Trick-or-Treating

This much cuteness needs little explanation.

Happy Halloween!

James, Jenny, Josie, Jamie, Johnny, and our Jack-o-lanterns wish you a Happy Halloween!

Perfect Imperfections

They say that love is blind, but that isn’t true at all. In fact, love not only sees everything but sees it more clearly. In a way real love has x-ray vision. When a person really loves another then they not only see the other’s faults but they see the beauty behind those flaws.

Did you know that James’ mustache hair grows in white? Or that Josie has a bald spot on her head that is caused by a large birth mark? Or that Jamie has a freakish bump on his right nipple? Or that all my kids have eczema and their toe nails grow into their skin if they’re not cut frequently? Some people would call these attributes “imperfections.” But all I see are lovely little details that the Lord hand-crafted. In other words, they are perfect imperfections.

Here are a few of my favorite family faults:

-James’ obsession with talking about his poop. James loves to give me updates on his bowel movements: when he has them, how big they are, their consistency, color, and smell and whether or not they’re on time. To most people this would be considered flat out disgusting and TMI. But I just laugh. To me this is an indication of our healthy relationship. I love that he feels comfortable enough to communicate about even the most mundane and inappropriate subjects.

-Josie’s huge gap-toothed smile. When someone else looks at Josie they might think about how she is going to need braces to close the large space between her two top teeth. But what I think when I look into her gleaming face is, “Awww, she looks so much like her daddy but she has my smile.”  (For those of you who don’t know, I had the same gap before five years of braces.) Someday when she comes home from school crying because a kid in her class made a joke about her teeth I will be able to comfort her and tell her that I understand because someone made the same joke about me. And when she gets her braces tightened I will take her out for ice cream and make pudding for dinner.

-Jamie’s lack of a vocabulary. According to experts, a two-year-old should have at least 50 words in their vocabulary and be able to say two and three word phrases. Jamie will turn 2 next month and he knows how to say three words- “mama”, “dada”, and “eye”- six if you count the ones he can almost pronounce- “ya” for yes, “bubu” for puppy, and “mo” for more. I don’t want him to be developmentally behind but I don’t really mind either. I know that he is an extremely intelligent little boy and his speech abilities will catch up in due time. I like that I can understand him more than anyone else in the world. His baby babble comforts me in knowing that my little boy isn’t grown up yet and still needs his mommy.

-Johnny’s poor sleep patterns. When Johnny was a newborn he was the worst self-soother on earth. He seemed to need constant physical contact, night and day. Now that he’s older he seems to instinctively know when his brother and sister are sleeping and has decided to make those his awake times, thus eliminating the possibility of naps for me. It is easy to become frustrated with these patterns, especially since sleep deprivation is my leading cause of grumpiness. I complain, but I secretly love it. I cherish the excuse to cuddle my baby longer, to let him sleep on my chest, and to rock him for hours. And I treasure the time I get to spend with him one-on-one while the other kids are sleeping.

So I suppose that the point I am trying to make is that a family should be best at seeing each other through God’s eyes. We see each fault as the beautiful, God-given, perfect imperfections that they are.

An imperfect family photo

(Pictures are from a friend's birthday party that we attended on Saturday)

How busy is too busy?

There are at least two types of people in this world: Busy Bodies and Home Bodies. I am the former and my husband is the latter. I thrive on activity whereas James is perfectly content to stay at home. I think one reason for our difference is that James spends most of his week working outside of the home so he treasures the time when he can just put his feet up, watch TV, and internet surf. I, on the other hand, devote the majority of my time working inside the home so I’m quick to jump on any opportunity to get out and socialize. So if we stay home then I’m grumpy because I end up spending the day cleaning messes, preparing meals, washing dishes,  laundering clothes, and disciplining and entertaining children. But if we go out the James is grumpy because he’d rather be home relaxing.

 So how do we compromise? Where’s the happy medium? How busy is too busy?

Looking back at my own childhood, I remember that my family was always busy with some kind of organized event or activity. I made fond memories during these times and am thankful for the valuable life lessons they taught me. After all, those experiences are what made me who I am today. But at the same time, I can see how the constant, highly structured, on-the-go lifestyle may have been detrimental to the family as a whole. Mainly because, more often than not, one or more of us children (usually the youngest) got left behind and left out. I can definitely see the benefit in staying home and staying together. But on the other hand, how do you explain to one of your 4 year old daughter’s best friends in the whole word that she won’t be at his birthday party? Because we need to stay home and veg? I don’t think so.

