I don’t want to talk about it. There was yelling (but not during picture taking).
Sharing the project was a horrible idea and they fought over who got to do what and they lost the beads and hit each other. This photo is deceiving.
That is all.
😉
Category Archives: Matthew
Advent Ornament Project – December 2
I almost forgot about this today after hearing some difficult news. It was about 5:30 when I hopped off the bed and said, “Shit! Our daily project!” I ran downstairs to get the supplies, did a test run, and called the kids in for their turn.
So today, we filled clear acrylic ornaments with paints and shook the hell out of’ em. After the day I’ve had, shaking those ornaments felt great! The kids picked their colors, I pointed them into the ornaments as they squeezed the bottles, I did the initial shake for good paint distribution, and I handed them over to the kids.
THEY LOVED THIS!!!!
This was a great test run because I’m planning to do this with 20 kids at Matthew’s school Christmas party. It will go great!
No pics today of them hanging them on the tree… They’re drying right now in an egg carton!
Oh, and…. I did not raise my voice even once!
Advent Ornament Project – December 1
I picked a SUPER easy project today that required nothing but a pair of scissors. I’ve had this little foam ornament package for over a year, just waiting for the right moment. We literally had 15 minutes between getting home and nap time, which made today at 1:15, precisely the right moment!
Bryson was INTO it! He was so excited to help me make his ornament and put it on the tree. It had to go, “right next to Thomas!” Every single favorite ornament of the moment must go right next to Thomas… He is VERY popular and like the cool kid in school, his spot at the lunch table (or in this case, on the tree) never changes. 😉
Matthew was all about making his ornament all.by.himself and I let him, because that’s what this is all about. He took no instruction from me (“don’t put stickers up the middle, you can put stickers on both sides of the tree, use up all the stickers I gave you if you’d like”) and ignored everything that Bryson and I were doing – he was in the zone. Once done, he tossed it at me and grabbed some crayons to color on the HUGE Amazon box that arrived yesterday. He was over it!
Pictures with Bryson went so well because he meticulously put his ornament on the tree himself. I had to force Matthew to pick a spot on the tree and stand still for two seconds so I could take a picture.
Official Day 1 (but actually Day 2) was a success!
Mother of the Year… or Just Plain Stupid
Remember how going off of the pill made me more pleasant? During that high (my realization that the pill has probably made me a crazy you-know-what for 21 years), I went to Michael’s and Hob.by Lob.by. It was full-on Christmas preparation there and they were stocked full of the things that would be hard to find a month later (been there, done that). I started buying things, craft things, creative things, things for me, things for the kids, you name it. As I was perusing the aisles, looking for clear glass ornaments to fill with paint and glitter and shit, I decided…
Our advent calendar will be one of daily craft projects this year, not chocolate!
Oh yes. Oh YES – this would be fun! Every day, starting on December 1st, we would come home from lunch and make a Christmas ornament, or a decoration, that would then be put on the tree or strategically placed wherever the boys chose for said project.
I loaded up my cart – at both stores.
When I came home, so proud of my idea, I just had to tell Hottie about it and his response was luke-warm, at best. “Every day? You’re going to make them make an ornament every day? I’m not sure that’s such a good idea. You’ll just end up yelling at them and doing the projects yourself – like when you did those Pint.erest cupcakes.” What? Of course it’s a good idea! We’d buy a tree for each of their rooms and they would slowly decorate their tree up until Christmas. What wasn’t he getting? This was a freaking OUTSTANDING idea! This was a Mother-of-the-Year (or at least, a Mother-of-the-Holiday-Season) idea.
This was going to be FUN!
My idea started going downhill when I left my two HUGE bags of projects out while I ran on the treadmill one morning. Bryson came in, carrying a strip of foam stickers, and I thought, “hmmm.. I wonder where he got those.” It didn’t take long to figure that one out. He’d of course ripped open the box of foam bits and pieces to build a pretty cool foam sticker train (tacky, but age-appropriate) because you know, it was full of stickers. I smiled, unfazed, and stuffed everything back in the box. I was sure there were missing pieces, but who really cared. This was going to be FUN!
I became a little concerned when I tested out the glass-ornament-filled-with-paint project. I have a shit-ton of these glass ornaments in the shapes of balls, boxes, and tear-drops. I have two big containers of acrylic clear ornaments especially for the kids. The project is a no-brainer, but I will likely end up doing 95% of them, leaving the kids the job of picking the colors for each one. Not a ton of fun for them, but their attention spans aren’t great, so it will be fine. This was going to be FUN!
