I came across this OLD post that I wrote in 2013. I emphasize that it’s from 2013 because I do not want any of you to get all excited and start thinking I’m expecting a baby.

There’s no baby. I’m so sorry to disappoint you. Ha!

I’m sharing this because I want every pre-school mom I know to read it. 

Some of you are like me, and you are busy, busy, busy with those little ones, and you are disappointed that you are not out there saving the world. Or you know, at least serving on the PTA. Ha! Because that’s the same right?

But why run yourself ragged? Yes, be involved in the community. You need that to stay sane, but once it gets to the point that you feel worn and empty, start cutting things. You can pick them back up later.

This is what I wrote when my first three children were ages 2-7, and I felt like I wasn’t keeping up as well as other elementary school moms:

It seems I will really never catch up on my housework. I booked myself too full of appointments and such last week to get much done. Alan is fantastic about helping, only Alan is too busy now to do much either. He had work, cub scouts, and baseball coaching this week.

We both did our best, but the fact is that we currently have more work than capable working hours.

You know what I think? I think God is preparing us for having four children. Four children, and not one over the age of seven. We need to learn our lesson now to stop signing up for activities, especially leadership roles (that’s Alan more so than me). Most all of my activities are physical maintenance and child rearing (like constant doctor visits). I did sign up to help my friend Margret with Staff Appreciation Week, and I haven’t even been able to be an effective helper! I do feel quite badly about that.

One thing that has been great this year is that I’ve met several more moms in the my neighborhood that also have preschoolers at home.

Here I am beating myself up because I cannot do all the things that Joshua’s friends’ moms do with the PTA and volunteering at school, when that is simply not the phase of life I’m in yet! These moms are a few years older than me, with no preschoolers left at home. The fact is we have different roles right now. Daniel and the baby that is soon to arrive (we do seriously plan to name him eventually) are a full-time job.

I had the privilege of walking to my Yoga class (oh, yes, I did sign up for 1 yoga class/week) with my friend Monica yesterday. Monica has a daughter in Caleb’s class. Monica also has a three-year-old, and she said some things that really made sense to me. She said something like,

“I just figure for now, while I’m taking care of a little one, I’m just not much use to anyone for much else. Even when it’s not nap time, there’s only so much I can do. You never know what her needs are going to be, or what mood she’s going to be in.” ~ Monica B.
Oh, yes, never were truer words spoken!

I’m going to finish out the things I am currently committed to (well, as best as I can), and then I’m done.

Of course, the Yoga class and the Fitness in the Park class I actually consider to be for my health. There are lots of negative health effects to gaining 50 pounds with each pregnancy, believe me! I’m still not convinced I can change that either though, but ugh I’m so tired of even thinking about pregnancy weight!

I even turned in my resignation for my Sunday school class a few weeks ago. I’m going to do it until the baby comes, and then I’ll just be home for a long time. When I finally go back, I will be attending Alan’s class, since he’s actually going to be teaching an adult class, starting in June.

Gradually, I’ll add back in nursery duty. When you’re breastfeeding you spend a ridiculous amount of time back in the church nursery feeding your baby anyway!

I’m not cutting everything, but it’s time to give my family a little extra grace and time and space to grow in. Reasonable expectations are a rewarding thing to have.

Praise the Lord for our sweet little boys. Can’t wait to meet the new one!

Have you ever gone through a phase where you simplified? Did you see a huge difference? I  certainly did, and I’d love to hear about your experience too.

The post Navigating Preschool Life: A Mom’s Expectation Makeover appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

Dan was such a good baby. I did not have to ‘sleep train’ him. Yet, somehow he gradually developed a bad pattern, and we had to work on it.  What is it with our toddlers??

The funny thing is I TOTALLY forgot that I ever had to “sleep-train” Dan at the ripe old age of 20 months. If you would have asked me, before I found this old blog post from 2012, what kind of sleeper Dan was, I would’ve said, “wonderful.” HAAAA!  The Mom Brain is a funny thing, full of selective memories.

