A good week

I had a really good week last week! I figured I better post about it so that when I had a bad week, I have something to remember.

First of all, my master bedroom has been a disaster lately. Every time I clean, I start with the first floor of the house, because that is what everybody sees. And the last room I ever clean is my bedroom, because no one ever sees it. But with the kids how they are, most of the time I never get to the second floor- by the time I have finished three rooms, they have messed up the first one. Ugh.

So my cute husband sat me down one morning and asked as gently as he could if I could maybe clean our bedroom first next time. And so I did. I had no idea how much sleeping in a cluttered tornado zone was weighing on me until it was vaccumed and gone! I haven't cleaned off my dressers in years, to be honest, but seeing the tops did wonders for my soul. And packing up a large bag for DI was fantastic.

And to top it off, Christopher remembered a discussion a week or two ago where I made fun of him for owing me flowers, and he brought home roses!

The next day, I got the rest of the house under control, and even managed to make a craft that I have been looking forward to for a while. I love making bows for Kaitlyn, but never had anywhere to keep them. So I finally got my bow holder made.



I know a lot of people like to make really decorative and colorful ones, but I liked the bows being the color on here. I would hang it on the wall, but I think Kaitlyn would have a blast ripping them all off. So it gets to be the one object on my clean dresser. :)

All week I was gearing up for the meeting with Tyler's teacher on Thursday morning. I try not to vent about it too much on this blog, but things have not been going well with Tyler lately. He enjoys school, and his teacher is really nice. But she doesn't give me anything to reinforce at home. I have tried reading books and looking at things online, but I just don't know how to be what Tyler needs. When we had Kids on the Move or speech therapy, I was there with him and saw what he was working on. That gave me managable goals- one week, I would work on "ing" verbs, the next week the therapist would have me emphasize "under" and "over". I can do that.

But I just don't have the ideas or the patience to do this on my own. It would be like if someone told me I needed to teach others how to pole vault, having never been to a track meet in my life. There are honestly days where I get so frustrated that I avoid my own child because I don't know what to do. He is perfectly content playing on his own, and too many days I just let him do that.

Well, back to school. I could try and blame the teacher for not communicating with me, but the truth was that she doesn't have time to teach me how to be a parent. So we discussed options, and I think we came up with some good ones. There is another school within the district that may be a better fit for him.

For the last six months, I have been looking at a private school for him, but they are rather expensive and 20 minutes away - so 40 minutes in the morning to drop him off, 40 in the afternoon to pick him up. I went and looked at them, and loved it- it would be two students per teacher, and they base their goals on what I see him needing help with at home.

Well, they called on Friday to tell me there were openings for their summer school. And when I opened the brochure they emailed me, I nearly cried. One of the programs was a parent class, where parents and students come together and the teachers show parents what to do. Exactly what I have been praying for. I ran down and signed him up the same day. I haven't heard back yet, but she said things weren't full yet, so I can't wait!

And to top that off, I got to have Thursday night off! The company my husband works for is nearly all male (they do computers, so this isn't a coincidence). And all of the wives have gotten to be good friends. So they had a Girl's Night Out last week, and it was a blast.

Like I said, it was a really good week. And those are rare enough that I figured I better document it for posterity!

Craft group

I haven't blogged in a while- but I haven't done anything in a while either. One of those months when the days are busy but you aren't sure what you actually accomplished by the end of it. I am very excited that Spring finally made an appearance, however! I love my tulips, and the kids love being able to play outside.


One of the few things I have been able to accomplish is finally making the dress I have been planning on forever. I saw this tutorial a long time ago for turning a Men's button down shirt into a toddler dress, and as it happened Christopher had a shirt that was the wrong size for him, so it was perfect! A neighbor of mine has started running a craft group, where we can get together on Friday afternoons and make a project together. Last time we made the flower hairbows like Kaitlyn is wearing in the pictures, and this Friday we are going to make the dress. I figured that since I was going to teach it this week, I better make my own before then and know what I was doing! And so, voila.


Also, I have to preface this by saying that my kids were being terrible about the photo shoot this morning. I mean, they are rather distracted easily, but it seemed like every time I got my shot lined up they took off. So this is the best you get, sorry.

Maybe it is rather silly, but I adore it when my kids match. Tyler already owned his Hawaiian shirt, but it worked pefectly!

I made the dress a bit big for her, so I added a ribbon to pull the slack with in back. Other than that, it was exactly like the tutorial! I love craft projects that are that easy. That's why I have been making a lot of hairbows lately- 10 minutes and some hot glue gives you are cute little product. Nice.

If anyone reading this wants to join us to make the dress this week, let me know!

Adventures in Kaitlyn land

One day, I came home to find all of my family up in the den and these three dolls very carefully put to sleep. On the stairs. This has been a big hobby of hers lately - but the stairs part was a first.


And then, another day, she very carefully spread out her blanket on the table for a tablecloth, and then sat down just like this and stared at it. Seriously, why? All I knew was it was cute.

And last, but not least, we have her bedtime habits. About a week ago she started climbing into bed with Tyler almost every night. When I went to check on them the first night, I found that she had gotten up, brought in a baby to sleep between them, and then stolen all of his covers before they both fell asleep. And then, tonight, Tyler had socks on when I put them to sleep, both in his bed again.

And right now, Kaitlyn is wearing Tyler's socks, a pair of Tyler's sandals she took from his dresser, and of course- no one can forget the baby doll. None of this was the case when I turned out the lights, mind you.

She makes us laugh!

More thinking.

A dangerous pastime (I know).

