The Frog in Our Mailbox

There is nothing quite like opening your mailbox and finding a frog.

...Not a real one of course but a fake one. I only wish the giant spider that I found in my mailbox the other day was as fake *shudder*.

A few days later we found a pink dog in our mailbox.  Our local mailman, a family friend ruined the surprise for my husband though when he sent a text message and a picture of it to my husband.  Apparently the people in the mailroom at our local post office got just as much of a kick out of it as the girls did.

Meet Hoppo and Pinkie 

The girls thought they were the funniest things.

So did my sister-in-law who sent them for the girls after Ry was born.

Who knew you could send toys without packaging?

I have a stand of flamingos in my garage that I bought as a practical joke that may be on their way to a new home...

Late Night Radio

When Ry turned two months last month, we transitioned him to his crib.  Our nightly ritual is the same.  All three kids go to bed around the same time.  Bob takes the two girls and I take the baby.  We all troop upstairs together between 7:15 and 7:30 pm.

Bath time, jammie time, story time, hug and kiss time, and then at last it is bed time.

The only piece of electronics in the kids' rooms is a radio.  Every night that is the last thing that gets dealt with before the lights go out.  We put their radios on.  Ironically, its the same station that plays in both rooms. That was accidental. It was the only station we could get clearly in the girls' room that didn't play rap or a lot of upbeat dance music which I didn't think was good nighttime music especially since Emmy and Maddie like to dance.  I pictured them dancing around the room that they've started sharing in recent months.  Whatever Emmy does, Maddie does to.  It is really the only station that comes in in Ry's room.  The second night Ry slept in his room, I noticed it was the same station playing in both rooms.

What do they listen to?  A syndicated radio show with Delilah.  She plays love songs and soft contemporary rock-the perfect music to fall asleep to in my opinion.

Since I sit in the rocker and nurse Ry before putting him in his crib for the night, I have actually started listening to the radio and not just tuning it out as background noise.  I've started looking forward to this quiet time.

Each night once the girls are in bed, I sit in the rocker listening to Delilah choosing the perfect song for the dedications of callers who are looking for a song to say what is in their heart or answering a listeners letter as they ask for advice or help.  As I listen to her giving advice, I wonder where does that kind of wisdom come from?  It seems she always has the perfect answer. 

Is it age? Life experience?  Personality and an inner ability to empathize?  I am in my 30's with three young kids and I still feel so young and inexperienced in so many ways.

My husband was joking the other day that we're really not that young any more.  He's right.  Middle age is shortly upon us. Yet, I don't feel older, wiser, or more experienced.

How do you find the right words when your children come to you with their growing pains?  You can't say "hold on a minute, let me ask someone else" or "let me google that".  What do you say when your child is the one left out, or when they get their heart broken, or heaven forbid, they face tragedy like the loss of a friend?  What do you say when they start asking the "hard" questions?  What do you say to help make it better?

And I thought Emmy and Madison's "why?" stage was tough.  It will get tougher, I am realizing.

Those "what to say worries" kept me up last night.  How do you find the right words? 

I know I can listen.  I can be there.  I can let them know I love them.  Maybe I can play devil's advocate, maybe I can see where they are coming from based on my own experiences, maybe, maybe, maybe...

I'm sure I will probably say the wrong thing more often than not. Will me letting them know I love them more than anything else in this world, be enough?

I'm sure I will be be going through my own growing pains as a mom just as they are going through their growing pains as teens and young adults.

*After I hit publish, I realized 8 pm is not late for most people but since I became a mom, my bedtime is usually right after the kids' so for me it is late!

Pumpkin Timeline

Ever since I was a little girl, trick or treating involved dressing up and having my mom drive us door to door to family and friends' homes since we lived outside of town.  We usually had our trusty plastic pumpkins to carry our loot.

For Emmy's first Halloween I was almost lured by fabric bags with pumpkins and sayings and the cutesie metal pails.  In the end I went to Wal-mart and bought her her very own plastic pumpkin for about a $1.99.  Those plastic pumpkins just bring back so many memories of my own childhood Halloweens.  That bright orange pumpkin has been her loot "bag" ever since.  Last year we bought Maddie her own and next year Ry will have his very own.