I started to worry quite a bit when Bryson proved that he is not ready for his own tree this year. Matthew has a very small tree in his room and Bryson likes to take the ornaments off of it and play with them, leaving a trail of hooks behind him. He does the same thing with the big tree in the living room, and has destroyed quite a few ornaments shaped like cars and toys because, you know, they look like cars and toys to play with. Again, I’ve kept my cool because they’re just ornaments and who really cares? Even if he can’t put them on his own tree, he can put his daily creations on the big family tree. This was going to be FUN!
So today, on November 30th, a day ahead of schedule, I pulled out project #1 (no, they’re not all planned out). I picked an easy one, one involving felt sticker bits to make a Christmas banner, complete with a snowman and Santa. I figured this would get them in the spirit – it had all the things they love (Santa, a snowman, sticker pieces, ribbon) – and this would get them excited about doing a similar project each day. They were into it for about 90 seconds before Bryson started putting the discard pieces in his mouth and Matthew started sticking random pieces all over the place. I kept my composure and just kept working through it, asking for pieces here and there and letting Matthew peel off the sticker backings (Bryson was still eating discard pieces and having a great time doing so). We got it done – without any yelling (take that, Hottie!), without any tears! And they loved it!
I decided to take a picture of them with their “very neat” banner and asked them to sit next to it (“but don’t touch it, that glue is drying. I mean it, don’t touch it. Please stop touching it.”)… and that is when it happened. That is when the inevitable, the unavoidable, happened.
“Please look at the camera. Please look at the phone. Please stay there a second. Please look at Mommy. Please, both of you, smile and sit still. Please just look at me. LOOK AT THE PHONE!”
I raised my voice…
But only once!
Tis the Season
The day after Thanksgiving is perfect for shopping, unless you are like me and can’t stand the crowds. In our house, this is the day of decorating.
Being perfectly honest, I don’t love decorating for Christmas. I grew up with a mom who was OVER.THE.TOP when it came to decorating for Christmas… But SHE didn’t do the decorating… We girls had to do it. Every year she’d shake her finger to and fro, telling us just where to put everything. We had very little creative license even when it came to her gigantic snow village, which really DID leave much up to your imagination. No no. “The man carrying the wreath goes here and the toy salesman goes there.” Good god, decorating her house was miserable. Even my dad would say, “if you want it a particular way, then YOU do it.” That never worked, she just would demand more.
So (and you thought this was going to be a jolly holiday post!)… Yeah… I don’t like decorating for Christmas. It makes me tense and sad. I really despise the Christmas village and just can’t bring myself to put mine up. I don’t think I ever will.
Because of my memories of preparing for Christmas, I refuse to make the boys take part in decorating for any holiday. I let them jump in when they want, and jump out when they’re ready for a break. I’d rather surprise them, quite honestly, with some decorations than make them be a part of the process. Matthew was adamant that we decorate right after thanksgiving but then he did very little once we got rolling, and I am fine with that. Decorating is my thing, I won’t force it on them.
I do, however, love decorating the front of the house! My parents didn’t do this until we were in high school and they hated doing it, so completely left it up to us, which we enjoyed! I always swore I’d be a white lights kind of gal but with kids, you just can’t be. They like color, and colors that do.not.match! Every year I get more stuff to put in my yard and I look forward to it no matter how cold it is outside. I’m doing the outside tomorrow, but I did buy some porch trees today that I’ve wanted since we moved into this house, and I couldn’t wait to get them outside! I added lights and ornaments and ta-da! Done!
We’re also decorating the tree tomorrow, but I told Hottie that’s his job. 😉
Annual Santa Photo – CHECK!
I took the boys to the mall to visit Santa today. Last year, they both seemed a little put-off by the big fluffy guy, so I did a lot of prepping this year. We went to “just look at him” last week (but rode the train!), bought our “Santa outfits” this past weekend, and talked about visiting him nightly. Both kids were SO EXCITED to tell him what they want for Christmas this year (Matthew wants yet ANOTHER set of walkie talkies, Bryson wants Lightning McQueen) and could hardly wait to go. On our way to school, Matthew kept asking why we had to wait soooo long to see him. After leaving Matthew at school, Bryson insisted that we go see Santa that instant (the mall was not open yet – I told the truth!!!). I had high hopes!
Prior to this morning, I did have a few worries that Matthew would get cold feet – after all – that is what happened with the Easter Bunny in April (in all fairness, Matthew just opted out and poor Bryson wasn’t given a choice and sobbed his little eyes out = best picture EVER). I thought for sure that Bryson would run right up to Santa and chat him up.
The opposite happened!
