Marriage

This quote came from a series that one of my favorite blogs is doing called "Less is More".  In the particular post that this appears in Eddie is talking about More Intimacy.

With all the chaos going on in our lives these days Brian and I sometimes feel like ships passing in the wind.  Now that he isn't in paramedic school we do have more time at home together but it still seems like it is the rarity instead of the norm. 

I truly believe that the strength of a family is dependent on the healthiness of the relationship between spouses.  The stronger and deeper rooted the relationship between husband and wife the stronger and healthier the family is. 

One of the keys to a secure marriage is intimacy.  I am not just talking about intimacy in the bedroom but intimacy throughout the day.  I am talking about the moments in the kitchen when you kiss as you are preparing dinner or doing the dishes, the little whispers in the hallway while moving kids from bath to bed, texts saying that you are thinking about your spouse.

I am lucky in that Brian is so good at all the little moments.  It pushes me to respond back in the same manner, when I am apt to run in the other direction with ten things on my mind.  The moods of our house definitely revolve around the mood of our relationship.  When we take the time to be loving with each other, I have noticed we are often more relaxed and loving with the kids.  When we go into stressful survival mode and don't take the time to check into each other the kids feed off of that. We are more likely to be sharp with them and they in turn are less likely to obey.  

Multipling Children

Brian and I were walking across the street the other day, he is carrying Abigail in her car seat and I am herding Garrett and Addison across the street.  We run into old friends of ours that we hadn't seen since last Christmas, and I think the jest was something like "man, you guys have been busy procreating!" While we didn't procreate Addison, we definitely have been busy multiplying children!

Adding two kids in four months to our family has sent us wheeling in a lot of ways.  We also feel so blessed in many ways as well!  We feel lucky that we have the means to provide a safe, healthy, and loving environment for Addison. Garrett and her are getting along so well, love playing together and our family has molded around her.  She seems to have thrived in the structured environment in our home constantly asking questions, wanting to help cook dinner, and constantly wanting to have an interaction and connection.

Things have also been hard, Abigail and even Garrett are sometimes up multiple times a night. There are fights between the older two, tears about things not being fair, and Addison (understandably so) can be over emotional.  It is a fine balance to keep everyone feed, happy, disciplined and well rested.  One that is exhausting and almost never obtainable.  But it does make those moments when I am making dinner, Abigail is napping, Addison is coloring at the kitchen counter talking with me and Garrett is playing quietly with his trains very sweet and rewarding.

The other thing I have noticed about multiplying children, even with a 5 year old and a 3 year old, someone is always hungry.  I cannot keep enough food in the house!  This is especially true with Addison.  She can eat two bowls of oatmeal for breakfast, oatmeal that has fried apples and raisins in it and then tell me 20 minutes later, while she is in line at school that she is hungry. We are constantly going through snacks, and then telling them they have to wait for lunch, dinner, etc. to eat again.

Then there is the laundry...I am learning that if I don't just take a day and do it, including folding and putting away, we are constantly doing laundry. All. Week. Long.  Digging through piles on our bed, and moving piles from our bed to the bench back to the bed, back to the bench, back to the bed, which is even more annoying than just pushing myself to do it all in one day.  And we basically end up doing laundry all week anyway between accidents at night, spills during the day and Garrett's bloody noses!  Aggghh, and re-reading that paragraph just made me exhausted...

I am constantly telling myself to let go of the things like the laundry, dirty bathrooms, and dog hair everywhere and just enjoy the kids.  To give them what they really need which is my time and attention.  They are only young once and the bathrooms can wait.  The laundry will just get dirty again and pile up in a corner. 

I try to make myself sit with Abigail drinking in the smell of her neck soaked with baby drool and spit-up, that smell that makes my heart skip a beat just thinking about it.  To make her giggle and soak in that toothless grin, that is now blemished with one little tooth. 

To tune into Garrett's constant chatter as he and I are painting his Halloween costume and he is so into what he is trying to tell me that he has been talking for the last 20 minutes and completely stopped painting. 

