Some­times when I’m read­ing posts on oth­ers’ blogs, I read them, maybe leave a com­ment, and don’t think much more of it.  Some­times when I’m read­ing posts, the same topic comes up again and again or a topic hits close to home.  That is what hap­pened to me this week.  First, I came across this post on facil­i­tat­ing children’s play by Allie from No Time For Flash Cards.  Then, a cou­ple days later, I was read­ing her blog and Amy from Media Mac­a­roni had posted this!

For awhile now, I’ve been feel­ing like we had too many toys (just like that post by Amy!).  This sum­mer, we moved from a house where we had play areas in the liv­ing room, fam­ily room, and in the boys’ bed­room to an apart­ment.  Also, both K and A have had birth­days since.  AND, with Christ­mas com­ing up, I have been feel­ing over­whelmed with all of our stuff.  I know that we will be receiv­ing many gifts from friends and fam­ily, and we will have to find a way to incor­po­rate the new books, toys, and activ­i­ties into our rou­tine and space with­out com­pro­mis­ing access to some of my kids’ favorites.

Lately, I’ve been rem­i­nisc­ing about our days in our old house.  When we decided to put the house on the mar­ket, I packed up (and/or gave away) many of the things that we didn’t use.  We had some in bins in clos­ets.  We put some in stor­age, and we gave some to good­will.  Even though we had less stuff, it seemed to me that there was much more play­ing going on.  The boys fought less.  There was less mess, and they seemed to enjoy their stuff more.  So, between my nos­tal­gic mem­o­ries and now read­ing the posts I men­tioned above, I think our play spaces will be under­go­ing some seri­ous trans­for­ma­tion.  If I get brave, I may even take a pic­ture today to post as a before pic­ture and con­trast with my after pic­ture. 

Also, in addi­tion to want­ing less mess and stuff around, I also want to start focus­ing on Christ­mas more with the boys.  I want to talk about Christ­mas and what it means to us.  I want to do things for oth­ers dur­ing this sea­son.  I want to spend more time together and less time wor­ried about our stuff.  I am try­ing to fig­ure out ways to move the focus from presents and dec­o­ra­tions to love, car­ing, giv­ing, and Jesus’ birth.  I’m hop­ing that by start­ing to get our stuff under con­trol, we will be able to do more of that.

Today is one of those days.  Nor­mally, when I say “one of those days” I mean a day when one child man­ages to pee on the floor NEXT TO the potty or when some­one dumps a pot of tepid cof­fee on the floor or when a child throws away an impor­tant part of a carseat and your hus­band ends up jump­ing into the dump­ster to recover it.  Today I mean it is one of those days when I look at my kids and I am filled with love for them.  I want to kiss them.  I want to hug them.  I want every­one who has ever seen them in a lesser cute moment to see them right now.  I want them to know I love them SO much, and that I am so blessed to be their mother.  Some days I feel inad­e­quate in my abil­ity to par­ent them and deal with the dis­ci­pline issues that come up.  Today I feel inad­e­quate and so unwor­thy of hav­ing such beau­ti­ful chil­dren.  I love it when it is one of these days.

Well, maybe not per­fect but it was very cute.

Today, my kids went to my sister-in-law’s pho­tog­ra­phy stu­dio to have their 2 year (sec­ond try for these), 4 year, and Christ­mas pic­tures.  I wasn’t com­pletely sure how things were going to go.  I had an idea though.  I thought that K would prob­a­bly be mostly coop­er­a­tive for a while.  I fig­ured that A would be reluc­tant, and we would be lucky to get any 2 year or Christ­mas pictures.

We took A to have his 2 year pic­tures taken in July, but it was too much for him and too dif­fer­ent.  He wasn’t at all inter­ested in stand­ing in front of her back­drop.  He didn’t like her stuffed bird that helps her.  He didn’t want to sit on her chair or stand on her step stool.  We didn’t push it.  A has always been slow to warm up, so I knew push­ing him wasn’t going to be the answer.

