Rescue the Day

Our day got off to a very bad start. I’ve chosen not to elaborate too much on the reason, but it has to do with the fact that James is off defending the country on one side of the world while I am here, doing the best I can to maintain control of the household on the other side of the world. For simplicity, let’s just say that bad days are a common deployment by-product. So after a morning filled with anguish and tears, our day was in desperate need of a rescue.

Thank the Lord! A beautiful sunny day and some wonderful friends came to our rescue.

We met at a local park for some fun, friendship, and food. Once the kids were unleashed onto the playground, the rescuing continued in another sense of the word. One of the main attractions at Gavin Park is a huge climbing apparatus that I like to call “the spider web.” Josie, Jamie, and their friends bounced between the slides, stairs, swing sets, and sandbox but they continually came back to the beloved spider web. After entangling themselves into its knots and weaves they would shout for help like helpless prey of some giant spider. Then one of the boys- mainly the two oldest boys of the group, Robby and Rowan- would come to the rescue and pull the seemingly powerless victim to safety. This game was played and re-played repetitively. With each successful rescue, the smiles grew bigger and bigger.

After an hour of active play our little heroes had to be rescued from their hunger pains. We all sat down at a picnic bench for some sack lunch sandwiches, followed by some yummy cupcakes. Let me tell you, nothing can turn a day around like a face full of frosting!

It was such a perfect trip that I was reluctant to tear the kids away. But Jamie had to get home for a nap in time to wake up for his speech therapy session, and you all know how fond I am of spending time with Kelly…So we packed up and headed home.

Therefore, our day that could have easily gone down in flames was pulled from the burning building. Thank you to all our friends who came to our aid and rescued the day.

Photo Preview!

Our photographer has posted a preview of our photo session on her blog! Check them out HERE.

My Tax-Payer Funded Friendship

We have a new special someone in our lives and the time we spend together is funded by the tax payers of New York. Her name is Kelly and she is Jamie’s speech therapist.

Jamie struggles with a speech delay. According to experts he should have a vocabulary of around 500 words and be speaking in two word sentences. Instead, he uses between 10 and 20 words on a regular basis and those are simple, one syllable words, with only basic sounds. When he turned 2 his pediatrician referred him to the Early Intervention program, which is a state funded service that provides assistance to children with behavioral, learning, and speech problems. Jamie was assessed and accepted into the program and then assigned a personal speech pathologist, named Kelly. She comes to our home twice a week for one hour per session to work with Jamie.

My little man of few words (August 2010)

Let me switch focus for a minute to make a confession: I’m a bit of a relationship junkie. Social interaction gives me a high. Whenever I’m starting a friendship with someone new, I’m like a twelve year old kid with an innocent school yard crush. I get jittery when I’m talking to the person on the phone, planning our next meeting. I feel giddy when they’re around. I re-play our conversations over and over again in my head, wondering if I should have said something differently. I second guess everything I do. I become obsessed with impressing them, but doing it in a way that isn’t smothering and repulsive. I try my hardest to look my best and act my brightest. You can think I’m crazy if you want to, but keep in mind that if you know me personally, I probably felt (or maybe even still do feel) this way about you. I hope you find it flattering. You should consider it a compliment that I realize you are such a special person that I would go to great lengths to keep you in my life.

 My mom always told me that you know someone is good for you if they make you a better person.

Well Kelly is good for my kids and for me! She intrigues me and inspires me. Speech days have become my favorite days of the week. Whenever she is scheduled to visit I work diligently to clean the house. I’ve even started mopping my kitchen floor on a regular basis (and if you know me well, you know this is very uncharacteristic) and I don’t even do that for the friends I’ve had for years. I choose my outfits more carefully in the morning on speech therapy days. Kelly is also a mom of three- an eldest girl followed by two boys, just like mine- and so we have a lot in common. She understands me in a way that few people do. She’s full of great advice on everything- from speech to discipline- and she’s willing to share her knowledge with me openly. She’s wonderful with Josie, Jamie, and Johnny and, as you should know, the way to a mother’s heart is through her kids. She is patient and kind and cheery and whenever I’m with her I want to be more like her. I’ll just say it, I love her!

I know that God puts the right people in our lives at just the right time. I’m pretty sure that He knew I needed Kelly. At this time in my life I am in desperate need of companionship, optimism, and advice and she gives me all those things. My other friends are doing the best they can to fill those roles while James is gone, but they’re all busy moms with young families and little time to spare. Kelly is a busy mom too but she’s paid to spend time with my family. Let’s face it, she’s my captive audience. The sad part though is that I’m not sure we’re even allowed to be friends. Technically we’re nothing more than her clients; recipients of her services that are paid for by tax-payer dollars. We may never be able to get together socially. Our kids may never be able to play together. I’m probably not allowed to send her a facebook friend request. But that’s a part of our relationship that I’m willing to accept. I’ll take as much Kelly as I can get and be content with absorbing her expertise whenever I can.

