hieroglyphics

(the girls' room)
interpretation: "if you jump on the bed mom will whack you!"

(by the basement door)
interpretation: "there's lots of trees outside"

(Gracie's dresser)
interpretation: "too many clothes"

(the kitchen table)
interpretation: "dinner tonight was about 2 stars"

(the bathroom door)
interpretation: "I love the way mom decorated the bathroom"

(the arm of the couch)
interpretation: "this way to the toys"

(hallway)
interpretation: "i was starting to draw a star but then mom walked up"

climbing mt. everest for a glass of chocolate milk

i do not profess to be the best house cleaner you ever met on the internet. i mostly run my household by the saying "clean enough to be healthy and dirty enough to be happy"...merry maids meets "cheaper by the dozen". totally me.

did i just give the impression that i'm a slob? because i'm totally not a slob...i just have 7 people living in one house and like every mother knows, there is a revolving "to do" list that just carries over from day to day to day to day. at my house, things like the baseboards and tile grout and the oven never quite make it to the top of the list.

and i know they don't make it to the top of your list, either, no matter how many of you post on facebook things like "organized the garage, defrosted the freezer, ironed 27 white shirts, and chopped down a cherry tree! now for some homemade pot pie with fresh garden vegetables for lunch!" i don't believe it for a minute...but i do start to feel bad about my june cleaverness.

so anyways, i have 2 big weaknesses when it comes to homemaking skills. i'm going to lay it all out for you here, keeping it real so you don't come away from my post feeling bad about your own june cleaverness. i'm nice like that.

dishes. and laundry.

as far as the dishes go...i've just always hated doing dishes. my family didn't get a dishwasher until i was a sophomore in high school, so i spent 4.7 years of my childhood washing dishes by hand. those are years i can never get back, years i could have been playing paper dolls or learning to do a back flip or lip syncing to whitney houston. a robbed childhood leads to a resentful adulthood, and that is why i don't like doing dishes.

never mind that now that i have a dishwasher the whole task could be completed in under 10 minutes. that is irrelevant. it's the principle, ya know? i always put it off as long as possible, then i break down and do it and tell myself "self, that wasn't bad at all. why in the bleep did you wait so long?" and then i answer myself and say "self, you are right. and there's no need for vulgar language. it's not bad at all. from now on, i will do the dishes as i go, all day long. easy peasy."

i'm a liar. i don't do it as i go all day long, and then i repeat the above paragraph. every.single.night. dishes are my enemy, poor things. i feel about dishes the way the rest of my family feels about putting a roll of toilet paper on the holder.

and the laundry. sheesh. i actually enjoy washing clothes. i can keep up with that one, no problem. at any given time, you can find a mountain of clean clothing piled nigh to the ceiling in my bedroom. washing clothes is not my problem.

it's the folding. and the putting away. as far as i'm concerned, folding and putting away clean laundry could best be described as climbing mt. everest with paper cuts on every finger and getting a root canal at the summit. if i were julie andrews and i were singing about my favorite things, i would never ever mention mt. everest or paper cuts or a root canal.

i realize it's unfortunate that my least-favorite household tasks are also considered daily maintenance and therefore not optional. have no fear, i have compensated in other areas, so as to balance out the june cleaver within. i am really good at bathing my children every night, and i never ever ever run out of nesquik.

now hiring: dishwasher and laundry folder. compensation: a tall glass of chocolate milk and no judgments about the pretzels and chip clips on your pantry floor.

ben, jerry, and joe jr...that's what i'm doing this year

because i am totally not the kind of girl that procrastinates anything, i...ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!! i put things off like nobody's work-from-home business. i had all these other great things i wanted to post about and figured i'd get to the "resolutions" post next time. or next month. but i think it would be awkward to talk about new year's resolutions in february, since no one's even keeping them anymore by then.

so, in no particular order, here are a few of my goals for the grand ol' year of 2012:


1. learn to eat with chopsticks. i haven't ever been able to figure those large toothpicks out, and somehow i have been able to sleep at night. but i have a newly-acquired love of sushi...and sushi is hard to eat with a fork. it's a goal born of necessity, but it still totally counts.