                                                 
On the girls' pumpkins, I wrote with a black Sharpie what they have dressed up as for Halloween every year since they were born.

And this year?

I guess you'll have to wait and see!

I've Been Hacked

My husband called me from work last week to inform me that my personal email had been hacked.

How did he know before me?

An old coworker of his (whose address was in my contact list because we had invited him to a pool party we threw several years ago) had emailed him that my email was hacked.

A few seconds later a friend of ours also emailed my husband at work to let him know that my email had been hacked.

That prompted a call to me to inform me that every single person in my contact list (we're talking almost 200 people) had been spammed by me.  I haven't cleaned my contact list out in...well, I don't remember. 

Those people who were spammed included former coworkers of mine and my husbands, our minister, our lawyer, the moms in the moms club I belong to, our travel agent who planned our honeymoon, and a myriad number of people who I hadn't spoken to in years.

I was mortified.

Apparently, I knew Max's secret, how to quit smoking, how to have fun, how to get rid of pain, and a site to get rid of your problems.


Needless to say I immediately went in and changed my passwords...

...and updated my contact list.

Have you ever been hacked?

It Never Compares to Mom's

My husband has a mom who is a good cook.  Even those of you who don't cook probably have one or two things you can make and take to parties or gatherings.  You know those things that you are known for bringing.  When you RSVP, it is that dish that the host automatically replies with "can you bring your..." 

Me, I make a mean veggie pasta salad. 

With my MIL it's not one thing, it's several dishes that she is known for that are absolutely delicious.  She makes a mean spinach dip, bean dip, and ranch pretzels (dubbed "Grammy's pretzels" and which my children could polish off in one sitting).  After our hurricane party (it was supposed to be a pool party), she is also kown for the BEST ribs ever.  Our guests polished off 8 or so pounds of ribs in no time. The recipe called for margarita mix.  Anything with margarita mix is bound to be yummy.

She's also the one who is in charge of the Thanksgiving turkey and which turns out amazing year after year even though she doesn't measure the ingredients.  According to her, its just a little of this and a little of that based on whatever is in our cupboard.  If I did that it would turn into some nasty science experiment gone wrong.  These are the people I envy since I am not a natural cook.  I need a recipe and a little luck on my side when I cook.

My MIL is also known by her family for her hamburger gravy.  Sausage gravy seems to be the norm here where we live and in the south but in the midwest where my husband's family is from, it is hamburger gravy.  We occasionally gather at her place for breakfast when the whole family is together.

After Family Fun Magazine featured a recipe for biscuits and sausage gravy that looked almost exactly like my MIL's hamburger gravy, I decided to tackle this dish myself.  My husband has been saying forever about how I need to learn how to make his mom's hamburger gravy.  How hard could it be?  (Asks the woman who still has issues using her bread maker).  I had low expectations so I figured I wouldn't be disappointed when it didn't turn out well since I was deviating from the recipe.

When my husband saw the finished product, he gave me THE LOOK.

It was the dubious look that asks, "will this kill me if I eat it?"  Actually, it was the "I have REALLY high expectations and this is so not going to live up to them" look since I have never sickened nor killed anyone with the food I've made. Of course there was that one time I mistakenly used cups instead of teaspoons of salt and instead of baking powder I used baking soda (or was it vice versa). I was making peanut butter cookies and they came out looking like bad tasting pancakes...Hey, I was only about 8 at the time.  Yes, I was using a stove at that age.  Of course, only when my dad was watching us.

I had been worried especially after my husband asked me if I wanted the truth or if I wanted him to be nice.  Anyway, it came out good.  Okay, at least the gravy did.  My husband said I nailed it or at least came really close.  *Insert me grinning wildly* I even have my grandparents as witnesses.

