Happy Birthday To ME + Making Pumpkin Picking Stress FREE!

Yesterday was my birthday! 

Number 41.  I know, try to stifle the yawn.  41 is so...anticlimactic after the big 4-0!  

It's a celebration, don't get me wrong...it's just not a CELEBRATION!!!!

It was a great, low, key, stay in your pajamas until 4pm and clean the kitchen from top to bottom kind of day.  I got lovely cards from Marc and the kids, and the only present I asked for, which was a biggie!  A weekend with Molly and Maeve back in Massachusetts!  Our flight leaves Friday and we are pumped!  Well, except for the little problem of Maeve cutting her top two teeth...and NOT gracefully, like she did her bottoms.  It's been U-G-L-Y around here.  I got 4 hours of broken sleep last night and had to fire up the swing for the first time in two months.

These pumpkins depict how my brain feels after too many sleepless nights!

But besides that part, the day was sweet and spent with my favorite people.  Giving Maeve an extra-long bath...playing puppets with Ben (we were dinosaurs playing catch with the head of a Power Rangers Megazord - it was hilarious!)...helping Molly do math homework (elapsed time is a killer!)...discussing our house tech rules with Jack ad nauseum (a daily ritual for him).

Case in Point, somebody smuggled his iPod because he just. can't. put. it. DOWN.

The one thing I wanted to do, which I knew had to be broad and flexible lest it not happen at all, was to "get out in nature".  At first, I'd hoped we could get to the Arboretum....but that didn't happen.  Then I thought maybe we'd go to the pumpkin farm.  But we were too lazy and preoccupied.  So as a last ditch effort to make something happen, we ran up to the farmstand at the edge of our neighborhood to buy Maeve's first pumpkin - which was exactly how I spent my 30th birthday too, only it was baby Jack's first pumpkin!

Here she is making her selection.  She wanted to be one with the pumpkin, so she dressed the part!

Out here in Chicagoland, everything is done BIG.  There isn't just a pumpkin patch.  There's a pumpkin EXTRAVEGANZA everywhere you turn.  With corn mazes, and hayrides, pony rides and camel rides, puppet shows and climbing walls, petting zoos and train rides, giant slides and pumpkin trebuchets, haunted houses and fun houses, face painting and pig racing, gift shops and photo ops...

Oh, and they sell pumpkins too.

It is all TOO MUCH!  We just needed a few good pumpkins.

The key to stress-free pumpkin picking I realize now (after a few years of doing it the other way) is to keep expectations LOW and choices LIMITED. This is an automatic side benefit to showing up at a local farmstand ten minutes before the place closes, which is exactly what we did!

11 days before Halloween, there wasn't much left to choose from, so choices were made expeditiously!

one....two...three...four!

And everyone felt pretty happy with their choices, instead of running around a 200 acre mega-farm like crazy people trying not to miss anything.

Okay, maybe Ben and Jack were a little tired of taking pictures...

But Maeve and I had a lovely time, especially for two people high on endorphins from not sleeping.

A perfect birthday.  Just like the one 11 years before...

Bookends.

I love my iPhone

I love my iPhone for many reasons, but mostly for its camera.  It has made it so easy to catch those little, fleeting kairos moments that otherwise would be lost to the ether.  Without the fanfare required to drag out the big camera, which in essence requires stepping out of the moment, I can simply and quickly go from

"Oh, I wish I could just bottle this moment up its so perfect!"...

To this...

We were just nursing when someone had a smile attack!

Waving "hi" to the baby in the camera.

Someone really loves looking at that baby in the camera okay, two someones!

Smiley baby overload.

The end.

To Nap or NOT to Nap

First time mothers are always admonished to "sleep when the baby sleeps!", but fourth time mothers know...there is no rest for the weary!  Nap time is for getting things DONE.  Today, that means culling the toys in the (disorganized, disastrous, tsunami of childhood) play room for my garage sale on Friday, and lucky for me, Maeve slept terribly last night so she should have been poised for a fabulous morning nap. 

NOTSOMUCH!

This week has been a moving and grooving week for Miss M.  She has figured out how to go from laying to sitting, from sitting to pulling up and from pulling up to sitting down, and back to laying down.  She is THISCLOSE to crawling too.  I need a nap just thinking about it, so I can't imagine what is keeping her awake!

I guess just like with my other babies, once they learn a new mobility trick, they JUST. CAN'T. STOP!  I remember Jack crawling around in circles in his crib for upwards of an hour before he finally collapsed, asleep. 

Two nights ago I found her sitting up in her crib and I knew it was time to lower that mattress - it's amazing that we've made it this far really, I probably should have lowered it before now, but I'm so short that I love the top mattress position because it's the only one I can lay the baby down in.  The others require me to drop them the last inches (I suppose I could climb up on a stool...I'll have to look for a stool!)

Anwhoo, Maeve's sleeping has gone to pot because of all of her aerobics.  Not that it was good to begin with.  Since the great swing-wean of August, there hasn't been too much sleep 'round these parts.  

Not sure what my point was as I sat down to write this post....I think I was killing time listening to Maeve fuss in her bed, hoping that she would go back to sleep...but she didn't.  Too busy sitting up and not realizing that she can lie back down to sleep some more.  So now it's four hours later and she's been nursed, changed, played with, fed lunch, played with some more, nursed some more and laid back down for nap number two.  I just sang her the tune of Gilligan's Island...but I changed the refrain to

A TWO HOUR NAP....A TWO HOUR NAP.