2. figure out how to use my sewing machine. the sewing machine i hadhadhad to have for christmas 3 years ago. the sewing machine that sat unopened in the box in the corner of my closet for 2 of those years. the sewing machine that my sister is now using...because she knows how. i'm not sure how i got away with calling myself a true stay at-home mom all these years without knowing how to sew...i'm sneaky like that, i guess.

3. actually put pictures in the assortment of frames that adorn the walls of my home. it's a great conversation piece, these faux families of models i've got hanging all over. if i don't do something about it soon, my kids are going to need therapy when they are older. and only for this reason, of course.

4. take more pictures. see #3. i am absolutely, positively, the worst documenting mother who ever lived in this age of rampant technology. like bob harper will be saying this whole season of "biggest loser"--no excuses!!

5. hold more babies. i'm counting on you, my loyal readership, to help me out with this one. i've already recruited my sister in-law and my best friend, but ya'll are gonna have to step it up in the baby-growing department if we are to fill this void in my arms. oh, and you need to live close to me and not be creeped out by the fact that i just asked you to move here and birth children for me to hold.

6. eat more ben & jerry's ice cream. because it's good, that's why. and also, i believe i should have at least one resolution that i know i am not going to save until december 20 to get started on.

7. watch "while you were sleeping" more than twice. i love everything about that movie, including joe jr. no, especially joe jr.


i think goals are good for the soul. and goals at the beginning of a new year are good for conversation starters. happy new year, moms, and happy goal setting!!

the legend of sleepy hollow

i've heard this day was coming...ever since that february morning in 2000, when the ultrasound tech said "it's a boy!"...people told me, prepared me, warned me.

the part they all left out was that it literally happens overnight. or overday. i sent my 11 year-old son off to school with a mid-morning snack and a sensible lunch. he returned home, famished and near to death, and proceeded to eat me out of house and home.

this is not a joke. the eating!!!! hollow legs are real, i have a testimony of that.

and just when i thought i could count on my firstborn to manage the saturday morning cereal extravaganza--while i got a few more zzz's--he started...sleeping in?! since when did a child of mine appreciate snoozing past sunrise?

it's going to happen to you one day, ya know. the legend of sleepy hollow...

my real job

first off, i'd like to welcome myself back to blogging! yay! i have really missed it...have you missed us? we were all kind of off in reality, being stay at-home moms...you know the drill.

2 of my girlies got to spend an extended weekend with a beloved aunt, and last night was officially "pass-off" night...we both drove 2 1/2 hours to meet up in a kansas walmart so i could get my flesh and blood back in my possession. gee, i missed them! they are always so cute, but i love how cute they are when i haven't seen them in a while :)

while the girls promptly fell asleep in the back of the minivan--which, by the way, i love. you should get a minivan--i had the pleasure of listening to a cd of cherished songs from my childhood. i just let it play over and over and over...and i got to think over and over and over. it.was.great.

several of the songs are little children, singing about their mothers. they sing about mother watching over them while they sleep. they sing about their mother telling sweet stories. they sing about their mothers holding them. about a mother's smile, a mother's prayer, a mother's love.

it dawned on me as i listened to these sweet baby voices, that the real job of a mother is all of those things...it is to nurture and grow and love and teach these incredible little people in our care. so often we (and i mean me, i assume it's you too?) think of a mom's job as laundry and dishes and diapers and cleaning windows. and i guess that's part of it...i mean, i do think it is my responsibility to provide a clean environment for my children, to feed them and wash their clothes. but in all honesty, those are really caregiver jobs, the sort of stuff that can be done by any parent, any family member, any hired helper.

the real stuff of motherhood is often just as messy as oatmeal and yogurt smeared all over the kitchen table, even when it's less visible. our real job is to make sure that when our children think of "mother", they think of the time we spent with them. they think of the things we taught them. they think of our love, our smile...

today i need to mop my kitchen floor and put away about 17 loads of laundry. but then, i will have some snuggle time with my baby girl. i will have a meaningful and humorous conversation with my 11 year-old. i will listen intently to the important events in the life of a popular 2nd grader. i will hold the hand of my oldest daughter while she says her prayers. i will welcome the shower of kisses from an affectionate kindergarten boy.

because that is my real job...

unexpected lessons from a wedding

my baby sister got married last weekend...sniff, sniff...

