Family Night

One of the key "Growing Kids" principles is being intentional about developing a strong "family identity." We've felt challenged to start trying to reserve a night each week as often as we can for "Family Night." Today I had the girls take a late nap so we could stay out a little longer than usual, and we got out to enjoy the lovely spring/summerish weather.

The girls were excited to go on a family excursion. Nora's car seat is now forward facing in Daddy's car anyway since that's the only way the new one really fits very well. I'm pretty sure she isn't quite 20 pounds yet, but our pediatrician said it was fine as soon as she was a year old. She's still rear facing in my car because it is considered safer for as long as they can fit that way comfortably.

Phase One of Family Night was ice cream at the Country Sundae by our house. Carolyn chose a SpongeBob popsicle, but I don't think I'll allow that choice again- it was so messy and there was SO MUCH red dye everywhere! Ice cream has to be better than that!

Nora got an ice cream cone too, but she was more interested in the tactile experience- maybe she's not gotten to fingerpaint enough.

She is so excited and pleased to be so fully mobile on her 2 little feet! She just kept walking around and around. This video isn't at all edited and I took it on my purse camera, but you get the idea.

Phase Two of Family Night found us at a local park tucked away in the country. It's such a pretty piece of natural beauty. I think we'll be spending more time here in the summer. It looks like a great place for a picnic.

First we went for a walk. Nora's so cute with her tiny toddler waddle!

We took turns watching Nora and playing hide n seek with Carolyn.

So cute! Love these girls!

Carolyn and her daddy.

Daddy made Nora hold his hand while they walked over the bridge. You can tell from her body language how much she liked the restriction of being held in any way. She has grown SOOO independent in the last few weeks especially. She wants to be DOWN, DOWN, DOWN! Very "toddler" now. It's making me itch for another time through the baby days. :) But at the same time, my cup also feels very, very full with these two hooligans. Someday, though, I hope there will be another. :)

And here's the last picture of the day. Happy little Nora, showing off her new "white" shoes. We had a shoe adventure this week- I have had all kinds of trouble keeping shoes on her feet and finally took her to the shoe store to find out what to do about it- and found out that her shoes were a whole size too small! But even with shoes a size bigger (now she's a 3 1/2), there was still only ONE style of walker sandals that came in her size! And our local store didn't have any, so we had to send to another store to get them. I'm not sure I'd have chosen white for summer sandals that are sure to get all muddy and dirty... but at least these are staying on, and in the end, they're only things.

And so Family Night came to a close, unfortunately not without the Pre-Bedtime-Overtired-Meltdown. That was unpleasant, but all's quiet in our house now... and now we can spend some time together!

Blur

The past 2 days have been pretty much a blur since I spent most of Weds and Thurs either working or recovering from working. Tonight I'm spending QT with my sister watching Avatar. I'll be back to post more tomorrow. :) I have some fun pictures and a Goose Adventure to share. :) Tonight, though, I'm taking a break.

But I do want to remember Nora's words of the week. She's added "Nigh-Nigh" and "Me-Mo" (Elmo) to her rapidly expanding vocabulary. :)

Oh yeah! And Carolyn went on the potty at school both yesterday AND today! I'm so proud of her and she's so pleased with herself. All it ended up taking was there being some sort of consequence if she didn't choose to go potty (she was told that instead of playing with the other kids outside that she would have to sit by the wall with the teacher)- and she apparently complied relatively cheerfully! :)

Carolyn's Artistic Take on the Easter Story

Today while I was putting Nora down for a nap, I asked Carolyn to sit at the table and draw me a picture and tell me a story about it when I came back from reading with Nora. This is what she drew. We recently invested in a scanner so that I could blog about some of the funny stuff she comes up with. I think you'll have to zoom in to see my transcription of her narrative, but it goes something like this:

The black part is the tomb for Jesus. The red cross is self-explanatory. The purple square is a "square for Jesus to die on. It goes in the tomb and He can die on it." The red circle and stick figure is Jesus, and somehow her attention got distracted as she was finishing drawing Him and the bottom part became a snake that was coming to "get" Jesus. The pink part of the picture is a guy who wants to "marry Jesus." And the green part is the moon. I think maybe we need to work a little bit on getting the events of Good Friday and the Resurrection in their proper order... and I'm not sure I've read the story where Jesus gets married- perhaps we are mixing up stories with some of the myriad of Princess books in our house? It was hard for me to keep a straight face this morning as she told me all about her drawing and I wrote it down for us to laugh about together later! Maybe she doesn't have all the key features in the right places, but isn't it cool that He is already such a big figure in her imaginative stories?