I totally blame the sleep deprivation.

Don’t despair when you tell your woes to moms who are out of this phase. They have selectively pruned most negative memories, and they may think that you just don’t know what you’re doing. Don’t worry. That’s not the case.

So what gives with these babies? Sometimes you just need to examine the circumstances surrounding your toddler.

We’ll get to what I did for Daniel in 2012 in a minute. First, let’s talk about my current toddler, J.D. This summer JD gave us FITS in the middle of the night. He still had to have a bottle. He still had to be rocked.  Some nights he would wake up every couple of hours. It was miserable.

Did I let JD cry it out? No. No. No.  This isn’t rocket science. In this case, I firmly believe the right thing to do was to suck it up and just be there for my baby. JD was in the middle of a domino-effect of life changes, and he was only a 12 month old. To ignore his cries actually would have been pretty mean because he needed some extra reassurance. We were out of our ordinary routine, moving from place to place, from the beginning of June through just a couple of weeks ago.

Guess what happened? Well, let’s NOT count our chickens before they hatched, but I THINK it worked itself out on its own.  We’ve had two glorious full nights of rest. Who knows–he may wake up once tonight, or he may sleep all night. Either way, this is not bad.

Honestly, I could never let a little baby just cry and cry without consoling them. I can’t do it for too long for a 20-month-old either, but apparently I did cave and let Daniel cry a while. I knew there was nothing wrong with him, and he was getting cuddled all day long, so it really did pay off.

For my first two munchkins: I re-sleep trained them any time it was necessary–pretty much just used the “Ferber” method. We would put them to bed, and then flee the room. We have always found that having an established bedtime routine makes a huge difference.  Once we left the room, if they cried without stopping, we’d go in there after 5 minutes, pick them up–yes—pick them up, console them for a bit, and lay them back down. I’d do this in increasing intervals. The truth is, I’m a softie, and usually by the third interval, my “consoling” would put them to sleep. This all worked just fine.

However, Dan gave me enough trouble that I had to get tough with him. In November 2012, I resorted to some longer intervals:

This is what I wrote in 2012 about sleep-training the Dan Man. He was 20 months old. Also, I should tell you, that Daniel was quite the mischief maker during the day. I described that too….

“-Daniel is still a sleep challenge. THANKFULLY, he DID finally sleep through the night last night. However, as we speak he is in the crying it out process in his crib….

 

 

 

-(About my missing wedding rings–sadness!) I still haven’t found my wedding rings. I am pretty sure they were flushed. I have good circumstantial evidence pointing in that direction.

–Daniel went to sleep!!!!! Hallelujah! Sleep training= letting them cry it out, but never more than an hour. After a couple days of that, they decide crying for an hour is just not worth it!

-His current goal is to put his shoes on by himself. I find him practicing all the time. OH! Also, he said “Joshua”, actually “Yoshwa”, and “Caleb”, “Cay-cay”, this week! We were so excited!

-Tonight I walked into the boys’ bathroom, yes at our house there is actually a boys’ bathroom, to find Caleb putting toothpaste on Daniel’s toothbrush for him. Dan was leaning on the sink, waiting patiently.

-About Daniel’s name: I like Daniel, Dan, and Dan-Dan, even the Dan Man, but I do not like Danny–I really don’t like Danny at all. Just wanted to make sure everyone knows.

-Yesterday I wanted to shower while all the boys were running loose in the house, so I paid Joshua and Caleb $1 a piece to keep Daniel out of trouble while I took my shower. Best idea I’ve had in a while, and money well spent!”

**************

And now look at us, 2014, and dealing with so many of the same issues all over again!

We’ve read Babywise and tried that. We’ve Ferber-ized. You name it; we’ve done it. I also read that if you want to keep your children from waking up in the middle of the night, you should be sure to spend time talking (NICELY) to your spouse each day. Make sure your kids are watching while you chat with your spouse to really build up security points!!  That gives them security, so they wake up crying–or walking to your bed–less at night. I will say, Alan and  I were in two different states for half the summer, so that also could have contributed to JD’s insecurity.

