Merry Christmas!

….pa dum Pum PUM!!!

And now, Ladies and Gents, adoring fans, grandparents from afar, I give to you what we have all been waiting for….Charlie and Alaythia’s First Ballet Recital!!!And the audience cheered wildly.  But Wendy knew better things were coming…This is Charlie bowing…it happened about 2 minutes after the performance when the older class was already getting into position, but hey, it still happened!Of course, everyone was enraptured….

Here is a link to the video of the whole performance.  http://youtu.be/C0Y8sLGUStA

(My favorite part is the very end, where you see Charlie arranging and then re-aranging his arms for his bow…that went on for several minutes after the video cut off before he finally settled on an arm in front and bent over from the waist….) Enjoy!

confessions of a J during finals week….

It is finals week and though he has been in the house most of the day, I have seen Jonathan for a total of maybe 20 minutes if you exaggerate it.  The day after he takes his last evening exam, we are leaving early in the morning on a 12+ hour road trip with two small, ACTIVE, children.  Christmas is upon us and there are MANY things to be made.  I don’t really know why (except that by the grace of God, the Holy Spirit must be prompting me) I’ve been dealing with this finals week differently.

Normally a week with this much activity, responsibility, uncertainty and potential for disaster would have me making plans upon contingency plans and lists of my lists in an effort to stave off any negative impact on my family.   Though this approach may sometimes result in being prepared for everything, it always guarantees one very stressed out and grumpy Mama.  I’ve been noticing, in the little bit of growing up I’ve done these past few months, that Mama’s mood quickly becomes everyone's mood.  So, in an effort to love my children and husband better, I have let the house go.   I am moving through each task in front of me without stressing about the cloud of other urgent, pestering tasks remaining undone.  I have no set of lists except the overall objectives of:

• getting Charlie outside for HARD playing once a day,
• making sure I have timely snacks and meals to provide my offspring (and to hand through the door to my muttering husband, hunched over yet another outline of notes he is studying)
• being aware of and then using any moment my hands are free to work on the projects I’m making for Christmas. 
• getting us all packed and travel-food supplied for our trip while the children are awake (as long as I can make it fun)  so that I can work on Christmas-ing while they are asleep.

The super bonus is that I’ve found I haven’t been inadvertently showing Charlie he doesn’t matter and is an inconvenience to me like I usually end up doing in high-stress  times.   We’ve actually had fun together instead of resenting the fact that we can’t have Dad!  This was our chaotic but delightful scene while we made pizza for dinner last night:

Many, many thanks to Gail, our Sunday school teacher, for teaching us this joyful song!

Physics through the eyes of a toddler….

A while back, when Charlie and I were still getting used to having Wendy in our lives, I decided to dedicate her first morning nap to “Charlie and me” time.  One week in September, we found this great little book at the library and read it together and did some of the experiments about force and gravity.  "Move It! Motion, Forces and You" by Adrienne Mason, Illustrated by Claudia Davilla

It is aimed at kindergarteners, so some of the more technical experiments were over his head.   But we did the simpler ones and just had lots of fun comparing bean weight (force of gravity) and blowing ping-pong balls (directional force) with straws—though I’m pretty sure the fun for him had mostly to do with scooping and blowing!

    

The real take-away was a fantastically fun game we discovered along the way.   I was trying to demonstrate the difference between pulling and pushing forces and ended up pushing Charlie over on the couch in explanation.   Soon  the “What kind of force do you want?” game became one of our all-time favorite activities.  It takes no more equipment than a bed or couch, one wiggling, giggling toddler and an adult with one hand free.   Here are Dada and Charlie demonstrating how to play the game …

Teach a toddler in your life about physics today!  You won’t be sorry!  Money back guaranteed!

independence…

Sometimes being able to root through your own toy box……is enough to put you in the very best of moods!

Photoshoot FAIL!

At the end, guess who was happy and who was not? 

a-Babka-at-the-end-of-the-stick-kind-of-night

Ever since Wendy came into my life there are lots of days that end like this. (Truth be known, there were probably more days like this before any children came into my life than there are now, but I was more relaxed back then and had leisure to wait until the mood hit me to spend hours cleaning up.)Now, it drives me crazy.  I learned with Charlie’s infancy that the only thing more depressing to me than seeing this mess at the end of the day, is waking up to it the next morning and having to deal with it while dealing with an infant. 

I hope you realize I pose no moral judgment on the untidy.   If you can live in chaos without it gnawing at your insides like itchy wool at your neck, then fantastic.  I cannot.  Somehow having children has turned me into a crazy woman for neat. I now equate “peace” “rest” and “relax” with “tidy and clean.” At the end of the day, when I’m tired of wrangling 2 year old cowboys and pampering 6 month old princesses, I wish this weren’t true. But it is. 

So the other night I decided to bribe myself into doing the dishes with Chocolate Cinnamon Babka. 

“What?!??” you say?  “Do more work to convince yourself to do more work?”   Yes, it is true.  I am that much of a sucker for chocolate,butter and white flour. 

Here’s how it went down:

made Babka dough (a whole cup of butter, folks!)  (and also some whole wheat roll dough because it’s easy and I was baking already and we needed it for the next day.)mixed up some divine chocolate-cinnamon-butter spread and soaped up the dishes while the dough rose shaped it and rinsed dishes while it rose some more…finished the dishes in time to watch a show while the bread bakedTHEN I ate me some Babka from a sparkling clean kitchen (and breakfast was already made for the next morning too!) SO worth it!

Conversations with Charlie

After an involved conversation about hugs, how they are a way of telling someone you love them and how good they feel…

“Dada, I think you should hold me now. Yeah. Maybe dat would be a good idea.”

During a discussion about how he lied about needing to go potty so he could get out of bed after bedtime…

“I’m not so good at sleeping. I’m good at being wake, Mama. I’m very good at playing.”

fall.leaf.fall

concentration…

We tried a new craft.  

The object was a noodle necklace.  I helped with coloring the noodles. It’s tricky.   And so is threading them.  (We used a super large darning needle and yarn. )He lost interest after he mastered it and before the necklace was finished, but for about two minutes I saw complete concentration…

L.o.v.e. that boy!

She eats! She sits! She bangs! She charms!

(It’s been a big week around here.  We are hitting milestones left and right!)

Eating!

Sitting!

Banging!

Charming!