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Category Archives: Matthew
Counting on Nature
My extended family had a rough day today, and because of my closeness in proximity to my cousin who had her phone turned off at work, I had to receive a frantic, upsetting phone call and then deliver the news to her. What happened isn’t my story to tell, but the impact of the situation is still unknown and I’m very worried about my youngest cousin (the baby between both sides of my family). Being a mother myself, I’ve learned that even if your kid walks away from a bad situation mostly physically unscathed, that the impact of his actions to those around him can be just as hard, or even harder, to handle than most physical harm that could come to him.
Oh the things we learn and lose sleep over once we become parents.
So after a very mentally exhausting day that ended with no peace of mind, I just wanted to go out with my family for dinner. Dinner was great, until it wasn’t, but watching the boys befriend ducks and geese and bunnies at our little town center ended the day as well as it could be ended. You can always count on nature for that! 😁
These Two
These boys of ours are something else. One minute, they’re best friends and the next, they’re pounding on each other. And then, once time-outs are started, they won’t let the other one sit alone, because they don’t want the other to be lonely. This is the daily cycle in our house.
Love-dislike-love.
That’s better than dislike-love-dislike, to be sure. But it’s still exhausting!
We’ve had way more happy moments together than angry moments lately, and no matter what the mood, Matthew wants to go nowhere without his brother. “Bryce, do you want to come to school with me?” “Brycie, want a bite of my cookie?” “Bryson, want to lay with me?” It’s ridiculously cute.
And the love and adoration goes both ways. Bryson is lost anywhere without his brother. Parks and play areas are a pass without Matthew and Bryson insists on getting Matthew up to play with him once he’s up in the mornings or after naps. I love watching him walk around the house calling out Matthews name.
They’re best friends.
My SIL told me today that we’ve done a great job making them best friends, but we didn’t do anything special.
We got lucky. That is all!
Onto Pre-K (Round 1)
Matthew finished up 3 year old preschool this past week. This school year finale was much easier on me than last year, when I cried and cried because I couldn’t imagine him having different teachers the next year. Getting new teachers is a fact of life and I’ve accepted it… And also worked hard to get him into the Pre-K class with his favorite teacher from this year as the assistant. 😁
Yes… I’m that mom. I make no apologies for it. I want my kid to be comfortable with the people who know and understand him. He has a lot of energy, and we’ve worked hard on that this year, learning to not push and hit when frustration sets in. Mrs. M helped us with that and also “gets” boys, so he’ll have her again next year. Yay!
We’re not sure if we’ll hold Matthew back until he’s 6 to start kindergarten our not, so I’m looking at this as Pre-K round one coming up. We’ll see… A lot can happen in one year!
Birthday Party Planning
I created a page on my blog (like I did last year) to track tasks for planning the big birthday party. You can find it in my main menu, and here, if you’re interested!
Birthday Time… Again!
I can hardly believe it, but I have TWO birthdays to plan in the next month! We’re making it easy this year – the boys are sharing a party. They’re best friends and honestly, all they care about is that they have each other at their parties, so we’re combining them.
And it’s more for us than for them.
Not really.
Well… really!
We have not had one of our big parties since before the kids came into our lives. We used to have epic parties – the types of parties that people would ask us when the next one would be so they could be sure to be in town. And we LOVED throwing huge parties! The bigger, the better… and we like to go BIG. Well, we’re not going HUGE, but it’s going to be big and it’s going to be FUN, goddammit!
Real food.
Real drinks.
Great cake (I always have a great cake because cake is my favorite thing).
Fun friends.
Babysitters for the kids.
I’m whipping this up and I feel like I’m pulling the kid-friendly aspects of the party (theme, invitations, banners, favors) out of my you-know-what (really, I’m just pulling them out of Et.sy), but I want to focus on the real details. I want to focus on the food we’ll make, the drinks we’ll serve, and the cake I’ll construct.
Here I come, birthday season 2015!
Emotional Limits
You’d think that after selling every last piece of baby gear, that I’d no longer have any emotional attachments to the past.
But I do.
I was inventorying the nursery decor that will be sold when we convert the nursery to Bryson’s big kid room, and I’m having a hard time imagining handing those things over to someone. The perfect mobile, the original artwork, the deer prints, the garland I made from leftover first birthday decor, the bookends shaped like animals. My heart is in each of those items.
I’m keeping them, most of them, and putting them up in the kids’ reading nook. My heart can’t take letting them go right now. I know my emotional limits.
For now, they stay.
Wordless Wednesday – Must Sleep in His Hat, Day and Night
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The Moose!
I’ll start by saying that I’m not 100% thrilled with how this turned out. It’s cute and all, but I didn’t use enough paint for the sky and I forgot to paint a tiny part (oops – I didn’t even notice it!). But I am happy with it, even if it’s not perfect. 😉
I will get it hung this week in my big kid’s room. When Matthew saw it, he exclaimed, “it’s a moose! A moose on the loose!” Ha ha!
Thank You, 2014!
2014 was a great year for our family. It didn’t start out well at all, but turned around rather quickly with a lot of self-awareness on Hottie’s and my parts, lots of hard work, and heaps of forgiveness. Basically, I feel like we grew into each other and our life as a family of four this year.
Having small children is a challenge. We started the year with a 2.5 year old and a 6 month old – meaning that our oldest was always being put on hold for naps, nursing, etc. and our focus on one another was, well, pretty non-existent. We started 2014 in survival mode, and there’s truly no other way to describe it. No one was sleeping (except Matthew) and fuses were short. Tempers flared and skins were thin. It was not good. But somehow, the fog lifted and we looked forward, and we found our way as a family of four.
I won’t lie – we made a lot of conscious changes to be better to each other, communicate more openly, and treat each other more as true friends than roommates. We talked about learning to forgive each other effectively, but also efficiently. I lived with the mantra that I will forgive for the things I’d like to be forgiven for if it was the other way around. I shared that viewpoint and Hottie agreed that was a good way to think about forgiveness. We grew, we reconnected, and we ended up in a very, VERY happy place. We ended the year with Hottie taking the two weeks off between Christmas and new years like he did last year, but I enjoyed having him home every minute this year as opposed to last year when I felt suffocated and invaded.
Yeah… Hottie and I had a great 2014! We’re best friends who are in love!
The kids had a great year! Matthews speech is great, Bryson is such a big kid, school is going great, and both kids are just so happy and good to each other. We are very happy parents!
And me… This was my year to get back to my normal self. The me before IF ruined me, mind and body. And I hit it hard. I took myself and my goals seriously and found great success all around. I am stronger than I’ve ever been, I’m healthier than I’ve ever been, and I’m happier than I’ve been since meeting my soul mate 7.5 years ago. I know I’m riding on a high here, but I’m cool with that. Being this happy feels damn good!
There’s no “good riddance to 2014” from this gal. There’s nothing but gratitude and appreciation for a fantastic year of countless highs, a few lows (I still miss my Lily cat beyond even my own comprehension) that taught us a lot, and health and happiness for us all.
Thank you, 2014 – you did right by us!
(2015, please don’t kick us in the teeth to balance us out!)
All the Sun For You 