To let Addison help me with dinner, pulling up a stool and wanting to help measure, see the noodles boil and to just be next to me with my undivided attention for 10 minutes.  Her face lighting up when I tickle her or tease her. 

We have been busy and the adjustments have been hard at times but the blessings that we see and the richness and joy of the kids makes it all worth the crazy! 

This is my prayer for my children, for God to lead us to raise children that want to be at home.

Trying This Blogging Thing Again

I have been thinking about returning to blogging ever since I stopped working full time last April.  I miss this little place and want to have a place to write down ideas and record the crazies of our household.  I have crafty schemes, daily frustrations, and crazy children to share.  I will have to start taking more pictures and making myself sit down once in awhile and write.  I have spent quite a bit of time redesigning the blog and reading old post.  Goodness I am a dork! But there are a lot of awesome things posted on here too!  I can't wait to see what happens in this special little place.

Love

Love is not something you say, it's something you do.
You can fake that you care but you can't fake being there.
To send a message of love to your children you must show up.
Love is not a spectator sport.
Our kids need to have love expressed to them daily.
With the little ones its pretty simple.
We need to hug them often.
We need to get down on the floor with them and play with toys.
We need to sit down and read with them on a regular basis.
We need to go in and lie down with them occasionally at naptime.
We must not allow ourselves to be too busy to spend time with them-lots of it.

I need to live by this more often...

Fall

Okay, well one day of Fall!

Brian was gone at a class on Saturday and Sunday so it was just Garrett and I all day. I loved having some one-on-one time with my little guy. We went to the What Women Want Expo on Saturday morning with some good friends. The girls looked at vendors and got free goodies. The boys hung out in the strollers and checked out the scenery. One of the vendors had alpacas and a huge "sheep" dog. The boys sure did like that. In the afternoon I had to run into work so Garrett got to come with me.

This morning Garrett was driving me up a wall and into everything (imagine breaking my hairspray, pulling all of the parchment paper out of the box, taking off with the end of the toilet paper through the bathroom...) Brian's mom sent me a quote saying "s two-year-old is kind of like having a blender, but you don't have the top for it." That was our morning, So I loaded him in the car and we went in search of amusement.
Here are the pictures of our day:

Trains at Barnes and Noble. I am guessing a set will be in out future.

After Barnes and Noble we went to the toy store to find a gift. I made a totally rookie parenting move and left Garrett out of the stroller to play with all the interactive displays. He went bananas, pulling toys off the shelf and going "what's that?!?!?!" and "ohhhh!!!". Needless to say I had to pull him out of the toy store screaming and put him back in the stroller. We did make it back in to actually purchase a gift, but he cried off and on through the whole thing. I partly blame that it was lunch time and he was hungry...right??

Playing at the park on the way to get the mail after lunch and nap.


Brian came home early so we had a yummy dinner and then decided to do pumpkins:

Getting started on pumpkins

Scooping out the pumpkins with Dad

Helping Mom with the drill

And Dad with the knife! (Obviously, we are very safe and responsible parents. We let our kid that close to a big knife AND use the drill in one night! What you don't see is right before this when Garrett tried to crawl in Brian's lap while Brian held onto the 6 inch blade...)

And, the ongoing battle of trying to get a toddler to sit and look at the camera for a picture. Oh, and our pretty pumpkins!

Garrett is such a fun and frustrating toddler. He can point out most of the basic body parts and knows some animal sounds. He is ALWAYS asking "what's that" and saying a lot of things that I don't understand (which is frustrating for him.) He understand enough to know what we are asking him to do but rarely obeys without follow through (frustrating for us!) He has taken to yelling "NOOO!!" back at you when you ask him not to do something (and sometimes running away.) We are enjoying his new communication skills but trying to navigate what to write off as the "stage" and not give attention to, and what things to not let slide. I feel like it is a fine line between teaching manners/acceptable behavior and overreacting/micro-managing...I guess only time will tell!