Whiney Wednesday XXIII

I really have tried to resist whining.  Really.  This post has been in my head for over a week now though, and maybe if I get my whining out I can just move on and things will be better.  One can always hope...

1. My dear children have been a particularly nasty flavor of difficult lately...sassing, hitting, aggressive behavior, failure to listen, running off from me at the library with a look of glee in (his) face all the while.  You name it.  All the things "those people's kids" do.  My kids are doing.  And it is driving me just a leeeeetle bit bonkers.  

2.  Bedtime.  Where do I even begin?  The new beds and all the arrangements that go along with those are going all right.  And night time itself is really pretty good most nights.  Bedtime however has turned into my worstest most awful nightmare.  Gemma is doing all right, but Kolbe has turned super needy.  Like, wow, really child?!  Prior to moving to the same room as Gemma, either Aaron or I rocked him to sleep in either the baby room rocker or on the back deck which was not ideal but it worked pretty well most nights.  Now it's light too late and hot and buggy so the deck isn't really an option, and Kolbe has no interest in the baby room any more (which is probably good, however...).  When we try to leave the room if he's still awake, he cries, and yells, and stands at the door and yells "mommy night-night" or "daddy night-night" until one of us goes in and lays with him.  And then he flips and flops and tosses and turns and is generally annoying.  So we leave.  And he gets upset, so we come back.  Repeat.  Repeat repeat repeat until he finally tires himself out enough to go to sleep.  He does the same thing at naptime, taking forEVER to get him down.  We've tried keeping him up from his nap and that only results in a very grumpy child all. afternoon. long. and then an even more difficult bedtime believe it or not.  I know this too shall pass but holy cow, I do believe I may lose my mind in the process.  Did I mention they've been waking up earlier than normal in the mornings as well?  The joys just never end.

3.  I feel big and pregnant and tired and uncomfortable and big and it's hard to roll over in bed and I have to pee all the time and I'm often nauseous and I (and the kids) sense a change coming and all the unknowns of the near-future are weighing heavily on my mind and heart.  Add to that #1 and #2 and you get one grumpy, snappy, short-tempered mama and wife.  And it's just this big awful cycle that feeds on itself all day (and night) long if I let it.  And you know what they say if mama ain't happy...  Yep.  The old saying is right.  Turns out no one around here is happy.  And don't get me wrong, I'm very, very excited for this new little addition to our family, we all are; it's just...overwhelming too.

So there you have it.  WHEW, I already feel better just getting that all out there.  And I will say, after all that, today has been a pretty great day around here.  But overall lately I just feel like things fail more than they succeed.  God is humbling me, and giving me ample opportunities to grow in grace, so for that I am grateful...I just need to actually be able to let go enough to learn and grow.  God help us all.  

If you have your own whines to share my comment box is open, or click HERE for the "official rules".  You know misery loves company!

"Y" week

Part of me is sad to be coming to the end of our letters, part of me is ready.  It's been a great year, we've learned a lot, and I feel like I've done a lot of work that benefited us this year and will potentially benefit us in future years with other children.  Lately I've been thinking about the coming year and what I'd like to accomplish with Gemma and Kolbe when it comes to learning at home...all the while keeping in mind we have a third little one joining our family here in a about 6 weeks.  I've found a lot of great resources, and thought a lot about our daily routine, and am confident (?? maybe that's a strong word...) that we'll be able to continue learning together, even if our "schedule" isn't quite as structured as it was with our Letters of the Week (and believe me, that "structure" has evolved as the year has gone by and our needs have changed and shifted).  But I'm getting ahead of myself now.  I plan on posting in the next couple weeks about some ideas for the future, but for now, our "Y" Week activities and books included:

• "Y" is for "Yes, Lord!"  Another great activity/craft from Catholic Icing.  Have I mentioned that I am so glad I own this book?!!
• Month by Month a Year Goes Round -  great rhyming book that talks about the changing days, months and seasons of the year.
• Just Like You -  A very sweet, multicultural book that talks about babies from all around the world.
• We had fun singing "Yankee Doodle" with this book.
• We looked at a great picture book about Yellowstone National Park and discussed the various things we saw.
• We enjoyed Yellow: Seeing Yellow All Around Us (our version from the library was just in English) and did this Y/Yellow/Yarn craft from DLTK.
• We're almost to the end of A is for Altar, B is for Bible and Museum ABC.  These have both been great resources throughout the year.

