beanski

man, they grow up fast

I was going through pictures tonight and when I came across this picture of Charlie from a couple of weeks ago and it literally took my breath away.

Charlie. The kid I still see like this.

He's big. He has manners. He rides a bike and isn't afraid to jump on a tube and get pulled behind a boat. It is mind-blowing.

I went digging through the archives of this blog for that picture of Charlie in the boots and I came across Renee's enormous baby thighs and Cameron's little man face and all of the kids as babies and I just sat here with tears streaming down my face so thankful that I had taken the time to write it all down. I've thought a lot lately about throwing in the towel on this blog and reclaiming the monthly hosting fees and it's really nothing other than I just don't have time in my life with Facebook and Pinterest and etsy and all of these blessed kids. But, I can't quit. All I have left of her her in that little red swimsuit Rama bought her in Aruba with the five rolls down her thighs are these pictures. This blog.

I need to get better about writing down the funny things they say. I need to get better about writing down that Cam says "toporrow" instead of "tomorrow." Even if my back hurts too bad to process pictures and I don't have photos to go with the words, I want to remember how polite he is right now and how he says "thank-you, mom" every time I give him a glass of water and how he says "I love you too" so incredibly sweetly when I tell him that he's my best boy. I love how he tells me that his "headache hurts" when he's too lazy to walk himself up the stairs and wants to be carried instead and I love that he makes a mad dash for our room in the middle of the night and vehemently insists that it is thundering and that he's too scared to sleep in his own room. I don't ever want to forget the thrilled look he gets on his face when he shifts his tractor into second gear and goes peeling down the driveway or how he is totally obsessed with cars and trains and trucks.

I need to write down that Renee is a total know-it-all and how she says "yeah, I know that" and "oh, that's great" and "you're doing it ALL wrong, mom" when I try to play with her but at the same time is the sweetest little thing you'll ever meet, kissing me on my belly ever so gently every morning and telling me over and over again how much she loves me and how she can't wait to help me take care of her new brother. I want to remember how easy and self-sufficient and how insanely beautiful and smart she is at four and how I honestly would just keep her exactly like she is right now for the rest of her life if I could. I want to remember how much she loves books and new movies and Polly Pockets and her dollhouse and swinging and climbing and doing the monkey bars. She went three bars across the monkey bars the other day and the look on her face when she made it that far was truly priceless. I think she surprised herself almost as much as she surprised me. I want to remember that for YEARS we were sure she'd never learn how to swing and then one day she just sat down and did it without any prodding at all.  I want to remember a life before there was school full-time and activities and three different schedules to juggle. I want to bottle things up and keep them exactly the way they are right now. Even with the hard stuff.

In two years, these are things I will want to remember. I won't care what kind of mother I was or who I spent the weekend with, I will care that I can go back and read these words and for a second, almost feel what it was like to have a four year old and an almost three year old in my life.

Man, they grow up fast.

TFT: overbooked

This article from the New York Times was an interesting read for me and something my husband and I talk about regularly. What are we doing to our kids by overbooking their lives? In an effort to expose them to every opportunity imaginable, are we taking away something from the family, from the imagination that spawns from being at home with nothing to do but make up imaginary games. Do I really want to pack up the kids and take them somewhere every time they get crabby and bored? It's an overwhelming feeling shoved in your face the minute you see two lines or the word PREGNANT on a pee stick.

Don't you dare have caffeine, your baby will never develop properly.

If you don't give birth naturally, you'll ruin your baby's life forever.

If you don't nurse for four years, your child will be sick every day and will have no chance of getting into college.

Your kids watch TV? Blasphemy! Plan art projects for them to work on instead. It's easy.

What do you mean you don't get a babysitter and have date night with your husband at least twice a month? Don't you know you're ruining your marriage?

While you're at it, work two jobs, make sure they have properly fitting shoes so they don't ruin their feet for the rest of their lives, cook healthy meals and make sure you are reading books with them for at least an hour a day.

If you want your girl to be a ballerina or your boy to have a chance at playing hockey or baseball or soccer, you better start it by the time they are three. Sign up for the traveling teams that cost an arm and a leg and force you to travel to games every weekend of your life just to make sure he has the best chance of being the best.