Matthew had almost no hesitations, and all Santa had to do was smile at him and he sat right down next to him and started spilling it. Bryson, on the other hand, was scared to pieces. As Matthew was smiling and talking with Santa, while I was trying to coerce Bryson to “just sit next to him,” I asked the picture gal to please start snapping photos because I wasn’t sure how long this was going to last. Matthew started to be concerned about his little brother and tried helping me convince him that it was OK to sit with Santa. Bryson disagreed – BIG TIME. So, I did what any good mom does and plopped him down there and walked away. We got one photo that did not look like we were torturing him 😉
And now we’re done for another year! Ho, Ho, Ho!!!
Family Pictures – Finally!
We had family pictures taken 4 months after Matthew was born, in the crisp fall of early November. Two years later, we followed suit when Bryson was 4 months old, and it was fun to see how our family had changed in just two years. We thought about getting pictures taken again last year, but we weren’t 100% sure if we were done having kids and figured that we’d wait until we knew for sure. Because there was a possibility of a third baby, I wanted to save the money for possible birth photos. Shortly after missing the crisp fall weather, we were told by two doctors that we were done having babies.
2011
2013
I scheduled our family photos in July for the fall, because I love nothing more than a fall setting and sweaters! I scheduled them for the end of October, a little earlier than we’re used to, but I was hoping for a little more green grass this year. I immediately got to work on coordinating our outfits and decided to go with blues this year instead of our “normal” browns and tans (Hottie accidentally wore a brown quarter zip sweater in both our 2011 and 2013 photos – it was a different sweater, but you wouldn’t know it by looking at the pictures). It all started with Matthew’s sweater and then the rest of us each had a different shade of blue on. It looked great in theory!
The pictures were not easy – Matthew gets so crazy and wild when he has an audience, Bryson was tired even though he’d just napped, I was wearing a dress that was way too short for my comfort level, and Hottie just wasn’t in the mood. I felt like we got a few good ones, which is all I wanted, and we called it after 20 minutes. Denise, my photographer friend, sent me a few teasers and I knew we’d gotten the few that I’d hoped for, after a few head swaps 😉 I waited for a couple of weeks, then, as she edited and took a much-needed vacation.
I got the full collection of photos on Sunday and they are so great! They capture our family, our craziness, my exhaustion (I’m not in many!), and the boys’ personalities. I’m really glad we waited 2 years from the last time because that’s a good amount of time to show some major changes in the kids. And.. I’m running out of wall space because I can’t bear to take any of the old photos down!
2015
Weekend Highlight – Our First Snow
We finally got snow yesterday for the first time this fall. This is unusual for us! Usually by Halloween, everyone’s making bets on when we’ll see our first snow flakes if we haven’t already. We usually have had at least a flurry or two by the start of November, but not this year (which has been awesome!).
Saturday morning brought us 6 inches of real snow – enough to play in but not enough to ruin our moods (ha ha!). Our “snow guys” had our drifts cleared out by 1:00 and the kids were ready to go! Bryson was pretty sick with a virus but he refused to stay in while Matthew got to go out, so we bundled them up and Hottie did the honors – I believe it is the Dad’s job to take them out in the freezing cold. They were out for over an hour (I ran on the treadmill) and I think the cold air cleared out Bryson’s nasty sinuses. He’s still feeling exhausted and yucky today, but I really think the cold air helped.
They had a great time together and with the neighbor kids. I snapped a few photos from inside behind a screen, so those photos are not good. The good ones are from the neighbor!
Matthew’s Room Is D.O.N.E.
So this is embarrassing, but this little project has been started for well over 1.5 years, and it’s been hanging over me. I sold all of my craft stuff in February because there’s no point in hanging onto things that don’t interest me anymore, but I kept this project because I knew I wanted to finish it. This was the final touch for Matthew’s room and the wall above his bed has been so bare compared to the rest of his room.
Until now.
It’s done… and I LOVE it!
Finally… it’s done!
I stood in his room to see his reaction. It was almost as awesome as his excitement over the Halloween decorations yesterday 😉
Travel, Travel, TRAVEL
(Please do not feel compelled to read all of this or view all photos. I don’t keep baby books or any albums, so I tend to over-share here and on FB so that things get documented properly!)
We have spent a lot of time traveling lately, both together and apart.
Hottie seems to always be coming or going from somewhere with work, and we’re lucky the trips are shorter in duration than they could be. He’s on the road, or in the air, at least once a week right now and next week is insane with three trips in 1.5 weeks, all requiring flights far, far away from home. It doesn’t bother me too much, because he’s usually gone for just two nights a week, but next week and the following week will be tough. I wish he was going to be traveling a bit closer to home so that the boys and I could drive up and meet him, wherever he may be, for the weekend.
