If we are peaceful, if we are happy, we can smile and blossom like a flower, and everyone in our family, our entire society, will benefit from our peace.
~ Thich Nhat Hanh
Farm day
I spent the morning yesterday playing at the A-Z Farm in Oregon, WI with Andrew’s preschool class. It was so fun to see all the adorable baby animals and to see the adorable four and five year olds petting them. Such cute overload. Also, why is it that I have a strong urge to squeeze baby chicks? They’re so cute, I just wanna squeeze them. I should stay away from chicks. Definitely.
I took pics of the animals to share with you. Here are some of my favorites:
And then for comic relief:
Playtime with friends
We’ve been seeing a lot more of our neighbors Alivia and Rayna these days (I wrote about some of their cute games in a recent post). The little girls had a rough patch where they weren’t tolerating each other very well, but then, suddenly, all the concerns about what was, “MINE!” seemed to evaporate, and they’re fast friends. In fact, the other day, when Sylvia saw Rayna walking down her driveway (three houses down), she leapt off her trike, raised her arms above her head in an elaborately excited gesture, and raced down the street toward her…shrieking in glee. It’s been so lovely having all four kids playing happily and easily together!
Here’s a few photos of them several weeks ago when we needed coats and hats:
Girls running!
Alivia thoughtfully working.
It’s so fun to watch how they play together:)
One of our last snowy pictures from early March. The kids were digging a hole. In their minds, it was a really big hole.
Seeing more of our neighbors again has been one of the really nice parts about the coming of spring!
Chasing UFOs
A few weeks ago, we spent a Saturday morning at Terry’s place while Bryan was participating in a chess tournament. Terry was recently home from a long vacation, and one of the toys he brought home was a flying UFO. He flew it around his condo, and the kids loved it!
Here’s some pics of my kids being goofs and having fun.
I just love these next two!!
My new favorite picture of my girl.
This soft bunny is a puppet that Terry got at a store in St. Paul a couple years ago. It’s such a cute toy, and Sylvia carried it around under her arm. Such sweetness:)
Goose Egg
I was reading stories to Eli, Andrew, and Celia on Friday, when a crash from Sylvia’s room sent me flying out of my chair. [She’s fine.] While quietly browsing books in her crib, my young girl decided to attempt to climb out.
It didn’t go well.
Since I didn’t see her plummet to the (hardwood) floor, I wasn’t sure where she was hurt. And it wasn’t until several hours later, when Bryan was home, that we noticed that she had a huge purple goose egg on her forehead.
So that means she fell out of her crib onto her head.
It also means that I didn’t notice a golf ball sized goose egg for several hours. My girl’s bangs are getting thick.
Ahh, parenting. It’s going to give me gray hairs.
Now, do I hope that this fall taught her not to attempt another climb and therefore keep her in her crib, or do I assume that by falling and not getting seriously hurt that she has used up her chance and I should pull out a big girl bed? I am NOT looking forward to the second option by the way as I assume that it is going to make naps and bedtime much more difficult to enforce because she’ll be able to get out of bed.
Any insights will be appreciated.
Successful Chicago visit
I feel like our little family of four has achieved a new level on this video game we call life. As we were driving home from Chicago today with two content children in the back seat, I felt like there could be a sign flashing on our windshield saying,
Congratulations! At least for today, you have entered phase B15. Vacations for fun are an option.
We took a day trip to Chicago to celebrate my brothers’ birthdays. As Bryan and I discussed the trip, I was pretty sure we’d be in a mode where we would be attempting to have fun amidst two kids who were not doing well. I didn’t figure Sylvia would handle the car trip well (two hours each way). I didn’t figure she’d do that well at brunch at the Four Seasons. And then I wasn’t sure how she’d handle the Field Museum when it was nap time.
In fact, because she’s been less than a stellar traveler in the past, we haven’t done may driving trips with her. Two and a half hours of screaming on a couple trips early on kinda did me in. The girl doesn’t stop when she’s made up her mind. And she doesn’t sleep in the car!
But…I was wrong. Happily, delightedly wrong.
Both kids did a splendid job on the drive down to Chicago. They both did really well (especially thanks to the help of Tom, Terry, and Uncle Bubba) at brunch. Then they both loved the visit to the Field Museum. Sylvia almost fell asleep on Bryan part way through, but she was bound and determined to keep those eyes open.