Balloons!

Today I escaped for a few minutes while Brad was home and the kids were napping to get some stuff at Hobby Lobby for my little business venture and the Party City was right next door, so I got the girls each an "unexpected gift at an unexpected time." They both love balloons! One of the best things about kids is how excited they can get over something so cheap and simple. :) Enjoy the pictures!

Another One Down

Another long weekend at work done... just 2 more weekends to go, and then NO MORE WEEKENDS! Yay!! I can't wait! Being at work has been such a struggle lately. Things have been stressful there for a variety of reasons, but I think it's probably at least as much because now that we've made the decision that I'm going to stay home with the girls, I just want to be through the transition and into the next season, and not still stuck in this in between part where I don't really "belong" either place! I'm trying so hard to "finish well" and run this last part of this "race" with the best that I have. But it's hard sometimes, knowing that my heart is at home, and that I only have 10 or 11 more weeks to go at work. Attitude is everything and I'm trying, but it's tough. I come home very glad to be done at the end of the day- especially those LOOONG weekends!

Not surprisingly, I have no more pictures to post! So I'll have to take a few tomorrow. Thank goodness Brad has Mondays off so we can still have some family time; I miss everyone when I'm away this much. The best part of my day today was when he made us all French toast and we had a family breakfast together- it's the little things that really count the most sometimes, I think.

Oooo! Sand!!

The other day I let Nora play in the sandbox with Carolyn for the first time. She was so enthralled with the sand. Lately when she experiences something new, she's been making this adorable "oooo!" face!

She liked watching the sand fall through her fingers.

Carolyn was not interested in looking at the camera. But she was there! And both girls had a fun time playing together. :

Can't believe how similar their hair color looks in this picture. Carolyn's hair isn't as light yet as it was last summer and Nora's is starting to lighten up, I think, though her eyes are finally succumbing to genetics and turning a proper shade of brown! :)

Dilemma

So we've been having this problem with Carolyn for the past couple of months and are at a real loss at this point to figure out what to do about it. I said something about it a week or so ago after the Biting Incident day, but Carolyn is really struggling with going to the potty at school. She has been potty trained for over a year and a half now and almost never has an accident at this point. But about 2 months ago maybe something seemed to happen to her in the bathroom at school because she all of a sudden just started REFUSING to use the bathroom there unless I am there. When I come pick her up, I don't give her an option and I don't ask her if she needs to go; I just tell her that she IS going to go, and she does, generally without a big fuss. But for some reason she simply WILL NOT GO all day long! So by the time 9 or 10 hours have passed, it seems like about half the time I get there to pick her up and she's had an accident.

We have talked and Talked and TALKED about this. She has lost privileges and even been spanked for disobedience, all without any success at all. She still won't say exactly why she won't go- there is some thought of a possible monster in the bathroom, but I can't tell how muc this really contributes because the teachers say she doesn't seem scared, she just doesn't WANT to go. I am sooo frustrated because I feel like we have been through this and through this and it's like she's just giving me the finger and saying "so what lady! you can't make me go!"

I'm so irritated and angry and kind of embarrassed about this and I just don't know what to do because nothing seems to be helping. I don't want to have to put her in Pull Ups or diapers at daycare because I'm not sure if that would motivate her to actually go on the potty or if it would just reinforce the thought that she doesn't have to. It's a logical consequence to the behavior, and I think that at some point if she continues to have accidents, they will ask me to do that... but I SO don't want this to go the other way; I am definitely NOT going to enable the behavior. She is almost four. She has absolutely no business deciding to regress on the potty training thing.

