The Good Life

Adrienne has it rough. This week Jillian (who is rather enthusiastic about her newly declared favorite author, Dr Seuss) decided she'd treat Adrienne to a lengthy reading of all the Dr Seuss books we own while Adrienne relaxed in my tub. They were both occupied for well over an hour. No complaints here....

Early Writing

I mentioned how much I love phonetic spelling of beginning writers in my previous post (in reference to the valentines Jillian gave to us). In the last week, she has brought home several pieces of work. They all make me smile. And all made it in the "special box" of things we save.

"I would save it to go on a Disney cruise"

"I would live in the White House and I would have lots of cats. And I would change the world. I would be brave" (Aunt Meggie, are you proud of the cat comment??)

"I would have wrinkles" (yes you WOULD have lots o wrinkles if you were 100! And they might even be red)

"I have a little sister. She is almost 4"

Day of Love

Valentine's Day has morphed from a romantic holiday for two into a pretty darn fun celebration full of heart-shaped everything with my girls. I really do love Valentine's Day (always have), though admittedly I really hate actual paper valentines (ever tried to fill those out with 2 small kids?). Perhaps I'd like them more if I actually put some effort in and made some. Anyway, we had a fun little day of love with our family of four. I am pretty convinced that Jillian has a destiny in event planning, because she is all about details and special surprises to make a holiday memorable. When Matt got home on the 13th, she told him she had the next day all planned out (and even written out). Her plan was put into action early the next morning as Matt and the girls snuck out of the house early to get surprise donuts and some treats for me. Matt texted me when they were on their way home to tell me I needed to stay in bed when they got home so I didn't spoil the surprise. They were home about 15 minutes scurrying around out in the kitchen before they burst into the bedroom to wish me a Happy Valentine's Day and usher me out for breakfast.

Careful selections were made by the girls on my behalf--not one, but 2, chocolate donuts, a cooking magazine, a candle, chapstick, roses, and nail polish (it was actually an orange shade of lipstick, but Matt thought it was nailpolish--E for effort!). I'd say they know me pretty well.

We had a laid back day, and then enjoyed a huge meal of chicken parmesan and fettuccine alfredo. We capped off the day with a family dance party. The girls love this. We each select a song and then we draw numbers to see which order the songs will be played in. Daddy was pretty smooth this time--he selected the song we danced to at our wedding for his choice. And then the girls promptly followed that up with "Let It Go" and "Tonight's Gonna Be a Good Night". What can I say? We embrace many forms of music in this house. Sweet memories.

My favorite part of this particular Valentine's Day were the first handwritten Valentines that Jillian made for us. I heart phonetic spelling. Kindergarten writing is awesome. I may throw a lot of papers/projects away, but these babies landed a spot in the memory box. Precious.

"Mom I love you because you have a kind heart. Love Jillian"

"Dad your heart is kind. I love you, Jillian"

This and That

Some random things from the last couple of weeks....

-Groundhog Day was all the rage around here. The Friday prior, Jillian got in the car after school and casually took a poll, "So guys, who's excited about Groundhog Day!?" A holiday is a holiday, people. After all the hype and the bad news that darn rodent gave us, Adrienne couldn't let it go...and couldn't quite get all the details. right. For about 5 days following the big day, she'd ask "Mom, did the warthog see his shadow?" When I replied that yes, the "warthog" saw his shadow she was forlorn--"Oh no. Six more DAYS of winter?!?!" Oh how I wish, little one. Oh, how I wish.

-I'm afraid I've created a habit with Adrienne in that every time we are at the store (I'd say she and I have about 3 errand opportunities together each week), she manages to get me to purchase her a kid's hot chocolate. This is of course because I am ordering my flat white or latte (depending on our locale). I made the mistake of getting her the hot chocolate just one time, and now the little prima donna pipes right up with her order after mine. Every single time. And she knows where all the coffee shops are in town, so even if we are in a store that (heaven forbid) doesn't contain one, she'll tell me where we need to go to make the purchase. The lure of a free cookie at Hy-Vee or Target never ever trumps the hot chocolate. Ever.

-Jillian is celebrating her 100th day of school this week. I'm not sure why this is worthy of a celebration, but it's important apparently, and is worthy of a collection. The kids are supposed to bring in a collection of 100 somethings, and Jillian smartly chose crayons (we have plenty of those for sure). I had her double check her counting before she put it in her bag yesterday and I was trying to explain that she should group things into tens to make this an easier (and faster) feat. "Oh Mom, you mean skip count by tens, right? We do that at school all the time. I need ten of these piles to make 100".  Props to the kindergarten curriculum for one-upping me on the math lesson.

