Potty time!

Chloe is doing SO WELL! She still sleeps with diapers (even nap time), but when we are home and she is awake she is potty trained. She has had only 1 accident in the last 3 days. I am so proud of her. She has been wearing panties around the house, and has even survived 3 trips to Serena's school without accidents. So, if she keeps this up, the pack of diapers we just bought should last us like 2 months...maybe more. Yay for Chloe!!

Cookin in the Kitchen With Chloe

Chloe is currently in the mimic everything stage, and I am soaking it up. Here she is making a mess....er.....cooking with me. She found a glasses case made out of a pot holder and decided it was her pot holder and went into my cabinet to get a pot out. So I played along and gave her a wooden spoon. She then added her snack...cheese. Yum!

Here Chloe is playing with sissy in her SNAZZY outfit. See picked it out herself, but Serena helped her put it on. Nothing says fashion like bike shorts, a bathing suit and a raiders jersey. OH YEAH!

For My Serena

The smell of wood chips wet with morning dew

Should have told me this was something new.

You laughed, you played, you ran and jumped around

My mother's heart soared so high my feet left the ground.

Still a child, but not for long will you stay so.

You were once my petite baby but then you started to grow

The smell of wood chips wet with morning dew

should have told me this was something new

First grade, first friends, your school days just begin

So many new discoveries and new games to win

These moments come, they hit me hard as rocks;

Today you tied your very own shoes after putting on your socks.

Off you ran, my gaze you didn't try to find,

In these moments I search for a way to rewind.

Remember when you held my leg as if for your life?

And how a simple kiss from me took away your strife?

I sigh as I recall.

The smell of wood chips wet with morning dew

Tell me the promise of something new.

Each day I sit in awe as your intelligence grows

Where your heart will lead you, only Jesus knows.

You love to lead the pack, and guide others where to go.

You love order in your life; everything must be just so.

I love who you are Serena, not just because you are mine.

And it's okay, you can keep growing, I will be just fine.

Pictures

The colors are portrayed MUCH better in the picture with all of them, but to do a close up shot, my camera shuts off the flash...so you get better detail...but not better color...

Feelin Crafty

I found a few new nifty blogs this week, and I have some awesome new ideas from them. One to use for Sunday school was a I spy bottle. Another was hand stitched cards. I love making homemade cards, I love letting the person know that I thought enough of them to make them a card, not just run to hallmark and buy one. And I love to sew...kinda...I love to cross stitch and I really enjoyed sewing some Christmas presents this year.

Long story short, I have been a-stitching all the live long day. (Dishes, what dishes?) I am really enjoying myself, and hoping that the recipients of them enjoy them just as much!

I will post pictures tomorrow...if I have time inbetween cards...

Her Wings Just Grew A Size

Yesterday Chloe was still out of it, so rather than bring her into Serena's school, I asked Serena if she would be OK walking in alone. She instantly smiled, from ear to ear, and replied, "Yes!"

I mentioned in earlier posts how close we are to school. I am the fourth building from the street, so we're about 100 -150 ft from the crosswalk to get to school. If I walk into the alley behind my house, I can literally see her classroom, which is at the back of the school. Like I said, we're close.

So I walked her to the crosswalk (where there is a crossing guard), and said goodbye and watched her walk across the 2 lane street, down the sidewalk (about 50 ft from the school gate and directly across from where I was standing) and into the school yard (now before you start to question my parenting, I could have ran and been to her in about 10 seconds).

I never thought she'd be willing to take such a big step so early. I mean, it's not that big of a step in reality, but in her little 7 year old world, it's huge. I love being able to let her grow, and stretch. I loved watching her smile. I wish I would have taken a camera.

Well today, guess what she asked to do? You got it. She wanted to walk to school "by herself". I am very happy to be SO close to school, so that I can let her take these baby steps into freedom. She was far enough to spread her wings a little more, but not beyond the reach of mine.

I am certain all of her steps into independence will not be this easy for me, but I praise God that this one was.

What a week

I am hopeful that I currently am on the upswing. Last week was awful.

It started with a call to poison control, see Windex entry. Happy Mothers day!