i expected the weekend to be busy, sleepless, emotional, full of good food, and to have to smile my face off. it was all of those things (and more)...

what i didn't expect of my sister's wedding weekend was to learn some new stuff. stuff like...

the correct pronunciation of the word "cognac"...kind of a surprising thing to learn at a safe & sober wedding, but that's what i get for having a sister with an english degree.

my grandma's plan to hitchhike back to the hotel...minus the thumb, add some leg, haha!

ibc root beer from the fountain is just as perfect as ibc root beer from a dark glass bottle.

gps is a joke. for reals, i prefer to get directions the old fashioned way...much faster, less stressful.

when put on the spot, my kids can behave just fine in a fancy italian restaurant.

apparently, cloning is totally possible and totally real.

always check your order at mcdonald's. failure to do so results in a hungry group of kids and babysitters.



and one more thing...my family has grown so fast!

we're all in this together...

it's an age-old battle...okay, maybe just decades-old...the battle of "stay @ home moms" vs. "working moms"...

you know what i mean. whether we've been involved in a full-blown war of words on a daytime talk show, or a private gossip-ish phone conversation with our bestie, or even just had the thoughts in our heads...we moms (women) are pretty good at passing judgement on others of our kind. why do we do this?!

i've heard s@h moms accuse working moms of not loving their children. i've heard working moms call s@h moms lazy. i've heard s@h moms point the finger of "materialism" at working moms, and working moms say that s@h moms have nothing to contribute to the world. and many more, you've all heard them too.

harsh! and in every case i know of, totally false. i believe the truth is that we have more in common with each other than we sometimes think...we are all moms! at the end of every single day, when our babies are snuggled safely in their beds, we mothers are just hoping we have done the best thing for our families.

we serve chicken nuggets and frozen lasagna and homemade enchiladas...and we love our children.

we push them on swings and set them in front of the t.v. and drop them off at preschool...and we love our children.

we take them to the doctor and take them to dance class and send them outside to be bored...and we love our children.

because really, whether you stay home or go to work, don't we all know the exhaustion of having a newborn? can't we all recognize that look on our child's face that says "i'm gonna blow"? doesn't every mother's heart go pitter-patter when their preschooler marches off in a backpack bigger than they are? doesn't every mother wonder how to manage the pile of papers that come home from school? don't we all know our kids' favorite lullaby? doesn't every mother wonder how that laundry pile got so flippin' huge? don't we all hope our kids have good friends? can't every mom tell the difference between a mad scream and a hurt scream? in the end...don't we all want our children to be happy and grow into wonderful big people?

we're all in this together. we might go about it in different ways, but our end goals are the same. moms...and all women...can be a powerful force for good and awesomeness in our world, and i'm proud of that. stay @ home moms, working moms...we are moms, and we are the same.

snacky snacky

summer break has descended upon our house...ahh, the lazy days of summer! swimming, inhaling popsicles, grilling, and that delicious scent of sunscreen...the best parts of may-september!!

the only thing about having everyone home all day is that everyone is home all day. right?! and my kids have this amazing talent...(for reals, i think we should take it on the road and show our stuff to piers morgan on the big stage.) they can empty my pantry and refrigerator in 2 hours flat. no joke. makes me crazy like a monkey!!

i've taken to being a little ocd about food around here...i plan out our entire menu for the week, 3 meals and 2 snacks a day. kinda crazy, but not nearly as crazy as a summer-long free-for-all in the kitchen!! i don't know about you, but we get bored with our snacks/meals around here pretty quick, so i'm always trying to mix it up...and be sorta nutritious...and please everybody...like i said, crazy!!

here are 10 of our favorite snacks, to help you pass the long summer days...:)

1. strawberry bananas--sliced bananas with strawberry jello powder sprinkled on top. this is a huge hit with everyone!! and sometimes we try different flavors of jello, but strawberry is the best.

2. trail corn--popcorn, mini chocolate chips, craisins, quaker oatmeal squares cereal. this is a yummy combo!

3. jello & cool whip--not especially filling or nutritious, but yummy and cold.

4. homemade lunchables--also known as cheese and crackers :) we usually add pepperoni and slick it right up!

5. fruit kabobs--everyone makes their own...our favorite fruits to use are strawberries, grapes, apples, oranges, pineapple, bananas, mango.

