Siblings

Siblings: Sometimes they fight and are mean to each other and they drive you a little nuts.  And then sometimes they play so peacefully together.  It's the later of these two instances that I prefer to remember years from now.  (I generally avoid taking pictures of them when they are hitting each other!)  On Friday, my two just played so happily together after school.  Amidst the dozens of other kids on the playground, they chose to play with each other.  And no one else.  I love these moments.  And so I took a few pictures with my phone.  I choose to remember this day.  And like my mom, I will one day have no memory of them ever fighting or misbehaving.  I'll only happily look back on days like this.  And when they ask me for parenting advice for their naughty little ones, I'll tell them what my mom tells me, "I don't remember YOU ever doing THAT.  I don't know what to tell you, sweetie.  Except that one day you'll forget all this."

Starving!

Pierce is my skinny child.  Skinny primarily because he is not a good eater.  He particularly dislikes anything served to him around 6:00 pm.  Because he is such a poor eater, he frequently exclaims, “I’m SO SUPER STARVING!” (emphasis on “so,” emphasis on “super,” emphasis on “starving”).  Lately, I have felt that I am hearing this expression FAR too often.  The expression annoys me on two levels: one, the most obvious, being that he wouldn’t be so super starving if he would just eat the fresh, healthy food I serve him four times a day; and two, because the word “starving” itself just bothers me.  He’s not starving.  Nor am I or anyone we know.  We are hungry.  Children in the third world who eat one nutrient-poor meal a day are starving.  We are just hungry.  Maybe even VERY hungry, but certainly not starving.

So, when Lent began four weeks ago, I was trying to think of simple things Pierce and Sydney could do or give up during Lent.  For Pierce, it came to me like a flash of lightning!  He needed to give up the word “starving” out of respect for those poor children who actually are starving.  So, I gently approached him with the idea.  I explained to him that we were all going to make one small change in our lives during Lent, and asked if he would try to stop using the word “starving,” and instead replace it with the word “hungry”.  He said, sure, and we practiced together saying, “I’m SO SUPER H-U-N-G-R-Y!”  We both laughed and I figured his Lenten pledge would last about five minutes.  But, let me tell you, Pierce William has hardly used the word “starving” in four weeks!  I caught him once or twice early on and kindly corrected him, he grinned and switched out the word, like it was a game.  Since those first few corrections, he has been awesome!  In fact, he caught me TWICE this week using that word to describe my own hunger (in my defense I am nursing and feel SO SUPER HUNGRY many many many times a day!).  He corrected me, saying, “Mommy, you are NOT starving, you’re hungry.  Don’t use that word.”

I am so proud of him.  He is the only one in the family really following through with his Lenten promise.  This was the perfect choice for him and for us as a family, since Lent is a time for a renewed focus on charity, among other things.  Every time I feel SO SUPER HUNGRY, or Pierce exclaims his hunger, I reflect on those who really are hungry and am reminded of how plentiful our lives are and how we need to always pray for and help those who aren’t.   Thanks Pierce!

Onions

In graduate school we used to refer to one of my good friends as “the onion,” not because she smelled badly, but because every time you talked with her, you found out something new about her.  Something interesting.  Something unexpected.  It was like peeling the layers back on an onion to reveal another part of her identity.  “You’ve lived where?”  “You’ve done what?”  The more people I meet and get to know on more than a superficial level, the more I realize that we’re all onions to some extent. 

We met a new onion today: our Stanley Steamer carpet cleaner.  Yes, that’s right.  After an hour of sweating over cleaning our horribly dirty carpets, Mr. Carpet Cleaner looked at my three kids (who were probably staring at him!) and said, “Do you want me to do your caricatures?”  Huh? “I do caricatures.  Go get me a sharpie and some paper and I’ll do yours.  It’ll only take me 2-3 minutes per child.  Go ahead.”  Um, ok.  So we did.  And he did. 

 

The kids were thrilled with their portraits!  During the six minutes it took him to draw each of them we started talking.  Turns out he is an artist who used to do fashion illustrations for Ralph Lauren in New York.  And a boxer.  Promoted by Don King.  Not sure which career came first.  Or how or why a man who was once a fashion illustrator and also once a boxer is cleaning my carpets in Cary, NC.  Well, it’s none of my business, but it just goes to show that you can NEVER judge a book by its cover.  Your grocery clerk might be trilingual... or a triplet... or a former triple jumper!  All those soccer moms you see at carpool might have their PhDs or be forensic scientists, detectives, who knows.  So strike up a conversation with those around you and they might somehow brighten your day (or at least disprove your assumptions about them)!

Signed,

The trilingual doctoral stay-at-home mom formerly known as Kate Lovell.  (See, even I’m an onion.)

'Tis the Season

'Tis the season for:

Gingerbread masterpieces....

 

 

Visits from loved ones....

 

 

Enjoying Christmas stories...

Quiet talks with Santa....

Dressing up...

Christmas parties...

