Happy Mother's Day

So this year was my third official Mother's Day. It would have been my fourth had Little Miss Stubborn arrived by her due date, but instead I spent that Mother's Day (2008) in labor. From 3:00 am on. And on and on and into the next day.

It's funny - that's about the hour that this Mother's Day started for me, too - about 3:00 am with the same little one. She's been sick with a cough and for several nights we've ended up out on the couch in the living room so that she can sleep propped up.

Thankfully, she was very tired and went right back to sleep and slept till 7:00. Except for one little blip when she bolted upright and said
"MOMMY!" [I jumped up.]
"What honey?"
"If Riley wants blue then I want red."
I had no idea what she was talking about. I finally said "Ok honey" because she was sitting there waiting for a response (she always requires a response), at which point she settled back down and went right back to sleep.

And so went my Mother's Day - sleep all chopped up, conversations with people all chopped up, chores all chopped up. I'm trying to fold a load of laundry but I have to stop because Riley is frustrated because Annie dressed his teddy bear in unfamiliar doll clothes and he's yelling "NO, NO, NO!" at his bear. It's a crisis. Or I'm in the middle of a conversation with Benjy and I have to interject "Riley, don't eat things out of the garbage!" That kid! He won't eat more than 2 bites of the 5 course dinner I put in front of him but I'm always catching him taste-testing the trash.

So it wasn't a perfect day. The kids weren't on their best behavior all day. There was hair-pulling and fighting and toys thrown out of the bath tub.

But I guess it wouldn't have been a real Mother's Day with out all of that, because that's the thing about being a mom - the mystery of how I can love these little people so much when they make me so crazy! I never knew how much my parents loved me until I had kids. And I wonder will my kids ever know how much I love them? Hopefully, if God gives them the blessing of children.

New "traditions"

It has been difficult learning to celebrate Easter here in the U.S. All the traditions seem to be unconnected to the event and the "holiday" commercialized beyond recognition. It doesn't bother me at Christmas for some reason - all the emphasis on presents and decorations and candy. But it does at Easter! I'm not sure just how to celebrate Jesus' resurrection here in our family. I don't want the kids to miss out on fun traditions but I also don't want to spend more time on Easter baskets than on the Easter story. And I just don't know how to respond when asked what the Easter Bunny brought me! That scary thing at Karcher Mall?!? He better not even so much as look my direction!

My memories of Easter growing up are of sitting on a freezing limestone bench at a sunrise service at the Garden Tomb and... no actually that's it. That's really the only Easter memory I can recall. Not chocolate bunnies and egg hunts. Which are great and really fun, don't get me wrong. I'm no Easter Grinch, ok? I really wanted to dye eggs and do an Easter egg hunt with Annie this year, it would be so fun. But I'm just not there yet. (I did, however, snatch up a bunch of Easter candy and toys at 90% off last week at Walmart.)

And I did give the kids Easter presents at breakfast Sunday morning - books, candy necklaces and some other little gifts. Not exactly Easter baskets, but along the same lines and a very fun tradition that I plan to continue. Giving of gifts is always a worthwhile tradition in my opinion! And that's where the balance is for me in all the secular Easter hype - an Easter tradition is a good tradition when  it reflects the character and actions of God, the One who gave His son. We emphasize that at Christmas, but how much more should we meditate on it at Easter when the full weight of that gift is realized. God gave us JESUS!

AND HE IS RISEN!

And because of that, we can (and did!) enjoy all of this:

Not sure what to enjoy first

Riley doesn't have the same hang-ups - candy first!

Sunday dinner at Grandma and Grandpa Becks!

An egg hunt with no competition! Perfect!

Time with Grandma and Grandpa Codr



Obsessions

It's gotten a little krazy around here lately, if you know what I mean - krazy as in The Krazy Coupon Lady. I was introduced a few weeks ago to the fabulous world of extreme couponing, hence the month-long blog silence. It has taken over my life and become an obsession. A couple of nights ago I didn't sleep well and every time I woke up I was thinking about coupons - Albertson's doublers, to be exact. That's when I realized I was obsessed. (Benjy came to this conclusion much earlier and has been trying to give me warning signals - like wrapping my coupon binder in caution tape and hiding my car keys in my Books To Be Read stack - could NOT find them for days!! =)
But I've had a few couponing set-backs recently (the stores being all out of the good deals by MONDAY MORNING!!) and the shinyness has worn off. I've had to come up with some personal boundaries and rules:

1) I can only check the couponing websites on the weekends (Fri., Sat., and Sun.)