6. smoothies--who doesn't love a good smoothie?!

7. dry cereal--it's not just for breakfast!!

8. frozen yogurt--we freeze gogurt tubes or the kids put a spoon in a cup of yogurt and freeze it that way. they think they are having popsicles or ice cream, and i'm off the hook to give them dessert!

9. fruit pizza--sugar cookie dough, cream cheese & sugar frosting, fruit slices on top...we like kiwi, strawberries, bananas, pineapple, apples, blueberries...you can find recipes online, and you'll be hooked forever!!

10. cinnamon sugar tortillas--i use whole wheat tortillas for these, 100x better! cut tortillas into strips or triangles, spread with butter and sprinkle with cinnamon & sugar. put under the broiler until butter is melted and tortillas get a little crispy. be careful, these are addicting :)

happy summer snacking!!

feel good feeling

i am sure most of you are aware of the devastating tornado that ripped through joplin, missouri on sunday evening. if you didn't already know, a few of us s@hm's are just an hour away from joplin. the people of that community are our neighbors, and our hearts hurt for their losses. we live every day knowing what tornadoes can do, but when it really hits, so massively, this close to home...there are really no words.

on monday, s@hm sunny came up with the brilliant idea of kid fun paks...check out her post if you missed it! there is a lot of help and love pouring into the joplin area, and we wanted to pitch in as well...as moms, our lives revolve around our children and much of our day is consumed with playing and fun. these fun paks will be donated to the children of the joplin tornado, to give them a little something that is theirs again...and something to do to pass the long hours while they can't play outside or hang out on the couch playing video games. this project will continue well beyond the joplin tragedy...we hope to have a continual stash and be ready to send these fun paks to kids in any disaster.

i gathered my kiddos on monday night and we put together a few of these fun paks as a family. i was going to take pictures...but as we all know, i am the master of missed photo opportunities. if there is an occasion i would like documented on film, i am sure to leave my camera at home...or in my purse...or the car...i have even been known to hold the darn thing in my hand all through a child's performance and never snap a single shot. so you get the point...i didn't take any pictures. however, eventhough i can't photographically prove it, my kids had a good time. they kept saying how good they felt, how they were excited for some kids to have these fun paks. i am so glad i included them in this service opportunity!

so the challenge (and call for your help!) continues!! if you are able to make some fun paks yourself--or with your family--send them to s@hm sunny...if you don't really have time or don't want to mail them but would like to help, cash donations are also accepted. it's a great way to extend our "mothering" to children in need...and i'm pretty sure it will ease the hearts of the moms, too!

recycling war

"mom, can i dump out all the granola bars and take the box to school to recycle?"

"sure, babe."

"mom, can i take all the jello boxes to school to recycle? that way you won't know what flavor of jello is in the package!"

"sure, babe."

"mom, can i have all the rest of the boxes in the pantry?"

"sure, babe."




"mom, can i recycle all the cereal boxes?"

"sure, babe."




is this a recycling war between classes...or between me and the school?

bargain shopping

i love a good bargain as much as the next guy (mom). however, garage sales are one avenue i just haven't figured out how to tap...and i don't lose any sleep over that. waking up at 5am on a saturday to rummage through strangers' junk...no thanks.

my children feel differently. their little blue eyes light up like skee ball at chuck e cheese when anyone in our neighborhood starts to fill tables on their driveway. i gave in the first few times and let them take a quarter to snag some loot. but garage sales became off-limits when they came home with a black garbage bag full of urine-scented stuffed animals and a small collection of spanish war knives. wow, treasures.

last weekend the nice lady up the street decided it was time to redecorate her house. no sense in throwing away perfectly good faded silk flowers...surely someone would snatch them up at only $2 a vase!

and who wouldn't love a picture frame from "aruba"?! i mean, now i don't need to go all the way there to buy the souvenir myself! awesome...

last time i checked, none of my daughters were named "andrea". but maybe she wants to try it out...before she makes it official, you know.



it's about time for us to have a garage sale and unload all these fantastic finds to other bargain shoppers!!

a riddle...

last night i ventured into the black hole, aka: under my bed.

under my bed is the official home for the craft box, the art supplies, the office supplies, the gift wrap, and fermenting sippee cups.

