Snow Day Morning

He was up at 4:30am to see if it snowed.  Thank goodness for movies and couch cushion forts and for neighbors to play and have fun and restaurants close enough to walk to for grilled cheese and burgers for lunch.  Plus, it just feels really good to be capturing things with more than just my phone again.

January

Here's what I've got right now.  

January was a blur of snow and sickness and morning (all day) sickness. 

#3 is on the way! 

How was your January??

From Sunday Morning

It's Sunday morning and I can hear them downstairs playing. Talking. Negotiating. Bickering. In my still-half-asleep state, I just listen, cognizant of the fact that it's Sunday morning and I'm in bed still with two kids big enough to go downstairs and play and watch tv together while we get up a little more slowly. It doesn't happen often, but every once in a while it hits me that my kids are almost 5 and almost 7. That my kids aren't babies anymore. That I'm officially that mom looking adoringly at moms with newborns, half wanting to snuggle a newborn right in the crook of my arm and half eternally grateful to be out of that phase of life and in one where I can wake up slowly on Sunday morning with my biggest worry being that someone will spill cereal or milk or sneak a piece of candy before one of us gets downstairs.

I have this strange dichotomy happening internally where one part of me feels like a terrible parent for not picking up on stuff and helping my kids sooner, but another part of me tells me over and over that I know we're good parents and that we're doing the best we can with what we have. It's something my mom says often, especially in relation to parenting. That we all just make the best decisions we can in the moment and that HAS to be enough. 

In the past month one kids has started counseling and we've decided to start speech therapy for the other and hold him back a year from starting kindergarten.  Especially now that we've seen with our first grader what he'll be doing when he gets to kindergarten and we've seen how hard it was on her. But it's feels weird because they're only 22 months apart and they'll be 3 years apart in school. And it'll make him 6.5 when he starts kindergarten and that makes me squirm because it makes us look like "those" parents. But this feels like a much better balance than just throwing him in and and hoping he doesn't struggle. 

I got to visit his preschool class last week and stay the whole time and we also had a teacher conference with his teacher where she confirmed that she's been feeling the same way - that an extra year of preschool in a play-based environment would be really good for him to build more solid skills.  And he will be in an environment with teachers and a director who feel the same as we do as parents about kids needing to play and having too much pressure and how it's all just too much for them right now, so that feels really good.  

When we talked to him about it, because we've already talked about kindergarten starting next year, he was thrilled at the idea of having another year in preschool, so that was a relief.

So, for now: We had a few warm(ish) days in a row and it was AWESOME. Snow is melting. Seeds are started inside and sprouting and more are ordered for outside. The seed germinating testing is fascinating all of us. The first day of spring is officially less than a month away. Taxes are filed.  Big time-suck commitments are almost over.  We're on our last bag of strawberries from the summer, which means it's almost time to pick more. Things are good. 

Tuesday Confessions

(You're surely sick of snowy/icy photos at this point, right?  Sorry, it's all I've got right now!)


We've kind of just felt like we've been in survival mode.  Quiet, snow-playing survival mode, but I'm coming off of 5 days straight with kids at home and that's survival mode for me!  Plus my sister came home from the Peace Corp late last Wednesday night and is staying with us as well, so everything is just a little bit off right now.  

I've been thinking during the past few weeks while I've had copious amounts of time with kids home and very little time alone to actually write posts, because I can't write and think clearly while children beg for snacks, and I'm working on a balance between project/food/informational sort of posts and personal stuff.  As I'm starting this post, there are 4 kids at our house because of a two-hour delay for school and they're all watching Planes because I have no energy left in me for kids inside my tiny house bouncing off the walls.  