I've been thinking lately about how we spend most of our time in the first couple decades of our life achieving goals. Finish homework for the night? Check. Move from Elementary School to Middle School? Check. Make the team or group we tried out for in High School, graduate and get into the college we wanted, find the person we want to spend our life with, etc. We always have things we are looking forward to and working on achieving. When we check one off, there is always another one on the horizon.

And when I really thought about it now, I think part of the reason I feel so . . . adrift now is that I don't have a single goal I am working on.

Now, let's define goal for a second here. When I was a teacher, we often had to make goals for our departments and school. But in order to qualify, a goal needed to be 1) achievable and 2) measurable. Because things like "prepare our students better for the work force" or "make sure every student in our school improves every year" don't work very well. We either don't have control over things well enough to achieve them, or can't tell when we have achieved them.

When I think about the goals I have in my life, I realized that I gave up on them some days because they didn't fit those two standards. I only ever worked out at the gym when I had a measurable goal ahead of me: a race. Once I ran the races I wanted to, and ended up with "stay healthy and fit", I stopped really caring about it as a goal.

And when I started parenting, I had all sorts of goals for my kids. But Tyler has taught me that I don't have complete control of him achieving something. That doesn't mean I stop trying (though many times I certainly feel like it), but it does mean that I can't assume that if I do ___ he will achieve ___. I learned that the hard way when he didn't sleep through the night until he was two years old. I did everything that any book told me would fix the problem (because when you are losing sleep every night, nothing else matters). I made sure I followed the instructions to the letter, and usually for at least three weeks when the books told me it would take three days. And I mentally fell apart. I wasn't used to my goals being dependent on another person like that.

I'm not saying I shouldn't have goals that relate to my kids, but . . . I need to take into account when I make them that I am not the only person involved here. I think the goal has to be phrased right in my head. "I will do x,y and z to help Tyler every day", not "Tyler will learn ___".

With all of that having been said, I have decided what I really need is a goal in my life.

But I have no idea what that should be.

Now, I don't think any of my goals will be the same as anyone else's out there, but I think this might be interesting. So, all two or three of you people who read this:

WHAT IS YOUR GOAL?

What is something you are working on? How do you make it measurable so that you feel like you can achieve it, instead of some lofty "be a better person" that lets you slide most days? And in the SAHM world, where everything we do goes mostly unnoticed, how do you stay motivated without some reward at the end of the tunnel?

Easter

Happy Easter everyone! Apparently Mother Nature decided we needed more snow, so we had snow on April Fool's Day and again for Easter morning. My poor little flowers are doing their best.


Anyway, on with the holiday. The nice thing about having kids so young is that you can pick and choose what you want to do and when, and no one is the wiser. So we didn't hide the eggs this morning. We dyed some this afternoon. I wasn't sure if they would be old enough, but Daddy was right- they loved it.

Especially the coloring on the eggs with crayons part.


And then they were fascinated by seeing them go in the colors.

Crippled Daddy did a good job helping.

Ta-Da!

Easter egg hunt

Every year, one of the families in our neighborhood puts on an Easter egg hunt. It has always been an adventure for us- for a long time, we couldn't get Tyler to figure out what we wanted him to do, and then last year it snowed. But this year was great! Not too cold, and both kids were quite into the project of gathering eggs to put in their baskets.

The only problem came when one of Kaitlyn's eggs broke open early on and she discovered that there was chocolate inside. Stop everything! No need to look for more eggs, let's just plop down here and open these puppies up!

Eventually we talked her into waiting until she got home to open the loot.

Yummy.

Hogle Zoo

Last weekend was rather boring, if only because Christopher was gone on a mountain biking trip with his friends to Moab again. But he came home with a prize: a splint. He fell and broke his hand, as the little blue arrow shows you here. Thank goodness it was their last ride of the weekend.




At least he isn't in a cast. The splint he can take on and off as needed, which is nice. It has been fun watching him to try and learn to do things with his left hand only. Poor guy. Every time Kaitlyn sees the cast she says "Daddy broken".

Monday is my one day of the week that Tyler doesn't go to school, so I usually save things that take a long time for Mondays. And this week, I found a friend to go to the zoo with us. I haven't taken Tyler since he was a year old (too young to enjoy it), and now they are both old enough to know the names of the animals and their sounds.

They loved it! They both got really into telling me what animal they were seeing. Hogle is a pretty good zoo, actually. And right now they even have a baby elephant.

Right next to the elephants, there was a rhino resting in his pen. Kaitlyn looked at him for a moment, and then said "dinosaur!". Not quite, honey. But close.

And then we came to this cougar. She wasn't sure exactly what to make of him either. Until he made a menacing growl at her. I guess it sounded enough like "meow" for her to make up her mind, because she said "cat?!" Yup. Really really big cat.

I don't know why, but giraffes are kinda my favorite. I love how much their body structure looks like horses, but . . . distorted into something even cooler. I guess my kids were more interested in their juice boxes at this point.

And of course, we have to get at least one picture of the family on a statue animal.

This was Tyler's favorite moment, when he found some meekrats that were just as excited about him as he was about them. Tyler would jump up and shriek with glee when one came over to him, and then the meekrat would jump around and run off. When it ran back to see him, Tyler would shriek and the meekrat would play with him and they both seemed to love it. You can see in this picture that there is a meekrat checking out each toddler.

They have a carousel at the zoo with zoo animals for you to ride on. Kaitlyn really wanted the giraffe, but she was just as happy with the elephant. So happy, in fact, that when I told her it was time to get off she clung tighter and shook her head frantically. I finally had to pry her off, sobbing. Poor thing.

We even rode the train at the end too.

It really was a great day at the zoo!