how many sippee cups did i find?!

leave a comment, make your guess...the winner will receive a target gift card (so you can buy some new sippee cups!)

breast milk baby

so i am not an e-mail forwarding type of girl, or a link-sharing on my facebook page type of girl...i just don't usually do that stuff.

but today, i am a link-sharing type of girl on this blog...i happened to see 2 minutes of a news program this morning (i never see the news in the morning, we have waaaaay too much going on around here) and i just can't believe how ridiculous some people are. really.

so there's this new baby doll out, called "breast milk baby"...instead of coming with magically disappearing orange juice bottle, this baby comes with a nursing cover-up...encouraging little girls to act like they are nursing their babies instead of bottle feeding. i guess some people are outraged, saying it's obscene and sexualizing little girls...poo! i think if you don't like it, don't buy it for your daughter.

personally, i don't know of a little girl that hasn't stuck a doll up her shirt and pretended to nurse it...myself included (30 years ago, mind you). i don't think it's a big deal at all...and this isn't even a "breast-feeding vs. bottle-feeding" issue.

so here's the link...tell me what you think...is it too racy? or is it perfectly fine?

**don't forget to comment here, and/or on our facebook page...we love comments!!

http://abcnews.go.com/US/breast-milk-baby-doll-girls/story?id=13251971

a true story about a girl

once upon a time, i got engaged in the middle of the summer.

naturally, we had to choose a wedding date. this seemed rather problematic to us...i was 8 weeks from beginning my senior year of college, and i just didn't think it was possible to hammer out a respectable wedding in that much time. his parents lived in oklahoma. my parents lived in missouri. we lived in utah. rushed was sorta out of the question.

also out of the question was waiting until our christmas break, 6 months away...we were more than anxious to get the show on the road, you know? wink wink...so anyways...

that meant getting married in the middle of the semester. which meant a significant portion of time would be consumed with wedding travel. i'm an amazing multi-tasker, cramming in my studying and assignments seemed a small price to pay to become a mrs...so a wedding at the end of september it would be. yay! (insert confetti and kissing, xxx)

with it being our last year in school and all, my roommates and i decided that semester would be the perfect opportunity to take a fun class together. we had varying majors and our class schedules rarely overlapped...so naturally, we chose bowling. yippee for bowling at the wilk! best.class.ever. who wouldn't love college credit for acting out your weekend fun twice a week?! :) bowling at byu pretty much beats bowling anywhere else. hands down.

oh, except for that whole "attendance is pretty much your entire grade" thing...the day i received my bowling syllabus was the day i died a little inside. this was the biggest dilemma i'd faced regarding my wedding: drop the class and miss out on that special bonding time with my friends (no freaking way) or miss 2 weeks of class and get an "f" on my college transcript--in bowling (no freaking way).

lucky for me, my young grad-student teacher saw my predicament and offered a generous solution.

"go bowling in your wedding dress, and i'll excuse all your absences. and i want pictures."

hee hee hee...this boy did not know who he had just challenged! we may or may not have been the girls that danced with lamp shades on our heads. we may or may not have been the girls who ratted our hair and covered our faces in mud mask for a walk around the dorms. we may or may not have been the girls who wrote the "whatever happened to the tuesday flier?" flier...game on! (shout out to the sisterhood!!)

wedding dress, veil, and cameras in hand...we did it. bowling shoes accessorize nicely with the white gown, don't ya think?

*just a note...the date on the pictures is because these are photos of photos...i was not bowling at the wilk in my wedding gown last night, just in case you thought you saw me

if you are wondering how this ties into being a stay-at-home mom...it doesn't, really. except that i went on to become a s@hm...and i wanted to tell that story. i think even moms can use a nice story now and then, don't you?

next time i take a walk down memory lane, i wanna wear bowling shoes.

gimme a break

it's spring break! is it spring break for you, too?!

we love love spring break around here...the winter blues have just about gotten the better of us, and it's time to start getting some fresh air, get reacquainted with the park, and plan picnic menus.

we've already done some hiking at the nature center, washed some cars, played at the park, gone for long bike rides, dug in the mud, jumped on the trampoline, chalked the driveway, had a picnic, slept late (hooray!), and watched lots of "cosby show" re-runs...by the way, i love the cosby show. a lot.

the kids are currently doing some "break" dancing on the wii...they crack me up!

hope you all enjoy your spring break!

