home sweet messy home

"Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God."

-1 John  4:7

Happy Valentine's Day! I've never really been into this holiday. Dan and I don't really celebrate it. I get stuff for the kids to remind them that I love them. It is a good day though to remember to love one another.

So potty training has kept me mostly at home lately. It's hard to practice while out and about, not to mention scary and inconvenient. So I like to keep my potty trainers home a lot until I feel like they've really got it down. But as a result, the laundry is suffering, the place is a mess and there's a lot more fighting and more of mom losing her mind. But it's just temporary... well the potty training part at least.

Angus is doing impressively well. Potty training a boy is quite different. They can't just sit down and pee. There's a skill involved. You either gotta point that pistol down or stand up which is dangerous I've heard. You never know where it's gonna go. Angus proved that to me at church a week ago. He's been using his little potty at home and that's easy because he's naked so he just sits down and puts his hands on the floor in front of him so his peepee goes in the toilet. But it's a little more complicated when the potty is off the floor and his pants are around his ankles and there's no floor to lean on. 

So there we were, in the church nursery bathroom, trying to figure out the best way to go. I tried to stand him up but he refused and became very noodley. I figured I would just have him sit on the potty and rest on me as he leaned forward to get a good angle. It seemed like it but I couldn't really tell if he went. Then he said he was done, leaned back and peed a steady stream on the stall wall in front of him. And he just looked at me like nothing was happening. Thank goodness I was at his side and wasn't in the line of fire. It was an impressive amount of pee all over the door and the floor. I cleaned it up and told the nursery lady he went potty. She congratulated him and he smiled proudly. I didn't get into details.

The other day, Addie told me that people grow bigger and bigger then we grow smaller and smaller then we die. I explained to her that we don't grow smaller and smaller like Benjamin Buttons. Elderly people lose an inch or so but that's it. She said, "No mom. We get smaller and smaller. Winter told me." We asked Winter about it and she was under the impression that my mom and Grandma used to be very tall. But since they were older they were shrinking. I told her my mom had always been 5 feet tall and so had Grandma. (Probably why Mya and Addie are so tiny) She wasn't convinced.

This is my mom Donna and my Grandma Wilda (my dad's mom) who lives in Las Vegas. We went out to visit her last October to be there when she was baptized. She's 91 and doing amazing. Yay for genetics huh?

How adorable is my mom. She looks so great. It could be because she's vegan. Crossing my fingers I'll look this awesome at 70. She's actually sick here haha.

Somewhere along the way, I figured out a good trick to getting my littles to obey (sometimes) without bribes or threats. If you have a little one you may already do this. With Mya I would just tell her to do something and she would do it. But with Winter, I had to get creative. I found that if I let her choose between two things, I could get her to do what I needed her to do. Instead of telling her to put on her shoes, I would ask her which shoes she wanted to wear. And when she would pick them, I would ask, "Do you want to put them on or do you want Mommy to help you?" That way, she felt like she had power and control when she really was being manipulated haha. Addie and Angus are both strong willed as well. How did I get three of those? Dan uses this trick with me. He'll ask, do you want to do the dishes or put the kids to bed? Do you want to take out the trash or empty the dishwasher. It totally works. I don't even realize I'm being manipulated until after the task is done. Genius.

When you're a mom of four, you can't really do anything well. You wear so many hats that there is physically no way to do any of them well. So you just do what has to be done and learn to prioritize the urgent and the non urgent and sometimes even some of the urgent things have to wait. Sometimes I feel like I suck at all of it. But I quickly remind myself that no one person could do it all and do it well. No one could have a clean home, spend time playing with their kids, help with homework, cook healthy meals, teach kindness, discipline well, offer encouragement, exercise, take a shower, put make-up on, have a clean car, clean kids, etc. etc. There's just simply no way. There's way too much needed and not enough of me to do it.

Sometimes I tell myself I'm lazy when I sit on the couch and look at the dishes in the sink. But then I remember... I endured 4 9.5 month pregnancies. (It’s not 9 FYI) Four years of nursing babies, one million times buckling and unbuckling little ones in and out of car seats, 2 million tantrums, potty training times four, four years of homework battles, 8.5 years of grocery store nightmares, 8.5 years of not enough sleep, 3 million diapers changed, 5,000 shoes tied and 10,000 noses wiped. Nope not lazy. Just tired. But happy.