My Little Experiments

I took these pictures of Lou Lou a few weeks ago and I love them. Her face in the first one is a "who me?" face and the second is her face pulling. I thought I was pretty clever for catching it. She has to get up everyday and get dressed. Coat and shoes. The whole bit. It sort of makes me nuts some mornings, but it gets me going. This day her vest was her "coak" and I got away with it. Nothing like her putting her coat and shoes on and then two minutes later they are strung through the house... like everything else she touches.

Sometimes I wish I could seriously start parenting all over again. With the knowledge I know now. I was telling my friend this yesterday. Poor Piper, she was just an experiment. Luckily I have cleaned my act before she will have any memory of it. The sad thing is is I bet I will say this in another five years. The thing is, the more you learn and read, the more you realize how little you know. Maybe it'd be better to blindly raise children without any psychological knowledge. I have this things for parenting books. Probably because of their psychology base, which I love, psychology. Now if only I could implement what I know. In the heat of the moment, it's a little hard though. But baby steps. Keep trying, keep learning, keep implementing as best you can. Just do what you can do.
Raising kids is just like any other phase in life. You can look back and wish you would have know this or that and how you would have done things differently. But that is the beauty in growth, we need that to learn. Even the hardest lessons we go through that wish we would have know things and done them differently will help us in the future. I have to remember that so I don't have regret. I can learn from relationships I do regret to not enter new ones of that kind, I can learn from mistakes I made with Piper and then on Beckett and do things differently with the consecutive kids. All we can do is keep trying, growing and bettering ourselves. Keep learning.

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, Happy Birthday

My memoir keeping has been lacking to say the least. Who has time to try to remember stuff?? And then to put it into words and pretty pictures.... not me, but I gotta keep making time. Memories are more important in the long run than a crumb free floor. Although my aversion to things sticking to my feet is pretty all consuming-does anyone else have hardwood through their whole house?
So first of all was Christmas. Beck is really into Star Wars and Legos so his presents reflected that. Christmas day was on a Sunday which was really nice because we were home a lot more. And me being in the choir made going to church a necessity which was really nice. It was a great holiday full of all our family and great food and lucky, lucky children. Here's each of them on Christmas day.







My little Peanut went to PRIMARY. He is the cutest little peanut there. He sits there on those little chairs and soaks it all in and doesn't say a word. I love my little angel boy and can't believe he is in primary. Here he is on this first day for him.
And be sure to notice his super cool cars.




Another big day for Peanut was his 4th birthday. Star Wars themed. Here's all the Star Wars lover together in their appropriate attire at his party.


And big news in Lou Lou land:
She hasn't changed a bit! She's still a character. With more sass than her little body can handle. So sometimes she just spontaneously combusts into fits on the floor. Here are her "duck lips" that my mom always points out. And she does have this cute little duck mouth.




For my first post of 2012 I feel like I should pay tribute to the new year. I am not really into resolutions although I made one called operation run solo. It was geared toward running alone more since my sweet running partner is too prego to run, but luckily a good amount of ladies in the hood have resolutions to run races so I do not lack people to run with. I continue to be on my journey of home and family. I find it imperative to live simply. I see a huge different in my kids when we do so and in me too. More quiet, more playing, less toxicity into our home, less outer influence on us and on me and the way I view myself and life. When we are true to ourselves and centered through simplicity then we can be sure of who we are or continue to find that as we travel on our own journey. Being receptive and intuitive. Which can't happen if we are always listening to outside influences. It's hard but I resolve to stay strong.
I look forward to this new year and the challenges and growth and memories that will take place. I learned a lot in the previous year. A lot about mothering, a lot about other people, a lot about myself and I can only be so lucky as to live through another.

Recently..

Let's start with the most important thing:

Piper turned SIX!



We had a party with some of her friends. She planned the whole thing. It consisted of these things:
-a pajama party
-a teddy bear camp out
-Indian face painting
-Indian hat making
-home made pizza
-musical chairs
-presents, of course.