5...FIVE...five...

so i'm a big blog reader. it's true. if you write a blog, it's possible that i read it. i love love love it. i just find people to be very interesting...which makes sense, considering that some of my favorite reading material has always been biographies. fascinating! call me a dork if you want to...but i know you have a hidden dorky hobby, too! and i also just realized that i made myself sound like a creepy stalker...i promise, i'm not a creepy stalker. :)

in my blog reading adventures--see, it's so exciting to me!--i find myself constantly inspired and uplifted by other women...everyone has a story to tell, even if we think we don't. some of the most touching to me (lately) have been mother's sharing their stories of how their families came to be. you know, life doesn't often turn out the way we plan...

so anyways, i have been thinking long and hard about whether to share "my story"...the one about how in the world i came to be a mother of 5 kids in 7 years. and i think it's time to get it out there...for those of you who don't already know. :) i will try to keep it short(ish)...but 5 kids sorta makes for a long story...

once upon a time, dave and amy fell in love. that's a different story, though, so we're going to skip ahead just a little bit...

"the plan" was to wait a while after we were married to begin our family. not a long time, probably a year. we wanted 8 kids...sounded like the most perfect number to both of us! we even put 8 little diamonds in my wedding band to symbolize our 8 little babies. 2 days after our wedding we both felt very much that we should start our family soon. we talked about it, mulled the idea around, and decided that "soon" meant less than a year. we also decided right away that there were a bazillion worse things that could happen to us than to have an unexpected baby join our family... okay, we'd settle into life and take it from there. 9 months and 6 days after the wedding...baby #1 joined us! we were not even done with the honeymoon phase and we were dealing with cravings and morning sickness and ballooning weight gain. nice. i got right down to the business of being a mom. joseph was a blessing and a joy, and i wouldn't change a thing.

joseph was almost a year old when we started talking about when we wanted to add to our family. no sooner had the discussion began than, voila! we found out we were expecting aubrey when joseph was 11 months old. we told everyone at joe's first birthday party, that was fun. it was even more fun that aubrey was due right around my birthday! this pregnancy was physically easier than the first--i was so sick with joseph--but emotionally exhausting. my mom passed away when i was 8 weeks pregnant. my dad remarried soon after and we made a sudden move from utah to missouri with only 7 weeks left until my due date. aubrey was born on my birthday...and we fell in love with our little baby girl!

everyone we met...walmart, church, the park, dave's work...told us how lucky we were to have our boy and girl...now we could be done! it always startled me a little bit, i guess i hadn't really thought about that. of course we knew we weren't done growing our family, but the first year of aubrey's life was difficult for me as i battled severe post-partum depression. we weren't ready to jump back into it as quickly as we had before.

little gracie was born just a couple of weeks after aubrey turned 2. it was a joyful time in our family...we had "planned" this pregnancy, and life in all other respects was good. we didn't talk to a single person who didn't tell us that "3 kids is the killer"...so we were prepared for all heck to break loose! thankfully, 3 was the easiest transition yet. dave and i were both worried about the depression returning, but thankfully we never saw that yucky stuff again!

although 3 children was not a difficult transition, neither dave nor i felt that baby-hungry feeling for quite a while. we made a new "plan". :) i had abandoned the 8 kids notion shortly after having joseph...it was just harder than i thought! we were going to wait until gracie was 3, then get pregnant again and have 2 children close in age. and then be done! awesome plan, it would work very well into my life...

spencer came out of left field and was born when gracie was just a few months past her 2nd birthday...no big deal, i'm easy! we'll just get a new "plan"...which happened to be that we were done. 4 was perfect! 2 boys, 2 girls...no big spaces, i was done before i was 30...yes!!

i was so sure that we were done that i was making "plans" to get that taken care of. you know...i really did feel like i had reached my capacity. spencer was a good baby, but 4 was tricky and i felt like i should quit while i was ahead, you know? no need to go crazy...

what happened next is personal and spiritual, probably not blog material. but i will just say that when spencer was only 7 months old, dave let me know that we needed to hold off on the permanent stuff. i couldn't argue it...but i was not thinking about having a baby. i thought we'd revisit the issue when spencer was in school? or not...9 days later i got a positive pregnancy test.