2) From now on, if I can't get to Albertson's on Sunday afternoon I won't go at all. (Maybe. This is more of an expectations boundary than a rule. If I can't get there on Sunday then I won't expect to get my good deals.)

3) No working on coupons when the kids are both awake.

But overall, it's been fun and I've been able to get some sweet deals - like 7 free toothbrushes and 10 bottles of Propel for a buck.

And - like mother, like daughter - Annie has her own obsessions these days: Melissa and Doug sticker books and making beds for all her little dolls and stuffed animals. She will play at this for hours! Every pillow and blanket in the house will be appropriated for her little "hotel" and once everybody is settled in for a long night's rest she will ferociously tell us all to be quiet! HER BABIES ARE SLEEPING!!! Too bad the fun is all in getting ready for bed and not in actually sleeping. She kind of skips that part.

All ready for a nice long (10 second) night!

Well, that's it for now. There are coupons to be cut!

Speaking of progress...

Then there's Riley.

He's making good progress, too. He has just recently started blowing kisses and saying "nigh-nigh." He can also 'run' - meaning he walks super fast while laughing a crazy laugh at how dangerous he's being. He had his 15 month check-up last week at which he weighed in at only the 7th percentile. The dr. said he was free to eat ice-cream every night. Unfortunately, there would be a proportionate increase in my weight as well if we were to follow those dr.'s orders. But you gotta do what you gotta do!

Watching a show on the couch

He likes to make us laugh (notice the napkin pieces on his head)

Taking a little rest in the toy basket

"Helping" me in the kitchen

Progress Report

So we've been making some headway on the 30 Memory Verses resolution. I got off to a slow start, though. And I'm not talking about having made my New Year's Resolution a month late - that's just par for the course. No, I'm talking about having to switch methods. I was using a fantastic idea that I got from Bible Study Fellowship called a Bible Verse Box - you put little toys and things that associate with each memory verse in a shoebox and then when you pull each item out the child can say the verse that the item represents.

It's a great idea. But I found I had two problems with it. First, I was NEEDING to go shopping each time I wanted to work on a new verse because I NEEDED to find just the right thing to represent the verse. I would come home with lots and lots of things, but nothing verse-related. It was harder than I thought it would be to find objects that represented things like 'rejoice' and 'Savior' and 'sin'. Especially since I was determined to find everything at the dollar store!

Which led me to the second problem. I started picking verses based on things I could find. Plastic snakes brought to mind verses about the Pharisees being a brood of vipers. Probably not a good verse choice for a 2-year-old. There were lots of good visual aids but they seemed better suited to longer verses than the ones I wanted to teach Annie. So the Bible Verse Box is something I will probably come back to in a couple of years.

Instead, I decided to use all my scrapbook supplies that are laying around gathering dust and make a Verse Book for Annie. Being the obsessive-compulsive person that I am, I couldn't just start the book with new verses - I had to go back and make pages for all the verses she's already learned. But we learned 2 brand new verses last week and she loves to go through the whole book and say all the verses "BY MYSELF, MOMMY! DON'T HELP ME!!"

One of the newer verses (the 30)

"Because I said so"

Annie has hit the "why?" stage!

"Annie, eat the rest of your green beans."
     "Why?"

"Annie, it's time for a bath."
     "Why?"

"Annie, don't color on the back of the chair."
     "Why?"

"Annie, don't sit on Riley's head."
     "Why?"

But my favorite are the follow-up why questions.

"Because you'll squish his head."
     "Why?"

How do you answer that?

The mathematical way? "You weigh 30 pounds, he weighs 20 pounds..." This will inevitably be followed by another why question, or worse - "How much do you weigh, mom?"

The ethical way? "It's not kind. Do you want him to sit on your head?" This is a risky question, she might say yes. A better question would be "Do you want me to sit on your head?"

The probability way? "Because if you sit on his head he will probably bite your bum." True story.

All of these conversations are very necessary conversations to have with a 2-year-old. The problem, however, is that there is only about a 3 second time frame from the moment Annie grits her teeth and gets that look in her eye until Riley's squeal hits an octave that even Mariah Carey never reached.

And so in that moment, in that split second, I resort to what I have come to fully understand as a perfectly good reason:

"Because I said so."
     and hope that it carries just enough weight to avert the crisis, or at least her attention long enough for Riley to scramble away and live another day.

Is it Mother's Day yet?!?

This one is dedicated to Serena and in honor of her most recent post.


Here's what my sweet child, my little baby girl, with whom I was in labor for 27 hours, whom I've fed and changed and bathed and cared for these past 3 years ... here's what she said to me earlier this week:

"Mom, stop singing! You're scaring away the birds!"

We were driving in the car with the windows rolled up.