bathtub paints

Since I'm not a foodie!  I thought I'd mix it up and share a crafty friday with you. 

I saw this totally fun & easy project to do with your kiddos here.  Shaving cream bathtub paint.   Below is what you need & how to make it.

What you'll need:
foaming shaving cream

container

paint brushes

How to make it:
1. squirt some foaming shaving cream in each of the 6 compartments of your muffin tin
2. add food colouring to each one to make whatever colours you want - I did rainbow colours. Mix them up well.
3. give to your kiddo in the tub and let them have a blast!

Go here to read all about it & see photos.  I'm thinking we'll have to try this soon.  Enjoy your weekend!   

who are you?

i take all 4 kids (6yrs & 21month) to super target for grocery (& more) shopping with me during the week and all is well.  my older kids push the cart, help with the little kids, grab the items i need, my little kids walk next to me are helpful and if i'm not careful will put 10 of an item in my cart when i only need 1 or 2.  (they are just learning after all)

we typically finish our groceries and have time to look at toys and other stuff and assuming the cashier isn't using snail speed we leave happy and i feel like we accomplished all and i thank them all for being so good. for being who they normally are.

so why is it...when on the weekends we try to do the same but daddy is along do i forget my list & my children act up, all of a sudden no little kid wants to walk or ride in a cart, they want daddy to carry them or cry when he leaves their sight.  why does one of  my big kids want to ride in the cart then pout when i ask her to walk, or why does my other big kid ask every 2 seconds if they can look at toys, when he knows our routine.  why was i so embarrassed by these kids that i was saying i'll come back tomorrow and get the rest of our stuff, it's easier when i have them alone... i left with the feeling who are you and what have you done with my children?

sadly, i admit i found slight comfort in seeing an 8ish yr old boy tormenting his 6ish yr old sister in the produce area.

do your kids leave you wondering who they are when their routine is broken?

better

thank you all for your kind words on my struggling post. i keep reminding myself it's really juggling. juggling all the aspects of a family of 6.  juggling all the sickness that we are hoping has left us until never next year.  juggling the lack of sleep (since i stopped breast feeding last fall, i've only had a handful of nights that my once fabulous sleepers both slept thru the night) juggling the school routine when they only go 2 days a week or sometimes 3.  juggling living where i work / work where i live. juggling the addition of swim lessons and soon t-ball. juggling the thought of potty training later this summer or early fall.

i've started my new 3 day a week schedule, which is definitely a challenge to say the least.  but i so enjoy more time with my kids alone. now if only we'd actually have spring weather.  of course more days of just me brought this recent conversation with my sweet 6 yr old daughter while i was getting ready:

"mommy, when is grandma coming?"
"she's not coming today, it's mommy day!"
sad look comes over her face
"i thought you wanted more mommy days?"
"no, i wanted more grandma days"

this from the child who said she didn't like when i worked and wanted more time with me. sigh...i guess she's moved on.  kids gotta love them.

indoor water fun

Mr. Potato Kids

Denial, part 2.

While we're on the subject of kids and school milestones, I got an email from the school district the other day that took me by complete surprise. The subject seemed harmless, it simply said "Fifth Grade Information." My oldest is in fifth grade, so okay, this made sense. I clicked.

Liar Liar McLiarpants, it was not fifth grade information. It was SIXTH GRADE information, for current fifth graders. As in, my oldest kid is going to middle school next year, and now is the time I have to start filling out enrollment forms and taking tours and parent classes about how they teach math these days in middle school.

I've written before about how easy it was to send my kids off to kindergarten. (Yes, that's a livejournal link. Is where I started blogging originally. Don't judge.) I have always been a working mom, and so kindergarten was a welcome respite in my pocketbook from the costs of preschool and daycare. It helped, to be sure, that my oldest was 5 going on 40 when he went to kindergarten, and on the very first day when I walked him to the classroom door, he ran inside, took his place on the circle rug, and never looked back to see if I was still standing there.

But middle school is different. I don't know why it's freaking me out more than I expected. It might be because my ten year old is very small for his age, like 2 percentile small, almost the same size as my eight year old. So he doesn't really seem like he should be going to middle school. I look at the kids in the neighborhood who are in middle school and they seem like giants, nearly adults, next to my kid.

Of course, it might also be bothering me because middle school starts an hour earlier. We are not exactly morning people around here.

But I have to face it, regardless. I have to take the tour, and learn how this new math works. It's going to happen, whether I'm ready or not.

Denial

My baby girl is going to start preschool in September. In some ways September seems eons away but as time has a habit of doing, it slides by faster than my brain can process the changes. Honestly, didn't I just find out I was pregnant with my third child?