But at this point, I really just don't know what to do. I don't know what to tell her, how to help her, how to keep my emotions out of this. It just makes me feel so embarrassed and angry with her. I'm pretty sure that's not really helping things, but it's how I feel. I can recognize that we are in a power struggle with this, but I just don't know how to get out of it. How is it that you can love a little person like this to bits and pieces, to the point where your heart might explode with the power of it- and at the same time be SO FRUSTRATED that you just want to scream!

I'd appreciate any input any of all you cyberspace (and real life) friends have to help us out!!

Our Cubbie

One of the best things Carolyn has done this year is to be a part of Cubbies, an AWANA Scripture memory club. It's been amazing to see how she's grown over the year and just what a little sponge her sweet mind is. She absorbed and learned those Bible verses so well! Even now she can still recite almost all of them with just a little help. So much of what my faith means to me as an adult can be traced back to the bedrock foundation I had as a small child, learning the word of God and the precepts of the Christian faith from the knees of my parents, as well as many other loving adults who gave of themselves to help little ones grow up knowing what is good and true and right. I'm thankful for the wonderful helpers and teachers in Carolyn's classes who fill that role for her as she grows!

And I'm so proud of her and all that she has learned this year. This picture was taken at the Cubbie Carnival last week when all the kids got to celebrate by playing games and eating popcorn and candy. :)

Here's her group of Cubbies singing the Cubbie theme song.

And here's Carolyn with Olivia, her best little Cubbie friend. :)

What a Day!

So here's how my day went. Got up at 5am to get ready for work and get the girls ready for "school." Out the door at 6:20am. Drop the girls off at 6:45am, get in the car, singing and ready for a new day. Realize at 7am that I forgot my lunch at home. Drive back home to get it, deciding I'd rather take the consequences for being late to work than risk missing lunch entirely.

Clock in at work at 7:20am. Work all day. Scarf down lunch between scripts. Spend about 10 whole minutes explaining to someone that one-half of a 25 mg tablet is the same dose as one 12.5 mg capsule. Still not sure it computed. Rush out of work at 3:30pm, home to make a quick batch of oatmeal raisin cookies promised to a good friend who decided to have her baby 3 days earlier than her scheduled c-section! I assured her that I would visit her in the hospital with cookies and she's going home tomorrow so this was my last chance!

Quickly wrap up a baby gift and hurriedly hot-glue about half the patches onto Carolyn's Cubbie vest (we lost the rest of the patches). Cram some stuff for Nora's dinner into the diaper bag. Load the car with five big totes of children's clothes going to the church garage sale tomorrow. Race over to the house where the garage sale is. Dump the stuff in the front yard and apologize over my shoulder that I can't help put it away (but at least it's all tagged, on hangers, and separated by size!)

Have to take the surface streets instead of the highway to the hospital to visit my friend. Realize on the way there that I've forgotten my wallet at home and the nutritious fast food meal I was planning for Carolyn to eat in the car after school isn't going to happen.

Get to the hospital, rush upstairs, say hello to my friend, spend a glorious two minutes snuggling a sweet newborn baby boy, wishing it were longer. Talk new mommy talk for about 10 minutes, hug her, and zip back to my car to just barely make it in time for Carolyn's parent-teacher conference at 5:30pm.

Enjoy hearing about the cute things my girl says and does at school. She is learning and growing so much and it's fun to see her beginning to catch on to the concepts of letters and sounds and pre-reading skills. After the conference, I pick up Carolyn and tell her that she must go to the bathroom since she has held it all day long (for reasons still unknown to me...). Then we switch rooms and go hear about Nora and how she is growing. By 5:55pm, we are all loaded in cars again. Brad's come to rescue me with fast food and cherry limeade from Sonic. Nutritious dinner on board, we head for church and the AWANA awards ceremony.

I quickly shovel food into Nora's mouth in the nursery while they are setting up in the sanctuary. We sit through a fairly lengthy presentation (for a 3-year-old anyway), reminding her to "have self control." Carolyn receives an award for finishing her Cubbie book! So proud! So proud! Took a bunch of pictures that I'll post later. Watched a bunch of other kids (including "our" Sparkies from the group of K-2nd graders we've helped out with this year) get their awards. Work really hard to keep Carolyn from wiggling off the chair. She does fairly well, considering. After the awards, we let the girls have ice cream. Though it was pretty cute that Carolyn fed her sister ice cream with a spoon. They were both pleased.