I have some cute pictures of all the kids with their faces painted and Indian decorated hats in the tent in our living room, but contacting all those parents to see if they mind their child being posted on the internet isn't worth showing you all the cute pictures. But you can imagine, right? So here is one picture of a kid that I have consented to be put on the internet.



We had a little family party with soup and bread bowls.



Before that was Halloween. We had a nice little soup and chili party with some friends and my mom came out for trick or treating.
Piper was Dorthy, with Toto of course.


Miss Lou was a unicorn, for about ten minutes.

Something

This child is such a little stinker. This is what I do with her a lot of the time when I need to get something done, stick her somewhere she can't get down. And she proceeds to say "stuck" it's pretty funny.

She definitely continues to be our most difficult child. She rampidly runs around the house destroying stuff and getting into stuff, consistently challenging me to not be complacent. It would be so much easier to give her what she wants. Teaching her is and I have a feeling is going to continue to be a really big challenge. Whew. I think I can, I think I can, I think I can.

Jake and I both go to bed reading parenting books. No joke.

And it remains to be seen if they are helping.

But at least we feel smart.

And at least we are trying... Right? And I'm sure I have got to be doing something right because there are some pretty intoxicating moments in there.

Kindergarten Picture

This is Piper's first school picture. She is absolutely loving kindergarten. She is so curious and soaks up everything she can. I wish I had the drive and thirst for knowledge that she does right now. It's really fun to see her learn and grow and read and try to spell EVERYTHING (this may or may not get old when in the car). But she's a little smarty pants who comes home everyday with a full report on what she learned, who she played with, who she sat by on the bus and how when her teacher sneezes the whole class says "bless you". I love it, it's pretty fun.



Oh and might I just add that this is the month I turn 30. *WHEW*
How am I supposed to feel about this? I feel like it should be monumentous, but it's not. I guess when you hang out with mostly 30+ year olds and have three kids it's really not that big of a deal? Don't mark my words though as the month goes on and it gets official, I might have some thirds life crisis or something.

A Year And A Half Today

My little Lou Lou is a year and half today. How quickly time with little kids goes by. I feel like it's almost impossible to slow down and enjoy it. No matter how much I try it just keeps going by quicker and quicker.
Indie is such a character. She has the most colorful personality. She still follows me around all day crying and wanting to be held and wanting to be given attention almost every minute she's awake. She so so sweet and kind and tender hearted though. A perfect balance between the older two. I love the way she smells, I love her sweet feet. I love the way she holds the silky part of her blanket and makes sucking moaning sounds when she's really tired and her binky is in her mouth. I love the way she wraps both her arms around your neck and squeezes you so tight. I even love how she walks around the house yelling "MAMA" so aggresively. She loves Jake. She loves her papa. She loves my brother and calls them all dad. She loves dogs, especially our cute neighbor's big dog she'll run right up to. She has the cutest run. I love the way she says "string cheese". Its hilarious. Oh, and "hot dog". That's funny too. If she wants something she stomps her feet while screaming. Or she'll push your legs as hard as she can to move you back so you can pick her up.

She's just so deliciously sweet (and sour) I just want to eat her up all day long. And I do.

Another Set Of Pigtails

I gave Indie her first official pigtails last week. Which is absurd because she's had so much hair for so long she couldn't had them months ago. But all day it was like deja vu. Circa 2007 when Piper was 18 months old. I pretty much only did her hair like this.

Think they look alike?

Miss Lou








Piper

Xterra and A Celebrity Sighting

This was an extra exciting Xterra with Lance there. So that was a big deal. Jake did amazing, as always. The last few years he has taken first in his age group and this year he took second but moved up to 3rd overall. (Lance competed with the pros). It was seriously awesome seeing him in person. I even stood right in front of him for like 5 minutes while I got his autograph and he signed for other people. I got really good pictures of his first transition, but in transition up to see Jake I didn't get his second or a good spot for the finish but I had fun taking his pictures. And my lover boy is insanely fit and fast. I am really proud of him. He's awesome. Love his guts.