Patience Update

Well, after careful thought and consideration (thanks for all your comments) and after listening to General Conference, I decided that my problem with patience was really mine. My kids are at an appropriate stage for their ages. Sure, I could work on teaching them about patience some, but mostly what prompted me to feel impatient with their impatience was ME. Ya follow? So I'm working on that. I know that I get grumpy when I'm pregnant and I guess I can add "impatient" to that list.

So there you have it, my piece of humble pie.

Patience

I am at the end of my rope.

My patience is running thin because of how impatient my children are.

Someone is constantly hollering at me that they need this or that while I help someone else. It doesn't matter if I have already said, "Yes, just a minute" or anything similar. While I'm in the middle of our two-minute routine of getting breakfast for everybody (the exact same way that I do every other morning), three children ask me for at least 3 things each. I think they should know that I can't do anything else for them at that moment. I cannot dole out bandaids, go over homework, and play catch while preparing breakfast. Sorry, kids. Naomi is by far the worst offender. Just now I sent her to her room for impatience and within a minute she was hollering, "Mama!" because I wasn't coming up to talk to her as promised. It's bad. How could I have failed to teach this to my children? It seems that in a family like ours they would have learned to wait their turn, but suddenly I wonder if instead they've learned to forget waiting and yell their way to the front of the line. Has that worked for them in past? I don't think so, but maybe I haven't been strict enough.

So, I'm putting my foot down. Impatience will no longer be tolerated. I haven't decided yet how I will manifest this non-tolerance policy or what the appropriate punishment should be. But I just can't ignore it anymore.

Suggestions?

Spring Break

We've been living it up this week, on Spring Break. We haven't done anything really momentous or anything, we've just enjoyed playing and being together. We've been to the mall, played outside endlessly, bounce housed, dyed Easter eggs, picniced, etc. And we've done much of it wearing shorts and t-shirts! It rained the first part of the week, but the last couple days have been positively gorgeous. Today's high is 79!

Tomorrow we are all heading off to D.C. to see the cherry blossoms along the Tidal Basin.

Pictures will follow when I'm not too busy having fun!

15 Weeks

Here's my belly at the beginning of my 15th week.
I think it looks bigger in this picture than it really is. Most of the time I look less pregnant than the random woman standing next to me (one of the hardships of having a genetically blessed flat tummy).

I'm excited to blog through this pregnancy and have a good record of my feelings and such. Lately my feelings are mostly blah, blah, blah. I'm tired and pretty grumpy and look frumpy most of the time since I'm piecing together maternity and non-maternity clothes. It's amazing how much the fit, color and shape of jeans change in just a few years. These light-wash, boot cut jeans are soooo out.

Contribution

Richard has been working really hard lately to get a new version of jQuery UI out to the public. He was even out of town for 5 days over last weekend while he worked on it in Boston with some other guys. And it seems that the effort is not going unnoticed. Well, at least the "big picture" isn't.

A very complimentary article came out today about jQuery (the parent of jQuery UI) on Pingdom (a technology news blog). Check it out here. Some of the highlights are:

"jQuery is open source, web developers love it, it’s been embraced by a slew of big companies, and is close to becoming a de facto standard for website development"

"jQuery has crushed the competition."

"This could very well be it, the one core Javascript library to rule them all and become, if not an official standard, at least an unofficial industry standard for web developers."

I know that most of the details of this are foreign to most of you (I know this because they are foreign to ME and I live with a guy who works on it every day), but I think you can still see how awesome a project this is. And how awesome a guy it is that I live with. It's exciting that this project that Richard jumped in on the ground floor of has exploded to such great proportions.

Way to go, Babe!

None Lamentational News

I'm still here. I just haven't wanted to whine too much on the blog. And I've been feeling very whiney lately. Pretty much every day I've mentally written a blog post entitled "Lamentations" in which I list my myriad of woes. But I'm pretty sure you guys don't really need to know all that. So I've stayed mute on the blog instead. ...It's not that my life has been awful lately, it's just that I'm whiney. Really I'm fine.

None Lamentational News:
I've been reading A Tree Grows In Brooklyn. I've enjoyed it and yet I'm bored with it. I don't feel like much has happened. It's an interesting look at life - there's just not much action.