This time, I decided to prac­tice ahead of time.  Sev­eral months ago, I read a blog post I, of course, can­not find or remem­ber where it came from.  It sug­gested that when encoun­ter­ing new sit­u­a­tions, par­ents should prac­tice ahead of time with their kids.  The mom who wrote the blog post talked about going to the den­tist and how she and her daugh­ter role played what might hap­pen.  If any­one knows where this post came from, please let me know.  I’d love to link to it.

So, last night, we got the vests out that the boys were plan­ning to wear in their pic­tures.  We put a blan­ket over the back of the couch.  I got a puppy to be my helper, and we took some pic­tures.  I told the boys where to sit.  I had Jason sit with them, too.  I also had them prac­tice stand­ing together and hav­ing K put his arm around A.  Then, we reversed roles.  K took our pic­tures.  He posed me and Jason.  He got to have the puppy as his helper.  It was a quick activ­ity.  I wasn’t sure it had made any dif­fer­ence at all.  Today was going to be the test.

When we went to have their pic­tures taken, I was wait­ing to see how A reacted.  Their Aun­tie Tera was great with them.  She had K take his pic­tures first.  He def­i­nitely worked the cam­era.  Next, came the pic­tures of the boys together.  I held my breath and waited to see what hap­pened.  Then, I saw a smile.  And another!  I was so excited!  I was prac­ti­cally beam­ing by the time A had his pic­tures.  I can say with cer­tainty that we are going to have some pretty cute hand­some pic­tures and Christ­mas cards!  I can’t wait to see them.  Thanks again, Tera!

Here are a cou­ple of the pic­tures from our prac­tice ses­sion.  They aren’t quite the same as the ones we’ll be send­ing out in a cou­ple weeks.

The food prop

With Dad

Not look­ing at cam­era

When you have a baby, you can be pretty cer­tain you will hear a few things.  “Oh, he/she’s so adorable!”  “Oh, how sweet!”  “I bet you are lov­ing being a new mom!”  “I love those baby sounds.” and of course “Is he/she a good baby?”  What is a good baby?  What is a bad baby?  In most cases, I was able to under­stand the intent behind the ques­tion “Is he a good baby?” to be “How does he sleep?”  “Does he eat well?”  I’m sure that I have even said those words.  That was before, before I had a baby who was not a “good” sleeper or a “good” eater.  Those of you who have read this blog for a while or know my fam­ily know that baby A was not an easy baby.  He was sen­si­tive to dairy.  He had reflux pretty badly.  He didn’t sleep well.  He nursed at least every hour for the first six or seven months.  He didn’t eat many solids at all before he was 11 or 12 months old, and worst of all, he didn’t want any­one but myself or my hus­band to hold him!

Many times in A’s first year, I was asked, “Is he a good baby?”  Of course he was a good baby.  Look at him, I wanted to say!  Isn’t he one of the most beau­ti­ful peo­ple ever to be a part of the human race???  Couldn’t they see only by look­ing at him that he was obvi­ously amaz­ing?  Then, the ques­tions got spe­cific.  “How often does he eat?”  “How many times is he get­ting up at night?”  “How does he nap?”  I usu­ally gave them the answers with a smile on my face.  Even though I was going crazy with a new­born and a tod­dler who were both nurs­ing like crazy, I didn’t want any­one to think any­thing about my son that might bor­der on less than per­fect.  I vented many times to friends about these ques­tions, I almost always answered them with a smile.  I rarely showed my frus­tra­tions or tired­ness, because I knew I would get advice I didn’t want.

Now, both of my chil­dren are preschool­ers.  When talk­ing with other par­ents, friends, and fam­ily the focus still seems to be on food and sleep with added ques­tions about obe­di­ence.  “What does your daugh­ter eat for sup­per?”  “Can you get your kids to try new foods?”  (see my pre­vi­ous post) “Is your 3 year old still nap­ping?”  “How can I get my child to x the first time I ask him?”