The biscuits were another matter.  They were small.  Apparently they were supposed to be large enough to break in half.  The recipe said it would make 10.  I had 12.  On top of that they were a little "funky".  They were dry.  Some were flatter than others and some had multiple ring marks since I had some little hands helping roll and cut the biscuits with a glass.  The girls had fun and really got into twisting the glass to cut out the biscuits. And if I'm truthful, I hate rolling dough so that could account for the different size biscuits since I rolled most of the dough.  When I talked to my MIL and told her about my foray into cooking her signature family dish, she laughed and said she probably only gets about 5 or 6 biscuits out of a regular recipe. 

 My little helper & the finished product

I can never make my mom's casseroles taste just like her's either.  So the lesson I learned is this: it will never live up to his mom's. Just like my casseroles and cookies will never taste quite like the casseroles my mom used to make and the cookies my grandmother used to make.  And that is the way it is supposed to be. Maybe its because they put a little bit of their heart and soul, a little bit of them, into what they cook. 

What is your signature dish?

A Mother's Best Friend

As a child, I remember getting gum in my hair thanks to my sister.  My mom's solution was to rub peanut butter into my hair and then wash it.  Even after two washings, I remember going to kindergarten smelling like peanut butter.

Recently, while friends were visiting, my daughters and my friend's son went into my daughters' room (they are young enough that I can say that without cringing) to play even though there is nothing in my daughters' room except stuffed animals.

I had forgotten that the nursery across the hall didn't have one of those door locks on it.  I had removed it for some reason or another and forgotten to put it back on.  It sat dismantled in a box with other odds and ends in my husbands office.  As my mother would sarcastically say when I was young, "that's a good place for it, right?" 

Of course my two year old who had followed her sister went inside the nursery and got into the petroleum jelly (a fresh jar that had not even really been used after Ry came home from the hospital) that was sitting in a portable organizer on the ottoman.  When I went to check on them, I saw Madison in the hallway.  She was covered in it from head to toe. When Madison saw me she grinned as though proud of her handiwork.  In her hands was the jar with the lid stuck down in the jelly and about a quarter of the jelly gone.

I felt my stomach actually recoil at the site.  The smell and the sight were horrifying and many expletives were racing through my mind. I would have much rather found my child with gum in her hair.  I am sure it would have been easier to clean up after. 

I handed the baby to my friend and picked Maddie up under the armpits away from my body and deposited her in front of the bathtub.  All the while I kept repeating how we DO NOT play with petroleum jelly.  Yuck.  Yuck.  Say it with me, "YUCK".

Even after wiping as much of the jelly off as possible and lathering her hair and body twice, her hair and skin were still oily.

That night she got another bath and after washing her down two more times, it seemed she was no longer an oily mess.

That night when I told my husband about her escapades, he laughed and asked me why I didn't just use Dawn.

Uhh...

He was right.  If it works on oil coated animals, why not a petroleum jelly covered child?

It seems that Dawn and magic erasers are truly a mother's best friend.

Printable To-Do List Just For You

It's no surprise to anyone who knows me that I am a list maker extraordinaire.  I make lists for everything and somewhere along the way I began to depend on them so much that I swear I am incapable of remembering the simplest things like milk, eggs, and butter from the grocery store.

Anyway,  I finally gave up my black book and my post-it note craziness. I came up with a to-do list that keeps me organized and that keeps me from pulling out my hair (and that my kids have no interest in).  Post-it notes seem to beckon to my children, "come take me away and play with me" as does my little black book which says "come draw in me".  I have lost count of the number of times my post-its have disappeared from my purse or the fridge and my little black book now boasts scribbles from the girls from when they've sneaked it from its spot in my bag.  With all the apps and such for my Smartphone, I still haven't been able to bring myself to join the electronic age.  I like writing things down the "old way".  Call me old-fashioned.

I finally created my own to-do list to help keep me super organized.   My weekly grocery list usually goes on the back but for those items that I forget to buy or that I run out of during the week, they go under the grocery list section.  My daily chores include those chores such as laundry, dishes, watering plants, and filing (bills mainly). As silly as it sounds, I often forget to water my plants regularly and to do those chores I dislike (or am I the only one who conveniently forgets to do them).  The daily chart keeps me from over scheduling my family.  I fill in any appointments we have for the day and things I need to get done.  The meal plan helps me plan ahead and reminds me when I need to pull meals from the freezer with just a glance.  The "Odds and Ends" section is my wish list of sorts.  This is for those things that I want to get done eventually such as scrapbooking or updating my iPod.  It's things that are important only to me and that I want to get done but don't usually have time to get to them.  I've found that writing them down has helped me make time to at least spend a few minutes working on getting them done.