D is my always baby. My last child. She's going to hate that label someday I suppose...until she has her always baby and then she'll understand.

One of my friends has 5 children and commented a few weeks ago about preschool for her fourth child who is 7 months older than D. I was taken completely off guard. There was no way these kids were old enough for preschool next year...but they are. Sigh.

Seeing your kids grow up is bittersweet. I miss the babies and toddlers they once were but love to see the kids they grow into. I suppose this is why I take so many photos. Thank goodness that the digital camera came along when I was pregnant with my first baby because I would definitely be broke by now if I had to buy film and pay processing fees to get all these photos of my kids!

Christmas Pageant Magic.

Thirty kids. Thirty costumes. Thirty sets of nervous families.
Two set changes.
Only four rehearsals.


Magic.
These are the reasons I love my job.

* yes that's the back of my ponytail. I photograph much better from the back, I tell you.

Skilled

My parenting skills ebb and flow, like much of the things in my life. In one week I might fluctuate every other day between calm, in-charge Mommy and screaming, irrational Mommy. Other weeks I am on top of my game and confident. The next I will be nutty all week. Then there are days that throw it all in the mix.


My kids have to be confused by it all. Heck, I'M confused by it all. Consistency is key in discipline, relationships, maybe even in life. I'm reading and re-reading Love and Logic, (okay so I've never read the original...yet but I'm reading the early years and what to say when kids leave you speechless). The techniques work wonders for my kids if I remember to employ them.

When my kids fight (and they have been fighting often lately) in the car I've started telling them they'll need to pay me to listen to it and start naming ways they can pay me. If they argue at home, I simply leave whatever room they are arguing in. It's amazing how quickly the dispute is resolved without mom observing.

Why don't I use this stuff all the time? I suppose I need to practice more. Maybe by the time they have their own kids I'll have it down...but I doubt it.

Maybe I need one of those shock collars that some people use to prevent their dogs from barking. It could give me a jolt to remind me that yelling at my kids never works as well as being calm and confident.

Boys and hygiene: like oil and water. Lots and lots of oil.

Remember when your little ones were so excited for that evening ritual of bathtime? When they couldn't wait to finish dinner so everyone could all run upstairs and strip off their clothes and climb in that big, bubbly hot, toy-filled tub of joy and splash around for a while, getting clean in the process?

Well, it ends. Especially with boys. They no longer long to be clean. They no longer care. They are too busy playing Nerf gun wars in the backyard or building intricate lego sets to be bothered with bathing, putting on clean socks, or for that matter, pajamas. Sometimes they sleep in their clothes. Nowadays all I hear when I suggest it's time for the bath or shower is whining. Now that my kids are a little more self-sufficient, (or at least I thought they were) I find myself saying things like, "when was the last time you used shampoo?" and "dude, you are ripe."

And what do I hear back from them? "Um, do I need to change my underwear?"

YES! This is a question that needs to be asked?

My friends with teens tell me it changes again soon, the pendulum swings back again, and then you cannot get them OUT of the shower.

I look forward to that. I think.

Riding in cars with kids...

I take my kids everywhere with me, if I want to go somewhere that is. I'm a work at home mom remember.  So they've grown up in the car. Not really but you know what I mean. 

Now that we live in the middle of nowhere, we are in the car for longer stretches of time in order to run errands.  Many times as we drive around the metro area, I see the dvd players playing.  Is it just me, but I'm not a fan of the car dvd players?

Don't get me wrong, we have a portable dvd player that we use on airplanes or car rides over 2 hours.  But I'm not a fan of dvd players that are on from the time a kid gets into the car until they get out.  Why? why does it have to be on? So we can talk on the phone, so we don't  have to interact with them, why???

This one time last year, we were heading to my parents lake house prior to our road trip to Sioux Falls, SD.  I let them watch a dvd since it was in the car, ready if needed for backup on our road trip.   I thought. okay special treat.  Uusally, we always point out cars, semi's, animals, scenery, etc while in the car.  I started to do this and was annoyed at all they were missing in our 40 minute trip to my parents.  Plus, I was sad I missed their interaction and usual silliness.

Missed learning opportunites.  Missed life experiences.  On a recent trip home from the zoo, if I'd had a dvd player going, we wouldn't have these...

{photo's courtesy of Avery 5 yrs old}

Just curious if I'm the only one who feels this way and is wondering what do you do in the car with your kids?