I’ve recently started won­der­ing at what point are we going to start focus­ing on things that are going to make a life­long impact in their lives?  Has any­one ever asked you “Is your four year old com­pas­sion­ate?”  “Does she work on her prob­lem solv­ing skills?”  “How can I pro­vide a rich envi­ron­ment to fos­ter her imagination/creativity?”  Some of us may have heard these ques­tions from our friends and fam­ily, but unfor­tu­nately, these things don’t seem to get nearly the inter­est that sleep, food, and obe­di­ence get.

I don’t have any answers.  I’m not going to pro­pose a solu­tion that will end the focus on the “good” baby who eats and sleeps as the book pre­dicts.  I only hope to point out that while those things seem to be so impor­tant when our kids are lit­tle, they decrease in impor­tance as a child grows.

It is that time at our house.  In fact, soon, it might be that time mul­ti­plied by two!  K is will be 4 in Novem­ber.  He had shown inter­est in using the potty on and off since he was about 18 or 19 months.  He would tell us when he needed to go for a few days, then, noth­ing for a cou­ple weeks.  We assumed even­tu­ally that he would just do it and it would be almost effortless.

Haha­haha.  Even as I write that, I feel a lit­tle silly for being so sure about that.  I’m sure that is the case for some kids.  How­ever, with K, almost noth­ing has been that easy.  He is a kid who doesn’t take change or learn­ing new skills easily.

Last week, we decided to have a bare bot­tom day.  K did great!  He ran to the bath­room on his own sev­eral times through­out the day.  He didn’t even come to me for help or any­thing.  Then, I think he may have decided that it was too much work to keep track of his potty needs.  After that, the acci­dents (and I use that word loosely) started.  “K, do you need to use the bath­room?”  “No.”  Three min­utes later, “Mom, I peed.”  “K, do you need to try going potty?”  “No.”  A minute later, “Mom, I peed.”  Today, he had an acci­dent less than 5 min­utes after using the potty.  He had another one within the next 40 min­utes.  After the sec­ond one, I went to get wipes, because he was dirty and wet, and he gave a friend of mine who was stand­ing by him a pretty mis­chie­vous smile.

My goal is to give him the oppor­tu­nity to go and be suc­cess­ful with­out tak­ing on own­er­ship of whether or not the process “works.”  It is very hard though.  I find it nearly impos­si­ble to be neu­tral after he pees less than 5 or 10 min­utes after using the potty or after me ask­ing him if he needs to go.  It seems pretty inten­tional to me.  I strongly hes­i­tate to apply inten­tion to my children’s actions, but in this case, there are times when it seems SO clear to me that he sim­ply does not want to be both­ered with using the potty.  It is very dif­fi­cult to remain calm and neu­tral about it.

I have gone over this in my head more than a few times.  Is he ready?  Am I push­ing him?  Am I expect­ing too much?  Should I have waited?  Was he show­ing inter­est?  Sigh.  I know he can do it.  I know that he is able to be mostly acci­dent free, because he did it on his own.  I don’t think I am expect­ing unrea­son­able things from him.  But, still I strug­gle with this process.  I strug­gle with my expec­ta­tions.  I strug­gle to avoid power strug­gles with him.  It is what it is, and right now, it is some­thing that is def­i­nitely test­ing me and mak­ing me reex­am­ine quite a bit about myself.

Have you ever had one of those days?  A friend of mine asked that in her Face­book sta­tus tonight.  I replied (self­ishly) by ask­ing, “Do you mean like when you walk into music class and pro­ceed to burst into tears?” Sorry, Friend.  I really should not have responded to your sta­tus by mak­ing it about me.  I apologize.

The rea­son I knew what she was talk­ing about was because we had one of those days.  We have had sev­eral of those days lately.  As I said, I did walk into my kids’ music class this morn­ing and imme­di­ately start cry­ing.  I’m not sure what exactly caused it, but I just felt emo­tional and all of a sud­den, there were tears run­ning down my face! I’m not sure who was my sur­prised, me or my friend who teaches the class.