-Alert the press: Adrienne is tired! She is "tired" ALL THE BLESSED TIME. Ask her to do something and you will get (in a pathetic little whine, mind you): "I'm tired". Adrienne, please go potty. Answer: "I'm tired". Adrienne please go up and brush your teeth for bed. "I'm tired". Adrienne, please take your clothes off BEFORE you get in the bathtub (true story). "I'm tired". 12 hours of sleep just isn't enough, I guess.

-Jillian has suddenly started reading like gangbusters. I mean really reading. She can read most all of her easy readers and now has started to discover books we have around the house that are not specifically for new readers that she can read. This is big stuff. She also has discovered that she loves Dr. Seuss (after checking out a couple lengthy library selections) and thinks he's hilarious, but she just does NOT understand the made up words he uses to rhyme. She can't fathom why anyone would need to make words up. And in that same light, I had to hide the Aesop's Fables book because it is maddening to try and explain the morals of those stories to someone in such a literal state of cognitive development. Give it a try when you want to drive yourself mad.

-Adrienne has a few little word blunders that we all find hilarious. Matt asked her one day what kind of animal Pascal is (Pascal is Rapunzel's pet lizard in case you live under a princess-loving rock). "He's a slither". Each day I tell Adrienne to get in the tub (after I've warmed the water correctly and put the drain stopper down). She always tells me the same thing: "I'm gonna wait til it's blowed up a little bit first" (pretty sure she means filled up...) And my favorite, while explaining some snack time issues at preschool: "Emily's allergic to cow milk so we have to drink soil milk".  Personally I would agree that SOY milk tastes like soil. 

-Adrienne (despite being chronically "tired") has developed a love of puzzles. There are puzzles everywhere in the living room, and she likes to leave them all out on the floor after she's done. So we now have puzzles for flooring. She will do this for hours these days. It is really, really nice.


-Last Saturday morning the girls came and got in bed with me (Matt was at the RAC working out) and we laid there for over 2 hours watching video clips of them as babies on the blogs. It was one of the most enjoyable mornings ever. They are so big. It was hard for them to understand why some of the videos made me teary. Time flies, kids.

-Jillian and I did our first service project together last week. Our church packs backpacks for the Food for Friends program (these go to kids in the town north of us). I thought this would be a great easy and relevant project for our school girl. We packed 60 backpacks with two older ladies full of non-perishable goods that would be sent home for the weekend with kids who needed some extra food. Jillian was all over it. She read the instructions for each basket of items (how many food items from each category to put in each backpack) and went down the assembly line packing each backpack independently. I guess I was following too closely behind her at one point because she reminded me, "Mom, I can do this myself." And she did. When we were done, we lined the backpacks up by the door and then held hands with the sweet ladies while they prayed over the backpacks and for the kids who would receive them. The evening definitely made an impact on Jillian and we will be doing this regularly.

-Matt took the girls to the Father Daughter Dance at the RAC on Saturday night. It was a surprise for the girls, and when he came home at noon (after a workout and eye appt), he arrived bearing valentines (stuffed animals, chocolates, and silk roses) and surprised these little princesses by inviting them to the ball with him. They were beyond delighted. He took them out to dinner beforehand, and as they were running down a list of ideas for their meal he suggested that perhaps they choose somewhere that I didn't like. They all thought and thought (and I thought they had aptly decided on McDonald's) and then Matt had a light bulb moment and told them about a little place called "Taco Bell Pizza Hut" and they were enthralled at the idea of getting tacos AND pizza in one spot. (Gag). They thought it was great fun, and Matt said that as they were eating Jillian just kept commenting, "I can't believe Mom doesn't like this place". Ha!

A lucky man with two lovely dates.

Fame

We all had a good laugh last Spring when Eleyna and David's wedding was getting closer and Jillian so sweetly asked, "Are we going to be in the newspaper?" It seems that she felt her role as flower girl warranted some attention. Well, wouldn't you know it? The wedding was one of the four weddings featured in the wedding issue of Rochester magazine! The photographer submitted some photos and the wedding was selected. It came out last month, and despite my best efforts to grab a stack of magazines at the RAC, I never saw any. Monday morning I checked one more time and found one lone magazine just waiting for me (don't worry, grandparents, the bride has about 50 copies and promised me a few for each of you). The girls were so happy with this surprise! This is big stuff for these little ladies.