Change of Plans

This is the time of week that I was going to write about a fun craft/game idea I had and implemented with my older daughter's Brownie troop but instead of having time to write that I spent the week tending to my feverish son, keeping him home from school Monday-Thursday with little hope that he will be able to attend on Friday, which incidentally is the end of the quarter. My boy needs more help with his schoolwork than my daughter does, so when he misses school it is more detrimental than it might be otherwise.

But I can't change it. He needs to stay home if he is sick. I don't appreciate when other parents send their sick kids to school so that mine might catch their illness, so I won't do it to others. It is frustrating though. I don't like seeing my kids sick and his sickness is one of those borderline sicknesses where his fever is just hovering at the low-grade end and disappears while the ibuprofen is working, returning like clockwork every 5-6 hours. So he feels great and fine for 4-5 hours at a time then crashes hard again.

His little sister doesn't understand that her usually boisterous all the time big brother doesn't feel well and that's why he is home. She wrestles him and picks at him until he's shouting at her to stop. Then she cries, confused at why he doesn't want to play. Then, an hour later he wants to play because the medicine is working. When it's nap time I know that my son is not feeling well because he consents to, and actually takes a nap. His little sister is again confused. This is a novelty that her brother is home and napping with her. She fights sleep in favor of trying to illicit her brother's giggles at her antics. Nap time has taken longer this week.

Despite the disruption to the routine we have managed to get some good cuddle time, I made some homemade soup, my two little kids have played together more than they have before (which was still quite often). My older daughter has been jealous that her brother gets to stay home and she has to go to school but I remind her that the break is coming. I also told her she could stay home if she took a nap. That clinched her desire to go to school!

I'm taking the Boy to the doctor today to see if perhaps he has an ear infection or something of the sort that would garner him some antibiotics and a prompter recovery. I almost hope that is the case just so he doesn't keep relapsing.

Besides, I bribed my kids to be good in school this quarter with a trip to the indoor water park in Owatonna, MN, and I want him to be healthy so he can enjoy his reward next week!

Helping Jar

Lately my kids (yes, all of them...even the 2-year-old) have spent a lot of time fighting just for the sport of it. I know a certain amount of disagreement and disharmony is normal with siblings but this has been reaching the point of being nearly unbearable. I hear "he/she hit me" "he/she looked at me" "he/she touched me/kicked me/stepped on me/pinched me/whateverelseakidcandotoanotherkid." I told my big kids a few times to just get it over with and hit one another until they bled. They refused of course and probably not the best thing to say to your kids but sometimes I think they need to be shocked into realizing what they are doing. "Go ahead and stand up and hit one another! Don't stop until you're both bleeding! Come on! Do it! You don't like one another anyway!"

"We like each other Mommy!" Doesn't seem like it to me.

I read something last week that sparked an idea. One woman made a "Brothers" bank. For us, it will be a "Family" bank or something like that. The idea is that whenever we catch the kids doing something nice for one another we put some money in a jar. The jar is banked for a long time and when the kids turn in their money they decide on something TOGETHER that we will do with the money.

My kids decided we needed a HUGE jar. It's a gigantic plastic jar that held 2 1/2 lbs of pretzels. I told the kids it would take a very long time to fill that jar if they didn't work extra hard to be helpful and nice to one another but they weren't swayed. I also told them that the jar, when filled, could potentially hold $1000 and could get us a nice vacation, membership at the Y, or any number of fun and exciting rewards.

My son immediately was willing to help his big sister. Whenever she asked him for help, he did it. My oldest, Miss M, will be more of a challenge. I hope she will come around. It will be fun to pay a few coins (I didn't set any amount...just coins...any coins) for my kids to be helpful to one another.

Fingers crossed that it works.

Earlier and Earlier

It seems that rites of passage arrive earlier and earlier with each generation, though I know kids used to get married much younger than we do now. I'm dealing with an 8-year-old who seems more like a 13-year-old with her attitude and moodiness and if you tell me that oh no that's totally normal and it's going to get 80 times worse I may just have to hang myself. I know for certain that my daughter is more physically advanced (shall we say?) than I was at eight. I know that kids are going through puberty earlier than we did. Is it because of the hormones given to the animals we eat?

It is really hard on my husband who had no sisters growing up and has absolutely no frame of reference on the subject. I have to teach him to let many things slide or this will truly be a battle zone. I am not looking forward to my son's puberty years though I had a brother he is older than I am and I'm pretty sure I was oblivious of the puberty issues, especially since he is 4 years older than I am.

I have been unprepared to deal with issues that have come up already in my just-turned-eight-in-July-year-old's life. I didn't know things I dealt with in Junior High (now called Middle School here) would show up in elementary school.