Our morn­ing started out a lit­tle rocky. K, my 3 year old, is work­ing on learn­ing to use the potty.  A, my 2 year old, is get­ting new words at light speed and also work­ing on those stub­born 2 year molars.  Adding all that up, along with a tired mom, and putting it on top of miss­ing our music class, and there you have it.  Me.  Cry­ing.  In front of other people!!!

The day didn’t change all that much from there.  We went to a friend’s house and played out­side with some of their toys for a while.  We had lunch, rested, and got ready to play at the park.  We played with friends at the park, and we had sup­per with those friends.  All those things were good, but I still felt a bit blah.  I felt like I could either be snappy with the boys or be in tears if the right (or wrong) thing happened.

Most nights at our house, you will find Jason putting the boys to bed.  I am often putting away sup­per, clean­ing up the liv­ing room, exer­cis­ing, or doing any­thing else you can think of.  Jason usu­ally puts the boys to bed.  Tonight, our friends left our house a bit later than we expected.  We had a sec­ond round of hunger after we brushed teeth. Things just took longer, and both boys were tired and warm.  As Jason was read­ing books to them, I was walk­ing past their bed­room door, and I knew that I wanted to be with them.  K sat on my lap for a bit.  A gave me a cou­ple kisses, and the four of us sat together for a few min­utes before bed.

Then, came the most beau­ti­ful part of my day.  A laid down in his crib.  K got him­self set­tled with his pil­lows, blan­kets, and every­thing else he had col­lected.  I watched both of my chil­dren drift off to sleep.  Ini­tially, I was turned toward K.  He had asked me to rub his tummy.  As I was doing that, I was watch­ing his eyes.  They would droop a lit­tle, blink hard, and pop open.  Then, he looked at me and smiled a super sleepy smile.  Again, his eyes drooped and popped back open.  He did this a few times until when they drooped and he blinked, they didn’t pop.  They stayed shut.  After he had closed his eyes, I turned toward A.  He was lay­ing on his side.  He saw me turn over, and he gave me his super sleepy smile.  I watched as he tossed and turned a bit.  He pulled his legs up under him­self, turned his head back and forth a cou­ple times, and drifted into sleep.

After the not-so-great day we (I) had, I felt very hon­ored to have been a part of some­thing so sweet, so gen­tle, so beau­ti­ful.  What a bless­ing my boys are.

Recently, sev­eral friends of mine have taken trips with their young chil­dren.  When I see their pic­tures or hear their sto­ries, I get the travel bug.  Before the kids were born, Jason and I did a lit­tle trav­el­ing.  We went to Win­nipeg a few times, Seat­tle, Florida, and some more regional travel.  Since kids, we haven’t done much at all.  Look­ing at pic­tures (thanks, Face­book!), I am start­ing to get the travel bug.

Then, real­ity hits.    We did a small road­trip this week­end.  On Fri­day, we drove the 4 hours to my par­ents’ house.  We brought books, toys, burp cloths, and snacks.  I thought for sure the trip to their house would be no prob­lem.  Unfor­tu­nately, K and A didn’t agree with me.  They slept for less than an hour, and the rest of the time, they really needed to be enter­tained.  By the time we were about 30 min­utes from our des­ti­na­tion, I was ready to go to Bis­marck the next day in order to buy a DVD player with dual screens for the trip home.  (We didn’t do that, but I was very seri­ous about doing it.)  The trip home turned out to be much eas­ier which was a pleas­ant sur­prise, but I am def­i­nitely not ready to try too many trips that are much longer than this one was.

I sup­pose some of the wrin­kles get ironed out with prac­tice and as the boys get used to being in the car for longer peri­ods of time, but that seems like a painful tran­si­tion!  Maybe there are some secret tricks I don’t know, if there are, please share.  I would love to know!  I am pretty sure that if there aren’t secrets that would change the whole expe­ri­ence time and prac­tice are prob­a­bly the answers.    I guess the travel bug will have to wait a lit­tle longer to be satisfied.