Got home around 8pm, gave them both a quick bath, almost fell asleep feeding Nora and putting her to bed, then stories, and potties and teeth and "talking time" and it is now 9:10pm and I AM DONE! Brad's gone for pizza since you might have noticed that dinner didn't happen anywhere in there for us. And this is the end of this post. :)

Words

I'm tired and it's late tonight, so I'm not messing with pictures or long stories tonight. I want to take a minute to record a snapshot of the new words coming out of Nora's mouth right now. At 14 months, she is saying:

-mama (my favorite :))

-dada

-dog (dah)

-duck (duh)

-bath (baaaaa!)

-hi

-shoe

-fish (shhh)

-sister (tih-tah... I think)

-baby (ba-ba)

-ball (bah)

-bird (in reference to her favorite toy, a small carryalong birdhouse containing 3 birds. I can't quite make out the exact sound she is using for this "word" but it's clear what she is trying to say!)

And signing

-EAT!

-more

-all done

-please

-thank you

She's getting into the stage where new words are coming more and more often. Maybe I'm not listening as well as I did with Carolyn, but it's harder for me to understand what she is saying, so think she is actually saying more words than what I have listed; I just haven't been able to figure them all out! This week she made the connection between signing "eat" and actually getting something to eat, and this made her very happy. It's cool to see the light starting to go on, and watching her begin to understand the concept of communicating with the Big People in her life. :)

Kindermusik Times TwoI

Tonight Brad got called out for a c-section and I didn't have anyone to watch Carolyn, so she came with us to Nora's Kindermusik Village class.

Nora had fun with the bumpy ball.

Carolyn pretty much bounced around like a maniac and had just no capacity to understand or cope with the fact that this was NORA'S class and that it was NORA'S turn for Mommy's attention. There's a good reason why you're supposed to be 1:1 with the child you're in class with! None of the activities are designed for 2 on 1! At one point, during the calm, sweet "rocking" song, I had a girl on each hip and felt like I was being suffocated in little girl! I wished that someone had gotten a picture because I probably looked pretty funny.

Still, though, I think the girls enjoyed themselves. And I'm putting this picture up because I loved how Nora's shirt and pants went together today with the bright green bow. :) But if I ever have this situation again on a Monday night, I will bring a DVD player and set Carolyn up in another room to watch a movie during Nora's class!

And this picture is here so you can see how LONG her pants are! This child is so teeny tiny! She's 14 months old, and these are 12-18 month pants and they are like 3 inches too long for her itty bitty legs! Still so cute though. :)

And now it is time for bed... another busy day tomorrow! Sorry for the nonsensical post tonight. Best I had. :)

A Great Buy

So if you know me in real life, you know that I'm sort of a weirdo freak about Amazon.com. I love it! I buy everything I can from Amazon because not only do they have the cheapest prices, and no sales tax (unless you live in Washington), but they always have an awesome selection and I can find pretty much anything I want without having to leave my house (which is a good thing... and a bad thing at the same time :)) I have their Prime membership, which means that anything I order gets to me in 2 days, no matter what the price of the item. I love it and I'll never go back!

Earlier this week this awesome box of animal magnets showed up on my doorstep (magically; of course, having nothing to do with the several clicks of the mouse I'd done a few days before). Today I brought them out and Nora and I had a wonderful time playing with them on the dishwasher and learning the names and animal sounds.

We both had a ball. :) It kept her busy for almost 20 minutes and was a fun thing to do together!

If you should feel the need to get some of your own, I've learned how to make these cool links directly to my favorite website so you can check it out.

