you both like opposite things so when I ask questions like do you guys want Chick-fil-A or hamburgers, almost always, you each will want something different. Tonight at dinner, Hannah ate the salmon and cauliflower and hated the gnocchi. Nathan loved the gnocchi, but picked at the salmon and cauliflower. It was like you both were eating what the other one wasn't. Too weird.  

Life is unfair.  
Nathan, all your life, I've tried to be fair, to create fair situations, and reason with you to get you to do what I need you to do. But when things seem to be unfair, you still throw gigantic temper tantrums. Instead of trying to fix things for you, we will now be simply stating, I'm sorry you feel ___, but life is unfair. I will try to do my best to point out times when I feel things are unfair so we'll see how this strategy works. 

Fight boredom with books. 

Nathan, you are in love  obsessed with reading. You can easily read 3 short chapter books in one day. You may quickly correct me with, "5 chapter books in one day." If I can be proud of one thing that we did right as parents, is your voracious appetite for books. 

Helping your sister with her chores is really not "helping" her. 

Once every blue moon I will go crazy and claim that I'm throwing all the toys that are left out away. This usually results in frantic cleaning by....Nathan. I've pulled you aside to tell you to not help Hannah, but you always tell me that you don't want her to be upset if I throw her stuff away, so you will clean up her toys for her. Well, now she expects you to just clean everything and thinks cleaning is boring. Believe me, you show her more love if you just let her clean up her mess. 

Japanese style curry chicken is the best meal ever. 

The 3 of you love this stuff, when I cook it, you guys recognize and will rejoice, you scarf it down like it's your first meal in months. It's one of my favorite meals, in fact, this was the first meal that I ate after each of your births. Perhaps that's why it's a comfort food for you all. 

Well, that wraps up all the lessons for the week. Below I just have a few pictures that the counselors from water camp posted. 

 And then last Friday, our church had an astronomy night. I wasn't feeling that great, so Hailey and I stayed home, but there was lots of fun to be had. You all launched rockets!

 Built rockets!

And witnessed a beautiful sunset. 

 Hannah, Daddy told me that you built this all by yourself!

 Everyone took turns looking at the moon and you all even got to try moon pies.

While you all were at water camp, I was actually holding a science camp at the Let it Shine School. Sometimes I will do what I did with the kids at the school with you all. For example, here you all are digging out "ice fossils."

 I remember doing a lot of sensory activities with Nathan, but I completely dropped the ball for Hannah. I'm going to try to not do that for you Hailey.

Well, Daddy and I celebrated our 10 year anniversary last night. My friend came over to babysit you guys and of course Hailey ends up sleeping through the night. (Hailey you've been sleeping through about 80% of the time since about July 4th) I've been feeling better rested, which is always a good thing.

 Well, this is where the summer finally slows down and we can relax a bit before school starts. Until next week,
Love,
Mommy

Post Vacation Whirlwind

Dear Kids, 

After returning from our vacation, we had a week of VBS, a visit from grandparents, and then I had a out of town work trip for a couple of days and then it was 4th of July. We still have 2 weeks filled with activities and then afterwards, we have 4 more weeks before school starts back up again. 

One afternoon I challenged you two to make the best blueberry muffins. Nathan, you looked up a recipe and told Hannah what to do. I pretty much sat back and watched as you two scrambled around the kitchen, grabbing ingredients and tools. The only thing I did was retrieve the cupcake liners and put/pulled cupcakes into/out of the oven. 

 I even let you two scoop the batter into the muffin cups, which is a job that I always do, but surprisingly, Hannah did an awesome job with scooping everything in without making a mess.

 As you eagerly watched your creations rise in the oven, I was secretly so proud of the little bakers that I have trained.

 The muffins came out beautifully! They look better than the ones I usually make!

 VBS was exciting, this year's theme basically focused on when life is tough, or good, God is still good. I thought that it would be a good thing for you Nathan, and that maybe the lessons would somehow help you work through your anger, but I learned tonight that it didn't.

 In the afternoon I decided to try something out and we made rain cloud models to simulate how it rains when clouds get saturated with water. Afterwards, we just marbled paper, which was pretty fun.

 In the afternoons, we try to go to the pool. I usually have to bribe Hannah with something to get you to detatch from your safety zone, which is right by the edge of the pool, and then once you swim a few times, you get more comfortable and want to keep going over and over again.

 Hailey, you are still a bit cautious around the pool and if you could have your way, you would prefer to just walk around the perimeter of the pool and occasionally scoop some pool water for drinking...yuck!