Series books we like

The library has become such a hidden treasure for the kids and me.  We always look forward to our weekly trips.  When Gemma was around two, she really took a liking to the Little Bear series of books.  Little Bear is a kind little bear who always shares with his friends and is very respectful to his incredibly patient parents.  I will admit, sometimes when I read the books or watch the show with the kids, Mother Bear and Father Bear make me feel a little guilty for my random outbursts of exasperation with my darling children and their nutty antics.  Now you know.  Anyways, I had two Little Bear books from when I was a child (and they were old then) and we read them to Gemma over and over and over and over and, well, you get the picture.  After some searching and a bit of trial and error (there's some junky stuff out there), we've found several other series' books that we really enjoy.  I thought I'd share them here.

Mr. Putter and Tabby - Mr. Putter is a sweet old man who lives with his cat named  Tabby.  These stories are funny and a bit sentimental. 

Elephant and Piggie - Oh Mo Willems, you are a super-genius.  These books don't have many words, and aren't divided into "chapters" like most of the others I mention, but they are so awesome and hilarious.  Aaron and I both enjoy reading them.  Oh, and so do the kids.

Henry and Mudge - Henry lives with his mom and dad and big dog Mudge.  Each book has 3-5 chapters about the adventures he and Mudge seem to always find in the everyday mundane.  These books also have a "sister series" about his "girly" cousin Annie and her bunny Snowball (Annie and Snowball).  All in all, I've been pretty impressed with anything we've checked out by Cynthia Rylant.

Frog and Toad - I think everyone on this planet could identify with the personality of either Frog (the excited optimist who's a true-blue friend and always looks at the bright side of things) or Toad (who is a bit of a grouchy pessimist).  You could probably do a temperament assessment on their personalities and learn a lot about yourself.  But that would be kind of nerdy.  At any rate, there are not many of these books and we have read them all so ad nauseum at our house (except the one with the kite on the front, which for some weird reason freaks Gemma out) that I kind of cringe when I see them, but they are such sweet stories and Gemma likes them so much that I deal with it.  There are also several great one-liners (namely from Toad) to be found within the pages of these books, so if you ever hear me yell in exasperation, "the whole world is covered in buttons and none of them are mine!!," now you know why.

What are some of your favorite series' for children?

"X" week

Seriously, what to do for X week?  I mean, really.  It was a stretch.  I thought I'd share some of the books we found though, because I really had trouble thinking of anything.  I stumbled upon something somewhere online that did get me thinking outside the box enough to find books with the "X" sound though, instead of ones with words that begin with X (since xylophone is the only one that comes to mind, and that doesn't even make an "X" sound...BLARGH, English!!)  So here are some of the books we enjoyed:
Max's Wacky Taxi Day
Fox Tails (Four Fables from Aesop)
Hattie and the Fox
A Fox (The Sound of X)
The Adventures of Taxi Dog
Fox in Socks

Gemma colored some short and long popsicle sticks and made capital and lowercase X's out of them, and I hot-glued them together for her.  For whatever reason, coloring popsicle sticks is something she really gets a kick out of.

She also colored a picture of a fox and some X's and cut them out.  I am amazed at her cutting lately.  We recently worked through the book More Let's Cut Paper and holy cow, she has really taken off.  I bought My First Book of Cutting as well, with the intent to go through it with her next, but I think I may save it for Kolbe.  She's doing really well.

We had fun finding X's when we were out and about (lines in the sidewalk, grout in tile, street signs, etc.)

Both kids gave me some eXtra help in the kitchen for breakfast several days.  French toast has been a recent favorite around here.  

And that's about all.  A very uneventful "X" week for sure.  Here's to "Y" and "Z"...where has the year gone?!