I've never gotten paid before for anything I've talked about on my blog, but I think I might get some referral percentage if people click on this link. The only way I could find to get the html for the embedded link was to sign up for the referral program. I'd planned to talk about the awesome magnets anyway before I found out about that, but still it doesn't feel honest not to mention this. At this point, I'm not really feeling like I want my blog to mix much with money, but I do like how the amazon links turn out when I do this. So sometimes you might see them. :) And I truly, wholly, DO love amazon. :)

Discouraged

Today was... a day. It started out with great promise; I had both the girls scheduled to be at "school" today so that I could accomplish great things around the house- and get my hair done! I did end up getting my hair done, so that is one thing... but I pretty much got nothing else done because as soon as I dropped the girls off and got back into my car to go started a Day of Great Things... the car wouldn't start. One call to AAA and a visit from the tow truck/battery man, my old Volvo and I were chugging our way up to the dealership for an expensive day trip. We made it, but just barely. When I got to the dealership, they told me it was about the worst possible day to bring a car in without an appointment because they were short staffed and there was only the slightest chance that my car would be looked at today; most likely no one would touch it until Monday. And no, they didn't have any loaner cars for me to borrow. So I took the shuttle over to the rental car place, which only had a "luxury" car in stock, but thankfully gave it to me at half off so it wasn't too bad. And thus went the first 3 hours of my day.

Later on in the afternoon, I got a call from the dealership saying that they were able to fit the car in and had discovered that the alternator was busted and that would be $850, thank you very much and while we're at it would you like a $700 brake job. I said no on the brakes for now, but didn't have much choice about the alternator as it's sort of essential to have a car that actually runs. Most of the rest of the afternoon was spent trying to tidy up the house and returning the rental car (thankful that they only charged me for 1 day when I'd signed the contract for 3 days!), and getting ready for the "family night" that really didn't turn out to be as much about fun as it was about trying to figure out how in the world to parent these crazy kids and what to do when your best intentions and training don't work the way they're "supposed" to because "kids will be kids" and sometimes that's not a good thing.

So back to the title of my post. I'm feeling discouraged tonight. Not because of the $$ we shelled out on the car or because I really wish that 2010 was the Year of the Minivan instead of (hopefully) 2011... or even because I didn't get much done today... but because for the first time, Carolyn was sent home from school with an "incident report" to her name. Today she bit another child, hard enough to draw blood. I feel so embarrassed and sad that this was my kid that did that. It's really uncharacteristic for her and I have no idea why she did it or what's going on in her heart that she would behave in such an unkind way. On top of all that, we've been working on a potty situation at school (she flat out refuses to go at all and just holds it all day long until eventually she just can't anymore)- and for several weeks now she has just staunchly refused to go at all, no matter what we do. Today was no exception to the pattern we've seen recently, despite the fact that I coached her and coached her and talked about it and she was so clear on what was expected... and she still didn't do it.

For the most part, I think she has responded beautifully to the changes and new standards we've been attempting to enforce in our house... but days like today remind me of how human she is, how human we all are. I feel sad for her that she's doing things like this to other children. I feel embarrassed about how that reflects on me, and I feel guilty that one of my primary responses when something like this happens is to think about how it affects ME and people's perception of my parenting. And I feel confused because I have no idea how to fix the problems, that as much as I've learned in our classes and stuff, that when the stuff starts flying around in the air, I feel just as clueless as the next person.

Seems like as soon as things are going pretty well and you start to consider the possibility that you might be on the right track as a parent (and ESPECIALLY if you start to get just a teeny sniff of smugness that YOUR kids are better behaved than SOMEONE ELSE'S)... something like this happens and you're reminded of how no matter how good your methods, intentions, and follow-throughs are- those little people are still little sinners at heart, with free wills of their own and the ability to make their own choices. And sometimes the daunting task of parenting guiding and directing those little lives can just be discouraging. Tomorrow will be a new day, but for tonight, I'm just a little bummed out.

Warming Up to the Camera

Carolyn has really never been one to smile (or do ANYTHING!) on command- especially if there is a camera in the vicinity. But lately I think we may be beginning to emerge from the silly face phase and into a new season of actually looking at the camera sometimes with a smile on Carolyn's face! We have gotten some really great pictures lately! And one day this week she even consented to "model" one of my recent headband creations (of course I was not allowed to touch her hair or assist her in the application of the headband in any way). I love the sweet shy-ish smile on her face here!