I can’t believe I wrote that – that I’d love to meet him, WITH THE BOYS, for a weekend away. A year ago at this time, hell – 3 months ago, I would never have said that. But something has changed lately… our boys have become good travelers.
What the what?
They’ve become such great travelers that we have spent the last THREE weekends traveling. Three weekends IN.A.ROW of hotels and road trips. Flights don’t scare me one bit, and the boys handle them great and they’ve never been an issue, but car travel and hotel sleeping has been a nightmare for years now. The only time hotel sleeping was *good* was when we went to Disn.eyw.orld with Matthew before he turned 2 (and prior to Bryson joining us – I was 7 months pregnant when we went). We had a condo and he had his own room and he went to bed on time and we sat up and drank wine on the deck (not really – I had Diet Pep.si). It was awesome. We thought that it was always going to be that great. But um… no… that was a one-time thing.
Until now!
Three weeks ago, we decided on a whim to head to Kans.as City to see a bunch of our friends and some family. We stayed at “the Wolf Pool” (as the kids call it) and the kids had a super time at the water park, and dinosaur museum, and out about with the people we love. Bryson slept in his OWN BED both nights until at least 4:30 AM (and once until 6:20 holy SHIT!) and Matthew slept in his own bed both nights well into the next morning. It was awesome! We came home from that little trip feeling like we’d conquered something pretty remarkable.
The following weekend was my family reunion on my mom’s side. My grandpa, who I loved dearly (I had fabulous relationships with both grandpas and one of my grandmas – I was lucky!), would have been 100 on the 28th of September and right before he died at the age of 89, my aunts promised him that we would all gather for his 100th birthday because turning 100 was always a dream of his. So… we did it. I have a HUGE family and of the 22 grandkids, 17 came and the 5 that didn’t were all very far out of state. All of the immediate siblings were there (my mom and her 5 sisters and 1 brother, and their foreign brother (exchange student) from Kuwait) and the grandkids all brought the great-grands, and our first and only great-great-grand was there as well – 74 people in total. It was super fun!
My aunts had the party in the town my grandparents lived in which was 2.75 hours from our house and instead of drive up and back that same day, we decided to drive 30 miles from the party to an indoor waterpark hotel (yes, again!) for the night. After the previous weekend at Great Wo.lf Lod.ge, both boys were feeling brave and rode the BIG adult waterslide on their own! It was a very big deal (but there are no pictures because, you know, water and nerves). We could not keep them off of the sides and even after a pretty serious forehead injury for Matthew, he kept wanting to slide. It’s hard to say no to such bravery… so we shut the pool down that night and opened it the next morning. There was a pretty fantastic park right next door, and the entire campus was right on a nice lake so it was quite picturesque and enjoyable. The boys are begging to go back. The night didn’t go quite as well as it did in KC, but we got 6 hours of sleep without a bed companion, so that’s a win in my book. Hottie’s parents’ town was on our way home and they messaged us about getting together, so we stopped there for 2 hours on the way home and that was a really nice way to end the weekend!
And that brings us to this past weekend – the trip to Omaha that we planned with Steph that we booked different weekends for. HA HA HA! We had a GREAT time and everything worked out in the end. Omaha is where I grew up and I really like it there. There is so much to do, the private education system is STELLAR, and the local restaurant scene is amazing. If my parents had lived in central Iowa when I moved back from Chicago, I would have moved to Omaha (I didn’t want to live too close to them for good reason), but because they lived in Omaha, I chose the next best thing. Ha!
We did something that we’ve never done before… we didn’t tell my parents we were coming this time. We just didn’t want to make it about them because it was about us, our kids, and our friends. And…. we had a GREAT time! We spent Saturday at the Children’s Museum and the Old Market farmers’ market and Sunday at the most incredible pumpkin patch. It’s not really a pumpkin patch – it’s an insane fall festival that they run for 6 weeks straight, 7 days a week. We had a hotel suite with a separate bedroom and the kids went to bed and we got to stay up and talk. Matthew slept in his own bed both nights and until 8:00 this morning, and Bryson slept in his crib until 4:00 on Saturday and 6:07 this morning (he wakes up at 6:07 most days of the week – it.is.weird). It was just so… EASY. It was so easy and fun that there were lots of tears on the way home that we’re not going to a hotel again for a long time.
It was a great weekend, and a great way to wrap up a trifecta of travel weekends! We’re ready to be home for a bit now… but just a bit!
I think we may have arrived at easy travel.
All the Sun For You 