Isaiah learned to say his own name in speech therapy. The best we've gotten out of him since then is "I -say-ew", but the teacher swore he was saying it in class. She also claims that he can say Naomi.

Next week is Spring Break. No grand plans, but we do hope to have at least a one-day adventure. Perhaps a day-hike somewhere in the Shenandoah National Forest.

We've decided to spend a good chunk of July in Texas. Still a good ways off, I know, but I'm always happier when I have a trip to my Mommy's house planned.

Spring flowers are popping up everywhere! I love when my daffodils bloom.

Good Day

Sports Confusion

Naomi came home from school a couple of days ago talking non-stop about soccer. How she wanted to play and did I know how to play and what happens if you use your hands and did I know there were special shoes and I want to be on Lizzie's team. So we talked about soccer all day. The rules, the uniforms (of special interest to Naomi), the ball, etc. Then that night I saw Lizzie's Mom at a church event and I asked her what team Lizzie was on because clearly Naomi is dying to play.

Lizzie's Mom looked at me in confusion. Because apparently Lizzie hates soccer. She refuses to play it, ever, even just in the backyard. Lizzie plays softball.

So the next day I talked to Naomi and brought up her sudden urge to play soccer. It had not diminished. Then I tactfully told her that Lizzie didn't play soccer, she plays softball. And Naomi, in true Naomi fashion, said, "Oh, yeah. I got confused. Softball - that's what she plays. I want to play that."

Total silence from me.

I couldn't believe I had just spent 24 hours discussing soccer when she meant a totally different sport. But it's true. She wants to play softball. Really, she just wants to play whatever Lizzie is playing- which, I repeat, is softball, not soccer.

So we spent all of last night and today talking about softball. Which is tricky since I never played softball or baseball or anything like it. I know the basics, but some of the terminology and specifics are a little fuzzy. Softball is, in my opinion, a little more tricky to understand than soccer. You really have to learn two different games - the one where you're hitting and running and the one where you're catching and throwing (offense and defense?).

I'm going to wait another day or two before I actually sign her up. Because clearly her sudden desire to play sports has very little to do with sports. But is that so wrong? I just worry that she'll be the girl standing in the outfield who gets hit square on the top of the head by the ball as she stares out into the woods totally spacing. But again, is that so wrong?

The problem is that I really don't have much experience to pass on to her. I was definitely the girl who would have been spacing out in the outfield - had I played softball.

Fastest Hair Do-dad Ever

For about a week now Naomi has been discussing what she'd like to wear on Saint Patrick's Day. I guess a holiday that's just all about what you wear really appeals to her. So, naturally, she's been very concerned with how her hair would be done, too. I promised her I would make her some perfectly-Patty's Day hair-do-dad. So when it came to crunch time today I sat down with my crafty stuff and came up with this: the fastest hair-do-dad ever made.
It's just a bunch of 2 inch lengths of ribbon, double knotted onto a hair elastic. I didn't even really measure the ribbons as I cut them, I just trimmed them to the length I wanted once I was done tying them all on. ~ It's a slightly crazy look, but I think it's got spirit. Holiday spirit!
The whole thing took about 2 minutes, no sewing, no hot gluing, nothing. If you can tie your shoes, you can make this.
This could be cute with yarn instead of ribbon, or with all your little scraps of random colors mixed together. But I think I'll keep it in my mental file under "Emergency Holiday Hair Do-dad".

Massanutten Weekend

The plan was to leave at 11am. Then it was to leave at 4pm. Then 3pm. Then 11 again. Then we were all ready to go at 11, but Isaiah did something to his foot. And instead of leaving for our weekend getaway at 11am, we left for the doctor's office. And then x-rays. After finding out that Isaiah's foot or ankle were not broken or fractured, but probably sprained or twisted, we finally left for our weekend around 4pm. (Feeling slightly guilty about leaving a drugged-up, limping, sad Isaiah for other's to deal with.)
(Good grief! Look at those puppy dog eyes! No wonder this kid gets whatever he wants!)
We arrived at our time-share condo at about 7pm. And were. Blown. A. Way! It was huge! The living room was bigger than the one in our house. The bathroom for was bigger than the boy's room. And our entire family could happily have simultaneously bathed in the huge jacuzzi. That night we just watched a movie and settled in.