Is it just me? Or are kids really maturing faster than ever?

Outdoor Adventures

What I hope:  I hope that I never lament the "good old days" when kids played outside in the summer.

Seriously?

To me, a complaint like this is akin to wondering why our kids drink too much soda (from our fridge) or watch too much TV (in our living room).

Maybe the cold of our Midwestern winters is what makes me get my kids (and myself) outside during the other three seasons.  Because, Lord knows, I am completely content to sit in front of the TV with my Diet Pepsi during the unbearable season of frostbite.  And yes, my kids drink soda, and yes, they watch TV.  Sometimes too much or too often, because, hey, we're just doing our best here and what fun would life be without a movie, Sprite and some hot wings?

But summer?  No.  In the summer we explore the great outdoors.  And there's hardly a scene I like better than this:

How about you?  What outside "adventure" do you most enjoy with your kids?

Parenting: I think I'm doing it right, actually.

Sometimes I really wonder how damaged my kids will be when they grow up because I lost my cool at how long it takes them to make faces in the bathroom mirror before they actually brush their teeth. I joke with my friends about "well, that's why you save for therapy, Amiright? Ha ha, hee hee!"
But sometimes I worry. Like at 2am, when insomnia has made me her bitch once again, and I can't seem to shut off my brain. Well, and also because my husband made me watch Inglorious Basterds right before bed, and who wants to fall asleep after that? Not me.

Anyway. Parenting. I often worry I'm doing it totally wrong. And then every once in a while, I get a little brush with how I must be doing it pretty well, at least some of the time.
Like tonight, getting ready for bed. We spent a large portion of this holiday weekend cleaning up around the house, cutting back trees and bushes, overseeding the yard. I also spent some time indoors, doing laundry, excavating my way through to the playroom, sifting through size 6x T-shirts and shorts to be handed down or tossed, etc. The boys got into the swing of it, too, and took down old stuff from their bulletin boards in their bedrooms to make way for the piles of new stuff. Stuff I had brought from the towering stack of papers that had been living in my kitchen since school was out last May. My oldest, now ten, took down a Sports Illustrated for Kids centerfold of Alex Rodriguez and gently set it aside. He shares a birthday with ARod, but that's about the only thing they have in common. The kid doesn't even play baseball.

"Buddy," I said, "if you don't want that anymore just throw it away."
"Someone might want it. Lots of kids like Alex Rodriguez."
"I know, bud, but it's from last year, he doesn't even have those stats anymore, it's obsolete."
"Mom! I bet there are lots of poor kids who don't have any posters who look up to him and would love a poster like this. I can't just throw it away!"

Just when I think nobody is looking, they are getting it. When I stop and pick up someone else's empty cup on the ground and put it in the trash, even though they don't look up from their DS game, they make some kind of mental note in the back of their brains, back behind How To Reload A Nerf Gun Magazine On The Fly. When I take them to Harvesters to sort apples, or I mention that I am serving lunch at a food kitchen, they are absorbing. When I walk out my front door with an extra leash and try and capture the neighbor's dog who has broken through a weak spot in the fence, they see me. When I tell them, many months ago, that we are going to donate an entire bin of toys to kids who don't have any, start sorting what you want to keep and what you are willing to part with, they understand. And they kind of enjoy it.

When my kids are adults, they may have some memories of me screaming at them, exasperated, to please put on their shoes and get in the car so we can make it to soccer practice, maybe only a few minutes late. Do you have your shinguards? A ball? A water bottle? No I don't know where your cleates are, they aren't mine, you are old enoughtokeeptrackofyourownshoes maybeifyouputthemawaywheretheyaresupposedtogoyouwouldn'thavethisproblem ohmyGodgetinthedamncar.

But I'm hoping that if they think of these things, they will think of them in between the doing, the acting, the loving and supporting and volunteering and being responsible that I've tried to display myself. I'm hoping my actions will linger longer, and louder, than my words.

smores anyone?

monkey boy

mr. easton woke with his hair matching his shirt.

Tea Party

What to do on an extremely hot and humid day? Have an animal tea party.  My 5 year olds dressed up their bears and set the table.  Complete with baby clothes & books as placemats!

What do your kids do on extremely hot and humid days?

Moving...

If you read my earlier post then you know we're moving.  Growing up, I lived in the same house since I was 3.  Since I left home, I've moved upwards of 15+ times, but never with children. 

This will be my first experience moving with kids.  I'm looking for any and all advice on how to make it as seemless and stressless for my children, for my 5 year olds actually.