My babies

"W" week

"W" is for Weather

We checked out several weather books from the library, including:

Oh Say Can You Say What's the Weather Today (very cute...takes big/tougher concepts and puts them in Seuss form.  Who can argue with that?!)  

We also got What Will the Weather Be? and It's Science "Weather" which were a bit above Gemma, but still gave us some great things to discuss.

I also checked out Crafts for Kids Who Are Learning About Weather, and we did one craft from it.  This is a cool book, I can definitely see using some of the other crafts in the future.

Here are some great weather printables from DLTK.

"W" is for "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands"

Gemma has always liked this song a bunch.  We looked at and talked about our My World book and checked out this version of "He's Got the Whole World" from the library (it was very nice I thought).  We sang the song (making up lots of our own verses, Gemma got a kick out of that) and did this craft from Catholic Icing.  Both  kids had fun, I think this is probably one of my favorite crafts that we've done all year.  They turned out so cute.  Too bad Kolbe ripped the pinky off of his picture and I can't find it.  So much for keepsakes.  ;-D

"W" Crackers!!

We made some "W" (and square) CRACKERS (click link for recipe).  I got a new hand mixer for my birthday as my stand mixer wasn't working very well, and honestly I just didn't use it that much.  We didn't have room to store it in the kitchen, and hauling it out and cleaning it up when done was just a task that made me totally unmotivated to really ever use it (read: lazy).  The hand mixer is so easy, I find I am pulling it out lots more often, much to Gemma's (my faithful and eager kitchen helper) delight.

A project we didn't get to but I'd like to remember for the future:

"W" is for Watermelon

Read Watermelon Wishes and do this cute watermelon craft from DLTK.

And a few other "W" books we liked:
Wombat Walkabout
Little Whistle
I Like Wind
Day by Day a Week Goes Round

Three letters (and weeks) to go!  We're looking forward to the Summer Reading Program at the library about the time we wrap up with our letters, and I've been thinking/working on some plans and ideas for summer and next school year (that's another post in and of itself).  I've got all our "Letter of the Week" posts organized under my "Learning at Home" tab at the top of the page if you're interested.  I decided that the better record I kept of all this, the easier it would be to possibly replicate it with future children.  We shall see...

News beds, "new" room, fun times!

A few months before Kolbe was born, we moved Gemma to her "big girl" room with a queen bed and she has been there ever since.  It was a nice arrangement as Aaron or I could easily and comfortably "co-sleep" with her in her own bed if she needed us.  This fall we converted Kolbe's crib to a toddler bed and he has been sleeping there part of the night and with us in our bed the rest of the night since then.  We knew that with the impending arrival of our newest wee-one the sleeping situation would probably have to change a bit.  After realizing that Gemma and Kolbe sharing a bed was not in the cards (believe me. NOT an option.) we decided to get bunk beds and assemble them as two twins.  It was actually cheaper than buying two twin beds, mattresses, box springs etc., and this will give us the option for bunk beds in the future if that ever becomes necessary.  Our beds came last week and we got them assembled (in "Gemma's" room) and have been working on transitioning the kids to the same room and transitioning Kolbe out of our bed.  It has surprisingly been going pretty well.  Gemma -- our oh-great-resistant-to-change one (no idea where she gets it) -- has handled it fairly well all things considered.  She's a bit needier than usual at bedtime but she likes her new "owl bed" a lot and I know she'll be fine once she gets in the groove of the new routine.  And Kolbe has been a champ; he's so proud of his "ball-ball" bed, it's adorable.  He's still waking up some during the night, but instead of coming in bed with us I just go in and lay with him until he goes back to sleep which works, and he's actually slept through the night the past few nights!!!  The main issue is Kolbe usually gets restless around 6:45am (their typical wake-up time is around 8:00).  If I'm able to settle him back in and Gemma doesn't get "too" awake, it works.  If they're both up early, that makes for a, how shall we say, quite grumpy interesting morning.  Oh well.  We'll weather this change just like we'll weather all the other changes on the horizon for our family.  And a funny story to share...Gemma tells me (very emphatically) after their first night in the same room, "Mommy, Kolbe got OUT of his bed for one minute!!" (This coming from the girl who will not leave her bed until you physically go in her room and tell her it's time to get up.)  I asked her what she did and she replied, "I told him to get back in bed and then counted to three and he did."  Kolbe's so lucky to have such a bossy good big sister. (haha!)  Here are a few pics of the "new" room.