The next day we headed to the huge waterpark on the premises. We lazy rivered, and went down slide after slide. Richard loved the ones that were big tubes totally in the dark. I never even tried those after going down one of the "faster" slides and nearly winding up with my swimsuit top all pushed up around my neck. (Seriously, People, I was millimeters away from a major wardrobe malfunction.)

Then we leisurely lunched, napped, lazed about, went to dinner, napped, lazed about, played in the arcade, lazed about, etc.

The next day we had big plans for Richard to go skiing. But it was raining so we opted for lazing about some more. We felt very luxurious as we watched a movie and ate Oreo's at 11am. Then napped.

Eventually we checked out, ate, and headed back to reality.

Richard and I have the most fun on these little weekends when we just let ourselves do whatever. No plans. No "we have to do this just because we can do this". We really do enjoy just spending time together. I'm always reminded on these trips how much Richard makes me laugh. And how much I love that. And him.

When we made it home the kids were... shall we say... HYPER. We brought them each a bouncy football-shaped ball that they've pretty much played with ever since - we won the balls using our tickets from the arcade.

Big thanks go to our friends Kami and Spencer and his parents for giving us the timeshare, and Aunt Kelly and Aunt Ruth for helping with the kids.
Ahhhh, the memories.

(PS - Isaiah is still limping a bit. His foot is clearly still bothering him even when he's drugged up. He must have really twisted it or something. Poor guy. I have a doctor's appointment for him on Thursday to check on his ear infection, so if it's still bothering him then I'll ask about it again.)

Farmer Boy

Laura Ingalls Wilder was one of my first favorite artists. I still have the whole set of "Little House on the Prairie" books as a set. They were given to me as a Christmas present when I was around 8 I would guess. (I'm guessing about the age, I know it was a Christmas present because I remember finding them before Christmas in my mother's closet and thinking that for sure she wouldn't be able to give them to me now because she would know that I had been naughty. I didn't tell her that I knew about them until after Christmas.)

I've been reading Little House on the Prairie on and off with Naomi in the evenings. There is so much that is just totally foreign to her - farming, log houses, heat only from one stove. The other day I was between books so I picked up my old copy of Farmer Boy to read for a few minutes while my stomach settled down.

In the book I found several lovely surprises. The first was this awesome inscription inside the front cover. I don't remember Rick or Ron, but I must have felt very strongly about them at some point. And why I felt I needed to draw a library check-out card thingy in the front I don't know. A picture of my feelings as an 8 - 10 year old I guess.
The second surprise was a little more sweet: A perfectly preserved flower/weed. You can see the tiny red flower among the much greenery. I love it. I want to frame it. I reminds me of life in the wild woods of Washington State every day after school. Of laying in the grass or the ferns reading. Of free Summers. Of a wonderful phase of my life.

And I find myself wanting to replicate that feeling for my children. When will my children be able to be so free? Even if we lived in the same house in Washington right now, I don't think I could let them run free the way I did as a child. So I must find other ways for them to be free. Other places and ways for my angsty, love-hating, 8 - 10 year old's to be free and independent.
And I'm sure they'll read other books more than Laura Ingalls Wilder. Harry Potter and such. But the point is that they READ. And love it. And learn from it the way I did. And feel the exhilaration of living for a moment in a totally different place and time.

That's a freedom they can have even in our living room in urban Virginia.

Rambling

I feel like I should blog today, but I don't really have anything of significance to say. So I'll just ramble a while I guess. Nothing big has happened this week, but plenty has happened. We had a semi-busy week of appointments, meetings, and commitments.

I got to go to Naomi's school and help with the Kindergarten's 100th Day Of School celebration. It was so fun to see Naomi in her element and meet more of her peers and the other Kindergarten teachers. And to discover who the meany substitute teacher is. (I'm just relieved to find that she's a sub and not someone my children may have to deal with on a regular basis at some point in the future.)

I took Isaiah to a follow up appointment for his mega-ear-infection from two weeks ago. He's been feeling much better but she said he still has fluid in his ears so we have to go back again in another two weeks.

