Who's in charge here?

For the last couple of years, Jane and I have been in hot competition over charge of this house and it's contents. I figure that I'm in charge, seeing as how I gave her life. She's pretty determined that I'm wrong. I am either completely ignored or openly defied by her about once every ten minutes or so and she feels completely justified. Sometimes I just deal with it and move on, but at least once a day we end up yelling at each other, neither of us willing to relinquish our God given right to be in charge. Imagine two wild animals fighting for alpha position except we are both a stubborn as mules and we never get any closer to resolving the issue. If I leave the room for half a second I return to find that she has given Lizzy permission to have an enormous red popsicle and eat it in the front yard by herself then shown her outside and closed and locked the door. I'm so not kidding.

Today, Jane and Lizzy were "painting" outside. "Painting" consists of 2 cheap brushes, a small bucket of water and the patio as a canvas. I stole this idea from another mom's blog and it entertains the kids almost every day. You should try it.

Anyway... This was a bad idea today for a couple of reasons. For one, Lizzy is sick as a dog and shouldn't have been outside and for another, I was upstairs trying to make some barrettes. All of a sudden I heard the all too familiar banshee scream. This time, it was Jane. I ran downstairs to try to prevent her from coming upstairs and waking Charlie.

Turns out that she had fallen and scraped her knees on the bricks and there was a little legitimate blood. The girls REALLY like bandaids, so we have the general rule that unless there is "red liquid pouring from your skin" you don't need one. I carried her and her sobbing self to the couch while I went to fetch the Hello Kitty bandaids that I bought at Target last week. I searched, but they weren't there. All of a sudden I hear Jane pull it together....

"Mom, you aren't looking in the right place. The bandaids are up there, I know it, you aren't looking hard enough."

"Jane, I've taken down the bins and looked through them, they aren't here."

"Bring them here, I'll find them. Nevermind, (sigh) I'll just come over there."

And then I watch her stand up, walk from the couch to the kitchen and climb up on a stool. She insisted that I put the bins of medicine on the counter for her to go through. And with an air of superiority I get...

"They aren't in this one, give me the other one... Hmmmm. Mom, they aren't here. You'd better go find them upstairs. They must be in the bathroom."

Obediently, I go. I return a couple minutes later with a couple generic bandaids that I scrounged up from the bottom of the vanity drawer. She informed me that they will have to suffice and starts to open them. I wanted to put some ointment on the scrapes since they were pretty dirty, so I told her not to move until I get the Neosporin. When I get back, she's trying to bandage her own wounds...

"Jane! I told you not to do that! Let me put some of this cream on them."

"Fine! But this one goes on this knee here and this one goes over here."

"I think that I know how to put on a bandaid, just let me do it."

"That's too much cream! I don't need that much. You're putting it in the wrong spot, it needs to be more over here! We need another bandaid, this spot isn't covered well enough!"

I tried to keep it together, but I don't take very kindly to a four year old treating me as though I'm so incompetent that I can't successfully adhere a bandaid to a knee.

As soon as I finished, the tears began again.

"Mooooooooom! I feel horrible! I neeeeeeeed you to caaaaaaaarry me!"

"Fine, but I'm taking a picture first."



the invalid.

I'm dreaming of a white kitchen

It's actually happening...




We are giving my kitchen a much wanted (no, it isn't "needed") makeover. This is the easiest makeover ever. Since we have an IKEA kitchen, it's just off with one door and on with another. I'm bordering on giddy about it. I LOVE white kitchens and because I'm a snob (I figure I must be), I couldn't allow myself to be happy without one.



I'm painting the interiors of the cabinets with glass doors this blue color. Pretty, eh?



And as I was taking pictures, I started to wonder if my newly acquired Costco flowers might be behind Lizzy's absolutely miserable allergies. She's been coughing, gagging, sniffling and crying all day. Poor baby. I thought they might add a "homey" feel to the tools, debris and folding table as a makeshift countertop, but now I feel bad.

On another note, Charlie really likes bouncing. He's been sitting in the jumper bouncing and bouncing for like half an hour now. It's fabulous.


p.s. - if you or someone you love/like/tolerate is in the market for the used IKEA doors and hardware that are pictured, let me know. They are dirty, they have two sets of holes drilled in them from when we changed the hardware they are beech colored, they are now discontinued (so you can't get anymore to match) and they are cheap.

It's coming....

We've been getting a little taste of the upcoming summer and it has reminded of some of my favorite things about warm weather.



It's wonderful how much time the girls spend outside. They are happy, I'm happy and for some reason, I almost never mind it when they get filthy. I enjoy seeing all the dirt wash away each night in the bath, followed by everyone crashing after a long, wonderful day.



I also love when the girls just hang out in their swimming suits which facilitates their running through sprinklers at every opportunity. They also look fabulous paired with boots. This is Lizzy's "cheese!" face. We might have to work on that.



Crusty faces, pink cheeks, wild hair, sundresses, popsicles, flip flops, late nights... is there anything better than kids and summer?

And I'm giving myself about 2 weeks of 90 degree weather before I start complaining about the heat and wish that it were fall.

I'm not a regular mom, I'm a cool mom

Sometimes, I wish that I were a fun mom. You know the type, the women that seem to have endless time and energy to play with their children, decorate things with them, build things with them actually make the things that they see in Martha Stewart Kids and other equally idealistic and unreasonable magazines. They must design their lives around making life fun for their kids.