Gemma and Kolbe's beds

"ART" they made for their wall together

 BEDTIME!!

3/4's there!!

Hard to believe this baby will likely be here in around two months' time!!

Small successes XLVI

In honor of Small Successes moving over to Catholic Mom (go check it out!!) I decided it was time to jump back on board with some successes again (the cool prize pack may have had something to do with that :-D).  Let's see....

1. Made my "To Do" list of things I'd like to get done in preparation for baby's arrival (first half of July).  There's so much less to do the third time around.  
2. Along with #1, we're working (as I type in fact) on getting daughter (4.5) and son (2.5) moved into the same bedroom.  Wish us luck.  Daughter will move from her queen bed to a twin, and son will move from his toddler bed in his room/sleeping with us to a twin in the same room as sis.  It will be a process I'm sure.
3. Have an appt. scheduled for Confession/spiritual direction.  Alllllllllllways good!!
4. Am trying to power my way through Walking with God: A Journey through the Bible.  I finally got it through inter-library loan, and have it until the 25th of this month.  Late fees are a dollar a day, and I'm not really into that, sooooooo...  I'm about a quarter of the way there.  It's very, very good.  Definitely not incredibly in depth, but a wonderful overview of salvation history.  I have the problem of getting through Genesis and part of Exodus (reading the Bible or with various commentaries) and then falling off the wagon.  Consistently.  This book is so readable, I am confident in finishing.  Hopefully by the 25th!!

CHEERS everyone!!  Head over to Catholic Mom and join in the fun!!!

Review: Nair Naturally Smooth Warm Wax Hair Removal

After using Nair's Warm Wax for over half-a-year now, and having several questions about it, I figured I should just review it on the blog.  This product has been great.  I was wanting to start using it last Spring, but realized I'd have to grow my leg-hair out to sasquatch status in order for it to be effective, so opted to wait until Fall.  Good choice.  So come October (read: jeans season) I let my legs get nice and woolly (a month to six weeks or so of growth...to the point where it was realllllly driving me crazy) and then gave this product a go.  Easy-peasy...you heat it up in the microwave (not too long, remember the object is not to burn the hair off), use the wooden stick that comes with the kit to spread it down your leg, apply a paper strip (these also come with the kit) and yank it off.  If you're weird about hair-removal pain, this product may not be for you, but honestly it's not that bad.  It took me around half an hour to do the bottoms of both legs (the tops of my legs are just naturally hardly hairy at all...since you wanted to know) and the results were awesome.  Hair gone...and it stayed gone!  I guess leg hair grows in several different cycles (so I am told) so I repeated this process every 4-5 weeks throughout winter.  Razor never touched my legs all winter long (not that I'm known for shaving a whole bunch in the winter anyways, but that's beside the point...)  Here's the exciting part...when I got to March, I did what I thought was my last waxing, shaved the next day (there are always a few hairs that don't catch...even if I go over my legs with a tweezers when I'm done waxing, which I've been known to do...) and waited with much doom and gloom to start shaving regularly again.  And it didn't happen.  My leg hair has thinned out so much now that I was able to let it go for another month, and even though there were some long ones they were so sparse they didn't show (and if they did I don't want to know about it), so I waxed again in mid-April, shaved the next day, and have been good ever since.  No shaving.  Seriously.  (Besides the day-after-waxing one.)  I really think I will be able to keep this process up indefinitely, which excites me to the point of sheer giddiness.  One tub of wax and strips seems to last 3-4 waxings, or longer now that I'm not waxing as much hair off, and the cost is around $8-$9 a tub (I can't remember exactly) at Walmart.  The Amazon price (linked above) looks  pretty comparable to what you can get in store.  So whether I'm saving money on razors is probably kind of a wash...but I'm saving time and effort not having to shave every day or every other day all spring summer and fall, and at this point in my life -- and for so negligible an amount -- this mama is THRILLED!