Isaiah's speech therapy teacher moved him to a different time because she finally sees what I've been seeing from Day One - that he would do better on his own than teamed up with an older kid. We're thrilled about that.

The big breakthrough for Asher this week is an "x" on the light switch in the bathroom. I finally figured out that his fear of going to the bathroom by himself had to do with his hatred of the noise the fan makes. Whenever he went in there he didn't want to turn on the lights himself because he was afraid he would accidentally turn on the fan instead. So an "x" below the correct switch has solved all his problems.

Naomi's freak-out this week was over where her future sibling would fit into her room. We've had the same discussion about a dozen times about where we'll move the beds and dresser and how we'll make sure this new baby can't get Naomi's special things, etc, etc. But she still freaks out about it every time she thinks about it. And this from the girl who has been whining for 3 years that she's the only one in the family who "has to sleep alone" since Daddy and I share and Asher and Isaiah share.

I'm feeling so much better it's unbelievable. I guess it takes feeling really, really crappy to be this thankful for how I feel even though I still feel very pregnant and tired and grumpy, etc.

I'm excited that I get to go to the temple tomorrow with a couple of my girlfriends. And then Baby Ethan (Richard's brother, Kevin's, son) gets blessed on Sunday. So a fun weekend to look forward to.

But not as exciting as next weekend when Richard and I take off on a solo trip to a ski resort - where we won't be skiing. We plan to spend our time at the indoor waterpark. And order up one pedicure for me. And plenty of just-plain-laying-around time.

How's that for rambling? It was actually kinda nice to not have to worry about the flow of the post.

New Rules

I've changed some of the settings for comments on this blog. Hopefully it won't really bother anybody. I was just getting way too many Spam-y comments. Sorry. I'd rather you didn't have to type in some wonky looking word or have a specific account to comment under, but the Spam... OH, the Spam...

My Man Could Smell Like WHAT?

You have all GOT to go watch this Old Spice commercial. I am positively dying of laughter right now. It seems like a mock commercial, but I swear it's the real thing - I just saw it on TV. Go to this link and then make sure your watching the video called "The Man Your Man Could Smell Like". And then die of laughter. And report back.

Not Me Monday

I'm not baking a chocolate cake right now just because it sounded good. Not me.

I'm not wearing sweat pants even though I had jeans on earlier to go out and run errands. Not me.

And I certainly haven't been wearing the same sweat pants for about 3 weeks now on a daily basis. Nope. Not me.

I've also recently washed my one pair of jeans that fits me. Because I would never be afraid that if I washed them they might not fit for the next year. Not me.

I'm not behind on laundry. Never.

I did not eat an entire tube of Girl Scout Cookies during naptime. Not me. (But if I had it totally wouldn't be that big a deal because those cookies are tiny!)

I did not stay out until 11pm on Saturday night with girlfriends. Not me. (But if I had it would have been very therapeutic. And yummy.)

And most importantly, and for real, I did NOT get sick this morning! Or yesterday morning! Things are looking up - yes they are! I'm not quite at the end of my first trimester, but I'm already feeling better and feeling very, very thankful for that!!!

I'm linking this up to the blog My Charming Kids and her Not Me Monday. She's lots of fun to follow on Twitter, too, if you're looking for some fun in that way.

Signs

Signs of a good weekend:

Smiles:

Face painting, half rubbed off from a long nap, and Oreo crumbs around the mouth:
Face painting, meticulously maintained even with a long nap, and more smiles:
No pictures of Asher. That's a sign of a good weekend for him. He was far too busy to pause for a photo.

It's Not There!

Asher has taken to telling me, "It's not there!" at times. Daily recently. What he means is "It's not fair!" It never fails to crack me up.

Isaiah can count five objects out loud. He says, "Wa, Two, Fee, Foe, Fi!" The first thing he counted was fruit snacks and he was very pleased to learn that counting his fruit snacks earned him a second bag of them (an unheard of treat). He tried the trick again today and was sad to see that it didn't work again.

Naomi threw an hour long fit yesterday including many tears and self-inflicted solitude because I wouldn't let her keep all 20 of the papers she brought home from school. I made her pick five of them to keep. It was a sad, sad day. I can't wait until next week when her teachers send home another pack of papers.