Want to print your own copy?

Click here to print your own to-do list (minus the nifty graphic since it didn't appear in google docs).  You can even punch holes in these sheets and keep them in a binder or if your like me you can recycle them or throw them away.

Are you a "to-do list" afficianado or do you avoid them at all costs?

The #1 Question Parents Ask Their Kids

What do you think it is?

With little kids, their favorite question is "Why?"  but what about the parents?

If you have a child just starting to talk, "can you say_________?" seems to be a common question even though the child in question is not likely to respond.  A good friend who recently visited was lamenting how her two year old would refuse to say new words that they were trying to introduce.  Instead, she would look at them, smile, and say "no".  At least she had one word down. 

If your potty training, it may be "Do you need to go potty?"  Warning to new potty training parents: They are more likely to pee on the floor than to say yes (at least in the beginning).

"What did you do at school today?" is common if you have school-age children.

"What did you just say?" seemed to be a favorite when I was a teenager.

I was out with the girls and I had asked Emmy, "What do you say?" after someone had complimented her.  The response I was looking for from her was "thank you" but she had hidden behind my leg and refused to say anything.  Since the person was a stranger and we have been learning stranger safety I totally understood her reaction.

The person replied with a smile that that question is the most often asked question that parents ask their children.    And the more I thought about it the more I thought that I had heard that before from someone or read it somewhere.  Or maybe it was just because their statement had a hint of truth to it.

I've come to realize how astute that person was and that they were probably a parent themself.  They were more right than even I imagined.

Since that conversation, I realized just how often I do say it.  That prompt to get them to say "excuse me", "please", and "thank you" does in fact seem to be the most often asked question out of my mouth.

Close seconds are, "Do you need to go potty?" and "What are you doing?"  The answer to the first is usually no and the answer to the latter is usually silence which usually signals that my children are up to no good (usually while I am in the bathroom or doing dishes).

What is the most asked question in your house?

Mommy's Home

Whenever I leave my house, even for the simplest errand, when I return home and the girls or my husband hear the opening of the door leading to the garage heralding my return, I always hear "Mommy's home."  This is usually followed by the pounding of running feet.

For over a month I have been MIA and have found myself for the first time in about a year and a half not thinking about my blog on a daily basis. When I did find myself thinking about my blog, I wondered if I would be able to find the words to tell more stories.  At those moments, my mind felt as though it was a blank chalkboard with nothing written on it. A clean slate.  Empty with only streaks from being wiped clean by an overly zealous hand.  It was as though all my words had dried up along with the moisture on the chalkboard.  Then, I found panic setting in.  Where did all of my words go?  What if I was away for to long and I couldn't get my groove back?  What if no words came when I did sit back down to write?

In the last month I found myself to tired and exhausted to write regularly.  Thank you cards have been the extent of my writing in that time.

For the last week I found myself putting "write a blog entry" on my to-do list.  Yet, I found every excuse not to sit down at the computer to write.  I felt anxious and worried.  It was silly to almost be scared of my computer screen...

This morning I finally just did it.  Once I sat down, the words just flowed...

Why have I been MIA for over a month?

A new bundle of joy has joined our family.  His nickname is Ry.  He arrived almost a week after his due date.  He's met most of his family and many of our friends so it seemed fitting to finally let him "meet" you all.

Mommy's home again.  Starting next week, I'll be writing on a regular basis again.  In the short time I have settled in front of the computer this morning, I do feel as though I am home again. I've also realized how much I have missed sitting here in the early hours tapping on the keyboard while everyone else is asleep and with my ears straining to hear any sounds of stirring overhead.

Home sweet home.