i cried. and cried. and cried. it's awful to admit, but i really struggled with accepting that last pregnancy. i felt like a victim. please don't hate me...i have repented and in no way do i feel that way today!! but it took longer to get excited for baby #5...i had to remind myself many times over of our original decision, the one about having an unexpected baby not being the worst thing that could happen to us.

my 20-week ultrasound revealed some cysts on the baby's brain. the doctor let me know that although the cysts are usually harmless, they also are an indicator of chromosomal abnormalities. we had to wait 4 weeks for a follow-up ultrasound...and in the meantime, i worried and prayed and realized that i loved this baby so much. all i wanted was a normal and healthy life for her...it was the little jolt i needed to be thankful for healthy children and the blessing of adding to our family.

things turned out fine...the cysts went away and little elizabeth hope was born happy and healthy just a few days before christmas. that year had been a hard one, and little ellie was the perfect bit of hope and happiness i needed to keep moving forward...

so in a big, fat nutshell...that's how i became a mom 5 times over. in hindsight, i see where each of them came at the perfect time for our family, even if it seemed off at first.

you see, things don't always turn out the way we plan...sometimes they turn out better!

let it go...

i am kind of a grudge-holder. not my best quality, and i'm not even a little bit proud of it. but i have worked on it pretty intensely over the last few years and wouldn't you know...i'm getting much better at letting it go.

as i have navigated this world of a stay-at-home-mom, it has become increasingly clear to me that "letting it go" emotionally is a lot harder than "letting it go" physically...i can hold a grudge with ease, but holding in my tummy is a bit more challenging. don't you agree?!

don't we all know a mom who has "let herself go" when the babies started coming? maybe we are that mom? i'm no fashionista, my husband and friends and children will attest to that :) but being home and doing laundry and reading stories and shampooing carpets is hardly an excuse to dress in gym clothes and live sans makeup all day. dress for the job, for sure...but do it with some makeup on, k?

it's the basics, the things we insist our children do before they go to school (or anywhere in public)...brush your teeth, wear deodorant, do your hair, wear clean clothes, wax your facial hair (really)...put on an unstained shirt and some earrings.

so join me! let's let it go and hold it in, all at once!

everything i need to know, i learned at parent/teacher conferences

a wealth of information, i tell ya...

my son has found out that if he puts a toy in his pants, the owner rarely wants it back. and that explains the abundance of hot wheels cars and mcdonald's action figures in his backpack.

my daughter is helpful and kind and someone the teacher can count on. i know you think that's a nice report, and it is. except that i think he had someone else's file out, because that doesn't sound at all like my child.

that eye-rolling that i thought my son reserved for only me...turns out, i'm not alone. way to broaden your horizons, son.

oh, the pride and joy i feel.

take this, kiddo...

when i found out i was pregnant with each of my babies, i started the typical dreaming about my impending motherhood...being a mom meant having a baby. having a baby meant all kinds of adorable things like onesies and strollers and gas drops. i got prepared...i bought stuff, i talked to other moms who had babies, i read stuff in all-knowing magazines. i was totally ready to be a mom to a baby.

a baby.

i forgot that babies grow into kids. kids that (sometimes) need discipline.

eek! i didn't read about the discipline stuff! i mean, time-out...sure. but i'm finding out that discipline gets bigger and much much much much more complicated with every birthday. you ever tried to sit a 10 year-old on a "naughty mat"? yeah, he totally learns his lesson :)

sigh.

so we get creative around here...

can't quit touching your sister? fine, you get to be tied together for 30 minutes.
can't think of anything nice to say? fine, you are grounded from speaking all day.
can't stop jumping on the couch? fine, you are only allowed to sit on the floor.
you wanna pick on your brother? fine, write him a compliment letter.
you wanna sneak a piece of gum? fine, you owe me a whole pack.

and wouldn't you know, those kiddos are always thinking of new ways to need discipline! they are amazing that way, those babes of mine.

got any good suggestions?

my face thanks you, carpool line

if it weren't for the long pick-up lanes at my childrens' schools, i would never...get my fingernails clipped and filed or tweeze my eyebrows (thanks, natural lighting!!)...

what do you do in the pick-up lane?