I'm not posting a picture of this product with the review, because I don't appreciate the essentially naked woman plastered all over the cover of the box.  But a bit of permanent marker and some tape can edit that out nicely for home storage, and you're good to go.  ;-D

**I received nothing in return for this review, I simply wanted to give an honest review and recommendation of a product that worked well for me.**

"V" week

"V" is for Vatican

We looked at the pictures in The Vatican (and other Christian Holy Places) and made our own Vatican Flag using the directions from my Catholic Icing Preschool Curriculum book.  Seriously, so glad I purchased this book.  We also found the Church/Vatican flag when we made a visit to Jesus at Church after our weekly trip to the library.  As an aside, the aforementioned book about the Vatican was a nice resource for pictures, I don't know that I would use it for anything theological however, I've an inkling the author was not even Catholic. :-D

"V" is for Virgin Mary

We made this Virgin Mary craft (also from Catholic Icing).  It turned out pretty neat, but it was way more work and way more mess than I anticipated.  I didn't use the stained-glass paints, I just mixed glue with acrylics, and while that worked fine it didn't wipe off as nicely as was implied when the kids painted outside the lines, and I had to repaint the black outlines after the kids were done.  And the kids (especially Kolbe) got pretty messy.  Like I said...quite a bit of time and mess, but the kids were proud of their final products.  They do look neat as sun-catchers, but we opted to hang them on our cabinet where we usually hang weekly projects so as to avoid tape on our (new) windows.  ;-D

This craft fit in very well this week since May is the month of the Blessed Virgin.  We also added a small Mary statue to our table centerpiece and start our morning prayers with "Immaculate Mary" in honor of the Blessed Virgin in the month of May.

"V" is for Vegetables

We checked out

Growing Vegetable Soup

and

Eating the Alphabet

Both great books for talking about veggies (and fruits).  Gemma also enjoyed this veggie-basket craft.

"V" is for Visitors

Our very favorite book for "V" week was A Visitor for Bear.  What a great story.  Gemma liked it so much, and I just thoroughly enjoyed reading it.  The vocabulary in it was fantastic.  Big words used in simple context.  And a fun, sweet story to boot.

We also enjoyed some visitors at our house...on Friday we hosted our first playgroup with my Catholic Motherhood mamas and their kids and had a splendid time playing with everyone.  Too bad I forgot to take any pictures.

That's all for this week!  Can't believe we're down to the last four letters!!!

Did you know...

...that when making a sheet-and-chair tent in the living room, a fitted sheet works much better than a flat, as the elastic helps it to stay put and thus it doesn't need "rebuilding" every three minutes?  Now you know!

A few Kolbe "cutes"

An impromptu, early evening nap on the couch after not much of a nap earlier in the afternoon.

Kolbe with his baby.  He is so very sweet with "beebee" (until he decides he's done and throws her, quite emphatically, back in his bed), it makes me smile watching him.  Gemma was kind enough to loan him her doll-stroller.

Helping me load the wash machine.  And yes, if you're the observant type, our laundry-room walls are two different colors.  One of those projects that is just halfway done (due to the fact that the washer and dryer will need moved to complete it, and I'm not much help in that department).  Hopefully in the next month or so.... 

With Gemma and their "prizes".  Gemma went to the dentist, and came home with a prize for herself and one she had thoughtfully picked for her brother (upon her request).  Another "mama-smile" moment...a silver lining among many moments that are not so smiley.  ;-D

Children's Book Review: Under the Sun and the Moon

Margaret Wise Brown rarely disappoints, and she was in true, good form with her book of poems entitled Under the Sun and the Moon And Other Poems.  The poems are cute, witty and short, great for toddlers and preschoolers; and the soft, colorful illustrations by Tom Leonard are the perfect complement to each poem.  We checked this book out from the library for "U" week and it was a good kick in the pants to get back into our poetry at lunchtime tradition, which seems to ebb and flow in its successfulness.  If you're looking for some short, nice poems to share with young children, this book does not disappoint. 

For our other "U" week activities, click HERE.