In a three day span over this Friday, Saturday, and Sunday our schedule includes one Halloween party, one dinner party, two birthday parties, various family errands, Sunday School, church service, and trick-or-treating. My children are still young and I already feel like a busy mom. What am I going to do when I have to take the kids to school, sports practices, music lessons, scouts, church youth group, sleep-overs, and more? I guess we’ll have to jump that hurdle when it comes. But for now I think it’s safe to say that if you can’t find the time to give your filthy kids a bath, then you’re too busy.

Dress Rehearsal

We wake up early in our house. How early? Well when I heard the kids fumbling down the stairs at 5:50 yesterday morning I thought to myself, “Wow! They slept in!”  We usually spend the first few hours of our day just lounging around the living room, but Friday morning quickly turned into a full-fledged Halloween dress rehearsal.

We started by getting Josie dressed in her kitty costume, which is nothing but a black velour bodysuit with a tail safety pinned to her rear and a headband with two triangle ears. Simple as it is, she loves it! And when Jamie saw Josie getting into her costume he excitedly pointed to himself with both hands to communicate that he wanted to wear his costume as well. So I ran upstairs and fetched his adorable (Gymboree) puppy costume. Now that I had two kids in full gear I figured I might as well dress the third and snap some pictures. The night of Halloween always gets hectic and it’s difficult to get good pictures when everyone is in a hurry.  The kitty and the goldfish more-or-less cooperated but the puppy kept trying to yank off his hood and dash out of the pictures. Plus the lighting was bad because the sun still wasn’t up, so I didn’t really get any good shots and will have to hope for some on Sunday night.

Eventhough the photo shoot was a bust, we did learn some valuable lessons during this practice session.

1.)    The urge to yank Josie’s tail will be irresistible. Within the first hour of her wearing the costume the tail was ripped off three times- once by Beast, our new puppy, once by Jamie, who received a scolding by mommy and an even harsher scolding by daddy who was awoken from his sleep by the noise from the first scolding, and once by Josie herself.

2.)    Just because they’re dressed like animals doesn’t mean you should allow them to eat like animals. Upon Josie’s urging I agreed to let them eat “puppy and kitty food” (i.e. a bowl of dry cereal) on the floor with their faces in the bowl and on all fours. But what started out as a cute game of pretend ended as a living room strewn with Cheerios and Chex.

3.)    Johnny’s costume looks less like a goldfish and more like a baby who’s been swallowed by a goldfish. It’s definitely one of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever seen. I won’t let it bother me too much though, since he’ll either be strapped in a stroller or bundled in a sling during trick-or-treating.

4.)    Face make-up does not wash off easily. Josie wore traces of whisker to our dinner party later that evening.

We got Josie off to her preschool Halloween party in full garb and with two sheets of decorated sugar cookies in hand. When all was said-and-done it was a successful morning.

"You and Me, Brother"

My favorite part about being a mom to multiple children is having the opportunity to develop a unique bond with each child and to promote their individual personalities.  Coming in a close second is getting to watch the kids interact with each other and develop their own special bonds as siblings. It’s difficult to describe the sensation- maybe it’s a sense of accomplishment, or a welling up of pride, or a surge of success. Whatever the feeling, for a mom to see her children happily interact with each other is nothing short of blissful.

The other night I was sitting on the bathroom floor beside the tub in my usual spot (I wouldn’t be surprised if the linoleum had an imprint of my butt permanently worn into it) with Johnny on my lap, watching Josie and Jamie enjoy their bubble bath. Josie scooped up a handful of suds and plopped it gently on top of Johnny’s head. She giggled at the sight of her baby brother with a head full of white bubbles. He, in turn, giggled at her gleaming face. Then she laughed because he had giggled at her. So he squealed because of her laugh. They continued like this, laughing and giggling and smiling at each other in turn, for several minutes. I just sat back and smiled and reveled. It was the first sustained period of interaction between brother and sister. And the best is yet to come.

There have been countless days that started out hectic and stressful that were turned around simply because of a cute brother & sister or brother & brother moment. A sweet gesture of sharing, or a gentle kiss on the forehead to calm tears, or an innocent game for two can mean so much more. It’s fun to listen to Josie and Jamie when they are plotting and planning elaborate schemes together. Josie obviously does most of the talking while Jamie does a lot of reinforcing, “uh huh.” When I’m driving I love to look into my rearview mirror to see the kids all entranced with one another and to hear Josie say, “Mom, we’re playing!” or “Mom, he’s smiling at me! I think he likes me!” It warms my heart.