 Hailey, we have slowly went from going lactose free to now completely dairy free. I've noticed your eczema improving. But for the past few weeks you still have been trying to hold in your poops for fear of it being painful. After a few weeks of coaching and deep breathing, I think this is over, but during the past few weeks, I've been trying to get as much fiber into your system and found that Popeye's coleslaw was the only vegetable that you were not spitting out. Who knew!

 Here are some more pictures from the last day of VBS. Hailey did great in the nursery while I led pre-school games in the humid outdoors. Hannah was in the Kinder group and Nathan, you were in the 1st grade group with a bunch of your friends.

 On Thursday, Grandma and Grandpa came from Illinois to visit. We went to the VBS celebration . On Friday, you all went to watch Toy Story 4 while Hailey and I stayed home for nap time. On Saturday, you all went peach/strawberry picking in Fredericksburg.  
 It was pretty hot, but it was fun.

 They even had a few strawberries hanging on for end-of-the-season picking.

On Sunday, we visited the Austin Capitol building, something that you two have been asking to do for some time.

 Nathan asked a bunch of questions about how government works (which kind of reminds me to find some books over the civil war because through the Magic Tree House books, you've become a bit interested in that subject) and I enjoyed using my brain to explain government 101 in terms that would be understandable to you.

 We ended up spending about 30 minutes playing tag in the new underground portion.

 And then I snapped a picture that I will be saving on my phone to remind you guys that you love each other next time you fight.

 As we were walking outside, it started to rain. You two came up with pretty sweet "hoodies" to protect your head from the rain.

 At the Capitol Visitor Center, we took a few photos before having Hailey take a nap in the ergo baby carrier.

 On Monday and Tuesday, I was in Ft. Worth for a work "retreat." (I don't know why they call these things retreats, but we basically worked and listened to other people talk the whole time.) I thought it would be glorious to be able to sleep truly uninterrupted (which it was) and not have to worry about you guys at all. But at the end of the day, I thought of each of you and missed you dearly.

I asked my friend to come watch you guys while I was gone and you all had a great time! You played at the playground,

Photo Credit: A. Gerkin

 Went to the pool (she's pretty much a rockstar for taking 5 kids to the pool!)

Photo Credit: A. Gerkin

 Ate nutritious meals each day,

Photo Credit: A. Gerkin

 had fun playing dress up, made dirt pudding,

Photo Credit: A. Gerkin

 and she even took ya'll to the movies AND let you guys get popcorn and skittles. When I found that out, I was thinking to myself, man, she's way too fun! You are not going to want me back!

Photo Credit: A. Gerkin

But when I returned, I was welcomed with big hugs and even some crying from Hannah. Aww, I missed ya'll too. 

Thursday was 4th of July. We decorated our scooters and walked with our neighbors in the parade. 

 And afterwards, everyone got a snow cone.

 Then you guys played tag with some friends at the playground and Hannah, you slipped and fell on some gravel. When I first saw, you, your face was covered with blood and dirt. I felt a moment of helplessness as I had no idea how to transport all 3 kids back home with the scooters and tricycle, but luckily a guy with his golf cart saved us and gave you two a ride home while I pushed Hailey back. Thanks Charlie!
Hannah, You now have a pretty big scab on your cheek and chin. You were so self-conscious about it this morning, but I was able to use this moment to talk about how we love people because they are nice, not because they are pretty and being beautiful on the inside is way better than being beautiful on the outside. Of course, I used lots of questions and examples to explain this point, but after the chat, I think you truly understood this concept.

For dinner, our neighbors across the street came over with their 4 kids, aunt, uncle, and cousin and for it being last minute, we had a great time. As the adults chatted, you all played very well together and afterwards we all ended up driving down to Kyle to watch fireworks. I tried to capture the awe in your eyes and faces as you watched the bombs bursting in air, but it was too dark, so this grainy picture will have to do.

What I thought was a spectacular finale, ended up being a malfunctional explosion, which resulted in a fire. It was kind of a crazy situation, but I think everything was well contained and I don't think anyone was hurt.

Hailey currently has a little cold, but digestive issues seem to have lightened up. Hannah is chugging along on reading lessons and Nathan is still figuring out anger issues. You told me today that you don't like to be angry, but it just happens. I'm trying to figure out how to help you lighten up about things that bother you. I think that's the key that will help you not get so angry.

We are also starting a sticker chart to encourage both of you to bring your plate to the kitchen after dinner as well as cleaning up your toys after you play with them. So far this little carrot has been effective in that I don't have to nag, so I hope this lasts for about 2 weeks because I think that's what they say is about the time it takes to form a habit.

I think that's it for now.

Until next week!
Love,
Mommy