In conclusion, I would like to thank the New York tax-payers for funding my exceptional new friendship!

So now, I have a question for my readers: Should I give Kelly a link to my blog so that she can read this post? Or is that too equivalent to the note passed in class with crayon scribbles that reads, “Will you be my friend? Circle YES or NO.”???

"Give me a smile and I'll give you a lollipop!"

Sorry, no pictures to share with this post; just a story. I wasn't the one with the camera, for once.

I am a believer in the power of positive reinforcement. Who isn’t, really? Everyone likes to be rewarded for their actions. Parents especially like to use incentives to reward their children for good behavior. Sometimes a reward can be as simple as an encouraging word, a smile, a hug, or even a high-five. Sometimes we need to go a step further and offer a trip to the park or to the toy store to pick out something special. And then there are other times when we have to bring out the big guns. At times like these, like on family portrait day, we bring out the lollipops.

As I’ve mentioned earlier, I LOVE taking family portraits. In the past, we’ve always gone to a typical studio like Sears or JC Penny. But recently some friends of ours had their kids photographed by a local artist who specializes in newborns, children, and young families. I was so impressed by her work after seeing how she captured my friend’s children that I scheduled us an appointment with Jennifer Pondillo Photography for our annual Easter pictures.

Having never hired a professional photographer before, I was very nervous about the whole experience. I just didn’t know what to expect.  I could barely sleep last night and I had butterflies in my stomach all morning long (Yes, that’s how important family portraits are to me). And when I looked in the mirror first thing this morning and saw a huge zit on my chin, I feared that it was a bad sign of things to come. The pouring rain flattened my carefully curled hair and we were running about 20 minutes behind schedule. Surprisingly, we got to the photographer’s house on time anyways and as soon as she let us through the front door, things started looking up.

Jennifer, the photographer, was inviting and friendly- such an easy person to smile for. The studio was set up in the corner of a fully furnished basement and all around it were fun and exciting toys for the kids to play with. Josie and Jamie made themselves busy while I changed Johnny into his sailor outfit. Johnny, of course, needed no incentives to smile. He was happy and cheerful and an adorable photogenic bundle. I have no doubt that we’ll see some priceless pictures from his sitting.

Josie then took center stage to pose for the camera. She was in great spirits, most likely overtaken by all the bright colors and lights of Jennifer’s studio. She smiled eagerly and followed directions as she was asked to switch props several times. I can’t wait to see how her poses come out!

Next it was Jamie’s turn…and here’s where the lollipops come in. Jamie is two years old and a stubborn two-year-old at that. He likes to live his life on his own terms. I had to force him to sit in place and although he sat, he would not smile. He kept his hands up by his face, rubbing his eyes in determined defiance. We tried everything to get him to smile- funny faces, music, toys, even marshmallows. Still he pouted. Jennifer revealed her special surprise for cooperative little boys and girls. Lollipops! Jamie was quick to grab for an inviting blue Tootsie Pop and we hoped that by allowing him to hold it we could keep his hands away from his face long enough to get a few pictures. Still he sat, lollipop in hand, pouting.

We decided to take the focus off him for a while to get some group shots, hoping he’d liven up enough for another try later. I had brought a framed 8x10 picture of James in his uniform with me. After all, I wanted him to be represented in our family portraits. I sat in the middle, Johnny on my lap squirming vigorously in an attempt to escape my grasp, Jamie on my right still holding his un-licked lollipop, Josie on my left saying ‘cheese’ over and over and over, and James’ picture in front of me at my feet. There was so much commotion that I have no idea how we looked. I’m extremely curious to see the final product.

Jamie did finally loosen up and started to cooperate. In exchange for his lollipop and a handful of marshmallows we got him to smile for the camera multiple times. All-in-all, without yet having seen the pictures, I would consider family portrait day a huge success!  The process itself may have been a challenge but I can’t imagine that the pictures are anything short of perfect. I mean, how couldn’t they be? They have my kids in them!

Sandbox Season

It’s time to celebrate. Sandbox season is here again!

It’s time for buckets and shovels and plastic dump trucks, and sand castles and mud pies made from newly thawed muck. Out comes the sidewalk chalk and the bubbles and wands and the hula hoops and bouncy balls that litter the lawn. Find the baseball bats, the balls, and dig out the gloves. Dust off the tricycles and the safety gear because outdoor weather is finally here!