Nativities anticipating the birth of a child...

Art projects....

Twinkling lights...

Cookies, music, mail boxes full of joyful greetings, and hopefully a little time to sit back, reflect and enjoy it all.

Merry Christmas, friends and family!

Fun with Paint

My kids love painting.  What kid doesn't?  So, Pierce and I have been working on several paintings together.  Ones worth keeping!  This is a fun and easy activity for even the young ones (Pierce is 3), and the finished product is great!  So far, he's done a shark, an alligator and a whale (all his choices for favorite animals). 

Here's how it works.  I bought a few canvases (they are so cheap at the craft stores) and some acrylic paints.  I let Pierce use his favorite color to cover the canvas (covering the table and giving him a smock first!  This is messy business, people!).  His strokes are not perfect, in fact, they are horribly messy, but it looks kind of neat that way.  There's something about covering a white canvas blue that can hold a child's attention until every little white spot is gone!  Then, lots of praise for a job well done and a break for the canvas to dry.  This works well because the attention span of a little one has already been exhausted. In the mean time, find out the child's favorite animal or image he wants to paint (keeping it super simple!) and find some of your kids books with pictures of this item in them.  Use your favorite illustration and copy it free-hand onto a manila file folder nice and large (to cover your canvas).  Use a pencil for lots of corrections if needed!  Then cut out your image carefully and use what's left of the file folder after removing the image as your stencil.  Help your child choose an appropriate color for their image (or let them choose an inappropriate one!) and mix it up for them.  Tape the stencil onto the dried canvas (a little tape won't hurt it!).  Then give them a rounded foam brush to dot the new paint color into the stencil.  By dotting the paint instead of dragging it with a brush, you'll keep it from going under the edges of the stencil.  Dot, dot, dot until his little heart is content and the image is fully covered, then remove the stencil and enjoy the masterpiece!  With Pierce's whale, we went back and added the white spots over the black after it had dried (using pieces cut from the same stencil drawing).  And then I showed him where to dot the eye.  So simple!  This beauty will go in Pierce and Grant's bathroom once Brett gets a fresh coat of paint on the walls.

This is such a fun activity and the child actually paints everything on the canvas, so it is truly their creation that they can feel proud of that.

Inspired by an image on Pinterest, we did some work in our mudroom, and Pierce's alligator (or is it a crocodile?) is proudly displayed there.  The idea with the mudroom wall of art is to have one piece from each child, but we are waiting patiently on Grant to produce his first masterpiece, and until then, Sydney has two pieces displayed.  This was also a fun project, another little item on Brett's long Honey-Do list. The pegs were only $5 at Michaels (less if you use your coupon!) and he painted them with leftover trim paint we had in the attic.  The art was free!  And a few frames were less than $25. Our mudroom looks and functions so much better now!  Thanks to Brett and Pinterest and my little artists.

Fabulous Fall

I love the fall.  Is it because I was born in the fall?  It seems like everyone always loves the season they were born in.  Hmmm...  Anyway, what's not to like about fall?  Nothing! Some of my favorite things about the fall include: changing colors, cooler weather, putting the sunscreen away, pumpkin bread, apple picking, pumpkin patches, roasting pumpkin seeds, and Halloween.

We enjoyed all of these things as a family this fall.  Here are a few pictures to share.  I hope your fall was a lovely as ours.

Apple picking (in the rain!) with great friends in the NC mountains!  We picked and ate a bushel! YUM!

Climbing Chimney Rock!  The kids loved the climb... Brett, not so much!  He voted for the elevator, but lost the vote to the rest of us (not carrying babies, of course!).

The kids enjoyed our local pumpkin patch - spider web climbing and all.

Heave ho!!!

 

Summiting a monstrous hay mountain.

Milking a cow ain't all that easy, people.

One smart looking group of farmers!  Look closely at the "wife" - it's not me!

Little Red Riding Hood, a cute monkey and a scary shark.

Quick picture before the monkey fell asleep!

Brett decided to assemble a quick last minute costume - good ol' Dick Cheney.

 

I hope everyone enjoyed their fall as much as we did.  I'm sorry to say, but tomorrow morning Christmas bells will officially be ringing.  And it is over in the blink of an eye!



Grant's Baptism

Sweet little Grant was baptized this weekend at our church.  It was such a nice weekend and fun celebration. Thank you to all our friends and family who joined us for this special day!  Here a few pictures of the baptism and celebration at our house.

Godparents Keith and Dawn Matune (who flew in from Chicago).

The whole gang!

Nana and PapaJohn with "the general"

 

 Our cheese dinner on Saturday evening.  Thanks, Brett!

We made a quick day trip to Wilmington on Sunday with our friends from Chicago to enjoy one last day of summer! 

Aha!  Caught them!  So cute!  (Will show them this picture later when they are mean adolescents who want nothing to do with one another!)

Brett with his good friends!

4/5 of the family!  Grant decided to rest and play at Nana and Papa Johns while we hit the beach!