Yes, appar­ently one or both Jason and I say “oofta.” Yes, we also live in North Dakota, so it prob­a­bly hap­pens more than we ever real­ize. This fact was ham­mered home to us the other night at sup­per when Jason said, “oofta” after A had a cough­ing spell. K looked at him and said, “Asa poopy?” So appar­ently, we not only use the word oofta, but we use it as an exple­tive when chang­ing a smelly diaper.

More and more over the past few weeks, we’ve been hear­ing K repeat things that we have said to him. One night, Jason was giv­ing him two choices for get­ting his dia­per changed. K kept telling Jason that he didn’t want to have his (poopy) dia­per changed. He wanted to wear it. (On a side note, you can tell we’re not exactly steam­ing down the road of potty learn­ing . ) Jason told him, “That’s not a choice.” Later that night dur­ing the bed­time rou­tine, K and Jason were talk­ing and at one point, K said to Jason, “No, Daddy, that not a choice.”

Last week, we spent a lit­tle time with my mother-in-law and father-in-law. One of the days, my nieces (ages 6 and 4 were over). At one point, I heard them argu­ing, and the six year old was say­ing, “That’s fair!” to her sis­ter over whether or not she needed to share some toys with her. Fast for­ward to this morn­ing. I was show­ing K the new library books we had checked out for this week. He was pretty excited about them, and he kept pulling them out of the bag and say­ing, “That very fair!”

Then, there are the things he picks up that I’m not sure where they came from. “You know bet­ter, Mommy!” “A, you being bad!” “No, no, no, no, no!” These are not things we say to him. I know that now that his peers are speak­ing more and we are around more and dif­fer­ent peo­ple, his pool of expe­ri­ences to draw from also grows.

He’s at an age where he is such a sponge. He doesn’t have pre­con­ceived ideas of what is fun or not fun (video games vs. books) or what music is good or not good (pop music vs. opera). He loves so many dif­fer­ent things. I think that his new ten­dency to repeat things that we say at just the right time is good for us in more than one way. While it reminds me that he’s always lis­ten­ing to what we say, it also reminds me that he is pick­ing stuff up All. The. Time. I am rais­ing a lit­tle sponge, and I want him to be able to absorb all that he can before this time ends.

You know that when­ever your spouse says, “Do you know what your son just did?” some­thing hasn’t gone quite right. This morn­ing, I was lay­ing in bed nurs­ing A, and Jason said those words. I didn’t answer, because I knew he was dying to tell me. Sure enough, the answer fol­lowed almost imme­di­ately. “He put Magic Butt Cream in his hair.” For those of you who don’t know, Magic Butt Cream is the dia­per cream that we get from our doc­tor for a dia­per rash that isn’t con­trolled by the reg­u­lar over the counter stuff. A few weeks ago, K and Jason had a talk about how we don’t eat the Magic Butt Cream. It’s only for sore butts. It’s not for eat­ing. Well, he didn’t try eat­ing it again. This time, he took about 1/2 of what was left, and he smeared it in his hair. Ugh.

Unfor­tu­nately for me, Jason was on his way out the door and on his way to work. I was lucky enough to take over the emer­gency bath. In addi­tion to hav­ing a head full of grease, K did not want to take a bath, and he had a poopy dia­per! I man­aged to talk him into the bath. Then, I started in on his hair with Dawn. Dawn cuts grease, right? I fig­ured that was my best chance at get­ting some of that stuff out of his hair. He was patient enough to let me lather and rinse his hair twice. THen, he lost patience, so I took him out of the bath, and he spent the rest of the day with the wet look.

Tonight at sup­per, he con­tin­ued on with the hair exper­i­ment and decided to try apple­sauce in his hair. I told Jason that it was his turn to work on K’s hair. He did the 2nd bath of the day with both boys. While they were in the bath­room, I checked the inter­net and found that some peo­ple sug­gested using corn­starch for get­ting Vasaline out of hair, so we tried it. K thought it was pretty funny, and I fig­ured it couldn’t hurt. I didn’t get a chance to see his hair after it dried, so I’m not sure if the corn­starch solved our prob­lem or not. I’ll be inter­ested to see how it looks tomorrow.