My current confessions:  
My kids are watching insane amounts of tv and I just don't care. 
I've been sleeping on the couch while we've rearranged beds because my sister is here and it's been kind of nice because it means I get a whole night of sleep without a non-stop snoring husband. 
I'm ITCHING to just be by myself.  
I've way over-committed this year at schools and I'm really looking forward to not having those obligations anymore, even though I like them and love to be involved in their schools.  
Freezer meals and menu planning are saving my sanity right now. 
I left 7 lbs of sausage (for a freezer meal exchange) on the counter overnight last night and I'm kicking myself for the complete waste of all of that food since I had to throw it away. 
I love my house, but it's driving me crazy.  I want to just be content, but there are SO many things I want to do here and I waffle on whether or not to do them and or to not spend the time doing things to a house we'll likely not live in long-term.  Maybe it's because we've been so cooped up? 
I missed the backyard.  
Mia and I were dreaming about strawberry picking last night.  I got strawberries at the store, because it's hard to say no to kids begging for fruit, and even though they weren't great, we seriously enjoy the fresh tartness of them.  It led to a discussion about fruits and veggies that are in season and how we all love strawberry picking so much because it means that summer is starting and it means it's right around Mia's birthday.  (Nick's birthday-season marker is March Madness!)  
When my sister offered to hang out with Nick this afternoon so that I could go out and get some work done and go to Mia's Valentine's Day Party alone, I jumped at the chance a little too enthusiastically.
We're having Sloppy Joes for dinner tonight.  I've tried multiple homemade versions, but nothing beats the can of Manwich. 
I need to make ricotta now. And feta and goat cheese.  I think I could probably live on baguette spread with various soft cheeses. 
This Pork Ragu is on the menu coming up and I'm salivating just thinking about that deliciousness. 

That's all I've got for now.  How about you? Anything you need to confess or discuss on a Tuesday? 

Snowy and Icy

Snowy and Icy was our theme this week.  The kids were home from school way too much. A tree fell in the backyard and thankfully fell away from the house and managed to also miss the chicken coop by inches.  I somehow managed to make a ton of freezer meals and meal plan, so that felt good.  I may share some more on that soon if these kids will just get back to school!  We got out my old American Girl doll and marveled at all of her things and looked through the old catalogs from the early 90s that I still had in her trunk. Our weekend is going to be filled with swimming lessons, Valentine-making, Olympics-watching, tree-chopping and warm food. How about you? 

Some reads I've loved this week: 

: "Two years ago, my son spent his 7th birthday hyperventilating in the shower over all the questions that might never be answered about his past and his future. The cupcakes were eaten and our day had been big-time fun, but the sun set on his heartbreak and he asked to take a late-night shower. We agreed, never guessing he was smart enough to know that behind the curtain, his tears could blend quietly down the drain pipe." -The Best Gift and Adoptive Mom Can Give

: The Clothes and The Toys You Want Your Kids to Love (and They Don't) - Part of a series on reducing clutter in your home at The Minimalist Mom. Make sure you don't miss all of the goodness added in the comments! (Bonus: Last week's You Can't Have It All part of the series is such a good reminder.)

:I would really like to live in this house, please. 

I finally made a Facebook page for the blog, I'd so love to see you there! 

Day 16: All of the Stuff

Photos, snippets, memories...they're beautiful, they're bits and pieces of our lives.  But...WHAT ON EARTH DO WE DO WITH ALL OF IT??? 

STUFF makes me crazy.  I'm not a keeper.  I don't have piles and piles of art from kids, just a few that are especially sweet and meaningful.  But, photos...oh the photos...I'm not exaggerating when I say that there are thousands and thousands of them.  At my last check, my camera has taken 60,093 photographs.  I got it in 2008 because I wanted a camera with a faster shutter speed to capture my moving 1-year-old.  I decided to actually learn how to use it in early 2010 when I took a fluke beautiful photo of my daughter in the snow (where I now know that the perfect conditions of open shade and a big blanket of snow as a huge natural reflector helped me out) and realized that I really could get some great photos of my kids if I just learned how to use the camera and I haven't stopped since then.

I obviously haven't kept all of those photos, but I'd estimate that between different computers and hard drives I have at least 10,000 personal photographs from the past 5ish years.

It's overwhelming, but you know what they say about how to eat an elephant, right? Stay tuned, later this week I'm going to have some specific suggestions for you with what to do with all of your memory-keeping and photo stuff!

I'm spending 31 days writing and sharing a series about Documenting Your Everyday this month.

 Click here to see all of the posts as they're added and follow along.