365: Week 4

Day 22: Stockings all hung in a row

 

 

Day 23: Is fall over yet?

 

 

Day 24: First piggy back ride

 

 

Day 25: Learning to walk

 

Day 26: Liam's gingerbread house

 

Day 27: Strike one. I didn't take a picture. Can you believe it? Here is another from the day before at the park. :(

 

Day 28: My kids and their windows.

I'm super disappointed about that gosh darn day 27 that got away from me. We hung out at home, Liam cried a lot, we went to Costco then we had pizza with family. I'm just not sure how I didn't take a single photo of all that excitement. :/

Some thoughts at 4am

 

I had a couple of situations this past week that made me feel extremely frustrated and overwhelmed with my duties as a homemaker and a mother. Brygit has been feeling a little under the weather and has been wanting to be held a lot which means everything I do is one handed with a nearly 19 pound baby on my hip. Which is fine most of the time except for instances where Liam poops his pants and I need to clean him and the entire bathroom without her crawling all over the floor or screaming bloody murder. Or when he spills apple cider all over the table, floor, and (somehow) wall and she acts like sitting on the floor next to me while I clean is the equivalent of being water boarded all while Liam cries because his cup is now empty. I wish I had handled these situations better. I wish I hadn't yelled and lectured. I wish I hadn't grumbled and complained. I wish I hadn't looked at the clock and started counting down the seconds until bedtime when these days with my babies are so precious and are moving so quickly. I wish I could go with the flow a little more. I could have totally left those messes right where they occurred, roped off that portion of the house crime scene style and attended to what was really important but my brain didn't allow that. Anyway, I spent a day pondering why I reacted the way I did. I was tired, grumpy and needed a break. That's a given. But there is also a mindset I have somehow adopted along the way that makes me believe that my children need to always be taught responsibility and obedience and maturity and tidiness. I have somehow become a prude... at times... more often than I like. So I came across this blog post. Seriously, read it. And read the letter she links to. Basically she says that the key to raising happy children is to let them be children. Let them play and frolic and make messes and be irresponsible. They are kids for a short time and they need to enjoy it before they have their own responsibilities some day. If this week was their last week here, I would have felt horrible that I spent so much energy on what they were doing wrong and not enough time on everything they do right. The smiles and the cuddles and whatnot. If this was their last week here I would have never let Brygit's little feet touch the ground. Living like life is as short as it is has to be my new focus. It's the only way I want to live and raise my kids and it has to be a daily, if not hourly, aspiration.

365: Week 3

Day 15: Brygit standing on Liam

 

 

Day 16: Our tree

 

 

Day 17: My attempt at capturing Brygit's crazy fuzzy hair

 

 

Day 18: I didn't bring my camera to Disneyland because it rained but, lucky for me, there is always Instagram

 

 

Day 19: My self portrait for November. I know, it's out of focus and I like that about it.

 

 

Day 20: Brygit mid dance with my favorite smile on

 

 

Day 21: Day 2 of Elf on the Shelf. Liam got a kick out of him hanging out with the Star Wars guys.

 

 

 

 



Generosity

I was having a bumpy morning. Most likely because it started at 4am... again. I was counting on a gingerbread latte to turn things around but as I went to pay, I realized I left my wallet at home. I grumpily sat down in the children's section of the bookstore to listen to a story about an elf as Liam started crying about missing out on his anticipated chocolate beverage. I started talking to him through gritted teeth in a threatening whisper. You moms know the kind. I was getting close to the end of my rope. The author/ reader of the story thought that Liam was afraid of the puppet elf she brought but I immediately informed her (and everyone else there) that it was not the puppet upsetting him. It was the 5am wake up time that he has been practicing for the last week and that I have been sufferring from (along with Brygit's 4am feeding). The woman then decided it would be best to just start the story and not ask any more questions. Just then I felt a tap on my shoulder and I turned to see a woman standing there holding two drinks. She said they came from a customer in the cafe and I was so shocked at their generosity. And I was relieved to have caffeine. But, above all, I was so embarrassed. Talk about an attitude check. I was acting like such a brat and this person was feeling generous and thoughtful toward me. Maybe they saw me and thought, "That lady needs some coffee." But most likely they were just being nice in the old fashioned sense.

I tried to explain to Liam how generous it was for someone who doesn't even know us to spend money on us especially at this time of year. It was kind of lost on him but I realized I wanted to add this to my bucket list as a mother. I want to teach my children how to be spontaneously and anonymously generous. Not just with coffee but as a way of life. And I'm taking a lesson myself. That person could have saved Liam's life today. You never know.

Thanksgiving 2012

We started our Thanksgiving festivities at home on Wednesday by roasting a turkey, building a fire and putting up the tree. It was topped off with hot cocoa and the football episode of Friends. It was the first holiday with all four of us alone and we talked about how we finally felt like a complete family. It was wonderful. On Thanksgiving day we pigged out on amazing food. Seriously, does everyone's family cook as good as ours? We played baseball with plastic bats in the yard and took a million leaves out of Brygit's mouth. I then spent the weekend huddled at home with the curtains drawn trying to escape all you crazy shoppers.



365: week 2

Day 8: We made Christmas tree cupcakes

 

 

Day 9: Playing outside in the porch light

 

 

Day 10: One of my Thanksgiving favorites

 

 

Day 11: Our first fire of the season

 

Day 12: Baseball at Great Grandma's on Thanksgiving

 

Day 13: First day I used my iphone. Who needs a double stroller?

Day 14: Letter to Santa

 

P.S. The pictures are all different sizes because Blogger is succeeding at making me want to find a new site to host my blog. Seriously, between the blog, playing video games with Liam and trying to figure out our new blueray player, I'm starting to feel like I'm 80 years old.

I learned something new!

I was just complaining about how bad the light in my house is at night. Not for living. Just for picture taking. My eyes adjust to the light so I'm startled every time I snap a yellow tinted photo. I stumbled across how to manually adjust the white balance ( I'm totally giving away how rookie I am) and it is seriously amazing. I just have to take a picture of something white in the same light I plan on photographing in then I tell my camera that, believe it or not, that is the color white. It then adjusts the white balance to show what the real colors actually look like. Are these machines awesome or are they awesome? Here is a before and after shot from the day I made this ground breaking discovery.