No, I am not a fun mom.

I've decided that it's because I'm too selfish. I want to be able to do what I want to do too often. I'm ok with it, they'll get over it. Children are incredibly resilient, thank goodness. Most of the interactions I have with the girls involve telling them to stop bothering each other, stop bothering me, stop making messes, start cleaning up and other similar not fun things. One of Jane's favorite lines (that I hear about 20 times a day) is...

"Mom! I'm NOT having ANY FUN!"

I've told her that I don't try anymore because she never has any fun and I've actually found that when I use reverse psychology on her and tell her that I'm going to try to do everything that I can make sure her day is as boring as possible, she goes out of her way to have as much fun as possible. It's amazing. Does that kind of manipulation qualify as child abuse?

Every so often, when I'm feeling particularly energetic, I make an attempt to do something fun and then I take pictures of it to post on my blog so that anyone that sees it will think that I do that kind of stuff all time. I'm deceiving them all.

I don't know if was the sun or the fact that I'm feeling well rested after being able to put a long week behind me with a great night's sleep last night (comparatively speaking, always comparatively speaking), but today....I was feeling fun.

So I thought to myself "what does a fun mom do?" and it came to me that I've seen a lot of women post about these muffin tin lunches that they make for their kids. If you're a little behind the fun mom times, you fill little mini muffin tins with different foods so that your children can enjoy a full shmorgasbord of little kid food AND eat a nutritious lunch without noticing. Kids are such suckers, they'll eat just about anything as long as it looks cute, that is until they have time to realize they don't like it. This is why you limit the intake of each item to a couple of bites and provide lots of items. Brent and I used to use that trick on Lizzy when she was on her hunger strike last year. We'd give her a nibble of cheese, and spoonful of yogurt, a single fishy cracker, etc., until we hoped she'd had enough food to keep her alive. Where were the fun moms and their muffin tins then? Huh?

But I digress.

I don't have the necessary mini muffin tins, but I did have these silicone ones that my grandma gave me and while it didn't provide nearly the number of options I would have liked, it looked pretty.





They even got a whole hearted "WOW!" out of Jane when she saw what she was eating for lunch.



And the girls ate pretty well too.

Success! Until next time, Fun Mom. Right now, I've got to get back to being boring.

I feel alive again

We had a fun weekend full of outdoor activities. It's about time it warmed up around here.

Brent started building my island for my kitchen.



The girls really like the construction phase.
(now I'm all worried that it's going to take too much space)

Brent took the girls to the zoo



not that you can tell from the photo, but trust me, they were there.

Afterwards, Brooklyn came to play.



A year ago, when we moved, I was really bitter and just missed my old house. At this point, I've gotten over it and the only thing I really miss is living across the street from Brooklyn (and her mom, of course)



They love her too.



Charlie also enjoyed the warm weather.

We invited ourselves to dinner at Leslie and Cameron's house on Sunday. It was de-licious. After dinner and several of my perfected homemade oatmeal cookies, we decided to walk off some of the calories.



I love walks in the evenings. This time we headed for the Daybreak temple, it's almost finished.



Ben was there too and cute as ever, just like his little brother...






We tried.

We had a really nice weekend, hope that you did too.

Happy Birthday Lizzy

Today, Lizzy was successful in her attempt to turn two.

Birthdays mean a lot more to me as a mother. I always think of what I was doing however many years ago on that very day...



Funny that I thought she was going to look like me :)

My tiny little girl has certainly flourished. She's not a runt anymore.









Jane specifically requested that we have a "feast" for her birthday. I'm not that good at preparing feasts, but I tried, wanting to make the day a little special. Lizzy just wanted her rainbow jell-o and a cupcake.




(I took photographs to document my attempt)

We love Lizzy SOOOOO much. She is the sweetest, funniest little thing. I can't even think about her without smiling, can you blame me?

Regret

My basic nature requires that I live with a great deal of regret and being the mother of three children triples the amount of regret that I live with. One of my biggest regrets as a mother is that I didn't pierce my girls' ears when they were babies. I know, it seems dumb, but I knew that they'd want them pierced eventually and it's so much easier to just do it as babies, I should have just done it then. Now I've created problems.

Jane has been desperate for several months to get her ears pierced and I told her that she could do it whenever she wanted to, but she was terrified. I don't blame her, the thought of forcing two more holes into my head isn't a pleasant one for me either.

In an effort to appease my guilt and satisfy her apparent need for adornment (that's a word, right?), I made her several pairs of clip on earrings. I felt like quite an attentive parent. She would wear them as long as her little ears could tolerate them, but they pinch! I can't imagine that piercing them hurts any less that clipping those things on.

Finally, Saturday morning, she must have had enough because she came in our room, woke me up, and with a look of utter and complete determination said

"Mom, I'm going to get my ears pierced today. I'm gunna do it."

I didn't take her seriously because I was sure she'd bail. She didn't. I held my word and took her to the mall where she bravely sat there and took the pain like a pro. Not a flinch and not a tear. That's saying something, coming from Jane who cries at the drop of a hat.



I'm actually really proud of her for going through with it, bravery isn't her strength. Now I just have the rest of my life to regret that I've been raising her to allow her vanity to motivate her that much. Oh well. I'll worry about that another day. She's stinking adorable.