And we are starting to see a LOT more of this precious cheezy smile in pictures! I love it!! :)

Exhaustified

I am just so wiped out tonight I have nothing intelligent to say... worked all day, came home, baked cakes for the AWANA Sparks carnival tonight, picked up the girls, skipped dinner, fed the kids, went to church, came home, fed baby, made spaghetti, put Carolyn to bed, ate dinner with Brad at 9pm, dealt with irrational, overtired 3-year-old who was frantic about a Band Aid falling off an "injury" that has been present for over 4 days and then lost it over the distressing discovery that the duvet cover has a "hole" in the bottom (for putting the comforter inside the cover); watched 24 with Brad from earlier this week (haven't seen much of him lately since he has had 5 deliveries in the past 2 days!)... and NOW I AM GOING TO BED!

Blanket Time

Amazing what a couple weeks of training can do! We've been having blanket time most mornings for the past couple weeks and today I was almost surprised at how "normal" it already seems. I got out the blankets and the toys and put them out on the ground and told the girls it was blanket time and they both went right there, sat down, and started playing! Far fro being a forced experience, they both really seem happy about it. I think they are comforted by having someone around to set some clear boundaries for them. And I've been looking for a way to get in my quiet/devotional time at some point in the day, and this 15 minute time block works just perfectly! It's really astounding how much kiddos are capable of; they really are such wonderful bundles of potentiality and able to learn to do much more than we give them credit for. :) I love my girls!!

In My Bones

Carolyn made me laugh today and I thought I'd share the story. We were driving by our church on our way home from having lunch with friends and Carolyn saw the cross on the outside of our church. Here's how the conversation went!

LMC: "Mommy! LOOK! It's the cross where Jesus died on the cross!"

Me: "Yeah, Carolyn, Jesus did die on the cross. But what happened afterwards?"

LMC: "He came ALIVE again!"

Me: "That's right, He did! Why did Jesus have to die on the cross?"

LMC: "For our SINS..."

Me: "Whose sins?"

LMC: "Mommy's, Daddy's, Nora's, and Carolyn's and everybody's!"

Me: "That's right Carolyn. Where is Jesus now?"

LMC: She points to her heart and says "In HERE!" and then she points to her legs and says "And in my BONES!"

Oh Carolyn, you make me smile! I'm so happy to hear you learning to love Jesus at such a young age!!

Strawberries!

We like strawberries at our house. :) Even Nora is starting to have a word for strawberries. It's kind of a slurred "daw-bees" sound, but she's pretty clear about what she wants! It's nice that they are finally starting to be good again! Costco has the best ones. I'm really tired tonight from a busy weekend, so I will let the pictures speak for themselves. :)

Strawberries all gone!

Sisters

Today was a fun day! I got to see both of my sisters. :) Michelle is back from their 2-week trip to Europe and she came to Michigan for the day today and Laura met us here at our house. We all got to have lunch together and catch up while the little girls slept. I'm so glad for such wonderful sisters!! It was fun to see Michelle looking like a little mama-to-be! My nephew is making his presence known and Shelly looks so cute! I even saw him punch through her tummy. Can't wait to meet him. :) Michelle and I went to Babies R Us to start her registry and that was so much fun. I love being a mom and I'm excited to be able to share that with her now too. Hard to believe that we can already be at this phase of life when sometimes it feels like just a few years ago we were sneaking out of our bedrooms in the middle of the night to talk to each other as girls!

Whenever I pause to think about how precious my sisters are to me, I have to think about how the two smallest girls in our house will impact each other as they grow. They are already so attached to each other. Carolyn truly does love her sister with all the love in her almost-four-year-old heart, and Nora just idolizes the Big Sister. First thing in the morning after she is done eating, she asks for "Tih-Tah"- I believe this means "sister," because as soon as I let her down, she is out the door and heading for Carolyn's room. She always wants to be wherever Big Sister is. In the picture above, Carolyn is spending some solo time in her room and Nora is supposed to be hanging out with me in the living room, but more than anything else she just wanted to be where Carolyn was! She knew she wasn't supposed to go down the hall, but she just kept inching and inching toward it, hoping to have a chance to make a break for it!

Shoe.

