Mara's Creativity

Mara had fun playing with playdough last week and made this fun creation. She was pretty pleased. Notice the detail in the toes. :)

A Bag Lady

Did I tell you we have a bag lady in the house? Sonna loves collecting things in bags and carrying them all around the house or put her bag over the handle bar on her bike. She is full of spirit and zest these days. She'll say, "I'm never gonna play with you again" or "I'm never gonna go camping with you". We are trying to teach her that these statements are unkind and not very helpful to any situation even if she is mad. But I know the absolutes ('never' and 'always') feel kind of good to use in the moment. :) (She is pictured above in another Sonna Original Outfit).

Playing with Babies

Sonna especially likes to play with her baby dolls. In particular, she likes to bathe them and change their diapers. Mara joined her this time too. Most of the time, they have a lot of fun playing together.

Crafty Aunt Becca

My sister has a wonderful blog full of her latest crafting, scrapbooking, party ideas, faith stories, recipes, and special quotes. She took a class recently and learned how to make fabric flowers. I suggested she make them for headbands and ONE week later they arrived in the mail for the girls! The girls were thrilled with their special package from Aunt Becca.

Her blog is: www.beccagroves.blogspot.com Take a look!

Happy News!

We are expecting a baby! I'm 11 weeks pregnant with an arrival date of mid September. We are all very excited. And I am much more nauseous this time around and having a harder time sleeping at night, which is exacerbated by the fact that an afternoon nap is a major rarity given the fact that my two little ones don't nap anymore. So my nausea seems to settle in around 4pm and stay until I go to sleep at night. On a few occasions, I have set the timer for 45 minutes for some afternoon quiet time and gone to lay down on my bed (with the door closed in hopes that I might fall asleep). One of these times, the girls got into the paints and had a grand old time. Another time they found some chocolate and marshmallows. I didn't care. I was just happy to have 45 minutes of peace and quiet.

Today I saw a woman with an infant on her front and a toddler on her back in a pack. I turned to Jedd and said, "Our girls will be able to walk and run without needing me to carry them while I carry this baby". That sounds nice. Sonna will be 3 years and 4 months old and Mara will be 5 years and 4 months old when this baby joins our family. I think that will be just right!

Happy growing, baby! I'll do my part to help - approximately 30 pounds. :)

Sandy Beach in Somers

So we ended our nutty week with a glorious visit to Sandy Beach which is near our home. The girls loved the combination of the water, ice, snow and soft sand. They were pleased that the sand was 'playable', unlike the frozen sand in our sandbox. It was a refreshing finish to our week.

Quite a week

I told Becca I was too tired to post the happenings of this past week but she told me it would be worth it and good to reflect on in years to come. This was a week from he^^. Jedd's dad had two minor heart attacks, I was unable to sleep without the aid of Tylenol PM, we found out our amazing neighborhood dog, Sarah, was taken to the pound, I dislocated Sonna's arm, a dismal job search in a dismal economy, and in an error of parenting judgement we made a consequence that was impossible for Sonna to avoid which resulted in taking her new scooter to the Salvation Army (major tears).

I'll start with dislocating Sonna's arm. Jedd was hosting a retreat at camp for the weekend so I was on my own for bedtime. It was time for bedtime stories and we usually lay between the girls. Sonna wouldn't move over so I could fit in between them. I asked Mara if I could lay on the edge instead and reach over Sonna to hold her hand. Mara said, "No, I need some of your love too". (She wanted me near her too). So I asked Sonna to roll over again but she wouldn't. I grabbed her wrist to help scoot her over and she immediately screamed. She rolled over and held her arm against her body and would NOT let me look at it. Still crying and screaming, I told her I needed to look at her arm. She said, "NO! Not you, only the Doctor!". She was very upset with me for having hurt her. When I asked Sonna if she wanted to watch a video (to get her mind off the pain) she said, "I can't walk!" (I think she meant to say "I can't move". Thankfully, Jedd was able to come home to help and in the meantime, I spoke to my cousin, Kathy, who is a Pediatrician Resident and she was so reassuring. She said that little kids' joints are very lax and that this happens a lot. She said they would probably take an x-ray at the E.R. Thankfully, Sonna's arm seemed to pop back into place all on it's own and she cried herself to sleep. Then Jedd got home and checked her arm (after cutting off her jammies since Sonna wouldn't let me touch her) and it seemed fine. Jedd went back to work. At 3AM, Sonna called me into her room and said, "I can walk again!!!" Her arm was better. She also said, "Tell my Dad I love him". (Thanks to Uncle Mike who was also a supportive consult during this traumatic event.)

This week also included calling Mom names. Mean Mom was what they called me anytime I said something they didn't like. Time Outs were not at all effective and of course, it happened only when Jedd was gone at work. At supper on Wednesday night, I gave a little speech something like this: "I am your mom and I love you very much and I work hard to take very good care of you and when you call me a name it is rude and disrespectful and it hurts my feelings" (insert tears in my eyes). So I asked the girls what they thought would be an appropriate consequence for calling me Mean Mom. In an effort convey the seriousness of the situation, Jedd suggested throwing away their scooters if they should say it again. He was not at all expecting the girls to agree to such a suggestion. But Mara's eyes grew wide and she said, "OK". Uh, oh. At 2 1/2 Sonna is lacking in self control or thinking before she speaks. At 4 1/2, we have been working with Mara to think before she speaks for several months now. We gave the girls several reminders that their scooters would go to Salvation Army for another little kid to have if they said Mean Mom, knowing full well that one of them would slip. We knew this wasn't the right consequence but we needed to follow through. As predicted, Sonna said Mean Mom the next morning and we took her scooter to the Salvation Army. It was a sad day for Sonna. (Just after Sonna said Mean Mom and was reminded of the consequence, her loving big sister said, "Sonna, I will share my scooter with you if you want").