Then I started spring cleaning. I was so excited about it. I am, by nature, a pack rat. Ask my mom. It started early. I have a ridiculous memory for who gave me what and seeing the potential in EVERYTHING. I desire so much to be organized and make my house sleek and user friendly. So I went gung ho, head first into my house and threw out so much unnecessary stuff. It was awesome, and I was TIRED after 2 days of scrubbing and re-organizing, and throwing away. Then Serena got sick, like instantly Tuesday night, no warning. And Brian got injured in softball and I had to patch up his oozing knee when he got home....at midnight. Then Chloe decided to be awake and keep me up. By Wednesday I was frustrated. My cleaning/organizing got stunted SO close to completion, I got no sleep and had 1 very sick kiddo to take care of.

Every night after that was a blur of waking to take care of somebody. Never two at once, no, they tag teamed me. Then by Saturday night Chloe was sick as a dog, and she literally let me sleep 3 hours Saturday night. I felt drunk I was so tired. Last night I gave up and dragged her bed into my room, so that I would simply have to roll over to care for her. But 2 nights in a row. all night long, all I heard was "mommy, mommy, mommy, Binky, mommy, mommy, mommy." while crying. She was so out of it she's lose her Binky, her bear, her sippy cup, everything, every 1/2 hour or so and wake up confused and in a panic.

So today, I looked around, and all my work has been demolished. My dishes are piled up in the kitchen, laundry and toys are strewn across the living room. Beds are unmade, bedrooms are a rye. And I am so flustered, I don't even know where to re-begin.

I am hoping to sleep tonight. Chloe is in her own bed, in her own room and I am praying for rest, sweet, sweet rest. Honestly I have been up at the wee hours of night day-dreaming of naps, how awful is that?

Then tomorrow, back to cleaning my house, again....sigh. I am starting a new theory that all hoarders started with a week of sick kids...and oozing knee husband.

One of the many reasons I am in love

This is Chloe singing a lullabye I sing to her and her sister. She is singing the first part of the first verse of Hush-A-Bye, and it goes like this "Hush-a-bye. Don't you cry. Little stars will see you."

100% pure sugar

My poor Serena is home from school today, not feeling well at all. She is laying on my bed, watching cartoons, snuggled under blankets. Chloe decided she had to join her, and when she did, she started doing this:


Rubbing her sisters head. It's so sweet, I think I now have a toothache.

Brownies

My original intent with Serena going into Brownies was two fold:
1. To make friends in our new area
2. To be Nazi-badge mom and have her earn badges at least once a month. I wanted her to gain new skills and have the responsibility of learning it all herself.
Well...the first goal was met. She has met some really sweet girls in her troop.
The second goal, not so much. Life is way more hectic than I had originally planned, and so Nazi-badge mom had to step back and allow reality mom to step in.

But now I proudly say, my Serena earned 3 badges "try-it's" all by herself. The American Flag, Girl Scout ways, and Manners. (The manners try-it is on back order, and hopefully will be here soon to join her others.) She also earned 4 patches, 1 for cookie sales, 1 for the book drive she participated in, one for a holiday bazaar, and one for baking cookies at the Ronald McDonald house. I loved every second of sewing them on tonight, swelling with pride that now others can see how my angel shines. Wanna know what she can do, check out her vest. Seriously, ask her to set the table for you, she'll smile really big and happily oblige!

Mothers Day

Up on stage dedicating Chloe.

Me, my mom and my Chloe

Me and my ray of spunk-shine!

I was blessed this Mother's Day by celebrating at my church, with the wonderful event of Brian and I dedicating ourselves to the task of raising our kids in a Godly manner. We did this with Serena when Serena was the same age Chloe is now. I am really in awe that God blessed me with these children to raise. His grace is always around me!

Nature Scavenger hunt

Saturday was SUCH a pretty day, and Daddy was busy helping a friend move, so me and my girls went on a nature scavenger hunt and picnic. It was so much fun, we will definately do it again!
My little expolrers

"Come here ducky!"

Look what she found!

Finding things on thier nature scavenger hunt list.

Serena is always ready to pose for a picture.

Chloe was playing ring around the blanket as we ate

And tackling sister too.

I know Chloe, that's how I feel after too many sit-ups too!

Table for 2

I was lucky enough to get a new night stand for my room, so the old one I was using I decided could become the girls dinner table. They had been sitting at an end table, so I took that and put it back in my living room and I repainted this table white, and let the girls go to town decorating it. They each had thier own side, so that Serena wouldn't have to worry about Chloe "ruining" her painting.Here are the pictures from it. They loved doing it as much as I had hoped they would!
Chloe is so proud of this table. Everyday when they sit at it, she excitedly says "Mommy, Look!" And points at what she painted.