We want our kids to be successful people, yes. But we also want them to be happy. I often wonder when I'm browsing through Facebook in the morning if we, or our kids, would be happy rushing from dance recital to ice show or if any of us would even get anything out of a vacation across the country before the age of five. I mean, maybe Disney World would be fun but something tells me that the lines and the heat and the three kids under five and the the insane amount of money might make it not so fun in the end. I can't help but see people running around from thing to thing checking off items on the proverbial checklist if those people are actually happy or if they just think they have to make sure to squeeze everything in to make sure they are adequately living their lives. I wonder if they really never feed their kids even the nitrate free hotdogs.

And, after I get off my soapbox and rationalize my own self preservation, I wonder if maybe I'm just too lazy to be bothered with shuttling her back and forth to ballet twice a week after watching her be totally ambivalent about the concept in the first place and I wonder if I'm depriving her of opportunities to be good at something using the excuse that I just want her to enjoy being a kid.

Thoughts?

24 weeks

The third child is getting the treatment of the third child already. Honestly, my back pain has been so bad that I don't do anything except the bare minimum requirements of being a mom and a wife and an employee. The housework seems so daunting and little things like Renee asking me for a glass of water 10 seconds after I brought her a snack make me ANGRY. Like, I have to go take a time-out in my room angry.

Ski and I are both convinced that the progesterone injections are turning me into a hormonal mess because Thursdays and Fridays are always bad. My mood tapers off over the weekend then I go back in for my shot on Wednesday and BAM! Crazy hormonal woman is back. The thing I'm looking forward to the most about the end of this pregnancy is getting my tubes tied so that I don't ever have to take a birth control pill or ingest a synthetic hormone again. I guess then I'll probably have to accept that maybe it's just me that's bitchy and crabby and not just because of the drugs :)

I'm trying to make some changes to make things better.

1. I re-hired my cleaning lady that I fired last year to save money. The day she responded that she would love to come back and could start next week, I shed actual tears because I was so happy to not have worry about when on earth I'm going to find the time and energy to scrub toilets and vacuum the stairs anymore.

2. I've found that reading for an hour before bed really helps me to sleep (hello, Hunger Games). I was seriously reaching the insomniac stage where I would wander around like a zombie in the middle of the night trying to figure out how I could quit thinking about onsies and baby quilts and just get some decent sleep. Now, if the resident two year old would keep his cute little butt in his own bed at night instead of coming into mine and flopping around like a fish out of water and my husband would learn how to sleep on his side so he didn't snore so damn loud, I might actually get some decent sleep. It is better than it was a month ago and I'm thankful for that.

3. I went to a chiropractor. I'm not a chiropractor person. Physical therapy and yoga were getting me nowhere. The back pain has reached the point where I just can't ignore it anymore. The scan of my nerves showed EXTREME RED INFLAMATION in the exact place that hurts me every single day of my life. I don't think it is a coincidence. I signed up for adjustments. I am that desparate for some relief.

4. We made some huge financial changes that I'm hoping will take some of the pressure off of us financially. I hate money. Money is hard. I wish I would win the lottery.

I'm hoping that one of these changes will make things better than they've been recently. And they really haven't been that bad but not really that good either. The kids have been really cute lately though so that's fun. They are both very excited about their little brother and it's fun to see how older kids are when there is a baby on the way. Renee is so gentle with my belly and she says all of the onsies are "so cute" and Cam calls the baby "my baby" (as in HIS BABY) and is already deciding which of his toys he's going to share. Yesterday he came up to me with his little toolbox and said "I have a big toolbox so this little one can be for my baby." And then I died from the cute.

I have all or most of the ideas for his room and have the crib skirt and some of the wall projects done. That just leaves me with a quilt, boppy cover, pillow, curtains, bumper pad, blankets and burp cloths to sew, a mobile to make and a dresser to refinish. I have totally realistic expectations for myself as you can see.

24 weeks. 20 pounds. A lot of back pain. Medicore sleep. Terrified of labor. Excited to meet my little boy.

That pretty much sums it up.

first annual camping trip

Everyone has a friend like Lindsey, I suppose. Or if they are lucky like me, they have a handful of friends like Lindsey. Friends where the loyalty never runs out, where time never changes the friendship, where you can sit down for a drink or a dinner after a year of hardly talking and have a ton of things to talk about. Where there isn't judgements or hurt feelings or childish games ... there is just a mutual understanding that you both care about each other no matter what. Time or distance or divorces or not becoming sister-in-laws like we once planned or three kids under four can't change the history, can't ruin the friendship. When things slow down, you'll pick up where you left off. It's the way real friendships work.