They call the parent-talk time “couch time,” and I do think that’s a great idea. Google it.

So, in summary:

1. Different times call for different measures. You choose what works for you and your baby.

2. These are not hard and fast rules. There are none. Even if the American Academy of Pediatrics put out guidelines about it, you’d still need to go with common sense.

3. There is more than one way to skin a cat.

4. Every kid is different.

******************

Quote of the week:

Alan: I’ll put the trampoline together right now if ya’ll can tell me all the states and capitals ya’ll have learned.

Boys:  Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!

Alan:  What’s the capital of Vermont?

one of the boys:  Massachusetts!!!!!!

Alan: This could take a while.

🙂 They’ve got it down now, and the trampoline was a life saver today. 🙂 Roll Tide. Yep. It’s that time of year again.

The post Mommy Brain: Probably the Result of Sleep Torture appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

That’s us at a Washington Nationals game on Memorial Day. We love baseball games, and that was really fun.

Plus, we’ve gotten to see some wonderful friends this week. Thanks for having us over, Pastor and Terri!!!

Their dog is probably still recovering from what Daniel seemed to think was their ‘play date.’ Poor Annie.

So good things have happened, and a few crummy things have happened, but nothing all that terrible. I think the main thing getting to me is just the stress of this humongous move!!

So three thoughts for today:

1. A good night’s sleep will fix a lot of things. I’m hoping to go get one in a minute.

2. A grumpy baby will ruin anyone’s day. If you don’t believe me, then it has obviously been a long time since you hung out with one.

3. The world still turns. All of today’s problems will be forgotten three weeks from now.

4. No matter how early I get up to have coffee, every child in this house will be awake before I’ve gotten the coffee poured into my cup…

But they are ADORABLE. Here’s your weekly dose of adorable. Just watch this video of JD crawling over to wake up his brother:

Choose joy….choose joy…..choose joy….I’ll just keep repeating it to myself.  Never mind that the dryer and the washer are both full and I want to go to bed. I’m choosing joy…….

How’s everyone else’s week going?? I could use some GOOD news. Or some misery company…ha….

The post On the Outside Looking In appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

If you NEED a chuckle today, watch this video of Daniel:

Alan:

He has been hard at work getting everything wrapped up for the move. He has made sure we have a house lined up to move into when we get there. There is SO MUCH planning that goes into a cross country move. Meanwhile, he’s been handing over his current responsibilities at work, signing out of his current post, lining up the shipment of one of our vehicles, and of course, our newest talent: calendar coordination.

We now use Google + calendars so that we know each other’s schedules. With each kid we’ve added to the family, and as the boys get older and have more of their own activities, there is just so much schedule planning that has to happen–constantly! I highly recommend the Google Calendar to all families!

This morning our church presented Alan with a Bible, engraved with his name, to thank him for his service in teaching Sunday School the past year. They had me go up there with him, and our pastor gave us a good farewell–which suddenly made this whole moving thing seem so real.

Wow! We really are almost gone!!

Alan is having to prep himself for returning to the student life. He will be getting his masters degree in engineering, and that is going to require a whole lot of math.

All I can say is, glad it’s him and not me!!

Me:

I’ve been trying to prep for this move by purge, purge, purging!  How do we have so much stuff!!??  Even after the yard sale, we are drowning in stuff. Bleh. Who needs it? I’m getting rid of as much as possible!!

We also have to get the house all cleaned and fixed up nicely for our move-out inspection. It’s easiest to get that finished once we move out our massive amount of junk, so for now…..I did some gardening:

Oh, the weeds….

I planted this rhododendron bush 2 years ago, and it FINALLY has its first bloom. Yes!!

I forgot to get a good before picture of this plot. It was even worse…

…..and after.  Yeah, My legs are STILL sore.

Of course, I had some helpers:

Work, Dan, work. Eh….pajamas are fine.  We’re just going to get dirty anyway. 😉

That’s one happy little helper.