Let's hope it worked subliminally!  I've made it through the boys' toys, and am on to Molly's.  If I never sort another Lego again, I'll be a happy woman (but I know that will never happen, not in this house!)

The Crafty Brain

I've heard that musicians "see" their life experiences and the world around them in musical notes.  Their brains are just hardwired for it and the music just comes to them, or maybe through them.   It's almost as if they are led to create and share it.  

Its the same with writers who feel it's imperative to capture their observations with pen and paper, or poets who have verse and meter tapping away in their brains even as they do something as mundane as walking down the street, or artists with their brushes, paints and canvases.

And for those of us with a crafty affliction, sometimes a vision just appears in our heads and we know...without a doubt...that we. must. create.  it.

That is how Carl came to be.

Carl started out as a birthday gift for Ben's friend Colin.  Colin LOVES minions, and his dad is a doctor.  What could be a more perfect gift than a game of Minion Operation!!

Today was Colin's party and it dawned on me that I didn't have any 'kid-friendly' gift wrap, so Maeve and I stopped at Target to pick some up. 

"I wonder if they make Despicable  Me gift wrap?" I thought.  

Nope nothing. 

"We'll, maybe I could buy some yellow wrapping paper and stick printed out minions on it"  

was my next thought. Notachance.  No yellow wrapping paper to be found.

It was then that the crafty lightbulb went off in my head.

"Maaayyybeeeeee....maybe I could wrap the gift to BE a minion!!"

Two sheets of colored poster board, one minion eye printable, some glue and a black sharpie later....

Carl was born!

The sheets of poster board were less than a buck apiece - cheaper than real giftwrap!

The goggle printable didn't go all the way across the gift, so I improvised with a sharpie to fill in the rest.

Luckily, Carl doesn't have much hair.

I freehanded the overalls and cut them out.

Originally I just drew on a pocket, but then I worried that sticking a card to the gift would ruin Carl, so I made a card-pocket instead.

I love the way it turned out!

Maeve's a fan too...though I think she may jut want to eat Carl.
Look out Carl!  Teething baby at 3:00!

I know, I know.

It's not the Mona Lisa, or Leaves of Grass, or Beethoven's 9th...It was just 20 minutes of crafty bliss during naptime and it made me happy for days every time I thought about it. 

Crafty fun is my antidepressant.  I don't know why it works, I'm glad it does!

Colin liked Carl too.  I hope we get invited over for a round or two of Minion Operation - it looks like a riot!

She Speaks!!!

Short post today.  We've got budding skillz in talking,

but notsomuch in the sleep training department.

 

Must go save the blubbering mess from herself after a whopping 20 minute nap and a whopping 20 minute cry while Mommy prayed she would figure out how to get herself back to sleep.

 

She didn't.

 

Sleep traing BITES.

 

Big Time.

 

But talking babies are cute, right?

 

 

 

 

Free Time

It's Friday!  Of the first full week of the school year.  My eyelids can barely stay open, which is odd because you would think with my days' burden lightened by three children I would have plenty of energy.  And yet each day my 3:15pm alarm goes off to remind me that the bus is bringing them home and I'm SURPRISED at how fast the time has gone.

What am I doing with all that time?  I asked myself that very question!

Where on earth has the day gone??

This week, my best guess is that of the 6.5 hours that school was in session each day, I spent roughly

• 2 hours a day doing housework and food prep
• 1 hour a day running errands
• 30 minutes exercising
• 30 minutes on personal care (if I don't get a shower after I exercise, it ain't pretty!)
• 30 minutes online (checking email, blogging, checking facebook, etc.)
• 2 hours making googly eyes at Maeve

TWO HOURS making googly eyes at Maeve?  You betcha!  Because honestly, is there anything better?

It's like having a firstborn do-over!  My actual firstborn did nothing but cry all day, so there wasn't a whole lot of googly eye-making going on, unless they were rolling in the back of my head from lack of sleep.  So this is a whole lot of retroactive payback for that year, and I'm going to enjoy it while it lasts!

We're having quite a bit of fun, Maeve and I.  Yesterday, we did this..

Seriously, I could die from the cuteness!!

Today,  we had an impromptu play date in the shower.  She woke up early from her nap, so I let her sit in the dry corner of my shower while I showered and she insisted on leaning forward to an almost-crawl to get to the water as it went down the drain.  She was going to either a.) fall on her face...which would be bad or b.) learn how to crawl...which would be WORSE!  I'm going to subvert all attempts to become mobile because I know where that leads her...away from being my baby! Not to mention into all sorts of  trouble.

So I decided to give her what she wanted and pulled her over under the shower.  She was horrified, and thrilled at the same time.  I ended up putting a washcloth over the drain to get an inch or two of water for her to splash in, and stripped her wet clothes off and gave her a mini bath.  Then I held her for a good fifteen minutes so she could play in the shower-spray.  Finally I wrapped us up in matching towels and we made faces in the mirror for ten minutes before getting dressed and going about our business.

It was awesome!

I'm so GLAD I get to do these things with her!  I'm such a lucky mama.  And I'm happy to have so much 'free time' to share with my little sidekick.  Even if it means that the alarm goes off to get the kids off the bus and I don't know where in the world the day went!

Captain Maeve

Down at Sharkey's Karate where Jack was having his final practice before belt testing this Friday, the rest of us had 45 minutes to kill.  We could have done homework, or read, or chatted about our day.  But instead, we decided to take a trip to Mars...

Maeve picked the perfect day to learn how to make engine noises...that's why she got to be Captain!