I am feeling a little more normal these day (well, normal for pregnant anyway). I ate an egg salad sandwich the other day - which I would normally hate, and I really enjoyed the smell of the raw ground beef I was browning. So I'm definitely pregnant.

Richard is working like mad, but it's so nice to have him working from home. Sometimes a little too nice - it's hard to leave him alone and let him work.

Ballerinas and Birdies

Here's some of the latest art from Naomi. This piece is actually she and I. I am wearing green and she is wearing purple. We both have pink hair. Note that she even drew little blue pieces of tape on each of the corners. "Because it's a picture of a picture taped to a piece of paper."

The Worth Grand Prix

Today we needed a good, free, hyper activity for the kids. And those are hard to come by.

A little (well, actually, a lot) of cardboard + tape + the dining room table + a bin of toy cars + 3 crazy kids = FUN





Once the cars really started flying, we realized that we needed a crash pad at the bottom to protect the poor wall.

Naomi with her "trophy" and prize winning car.

Fun, fun, fun!

Too Much Law & Order

Yesterday morning I woke up feeling pretty good. I think I've got a handle on this morning sickness finally (now that's it's down to only being *morning* sickness). I got the kids all dressed and ready to go since everybody has school on Thursday's - which means almost non-stop drop-offs and pick-ups for me until noon. Then I ran up to shower and actually get myself dressed for the first time in about two weeks.

While I was in the shower, Isaiah came into my room and sat by the bathroom door (which was open). He whined "Mama" at me a couple of times, but for the most part I ignored him. Shower time is sacred! But pretty soon I noticed that Isaiah was kind of whimpering. I figured Asher had done something mean to him and that he'd get over it soon. But as I got out of the shower I realized that he was pretty upset. He wouldn't stop whining and whimpering and almost crying. He wanted me to pick him up. It was so uncharacteristic that I went ahead and picked him up and cuddled him for a second (buck naked), figuring that would solve the problem. But it didn't. He started full on crying. He wouldn't let me set him down. I started to worry. Was he sick again? He had just been pretty sick four or five days ago. I went looking for throw-up. None to be found upstairs. Was he physically hurt? I tried to ask him but every time I asked him, "Does your foot hurt?", or "Does your head hurt?" the answer was "yes" to it all. Finally I started worrying that he was emotionally traumatized by something. What if something happened downstairs that Isaiah had witnessed? Maybe a serial killer was downstairs slowly massacring my family and saving me for last! (This is the too much Law & Order part)

I braved going downstairs. Shockingly, all was fine. I asked Asher if he knew of anything that had happened to Isaiah, he said no. I asked Richard (who was working in the basement) if he knew of anything that had happened. No.

Anyway, on and on. He really was completely inconsolable. Snacks, cuddles, treats ... nothing could stop the crying. Finally I called our pediatricians office expecting that I'd really have to sell this to the nurse on call as a valid reason for an immediate visit. When I told her he had been crying for an hour and it was unusual, to her credit, she told me to come right in to the office.


So off Isaiah and I went, him crying all the way, to the pediatricians office. (Reason #486 Why It's Great To Have A Husband That Works From Home: leaving not-sick kids at home when taking sick kids to the doctor) It took a whopping 5 seconds with the doctor for her to see that Isaiah had a raging double ear infection. The poor, poor little guy. He was in so much pain!

So now he's highly medicated with antibiotics and Tylenol. And he feels much better - except for the 30 minutes before it's time for more Tylenol. And I feel like a terrible Mom for not having taken him to the doctor sooner when he had that "cold" last week. And I know that he might not have had anything wrong with his ears if I had taken him in earlier - ear infections apparently come on fast - but I still feel like a crap Mom. How can you not when your baby is in pain?

This is another one of those times when nothing really horrible happened, but it was a totally traumatic experience for me anyway. Trying to get dressed while holding a screaming two year old, a frantic call to the school to cancel speech therapy, driving to the doctor with a screaming two year old, sitting in a waiting room with a screaming two year old - all these experiences are traumatic for a Mom.

Man! This is a tough job!