Nora has a new word. She's been obsessed with footwear since she was first able to grab onto things, so it's not surprising that "shoe" is one of her first words. :) She especially likes these particular shoes and knows where we keep them. Tonight after dinner, she was toddling around the kitchen and disappeared into the mudroom (where the shoes live) and when I went to retrieve her and remove the shoes from her possession, she wasn't especially pleased. She didn't care for being distracted by the toy I got out for her... and as soon as I let her go, she made a beeline for the mudroom again and on her way there, she distinctly said "SHOE!" as if any of us were in doubt of what she was going after! :)

The Big Big Girl Bed

Since she moved out of the crib at 2, Carolyn's been sleeping in a toddler bed; she's never been a really huge child so it's really fit her fine, until recently we started noticing that she just seemed too big for it. So we've been working towards getting her a Big Big Girl Bed. We had a full sized mattress courtesy of Nana and Papa's furniture purge before their move to South Carolina, so we decided to make that Carolyn's bed. Interestingly, it was also her daddy's bed when he lived at home! Today we put the bed frame together and put the pink sheets and duvet cover on while Carolyn was at school and when she got home she got to see her brand new room! She was so excited!! She picked out the covers and I do think they are a tasteful pink- obviously girly but not too oppressive- and I'd rather pink polka dots than Elmo or princesses or fairies! :)

She looks so tiny in that big bed, but she loves it! And I love it too, because that bed used to take up about 40% of the space in Nora's room and now that it's found a better home, I actually have enough room to rock in my glider when I'm reading to the girls or rocking Nora at night. So this was a win:win for everyone; now we just have to see if Carolyn will actually SLEEP in that big girl bed!

On the Home Front On the Home Front

Here are some random pictures from the past week or so.

We have been working on "blanket time" with the girls as a way of teaching them boundaries, reinforcing obedience, and encouraging the ability to be content with what you are given and find a way to play with a few toys rather than needing an entire roomful to be happy. Initially it was just something I was planning to do with Nora, but Carolyn got into it and so we decided to do it all together and it's become such a fun part of the day now that they are used to it. I sit in the room and do some work like folding laundry or something, and they sit and play away on their little blankets for 15 minutes.

In Nora's case, training her to do blanket time has the added benefit of being a strategy for containment if we're in a situation where she just can't be roaming about. She cried a little the first day we tried it and sometimes tries to get off the blanket, but she's pretty easily redirected and overall seems quite content with the new feature in her routine.

The other day we had a tough nap day and it just wasn't going well for anyone... and it was just one of "those" days, so I let the girls cuddle together on the couch and watch a movie. I even let Pipe and Lovey out of the crib for a brief season (in hopes that Nora would go back to sleep...)- the things we do for a bit of sanity. This was a day that I questioned a bit the advisability of becoming a SAHM! I was so fed up by the end of the day that I wanted to run out the door! Thankfully, not every day is like that, and not every moment of every day either.

Then of course there are days like yesterday where I had piles of laundry and hills of dishes and two cranky children! It looked so pathetic in my living room that I had to take a picture so we could all have a good laugh at what my house really looks like most of the time!

Then of course there are the bright spots- and there are lots of them! These girls are such a joy and blessing- to me and to each other! They are really starting to have more of a relationship now and it's fun to watch. Here they are playing their pots and spoons together. Or, Carolyn is playing the pot and spoon and Nora is eating hers. To each her own.

And aren't they awfully cute both trying to peek out the skinny window by the door. I love how Nora is standing on her tippytoes to look out. :)

Easter 2010

Easter this year was pretty low-key in our house since I had to work all weekend. It was the first time in a long time (maybe ever?) that I had to do 2 weekends in a row... and I was already pretty worn out by the time I even showed up for work on Sunday! But the girls did get to have a special Easter present each (Carolyn got her first set of "real" Legos, and Nora got this cool little toy birdhouse that she loves to carry around the room)- we sort of skipped the official Easter baskets this year since we couldn't all be around to enjoy/deal with the sugar rush afterwards, and they really didn't need any candy, nor did they miss it. But of course, no Easter could be complete without "official" Easter Sunday pictures in the special dresses.