When she mentioned that she and Steve were going to take the kids camping on Rainy, I jumped at the chance to go along and knowing that my sister and her kids would love it as well, I invited them along. It was our First Annual Kid's Camping Trip on Rainy and I can't wait for next year. 12, 10, 8, 6, 4, 4, 2 were the ages of the kids that went and they all got along so great. The big kids helped out with the little kids and the little kids watched in awe as the big kids did things like surf behind the boat.

Charlie and Andy became fast friends and spent most of the weekend racing up and down the trail in the lastest form of extreme sports. If you can make it to the end without falling and cracking your skull open, you're tough.


Katie helped out with the little kids and with the cooking and putting the tent up. And I realized what it's going to be like to have one girl and two boys. Loud and busy with a touch of drama thrown in for good measure.


And Chris tied fishing lines for the little kids without complaining even once and showed us that it is indeed possible to surf behind a boat (and wake board, tube, and any other trick that is possible to be done behind a boat)


We played UNO during the rainstorm that dropped down buckets of water and left us all with wet feet and wet clothes. No one even cared.



I got to spend time with my sister and my niece and nephew and it felt so good to see them all smiling so hard.


We spent hours on the boat, watching the kids on the tube or swimming until our toes were almost permanently pruned. My little girl told me every 10 seconds that she wanted to swim all day every day. She's going to be an Aqua Bronc in no time.





We fished. Or at least pretended to. The boys did catch a few Northerns off the dock.


And we slept in a tent for the first time as a family, me halfway pregnant with number three. It rocked my world and my little girl LOVED everything about it.

We sat by the fire and we made s'mores and we told stories.

And we enjoyed the beauty of Rainy Lake.



I think it's safe to say everyone had a blast. We can't wait for next year.

it only took me four years

It only took me four years to con my girl into letting me braid her hair. She required two bite sized 3 Muskateers as payment. Candy well spent.

how to talk to little girls

As part of my effort to post more on this blog as well as comment on other blogs I thought I'd share this today. It is something that I struggle with as a mom to a four year old girl.  Go read this article if you're so inclined as it is what got me thinking today.

I'm guilty of telling my daughter how beautiful she is and it's not because I think that's all that matters about her. Her sweetness and kindness and curiosity are way higher on my list of things that I love about her. I am not a girly girl. When there are bugs that need to be taken care of in our house, the kids call for mom. I dress up once in a while and I like to buy decent clothes that actually fit me when I can, sure.  But there are days when I leave the house in yoga pants with no make-up and personally, for me, I don't see anything wrong with that. It is my life to live, not my job to look good for everyone else while living it. If I feel happy and content in my non made up skin (and my yoga pants), well then I'm going to own it. My daughter doesn't see me putting on make-up ever as I generally put in on after I get to work. As far as women go, I spend VERY little time on myself (we're talking a five minute shower and five minutes to put clothes on my body). 

Regardless of this, she still likes girly things and princesses and nail polish and all of that. Her dad and I do spend a lot of time building Legos with her and doing art projects rather than only playing with her dollhouse or having a beauty salon all day every day. When she asks me why they don't make more pink Lego sets, I get angry with the way our society trains little girls that they have to love tutus and lip gloss instead of toys like Legos. They can't like pink and still like Legos apparently. I find it annoying that 90% of the books marketed to little girls are about princesses and make-up and being pretty. And yes, there are exceptions to every statement I've made here. I could list at least a dozen girl-centric books where the main character is actually a bright, smart, funny girl. Those are the books I read to her.

BUT. There's always a but. 

At the same time, I want her to know, I want her to truly believe, that she IS beautiful. I tell her regularly and it is not because I think that's the only part of her that matters, I tell her because when someone criticizes how she looks or what she wears, I want her to remember that her mom thinks she's the prettiest thing on planet earth and I want her to shrug them off and move on with her life.

Am I, at the same, supporting and encouraging her predisposition to insecurity, vanity, etc. that often goes along with being a woman?

What's your take? Do you instinctively compliment little girls' looks, too? What else do you talk about with little girls? Does it matter?