Rockin' The Bump

Shell over at Things I Can't Say is hosting Rockin' the Bump. Do you have fun pics of you rockin' your pregnancy bump?

Pics of me being pregnant with the kids?

Uh...there are not many.  There are probably more of me from my pregnancy with Emily because of the prerequisite baby shower.  I had to really search for some.

In all honesty in most pics I am usually the one behind the camera and being pregnant is no exception!

The pic below is of me pregnant with Baby #1!

Pregnant w/ Baby #2 on our Babymoon to Mystic, CT

(I made a lot of people nervous including the owners of the B&B we stayed at even though I wasn't anywhere close to my due date.)

This was taken just a few weekends ago at our goddaughter's baptism in MA with my pregnancy bump with #3.

I have less than two weeks to go before #3 arrives (unless he makes an earlier entrance) which is why I have been writing so sporadically.  Hopefully, within the next few weeks I'll get in the groove again but for now I am just enjoying my family, focusing on whats important, and relaxing before things get seriously crazy.

If you haven't yet, don't forget to link up with Shell over at Things I Can't Say!

Men & Shots

"Why don't you ever believe me?"my husband always asks.

I could say the same.

While getting the girls ready for bed last night, my husband called up the stairs asking if I had any hydrogen peroxide.  After searching both of the upstairs bathrooms and only coming up with a bottle of alcohol I had to tell him no.  I went downstairs with the bottle in hand, asking my husband from the stairs why he needed it.

He didn't answer right away.  I found him standing in the kitchen with one shoe on and bloody footprints leading into the downstairs bathroom.

Apparently he had stepped on a nail while working outside and it went through his shoe into his foot.

My husband refused to believe me that he needed a tetanus shot.  With his manly bravado he humphed and sneered.    I tried persuading him, harassing him, and then finally guilted him into going.  My trump card was "if you don't go get a tetanus shot, I'm going to worry so much it will send me into labor." 

His reply?  "I'll ask Google."

For once Google and I agreed.  Off he went to the emergicenter to get a tetanus shot.  I couldn't even hold his hand since I had to stay with the girls who were already sound asleep.

Poor guy.  All that hard work today and he ends up in the doctor's office needing a shot.  I'm sure that wasn't the ending to his day that he was expecting.


Interested in finding a summer read for the kids?  Don't forget to enter to win an autographed copy of Victoria Simcox's The Magic Warble.

Running the Bases

Every summer I have a to-do list of places to visit or things to do as a family.  Fun things.  That hasn't changed even though it is a pretty short list since Baby #3 is due in about 4 weeks.

One of those things was to attend the local AAA minor league ball game with the kids and let Emmy run the bases afterward which they do at every Sunday home game.

Since both girls have a short attention span and we have season tickets, we arrived late, really late, in the 7th inning late.  The girls were mesmerized by the people and the cheering and the action on the field.  Emmy was upset that she forgot her pom-poms to cheer them on.  I of course forgot to grab them from the table when we left.  She kept reminding me throughout the rest of the game.

During the 9th inning, kids and their parents start lining up to run the bases after the game and when the game is over they are led down to the field itself.

 Emmy holding her dad's hand in the 90 degree heat

Emmy was at the front of the line.  The kids ran from first base to home plate.We weren't sure how well this was going to go.  Emmy was a bit younger than most of the other kids. We debated whether my husband should go with her or try to let her do it on her own since each child went one by one.  We decided we'd let her try it on her own and if she got scared we would run out to get her.  We were standing between first base and home plate so we weren't far away.

When Bob stepped out of line, Emmy was looking around for him to keep him in her sights.

We needn't have worried.  When she was 4th in line, she bolted.  The stadium worker who was high fiving the kids to give them their okay to run stood there bewildered and laughing as this little peanut started running towards second base.  My husband stood next to me laughing and joking that this was going to end badly.

Emmy crossing home plate

It didn't.  She even stopped so she could tag the second base before running for third and she didn't stop until she made it to home plate where she ran to her dad.

She even wanted to do it again!

Do you ever find yourself underestimating your kids?  And what's on your summer fun list?