church

Our church has a nursery where we get to drop off our little ones and enjoy a quiet, kid free hour or two of worship and fellowship. What a brilliant, life saving idea that was, whoever thought of it. 

Winter's nursery routine makes me laugh every time we go to church. And I am there a lot for GUM (Growing Up Mom), bible study and Sunday service. She asks for her check in tag as soon as we get out of the car. She runs as fast as she can go, yells "here!" to the check in desk, throws her tag through the window to the check in person, pushes open the gate, books it to her favorite springy rocking horse and rides until I get there and tell her to go in her classroom. 

It's not really the way we are supposed to do it but hey, it works AND it is very efficient. By the time I walk up to the nursery with the baby, we are all checked in and ready to go. Winter knows she only has a few minutes with that horse all to herself. She's no fool. And the nursery staff find it amusing every time. Well at least they pretend to.  

When it is time to check out, I go get Winter from the 3-year-old room so she can run over to the baby room and shout to whoever is holding Addie, "We need our baby back! We need our baby back!" She makes them laugh but she's very serious. She stands there until they hand the baby over to me. 

bedtime routine

I know that I am not the only parent who goes through this. In fact, I remember doing the same thing as a child. But Mya is the queen of finding excuses to come out of her room after bedtime. She comes to the stairs and yells down, "Mommy!" And I yell back, "What?!" Sometimes they are valid reasons... sometimes they are not.

These were tonight's reasons:

"Winter took my squeezy toy!"

"Winter needs you to wipe her!"

"I tied my ponytail all by myself!"

(crying) "I bumped my head on the door!" 

"Can you untie my Cinderella slipper?" (She tied the ribbon part around her ankle and it was cutting off her circulation)

A couple of Mya's selfies :)

snack snatcher

Winter is constantly trying to take things that don't belong to her. She just walks out of the nursery or the neighbor's house with a purse on her shoulder or a dolly in her arm like it's hers. I'm not sure if she doesn't see anything wrong with that or she just thinks I won't notice... Maybe we should have a talk about stealing. 

Yesterday, we were hanging out at our neighbor's house (the Andersons') Winter had a backpack on that was not hers so I reminded her a few times that she needed to leave it there when it was time to go. So when it came time to leave, of course she wanted to take it home. She put up a bit of a fight but eventually threw it on the floor and walked out. 

As we started home, Nancy Anderson had opened the backpack and was laughing when she showed me the inside. Winter had gathered a bunch of snacks from the Andersons' garage and stashed them in the backpack! What a little klepto.  It had rice crispy treats, fruit snacks, Caprisuns, granola bars, you know, the good stuff. We try to keep snacks pretty healthy and boring at our house and poor deprived Winter saw her window of oportunity :)

baby

Winter LOVES to hold her baby sister. Baby sister does not always love to be held by Winter :)

 Check out those thunder thighs!

help

I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

Gal 2:20 ESV

I have two daughters that are very different. I have a not so sensitive one and an overly sensitive one. Winter is very mischievous but a few seconds after a timeout or a spanking, she's fine. She doesn't let it get to her. She has probably come to expect punishment at least 5 times a day and she's okay with that.

Mya is my sweetheart but she gets her feelings hurt so easily. She cries pretty frequently. And it's not that she wants attention. She just feels things deeply. And toward the end of the day when she is tired and hungry around 4:30, it is pretty easy to make her cry. What usually happens is that she doesn't listen and is told to go have a timeout. That's when she completely loses it. And no amount of threats or spankings or anything will make her stop crying. I usually send her up to her room until she calms down. Sometimes she stops after a while and comes back down, sometimes she falls asleep and sometimes she just carries on and on and on and gets so worked up that I have to hold her for a while until she is okay. Dan and I have learned that with Mya, a hug will fix almost anything.

But sometimes we are just too frustrated with her to sit down and give her a hug. A lot of the time we resort to yelling, "Stop crying!" And that of course does not help the situation, ever.
One time when I was reaching my boiling point with her, I yelled, "Mya, I am about to lose it! Please. Just. Stop. Crying! Stop Crying!"

Her reply immediately changed my anger into sympathy. She cried, “I can't stop! I want to but I can't!”

I knew what she was saying because I've been there too. She wanted to stop crying but she just couldn't without some help. So I sat down with her and held her until she stopped crying.

Now that I'm a mom, I have a lot of behavioral issues, not with the kids, with myself! Often, I think of Mya and her honesty in that moment. Sometimes we can't stop what we're doing without help from Jesus. 

Any behavior that is hard to change whether it is anger, jealousy, selfishness, pride or sadness is totally changeable when we let Jesus work through us and help us fix it. Let's read that verse again.

I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

Gal 2:20 ESV

doggy style

After the girls went to preschool, I went for a walk with Addie. We came up to a signal and waited for the light to change. There was a lady in front of me also waiting for the light to change. She had a dog with her. The dog proceeded to hump the lady's leg. And she didn't even seem to notice. She didn't even move. She just stood there while her dog pleasured himself. I was smiling, trying not to laugh out loud. I tried to get a pick but he was done by then. Oh well, you can use your imagination.

Sometimes you see funny stuff while going for a walk. And that is why everyone should get out and walk!

stuck

This morning at 6:20AM, as I was making Winter some breakfast, somehow she managed to get her finger stuck in a hole located on the side of the baby's bouncy chair. I really wasn't surprised. I was kind of amused actually. Poor Winter was kind of freaking out and there I was debating on whether or not to take a picture. 

So, I tried to yank on it a little bit to see if it would budge but it was in there pretty good. I tried to think of something slippery that would make it slide out so I grabbed the soap. I squirted some on her finger and in the hole but it didn't help at all. It dried and made it kind of sticky. 

Winter was not happy. She said calmly, "No, stop. Just wait." I said, "Okaaay... what are we waiting for?" She replied, "Fo Daddy, just wait fo Daddy." So I said "Okay, I'll go get Daddy." (He has experience with this type of thing anyway) So I went and got Dan out of bed and told him he was needed downstairs. I came back down the stairs and took the baby out of the chair and started unscrewing the side. I told Winter Daddy was coming to help her. But she cried, "No! Daddy's gonna be too fast! No!" I couldn't help but laugh.

She actually managed to pull it out just as Dan got downstairs. We took pictures afterward :)

Oh and FYI, Vaseline is what Dan recommended. Also you can try holding the extremity above your head that is stuck. That way, the blood rushes out and makes it smaller. Good to know.