This is the only pic of Serena I could put up. I have tons, but since she painted in her underwear...I won't be posting those.

Serena wrote "I love to rite." TOOOOOO cute.

The finished product.

Serena delicately painting her side. Chloe went for a more "smear it around all the place including half my body" approach.

Windex, a cure-all???

My daughter must have been influenced by my watching My Big Fat Greek Wedding over and over when she was in-utero. She decided this morning to spray Windex in her eye.

Last night Brian and I watched a movie, and to do so had to clean the hand prints off the TV. The Windex got left out, and Chloe found it. You can see where this goes.

So she's screaming, and I run, scoop her up and stick her eyes under the sink faucet. I found out how strong she was as she grabbed my hair and shirt and held on for dear life to keep me from doing it again. After I rinse it for a few minutes, I take her out to look at her eye. It looks red, but not bad. She tells us "eye" and "mouth". I'm thinking 1 spray is probably a teaspoon of liquid, if that, and if some got in her eye, then even less got into her mouth. I'm not worried, but Brian is. So we call poison control. They say, she may vomit, but it won't hurt her, it wasn't enough to do damage, BUT the eye needs to be rinsed out longer.

So we take their suggestion and stick her in the tub so that I could dump water on her eye for 15 minutes. The first 2 minutes she had fun playing "where's Chloe?" (the water would make it so she couldn't see, so it was like peek-a-boo). Than she was done with that. She fought me the rest of the time, screaming for daddy. It wasn't a fair fight, poor kid. With me constantly dumping water on her face she couldn't see enough to fight me full force.

After I let her go, she cuddled with Daddy for a while, since I was the evil mother dumping water on her.

What a morning. I am so diligent about putting things out of her reach. Child safety locks do NOTHING to stop her, so I have everything on a high shelf that I can barely reach inside my laundry room. Away from her reach and eye line as well. But, one simple oops, 1 dumb moment and we're lucky she wasn't seriously hurt.

Meanest Mother Of The Year

I accepted the award this morning, from my very angry daughter Serena.

Every morning she gets ready at a snails pace, and even though I have been waking her up 15 minutes earlier she still find some way to push everything to the last minute. All morning, all I say is "Serena, eat." "Serena EAT." "Serena eat." "Serena get dressed." over and over. I really feel like a broken record, and I don't get any time to really talk to her, because I have to push her along all morning.

This morning, I had enough. I am tired of doing half of her getting ready for her, simply because we'll be late if she doesn't.

For the first 3 or 4 months of school Serena tied her own shoes, I didn't make the bows pretty enough for her. Then she got Velcro shoes, and she would get those on for herself too. Well, now she is back to tie shoes, and she had gotten lazy about doing it, and I being frustrated that we were always running late, would simply do it for her. My mistake. I know that completely. This morning I realized I was doing us both a disservice. So I ended it.

I informed her about 20 minutes before we normally leave that she would be putting her own shoes on today. She is a capable 7 year old, and she needs to do that for herself. I told her that I loved her too much to do everything for her (I am certain she didn't get it, but I wanted to make sure she knew I was doing this out of love not anger or meanness). So after about 15 minutes of half heartedly doing it, I informed her that I really wasn't going to help her . See, she's a smart cookie and she knows that I usually jump in and do it if it takes her too long, again my bad, I know. She gave me a dirty look and said she was tired, her socks were bugging her, etc etc!

I told her that she is a big kid, and she can make these kind of decisions herself. If she wants to wear an older pair of shoes that's fine, if she wants to go to school with untied shoes, that's fine. It was her problem to solve today.

I have to say I do appreciate the fight in her, though I wish she would have fought more with her laces than me. She kept telling me how mean I was, and that I didn't care, and that I hate her. She kept tying her laces in knots (on purpose) acting like she didn't know how to tie a bow. She kept pouting. She kept sulking, but she also kept dilly dallying.

Sigh. Letting your kids face their own consequences can really suck.

I warned her that the bell would be ringing in 5 minutes (we live about 1 minute from school ,walking) so she better hurry or she would be late. She said even more nasty things to me (again the smart cookie was trying to get me to give in). I spoke to her about it never being acceptable to be disrespectful to your mother, but I didn't give in. I then warned her that it was 3 minutes until the bell rang. Now the tears started.