Look! No hands!  And thank you, Amy!  She is ALWAYS holding babies and helping us with Daniel. I’m sure she loves always having her picture on the internet, too. haaa– I bet Amy’s hoping the new tenants do NOT have a blog….

Adding the fourth baby was big for us this year. I had to cut a lot of things: gardening was one of those things. This was the first time I had worked in the dirt in an entire year.

What else have I been doing….a lot of socializing…..because you know me, that’s what I do. 😉 No, really, I just want to see everyone one last time! I’m going to miss my friends so much!!!

Then there’s the whole schooling thing to figure out. I’ve gotten a lot of mixed reviews of the school where we are going, and I just have no peace about it. I finally decided to just devote this issue to prayer. You can find plenty of good reasons for each different method of schooling. Forget about it. Two weeks ago, I told Alan to devote the week to praying about it, I did so too, and we’ll do what God leads us to do.

I did get the answers I was looking for, so at this point we are moving forward in that direction, but I’m not ready to blog about all of that yet, so we’ll talk more about our schooling plans later.

Oh! And I’ve been working on teaching Caleb how to ride a bike. It kind of makes me want to pull all of my hair out, but we’re making progress.

Daniel:

Ah, Daniel. Daniel has learned the power of the word ‘stupid.’ We’ve never had much trouble with name-calling from our first two boys, but Daniel has this keen sense for bad or taboo words. Say something nasty in front of him one or two times, and he locks in and repeats it. And repeats it. And repeats it.

“You stupid, Caweb.” You get the idea. He likes to get a reaction. We are working on that problem…best advice:  You definitely want to watch your mouth around Daniel. He’s the only 3 year old I know that uses the expressions, “What the heck!” and “Dang it.”

Redeeming qualities: He LOVES his baby brother, he is compliant in public, he’s cuddly and sweet most of the time, and he also loves to say, “I love you, Mommy.”

Of course, sometimes it goes more like this:

Me: “I love you, Daniel.”

Daniel: “No. Me love Daddy.”

Nice.

Daniel and his best bud

John David:

The gates are hung, and JD is off! He is officially a crawler, and it is just so adorable. It also makes him happier, easier to deal with, and he sleeps better at night.  All good things.

One day last week, I suddenly realized that JD is 11 months, not 10.  Huh– so he’s our latest crawler ever–I guess that probably means we don’t have to worry about him walking yet either.

So now the baby is crying and needs to be fed, so I am outta here!

The post “No! Me love Daddy!” appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

crawling, crawling, crawling

Well, it finally happened. JD is crawling. And as promised, here are two photos of the event.

In other news, at this moment Alan just came downstairs with ideas for things I need to do to prepare for the move.  Ugh. ugh. ugh. Did I mention moving is not fun at all???

Also, why does it require so much ‘calling people’. I live in dread of having to call people. Bleh.

But here’s the good news: Date night tonight!!  Yep, that’s right.  I have like 6 different good babysitters to choose from now, so we are headed to the movies!!!  Whoo-hoo!!! We’re going to see “Mom’s Night Out.”  I’ll let you know what I think!

The post Date Night Tonight!!! appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

I am proud to announce that JD finally made tiny crawl movements FORWARD today, on several occasions.  He’s been on hand and knees, going backwards, going to the sitting position, and even pulling up, for a while, but forward movement had eluded him until today. Go, JD, go! By the time we arrive in Alabama for our visit, I bet he will be all over the place.

I recently mentioned that I do not have many digital baby photos of Joshua. Right away, both sets of our parents dug through their old email files and forwarded me beautiful digital photos of Joshua.  Thank you so much!!!  While my mom was working on that, she came across this old email (from my pre-blogging days). When I wrote it, we were preparing for a move, Joshua was 2, and Caleb was a 10 month old. This is so deja vu it’s crazy!!

“Caleb is growing up.”