If this is how my mom felt when she saw me with my siblings, then I can see why she ended up with five of us….

The Family that Carves Together

Today was pumpkin carving day! We gathered all five pumpkins and all five Js around the kitchen table and set to work.

James and I started by cutting out the openings and, to my surprise, Josie rolled up her sleeves and dove right in to start pulling out the innards.  Jamie, on the other hand, poked one finger into the juicy insides and said, “Ewwww!” He doesn’t like getting his hands messy, which is pretty funny considering he’s 100% boy in all other aspects (so I guess that makes him 99.98% boy).

He spent the remainder of the time coloring on the pumpkins. I made sure he used a washable marker so that I could un-decorate the pumpkins for display afterwards. Josie helped us decide which pumpkin would have a happy face, which would have a scary face, and which would have a surprised face. The crowning moment was when we lit the candles and the kids got to admire the shiny orange glow of our jack-o-lantern family.

Of course, no family project is ever complete without at least one catastrophe. At one point I took a mid-carve break to get dinner started. On the menu was roasted chicken with stuffing and corn on the cob, so I set the oven to preheat while I prepared the bird in its pan. The sweet smell of raw pumpkin coming from the nearby kitchen table must have masked the stench of burning plastic, because I didn’t realize that I was cooking toys until I opened the oven to place the chicken inside. One of Jamie’s recent obsessions is playing in the oven. I’m sure you can connect the dots.

I was upset about losing a handful of play food pieces but at the same time the whole incident- which I’ve totally seen coming for at least a week, when I first found toys in the oven- brought a smile to my face because it reminds me of when I left a Care Bear toy in my dad’s broiler. By the time my parents discovered the source of that awful smell Sunshine Bear was little more than a yellow blob of icky goo and the entire house was filled with smoke.

But anyways, half an hour later James noticed that I had forgotten to restart the oven after scraping out all the melted plastic. Chalk it up to trying to do too much at one time. It all turned out in my favor though. James offered to order us Chinese food, so instead of having to clean a sink full of dishes I swept up all the pumpkin guts and seeds that had been scattered around the kitchen floor while the kids watched “It’s the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown.”

Letting Loose

I never would have expected my first real blog post to be about farting. But then pretty much everything about parenthood is surprising.  Case in point: the fact that a good fart can really liven up a room.   

We were all sitting around the toy strewn living room this morning, a half ignored episode of ‘Mickey Mouse Clubhouse’ playing in the background, Josie cuddling her puppy and Jamie gulping down his second sippy cup of apple juice while James was enveloped in his perusal of colts.com.  I was sitting on the couch nursing Johnny when he let one fly, the sound reverberating off his diaper in typical fashion that will make even the smallest baby fart sound menacing.  James looked up from his laptop to congratulate, “Whoa! Nice one, buddy!”  Everyone giggled, including Johnny who broke his nursing latch to look up at me and give a big grin of accomplishment.

It seems the smaller the person, the cuter the fart. A Johnny fart is adorable, a Jamie fart is silly, and a Josie fart is sweet (no pun intended), a mommy fart….well, we all know that ladies never fart…., and a daddy fart is gross. In our family, cutting the cheese almost always produces a good laugh. There's the always popular bath tub fart and the classic blame-it-on-the-dog fart, which in our house is true at least 50% of the time. Pudge's middle name isn't Tooter for no reason. 

Somewhere along the line, when Josie was learning to put together sentences, she began to substitute the word “toot” for “excuse” in the exclamation, “excuse me.” So whenever she hears a fart she says, “Toot me!” or “Toot you!” Ha ha ha! How can you not smile after that? No matter how smelly it may be….

Here we go!

Well, here goes nothin'......


My very first post to my very first blog- Please bare with me as I explore the world of blogging. Things might be a little rough at first but I'm sure I'll get the hang of it after a little experimentation and a lot of practice.


My goal in starting this blog is to provide my readers (primarily all the family & friends we have who are scattered around the world) a glimpse into the everyday adventures of our little family of Js. Stay tuned for cute pictures, fun stories, and entertaining tid-bits from the J family household....