I again reiterated that this was a problem she had to solve herself, whatever she decided was fine, but I was not going to do it for her. She could decide to go to school with her laces untied, but then she would fall down a lot. She could wear her shoes that are too big, she could put her old beat up Velcro sneakers on, whatever. She just needed to make her decision, because she was going to be late. And when we would go to the office to get a tardy slip she could tell them she is late because she wouldn't tie her shoes.

Well, if looks could kill, even being a cat with nine lives wouldn't have saved me. Then I hear the first bell ring (that's how close we are). So I tell her, I heard the bell, you are late. She finally gets her shoes tied. Not that it took her that long. The actual tying took her about 1 minute. Like I said earlier, she is perfectly capable. Off we went then, with her scowling all the way to school. She is fortunate, her school does the flag ceremony outside, so though she was technically late, she didn't need to get a tardy slip. Part of me wishes she would have. Maybe this lesson could have been a dual lesson.

So need I say it was a rough morning? Well, it was a rough morning. I wish she understood that I had just as bad of a time making her do this. I hate to see her frustrated and crying. I kept reminding myself, discipline is love and enabling is crippling. I knew she could do it, but she didn't want to. I wish you could have seen how quickly and EASILY she tied her shoes when she finally gave in. It was almost comical. If she had simply done that 20 minutes earlier she would have been to school in time to play.

I have slowly been realizing that raising a compliant child has just as many difficulties as raising a strong willed child. If child rearing is easy, than it's not real. I have totally DIFFERENT tasks for each child. For Chloe I need to teach her what the rules are, and WHY we follow them, and give her freedom enough to keep her from feeling caged. Serena I need to teach WHY we obey the rules, not just that we obey them. She knows how to obey. She knows how to please authority figures. She needs to want to obey because it's right, not because it's whats expected. I need to teach her that she needs to do things not just to get by, but for the feeling of accomplishment when she does them herself for herself. Chloe has enough drive for a mac truck. Serena needs some of that to rub off on her. Some of Serena's calm spirit needs to rub off on Chloe.

I am hoping by time I pick Serena up from school she will have relaxed, but I am not getting my hopes up. She's a grudge keeper. Maybe that just means we'll be able to have a good talk about why I made her tie her shoes this morning? Oy. What a day already!

Slow and Steady wins the race, right?

I thought for sure that Chloe would be potty trained by now. It's her personality to pick up on things quickly. BUT she does not seem to care about doing things the way I would expect. In her defense, it is really hard to do it with always having to be on Serena's school schedule. Right when it would be a good time to pee, we have to take Serena to school. Then another good time would be when she has to nap (she has to nap at a specific time so that she has enough time to sleep before we have to go pick up Serena). Then soon after she wakes up we have to go pick up Serena from school. The day is too broken up to focus on getting the habit of going to the potty.
In spite of all of this she has peed in the potty twice. And she has pooped on the potty twice. Once, when no one was paying attention, just like the 2 pee pees. Then yesterday JUST as we were about to leave to get Serena She tells me "I poop". She was naked, so I thought, great she pooped on my floor!! So I asked "Where is it???" She said "I poop!" I said, "I know, where is it so I can clean it!" and she pointed at her butt and said "Right there!" Duh. She was telling me she had to poop. So I go, "Oh! Go to the potty, go to the potty!" So she ran in, and closed the door (apparently even though I will be wiping her in 1 minute, I can't see her going poop.), and I go in to see she went, in the potty!!!
With Serena we had a chart to put stickers on, and she got M&M's when she went in the potty. But so far, the only reinforcement Chloe has needed is calling Daddy and Grandma and Pappa to share her achievement. It seems as though she may be a kid to responds well to words of affirmation, while my Serena is totally a receiving gifts person.
So, I have decided that I will simply go with her very sporadic potty urges, and wait for the training part of it until the summer when we can stay home and devote a whole day to going. I also realized I need to get a second potty for upstairs, she doesn't like trying to sit on the big potty, even with my help.
I am learning not to rush her, after all she won't be this little for much longer. I am trying to enjoy all of it, even having to change her diaper. Soon I will be planning my day around potty breaks and knowing where every potty is, in every store,within a 50 mile radius of my home. So maybe this slow progression into a new stage is God's grace is allowing me the extra few moments of changing her diaper, when she has my full attention, and I have about 1/2 of hers =o).

Today's Moment of Zen

Brians 92 year old Gram playing guitar hero.

You're welcome.