Joy!

Day 10: Today's mom focus is Joy!!

Webster defines joy as:  the emotion evoked by well-being, success, or good fortune or by the prospect of possessing what one desires.

These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.

—John 15:11 


Because His joy is in me I am full!!!  I am so lucky to have a husband who enjoys spending time with us, children who love to smile and play, and a loving extended family who loves seeing us!  

Joy of living life together!!!!!!!!!!!! 

I have been there...

Day 9: Picture yourself at your child's age.  Try to remember how you felt.

Well... this doesn't work for me.  I don't remember being 1 so I can't relate to Little miss.  My only real memory of being 4 is that I got a bottle out for my new brother and squirted it out on my wrist, I had seen my mom do the same, and then gave "tested" bottle to my mom.  I do know from being told that I loved my little brother, was very imaginative (many imaginary friends), and a little hard headed!

G man loves his sister so much.  He will take up for her, make us go and get her out of her crib at the smallest whimper she makes, he makes sure that she gets the same amount of food that he does, whether she can have it or not, and always wants to play with her!  We as his parents love this!  My husband and I were both first borns and were VERY hateful and hurtful to our younger siblings.  (I am sure both of them will attest to this.)  It is our prayer that they will continue to love each other like they do now and continue to play together!

  He loves to dress up as superheroes or ninja and save the house, he pretends he is one of the dragons from Dragon Tales, and he can beat up a Megatron that I almost woke up!!  Needless to say he is just as imaginative!  When my family tells me about how I would make-up stories that would last hours and hours on long trips, or that they had to go to the clinic to pick up some injured imaginary friends I thought it was wonderful!  Now that I have an imaginative child I know how EXHAUSTING that can be!!  We are constantly having to fight off bad guys or tip toe around the house.  However exhausting it can be it is more fun to make memories this way!

Now for the hard headed part... he did get that!  He will argue over anything and he uses every part of his body language to say what little he was holding back!!  I did... I mean I do the same thing!!  I try very hard to explain to him that emotion won't get you what you want.  Have you ever tried to reason with a 4 yr. old!!!  We will still work on this!!  He is my son through and through and we are so lucky to have a loving, imaginative, hardheaded little boy!!   We can't wait for Little miss to show us more about her personality!

Graduation countdown... :(

Day 8: Calculate how many more weekends are left until your child graduates high school.

Wow!!!  I really didn't want to do this!  G man has 737 weekends until he will graduate high school and Little miss has 893 weekends until she graduates!

What did this help, besides making me use my math skills??
1. I now know that we don't have near as much time as I think.
2. Every moment is precious.
3. There are some things that can wait and others that can't... such as cleaning and busy stuff that can take up the weekend can wait til the sun goes down or until kids are napping so we can play together!
4. We have to squeeze as much family time in as possible now because I remember my busy childhood weekends when we started playing sports!!!  G man will start this summer and if he is anything like me he won't stop!!

eye heart u

Day 7: Leave a sweet not for them.

Well I have 2 non-readers so writing notes would do no good unless I read it to them.  So I decided to do a picture note.  I had NO clue how I was going to do this.  I am a work-at-home mommy so today was a meeting day for me which means my kids were in the house with grandparents and I was in meetings.  I could have left the note for him to find while playing with Nana and Papa but I of course forgot about it... :(  G man requested a day at the park and really, how could I disagree.  So we made a picture note together!!

Yummy in my tummy!

Day 6: bake, make, or buy them their favorite food.

We made chocolate chip muffins!!  This is a favorite of ours.  G man and Little miss like to get on the counter to help stir.  Well I think Little miss just likes to eat the chocolate chips!!  We sometimes get star shaped foil cupcake cups and G man calls them star muffins.  Today however we used the regular cupcake papers.  Gibson stirred in the chocolate chips that Little miss didn't eat and we all helped fill the cupcake papers.  Now to sit back and enjoy them!!

I was going to post a picture of us enjoying our muffins but a sneaky little one kept taking them off the pan and we didn't have enough left to eat for dessert after dinner!!

He is still my baby boy!

Day 5: Tell yourself, "He is only __ years old. He's still a child."  Then, treat him that way.

I started homeschooling G man at 3 years old.  He has just turned 4 and has almost completed a full year of pre-k.  He has showed so much interest in school work and loves learning new concepts.  Because of this it is easy for me to forget that he did JUST turn 4.  He is still so young.  I get so frustrated with him when he doesn't try to put his own shoes on, he pouts, or he forgets to clear his plate at the table.  All day through his rough housing and silly giggling (for no reason) I couldn't help but smile at my little one!  This will be an ongoing one for me.  G man was a bigger baby (ok he was ginormous) and did things very quickly.  (He started walking at 8 months which is also when he quit the bottle and went for a sippy cup.)  My little miss (who is very little) just turned a year and is still in an infant carrier, walked at 12 months, and we definitely treat her like a 1 yr old.  I guess I have always expected G man to act older.

God has such a sense of humor.  G man wore an outfit today to church that he wore about 3 weeks ago to church.  Today it didn't fit him!!! If he raised his arms even the slightest his belly showed and his pants barely touched the tops of his shoes!! So on the day where I am suppose to remember how little he really is I realize that he just hit a big growth spurt and he needs bigger clothes!!!  Good thing the consignment store took our small clothes and we got a lot of cute new clothes and even a little bit of cash back!!  Got to love it!!

This is G man at 1 month old in the family bassinet... notice he takes up the WHOLE thing!

This is little miss in the same bassinet at the same age.

They are perfect when they sleep!!

Day 4: Kiss your children while they are sleeping.  Man this was hard for me... don't get me wrong I love kissing my kids and watching them sleep!!  Here was my problem, we use an older crib that has a hinge swing side that swings down about half way down.  Which means I had to climb into her crib and carefully try to maneuver to kiss her head without waking her!!  Done successfully ;)  G man just got a new bed for his 4th birthday which is a loft bed with a slide!!  I climbed up the ladder and started to kiss his (sweaty) little forehead when 2 big ole eyes popped open and he started giggling!!  I kissed him anyway and slid down the slide.  This was a lot of fun and made me realize that I need to lose some weight!!