And on our drive home, Bryan and I looked at each other with wonderment, contemplating a future that might involve more day trips to Chicago (Brookfield Zoo, the Aquarium, Navy Pier, walking on the waterfront) or Door County or just farther than across town. Maybe driving farther than across town is a prerequisite, because last week, she threw fits as we drove across town on three separate occasions. I think she liked the adventure of Chicago.
Now that my girl is well into being Two, I’m starting to get more glimpses of what like with two kids (as opposed to one kids and one baby) might be like. Amazing!
Enough time
“Everything changed the day she figured out there was exactly enough time for the important things in her life”.
I ran across this quote from The Story People while I was browsing the web today, and it made me happy. Being a stay at home mom, I sometimes find myself with excessive time. Sometimes these last few months, when the day starts and we have no plans, I feel like I can see time stretching out toward dinner and bedtime as a loooong road that me and the kids would need to travel together. Or perhaps like it was an obstacle course, and my goal was to make it to the finish in one piece.
If I was working outside the home, I think I’d be scrambling to find time to do the basics: grocery shopping, laundry, meals… Being home full time, I sometimes think that all I have is time, but I’ve also got some individuals I live with who can make productive work, uh, challenging. In fact, even with all the time I do have, I often find myself scrambling to do the basics. Kids don’t cooperate, snuggling time occurs, life gets complicated, tantrums happen, playtime stretches out…
I find that I tend to be compulsively honest about not making excuses. If I’m late or didn’t get something done, I find that I feel much better about fessing up with the honest truth rather than a light excuse. “I’m not on time because I stayed in my pajamas too long.” “I didn’t finish that project because I wanted to snuggle with my husband and watch The Office rather than work last night.” Those feel better to me than, “Traffic was bad.” or “We got really busy.” Along those lines, I don’t really like the “I didn’t have time” excuse. It’s often true, and in some cases, there is just too much that absolutely needs to get done. But when I hear “I didn’t have time” (or when I hear myself say it!), I also hear “It just wasn’t important enough.”
There’s time for the important things. There’s always time for the important things, but it means I have to prioritize. One of my goals is to keep a sharp eye out for the important things so I’m sure to make time for them in my life!
Looking into new web hosts
Hello friendly readers,
How do you feel about the speed of my blog? I, for one, am feeling like it’s waaaay to slow. Especially on my photography website. Ugh. It hurts to watch it load.
So with my free moments this morning, I started looking at hosting alternatives. And being myself, I started by looking for a environmentally conscientious/green hosting provider.
SuperGreen hosting is looking good to me. They’re supposedly fast with WordPress sites, which is the platform I use for my blogs, and they use renewable energy, plant trees, and don’t run horrible ads like GoDaddy. yeah, I’ve got to switch.
Of course, it’s more than likely that I’ll run into problems that will shut down one or both of my sites for a couple days or will keep me up until 2am staring at my computer in confusion and sadness, but in the end, hopefully this little website will run much faster for you and I’ll sleep better knowing that I’m supporting a better hosting company!
Thoughts? Suggestions? Warnings? Offers of chocolate?
Winter…into spring
In late February, we lived in a snowy winter wonderland. We were sledding at Olbrich park, pulling the kids down the street in their sleds, and generally working hard to relish snow and winter for as long as possible so we didn’t go stir crazy for spring too early!
Here’s a little demonstration of the transition over the last several weeks.
Here we have a sparkling, snowy morning. The tree is a maple that Bryan transplanted from a seedling a few years ago. Those silver maples grow fast!!
So the chain link fence isn’t particularly picturesque, but the glittering snow is lovely!
Here’s my new sunflower sun catcher from Heather. A beautiful bit of summer hanging in my snowy window.
In Sylvia’s room, I have a wintry (white) fairy display. I just switched it to a brightly colored spring display. Bye bye winter!
Then, the first weekend in March, the snow started melting. Mellllting!
And within a few days…
The snow was gone!
Bye bye snow, hello spring…
More snow may be on the way, but this week, I took pictures (with my phone) of crocuses and snowdrops at Olbrich!
Spring…in the form of flowers and soaring turkey vultures and migrating sandhill cranes has made a stand! Our neighbood owls (who’ve been hooting every night for months) have hatched at least one chick. A neighbor found the shell on the ground beneath their tree.
Hip hip hooray for spring!
Back in February…snow play with Eli and Celia
On March 1, I went to Andrew’s new elementary school to register him for Kindergarten (see the post I wrote about that right here). While I was at the school, Jessica, Eli, and Celia came over to hang out with my kids. Here are some lovely photos that Jessica took while I was away. It was one of our last really wintry afternoons.
Thanks for taking such lovely photos of your kids and mine, my friend!