It’s here! It’s here! Sandbox season is a reason to cheer!

Sandbox season and all of its toys bring babies (and mommy) days full of joy.

A Few Things Mommy Forgot to Mention

These days having a big family is becoming more and more uncommon. In fact, I can almost count the number of people I know who have three or more kids on one hand, and one of them is my mom. She raised five kids- me, my three sisters, and my brother- and she is my primary source of advice and encouragement on what it’s like to be the mother of a lot of little children. But there are a few things that Mommy forgot to mention….

Some things I think she omitted because she didn’t want to scare me. Like the fact that the after birth cramps get more and more painful after each child. They are ten times more agonizing after the second child, a hundred times more excruciating after the third, and exponentially more painful than labor itself. Johnny was well worth it, but it would have been nice to have fair warning. Another thing that never crossed my mind is that when you have three kids, they will inevitably all start to cry at the same time. Just last night Josie woke up screeching during a night terror…(note to self: blog about night terrors in the future)…and the commotion woke up Jamie, who began to whine for “wa wa” (water)….and at that precise moment Johnny started to cry for his first of several night nursings. So there I was standing in the hallway, trying to decide which bedroom to go to first, being only one mommy in a house full of screaming children. I guess that’s something my mom thought would be best for me to discover for myself.

Other things she probably didn’t discuss out of embarrassment. For example, the fact that carrying and birthing three (or more) children really screws up your bladder control. And also that being a mom of many children causes you to lose all sense of self decency. After all, once you’ve showed your enlarged genitals to a room full of hospital staff on multiple occasions and when you clean poop and vomit from sun up to sun down, closing the bathroom door before you pee becomes a frivolous waste of time.

Still there are other things I think my mom just completely forgot about after time passed. She never told me that every time I left the house with the kids I should be prepared for complete strangers to stop me in the entranceways and isles and point out, “Wow! You’ve sure got your hands full!” I swear I would be a millionaire if I had a dollar for every time I had to fake a smile in response to that statement. But the biggest shock of having three kids was none of the above unpleasantries. The thing I was least prepared for, the thing that Mommy forgot to mention, is how impossible it is to control all the clothes!

In a house with three kids, the laundry never stops. There is always a load in the washer or a full hamper waiting to be thrown in. Piles in need of folding or hanging accumulate at the feet of the beds. And more often than not, when I’m running late to an appointment it’s because I stopped to switch the wet clothes from the washer to the dryer before I left the house knowing that, if I didn’t, I’d regret it the next day when someone didn’t have clean underwear to wear. But it’s more than that. Keeping the closets filled with correct sizes and seasonal apparel is an overwhelming ordeal. Periodically throughout the year all other housework comes to a grinding halt, the house gets turned upside down and everyone lends a hand in order for me to transition the kids’ closets from one season to another. This week I started transitioning us into spring wardrobes.

This whole-house affair begins by taking out all the clothes that are either seasonably unsuitable or the inappropriate size. Jamie helped me remove all the hangars from the old clothes and carried them down the hallway, one-by-one, to make a gigantic pile in my bedroom. At the time I thought he was helping but I wasn’t so happy with his role later in the day when I had to de-mangle the mass of hangars that had gotten twisted and hooked onto one another. It’s amazing how entertaining the everyday things, like hangars, can be to kids. Josie took a handful of them and used them as “decorations.” She carried them around the house and hung them in random places- on the doorknobs, over the sides of toy bins and drawers, on the back of chairs, etc. She explained that she was decorating for Jamie’s birthday party. It’s kind of a funny thought to wonder how Jamie would respond if he were to look through the scrapbooks at pictures of his hangar themed 3^rd birthday party. Ha ha!

Johnny, of course, got a good chew out of them.

I like to say that babies must be quite the plastic connoisseurs- they put so much plastic in their mouths that I have a hard time believing they don’t acquire a refined taste for the good stuff (if there is such a thing).

The kids enjoyed helping me vacuum the air out of the Space Bags

And then we had fun stacking and climbing on them.

Hundreds of hangars, ten loads of laundry, six drawers, five large Space Bags, two closets (Josie and Jamie share one), and two days later…I am finally close to being done. I wish I’d taken a picture of the closets before I started because they were a disastrous mess, especially Johnny’s which housed four separate towers of grown-out-of clothes reaching as tall as the other clothes hung down. I’m proud of how orderly they look now and there’s even a little bit of empty space….just in time for Gymbucks redemption shopping next week J

Josie sitting in Johnny's cleaned out closet.

An inevitable result of playing with clothes all day- dressing up in big sister's outfits.