Big week for Caleb! He’s crawling a little (just enough to get him to something he can pull up on), pulling to sit ,and pulling to stand.
He just practices over and over and over….especially at nap time. Here are some pictures of him in action!
Things are really in gear for the move! I showed the house to potential renters today and again tomorrow.
Tomorrow morning is our traditional “we are moving” yard sale! Next weekend is closing. The weekend after that we have 3 farewell parties.
Then that last week of May, the movers and packers arrive, and the boys and I head down south.
I’m hoping by the time we move Caleb will be all over the place. They will have a blast with all the moving boxes!
April

So really I should be sweating none of this.  I am simply repeating the past.  Wow. I wish I had taken more photos of JD on all fours this week.  I feel like I’ve failed him in that regard. So here’s a mix of all the boys mastering the ultimate challenge: MOVEMENT!!

Joshua:

Caleb:

Our first three boys all learned to crawl in Alabama. The first two were at our house, and Daniel was at Granddaddy and Nana’s.

Daniel:

and JD:

I am ashamed. His face doesn’t even show. I vow to take a GOOD JD crawling photo this week!!!  Tomorrow, in fact!!  Look for it on my Stories of Our Boys Facebook page.

One last similarity that made me smile!

You see Caleb standing in his crib, with his devoted older brother in the crib, bouncing around behind him.

This is such an adorable phase:

The post Learning to Crawl appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

Lots of little things are going on here in the House of Many Little Men….

This is the thing I’m most excited about:  JD is getting ready to take off.  Each day he finds his way onto his hands and knees just a little bit more.

He is also SERIOUS about his “standing practice.”  He just loves to be on his feet.  He’s extremely unsteady when you walk him, and yet the boy will randomly just let go of your hands.  Gutsy, this one.

Do you think we’ll have to hang gates before we move?  Right now he moves at the speed of sleeping turtles, so we’re good, but we have around seven weeks left in this house, and a lot can happen in that amount of time!

DID I MENTION MOVING?????

This is hands down the most stressful thing going on with me right now.  Here’s the deal:  we are a military family.  That means we can’t even book movers (set a moving date) until we have official orders in hand.

Alan has to report to his new duty station on June 30.

We have no orders.  This is April 24!!!

We keep calling.  It turns out that the EFMP is what’s holding us up.  What’s an EFMP, you ask?  Exceptional Family Member Program:  a PCS nightmare.  (PCS = Permanent Change of Station= Moving) Pray for us!  We can’t move until the EFMP people decide this is a good place for Caleb to live and get treatment.  Caleb has epilepsy.  I will be doing a post on epilepsy soon:  yes, another one, because I’m always amazed at the misconceptions that people have of it.

So that’s that.  Moving stresses me out to talk about, so let’s move on…

My #2 stressor right now is that I’m the room mom for Caleb’s class, and Staff Appreciation Week is coming up.  I volunteered to make this:

only with less Elmer’s and more pencils.  Plus, we’re adding a couple of fun gift cards for the teacher.

Do you think I can do it?  Let’s go with yes.  After all, I did make this last year:

and by ‘this’, I’m referring to the diaper cake to the right of my friend Betsy!  I forgot to take a close-up picture of it!! How do you create a masterpiece like that and forget to take a picture?  ; )

I’ll keep ya’ll updated on the ‘supply cake’!

******

Funny things I’ve seen/heard lately:

–I was going over my bank records, and I noticed a transaction that read  “Church.  $23:  charitable giving”

(Our bank categorizes our purchases.)

Alan was sitting beside me, and I thought this was an odd amount, and at a different location than our church.  I asked Alan, “Did you give $23 to a church?”

“No.  What’s the address?  Hmmm.  Let me see it.  Oh!  Ha!  Church’s chicken!”

So there you have it, folks!  If you eat fried chicken, it may or may not help you on your tax return!

One more:

Daniel was sitting down the other day, making his feet talk to each other.  Apparently they were having an argument of some sort:

“Your turn,” said the left

“Noooo,” replied the right, and it kind of just went on along those lines.  But then doesn’t everyone’s feet talk to each other?

The post Charitable Chicken and Other Little Tales appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.