Cover

Page 1--you can see the adorable little flower girls in the top middle picture

Page 2--You can see Adrienne in the bottom picture. Also pictured--my arm wrapped around her.

First Party

Adrienne was delighted to receive her very first birthday party invitation (for a friend who is not connected to her sister). Her friend from preschool, Rowan, had a party at Chuck E Cheese and she was sooooooo excited to go! You can imagine that her sister was a bit put off that her younger sibling would be invited to a party where she would not also attend. Life is hard, people. We dropped Adrienne off and then headed off to have some special time with Jillian. I wish I could say that Jillian was delighted by the solo time with her parents, but she could have won an academy award for her level of sulk. We tried to play it up that it was great to spend time alone with her, etc, but Matt finally just told her that life isn't fair and not everyone gets to do the same thing--basically, "suck it up kid". Parenting is trial and error, right? While Adrienne was frolicking at the place of my personal hell (Chuck E Cheese, I am not a fan), we took Jillian to our favorite sushi place (because we knew she would like the coconut chicken on the menu and she does eat rice) and then to Target to pick out her Valentines for school. Then we went to retrieve our tired, overheated, absolutely sugar-crazed, hyper 3 year old.

Post-party glow

Learning to use chopsticks. Matt fashioned some trainer chopsticks with the chopstick wrapping and and extra hairband I had in my purse.

Success

Changing Seasons

The Hawaii trip sort of set off a realization for me. It happened first when I sat poolside while my kids were in the pool--without me. And then, we came home and suddenly the girls couldn't agree about their bath. You see, they always bathe together--it just depends if they want to bathe in our big tub, in their tub upstairs, or take a shower. On Monday there was a large amount of squabble from the backseat about which choice was best that day (we often bathe right after school, seems to be a nice transition home especially since Jillian has been standing outside in the cold waiting for me to get to the front of the pick up line). So, I let Adrienne take a bath in my big tub alone. And Jillian decided she would like to go upstairs to her bathroom and shower herself. We reviewed things like keeping the water in the tub, making sure the curtain liner was inside the tub, putting the mat down, having her towel right there....and she was off. She's done it everyday since. She has also started putting her laundry away and loading the dishwasher. And then yesterday, as I was in the shower following my return from an early morning workout I realized that my kids were up, Matt was gone, and I was showering when I wanted to. I didn't need to orchestrate entertainment for the girls, wait til they were asleep, have them come in the bathroom with me, or worry they were going to escape the house or set it ablaze while I was occupied. My realization is simply this: we are in a new season of parenting. It snuck up on me gradually, and then pounded me right between the eyes this week with this succession of events. Now that I know this, I have three  choices:

1.  I can spend my time regretting the past--the loss of infancy and toddler hood, worrying that I didn't enjoy the girls enough, wondering if I'd do better at it if I just had one more (don't get your hopes up, the answer is no)

2.  I can spend my time worrying about or longing for the future--waiting for even more independence in the girls, worrying about sickness, safety, character development, etc.

3.  I can enjoy where we are.  Today. Right now.


Jen Hatmaker wrote a brilliant devotional in her "Out of the Spin Cycle" book on this subject, and I shared an excerpt from it as I led worship yesterday at Bible study. She writes,

"The concept of daily bread has been baiting me for awhile. when God literally gave the Hebrews their daily bread--dropped from the sky--as they wandered the desert for 40 years, his instructions were explicit: 'The people are to go out each day and gather enough for that day (Exodus 16:4). He was very clear: no one could hoard the bread and quail for the future. In fact, any leftovers were spoiled by the next day, the only exception being the Sabbath, where they could collect enough for two days and make room for rest. God seemed to be saying, 'Don't obsess about tomorrow. Live in this day, without worrying what you'll do or need later. What is nourishment today will be spoiled by tomorrow. Enjoy it today, or enjoy it never'. "  She goes on, "Give us today, our daily bread. I won't spoil this day by grieving what has past or longing for what has not yet come."

It's so easy to fall into the traps of choices 1 and 2. I've lived  most of my life in those places, and I've spoiled so many portions of my 'daily bread'. I want to live choice number 3, and I want my girls to learn to do so. My daily bread is fresh for me every single morning, and so is yours--it's hot out of the oven, just waiting to be enjoyed and savored. Doesn't that sound better than stale, day-old bread? I think so. Enjoy it today, or enjoy it never.