I wish that the pictures were digital from eons ago when I was the one wearing the frilly dress and not the one behind the camera... because I have vivid memories of Saturday nights spent sleeping on pink rollers and Sunday morning lace and ruffles and having pictures taken with my own sisters! And the tradition continues on. :) The girls did look beautiful in their matching dresses!
We went to the early service at our church since I had to be at work by 9:30am and I wanted to at least get to go to some church on Easter Sunday. My favorite music is always the Easter music. I don't know why we don't sing those amazing, deep, triumphant songs of Christ's Resurrection more often! This year I was excited to bring Carolyn with us to "Big Church" (as my Granny called it). The 2s and 3s had their children's church during the later service, so we took Carolyn with us for the first part of the service and brought her to the nursery for the last half. She really did very well- she drew the above picture during one of the quiet parts of church. If you can't tell what it is, she drew a bunch of crosses and one Jesus- though if you ask her if Jesus is on the cross now, she will tell you that He is alive! Amazing how she is starting to really pick up on things now that she is getting older!

As I sat in church on Sunday morning, teary-eyed as I remembered once again my beloved Granny who sings with the angels in heaven today even as we sang the words to "Because He Lives," and watching my daughter take in just a tiny piece of the wonder and majesty that is the Resurrection and the grand story of redemption, I was even then planning out a wondrous blog post I would make about how I love the words to those old hymns and how precious Easter is to those who know that death and sorrow and sadness have no power and no victory in the end. Then I went to work...

And now when I do sit down to write about Easter, I find myself remembering it from another angle. You see, there was a reason that Christ had to be born, to die, to come alive again. It was for people like me. People who put up a great show, who say all the right words, believe all the right things, tear up in all the right places in a church service... but who walk out the door of the church and into the workplace and practically before the pews are cold again find the very worst of themselves spilling out on those around them. Just hours after I skipped out the door of my church humming "Up From the Grave He Arose," and reveling in the beauty of a perfect Spring morning... I was actually yelling at a coworker of mine over something that wasn't even her fault. Yes, it was a stressful afternoon. You could argue that there was some situational provocation, but still... Blech... the wickedness and darkness of my heart just vomited all over the place and all the hard work I've done for months to try to show a kind and Christian spirit at work began to unravel... and suddenly the triumphant and beautiful post I was considering writing sort of fell apart in my mind... because I realized over again how fallen I really am.

And at the same time, why Easter is so incredibly important. Not just because God conquered death and hell on a global sense through the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross... but also on a very personal level- that He did all that for me. Little me living my small life with my petty selfishnesses and cares and slipups and adult-sized tantrums. I don't deserve such magnificent mercy. Even years into my journey as a Christian, although I can sometimes see how far I've come, I can also clearly see how far I have yet to grow. Easter is a wonderful reminder that although He will not be finished working in my life until the day I draw my final breath... His ultimate work is finished. When that tomb was empty on Easter morning, it was empty because the price had been paid. All of it.

Because He lives.

July in April

The weather people have been all excited this week because they have had something to talk about besides cold weather and grey skies. We had about 3 days of record heat- temperatures closer to typical July temps than April! We saw over 80 degrees on two days in a row! What a nice break from the usual winter weather that hangs over into Spring. It's already back to closer to "normal," but these pictures make me smile and remember that it wont' be cold forever. :)

It was obvious Carolyn was feeling better after she woke up from her nap on Thursday. She threw up once Thursday morning and complained about a tummyache for about 8 more hours, but then once the bug was out of her system, she was back to her usual self. :)

We played outside with chalk that afternoon. I took this picture to show how Nora is able to stand up without anything to pull up on and she can even bend over to draw on the sidewalk.

Hello up-close Carolyn. You are so beautiful, even with blue chalk around your mouth. :)

I've been trying to take pictures of Nora toddling around with her little Frankenstein walk because I know the stage is so short and before I know it she won't hold her sweet little arms out like this. She is so proud of herself for being able to walk anywhere she likes all by herself! Just in the last few days, she's essentially stopped crawling; when she falls she'll crawl for a few paces and then stand herself up and keep on walking along. She's growing into such a big girl!