"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.