Parenting Ah-Ha #1

Those of you who know me, know that I am kind of a "do-er." I was raised by a feminist who taught me how to get stuff done and to be brave enough to try to do it myself, even if it meant learning a new skill. What I am saying is that I am not exactly the kind of girl who waits for a guy to open a door for her, if you know what I mean.

Being very pregnant does not have a lot of perks. Basically one: you know the pregnancy is almost over! Mostly, you are big, tired, and don't really feel like doing a whole lot. However, you don't really have a good excuse to quit work, and there are a lot of things to do at the house before the baby comes, etc. In my opinion, having a newborn baby is WAY easier than being 9 months pregnant. After all, you can set a baby down...you can't exactly take off your pregnant belly.
Plus, once that cutie comes into the sunlight it seems that people bend over backwards to help you. They cook dinners, carry things to your car, bring you pillows and drinks. When I had my first daughter, I thought this was a little absurd. If I wanted to be a competent, independent mom, I needed to know how to manage myself and the baby on my own. I might as well start as soon as possible.
Then I began to notice a whole set of tasks that people did NOT want to help with. Namely, waking up in the middle of the night or a baby that won't quit crying. I noticed that if the baby dirtied her diaper, people passed her directly to me. I found myself making sacrifices so that my husband could get more sleep since he had to wake up at 6 AM. I found myself spending dinners at a fancy restaurants in the bathroom trying to calm a baby. That is when I decided:

"If I am going to have all the DISADVANTAGES that come with being a mom (accepting them with grace and joy), then I was not going to feel guilty about the ADVANTAGES of being a mom."

Yes, I can get my own drink of water, but if someone else wants to, that is an easy way for them to help. I now smile and accept.

A kid's bedroom remodel

Christmas always poses a bit of a dilemma in our house. How do we honor our family members who want to give our kids gifts without filling our house with junk and spoiling our children? We work extra hard to make sure that "kid things" don't monopolize our house. If possible, we would prefer them not to show their face in the main living rooms. We have set up the house so that the kids play outside, in their room, or in their portion of basement, but we can maintain some uncluttered areas in our living room, dining room, and kitchen.

Last year for Christmas we had the great idea of remodeling the girls' room as a present. We enlisted grandma to help by purchasing new comforters as a gift for Christmas. I looked at the calendar and set aside a day. For my Christmas gift, I received a day of babysitting from my aunt, so I set that up for the same day. When the day arrived, my husband was overwhelmed with a project at work and was not able to concentrate on any other project. We took the day of babysitting and went out on a date (which is more what the "gift" of babysitting was intended for, I'm sure).

A month or two passed and I finally caved in and put the new comforters on the beds without painting, etc. Finally, about June, my mother in law called to say that she is coming for a week to help us decorate the girls' room. Evidently, my father in law was going on a mission trip to help do projects on people's houses. Even though my mother in law wanted to help, she was not able to commit to sleeping on gym floors for a week, so she decided that helping us with our house would be close enough.

The project consisted of:
1 - buying matching purple paint and doing a quick coat to cover up the disaster of a paint job that existed.
2 - removing grapevine wallpaper border.
3 - painting pink accent wall.
4 - painting all trim, doors, and windows white and covering up the purple paint that was all over them from the last paint job.
5 - making the white and pink "dots" out of contact paper. developing a pattern we liked and measuring and sticking them into place.
6 - making invisible bookshelves out of old books from a tutorial on instructables.com.
7 - making circle bookshelves from cardboard concrete forms as found also on instructables.com.
8 - spray painting toybox lid.
9 - hanging new curtains.
10 - sorting toys and give away 60% of them. 


Here is the finished product. You'll have to forgive the video quality as it was just done quickly on my regular camera, so the lighting is a mess, but you'll get the idea. We love it. It is a great room for our girls, but it is technically the "master" bedroom... so it might not be so good for the resale value! Oh well... you can't have everything.

   

Life is more fun as a kid!

Each year on Labor Day weekend, my very distant family hosts a family reunion at Spring Mill State Park in Mitchell, IN. It is a very big memory for all of us in the family and is second only to Christmas at Grandma's house when it comes to holidays. When you think of family reunion, you may think of quilt auctions, matching T-shirts, nametags, or slideshows. This reunion has none of those. After the pot-luck dinner at the park, the family members are free to explore the trails and caves, visit the authentic pioneer village, or test their endurance by walking in the spring-fed creek that maintains a water temperature of about 50 degrees year-round due to the caves. While a typical family reunion is usually dreaded by a 10 year old boy, in our family they make plans for weeks!

Unfortunately since we have lived out of state most of my married life, and the years we lived in state, we worked on Sundays, I have not attended much at all. I decided that this year, I would go with the girls despite the fact that Michael would be working.

I came home with one conclusion ingrained in me: "traveling with kids is hard work." Traveling with kids, without my husband, while trying to coordinate the schedules of other family members is even harder work. So, although I did manage to snap a few cute pictures and I am sure the kids had a blast, I am EXHAUSTED! WHEW!