If you don’t want to read about nurs­ing, today’s a good day to take a break from the beau­ti­ful let­down.

First, nurs­ing bras. Who makes these things? Why do they all sag? I have yet to find a nurs­ing bra with good sup­port. Even when I take the lit­tle adjuster things (the plas­tic clasps on the bra that make the straps longer or shorter) and push them over the back of my shoul­ders, I am still not get­ting decent sup­port. I have been wear­ing nurs­ing bras since Novem­ber of 2005, and I’m still unim­pressed. Any suggestions?

Sec­ondly, nurs­ing in win­ter. I need some new win­ter clothes or some­thing. Nurs­ing in clothes that keep me warm is a tough job! Sweat­shirts are too bulky. Some of my under­shirts are a lit­tle too tight. Some shirts don’t work out that well with a nurs­ing tank­top. Sigh… Appar­ently, I’ve been hav­ing apparel issues lately.

Next, falling asleep while nurs­ing. Nei­ther of my boys have ever been the nurse to sleep type. A did for a while, but he stopped that quite a while ago. K never really nursed to sleep even as an infant. I’m not sure if it was the turkey or what, but in the past few days, both K and A have fallen asleep in my arms while nurs­ing. It’s such a sweet feel­ing. They’re just so sweet and pure and loving.

Then, there’s three years of nurs­ing and almost eigh­teen months of tan­dem nurs­ing. After three years of nurs­ing K and about 18 months of nurs­ing K and A, I’m start­ing to feel ready for K to get ready to wean. At this point, I don’t think that I will do any­thing about my feel­ings. If K isn’t ready to wean, I won’t push him. I’ve con­sid­ered lim­it­ing the num­ber of times he nurses in a day, but I don’t think that’s fair to him. If he did it out of bore­dom or habit, I might con­sider it. I don’t think he does though. I think he really needs to nurse in order to reestab­lish a con­nec­tion with me. This morn­ing, my par­ents were up with the boys while Jason and I got a bit more sleep (thanks a lot, Mom and Dad, we appre­ci­ate it). I heard Kael out­side the door at one point ask­ing for “mommy milk.” I heard him ask­ing for me a while later just as I was about to get up. When I came out to the liv­ing room, he said, “Kael needed you. My wanted mommy milk to feel bet­ter.” Now, really, how can I argue with that? I don’t, because I know he’s telling me the truth.

Finally, sup­port. I have the best fam­ily. They are all great about the nurs­ing and tan­dem nurs­ing. My mom nursed me for at least a year and a half. She nursed my brother until he was almost three. She’s always been very sup­port­ive of the boys nurs­ing. She encour­aged me to check out the local breast­feed­ing sup­port group which I have really enjoyed, and she was a huge help when both of the boys were new­borns. She sat up with me and helped me with dia­per changes and burp­ing. WONDERFUL! I know that some peo­ple are for­tu­nate enough to have sup­port when their babies are young, but as the baby grows, their sup­port fades away and they hear “when are you going to start that baby on formula/solds/cows milk?” or “when are you going to stop nurs­ing?” I have yet to hear either of those ques­tions. Of course, my boys both eat solids, but I *never* get asked when I’m going to wean! That means a lot to me. Also, over the week­end, my par­ents stayed here as did my brother and sister-in-law. They don’t have kids yet, so I’m not really sure what their thoughts on nurs­ing are, but I would never have had any rea­son to sus­pect they are any­thing but pos­i­tive and accept­ing. K nursed sev­eral times over the week­end, and A nursed MANY times. In fact, he nursed a cou­ple times at the din­ner table on Thurs­day dur­ing our Thanks­giv­ing din­ner, and no one bat­ted an eye.