Exactly one month ago today we had a Superman birthday party for my youngest. In addition to a slew of crepe paper, we hung a giant poster of Superman on the hutch in our dining room.
Last night I noticed that Superman still hangs in my dining room.
He’s hung there for an entire month.
We let him hang there until we moved it up to the boys room. This way it wouldn’t wrinkle or rip until we got around to it, and maybe by leaving it hanging in our dining room we’d be more motivated to get around to it sooner than later.
A few weeks ago, the kids spent a long weekend at my parents while Scott and I enjoyed St Louis. While they were there, my parents took the kids to a friends farm. The kids had a blast. Seriously, a day doesn’t go by that they don’t mention the horses or the chickens or the barn cats. They even got to ride on the horses. Right up there with all those memory making experiences, was another new life experience for my 4 year old.
A traditional Christmas card will not be arriving in your mailbox this year from the circus fam, instead I give to you this greeting from me to you. I’ve thought a lot about what I want to say in this card. What image I want to share with you from my family to yours. We’ve had a lot of great moments this year. Many of them I’ve shared on here so I can look back and remember them in the years to come.
We are on break here at the circus. And I couldn’t be more excited about it. I have been looking forward to this week for ages. The week before Christmas. All I want to do is enjoy the kiddos and catch up on some house work. And bake. And do some shopping. And maybe see some friends. (ha, ha… can you tell I am an introvert? read over that list, when I proof read this and re read it, it made me laugh)…
I don’t really know what it is that possesses a child to just randomly on a whim pick up that crayon and suddenly decide to make the world (or in this case the bathroom) his canvas. We have crayons out every single day in our house. I do my best when I see a stray one on the floor to nab it lest it suddenly look inviting to my toddler. But, truly they are laying on the school table, in reach, every single day.
Our 6 year old had her first gymnastics meet this past weekend. I can’t really put into words the feelings of pride I had in watching her. When we first enrolled her in gymnastics 3 years ago, we did so because she was tiny, tough and flexible. It seemed gymnastics might be worth a try for our then 3 year old.
Somewhere in the last 3 years, a light when on inside her.
Some days we wake up on “school at the building days” with clothes all lined up and ready the night before, I’ve gotten lunches packed complete with notes from Mom, and we’re out the door on time so we can arrive at the building with plenty of time to drop everyone’s books off in their classrooms and report to the sanctuary for opening with time to spare.
And some mornings Mom oversleeps when her alarm goes off, laundry isn’t put away so we find ourselves scrounging through baskets of laundry looking for matching socks, lunches are packed but without drinks b/c we couldn’t find water bottles, and we stumble out the door racing the clock, with bed head and arrive at school only to discover the socks were left on the kitchen counter so we’re going in with just sneakers and no cute knee socks…
I like to think of myself as a woman who can hold her own. I’m not a girly girl. I can follow a football game and I am currently 3-0 in my fantasy league. I love camping. Power outages don’t send me packing for the nearest Hilton. And I will happily kill and remove any bug that comes my way without even a squeal.
However, this “tough girl” fantasy that I have of myself falls apart rather quickly when confronted with my own personal kryptonite.
Lately, I’ve been asked several times what I do with my 2 year old while I am teaching the older 3. Here’s your answer.
Yes, that would be pen mark up and down the corner of the walls in my dining room. Yes, he did that yesterday morning while I was working with the big kids in the other room and thought that scraping sound was the sound of him scraping oatmeal of his cereal bowl with a spoon.
The morning was going well… kids on time for tutorial, load of laundry in the washer and dryer, even took the van to the garage for some repairs.
And then, because things can’t go THAT smoothly…..
Yea… turns out even the otterbox can’t protect your phone when it’s been thrown off the side of a van and run over on the side of a highway. And, no, this had NOTHING to do with the new iphone 5 coming out today.