Last Chance at Two

For some reason, Cooper's birthday tomorrow has me totally sad.  Its been a while, a rather long while with two toddlers in my house.  First it was Em and Coop, then Coop and Harper.  Now, it will just be Harper, all by her lonesome and I will have two preschoolers.  I'm not sure how that happened- them growing up so fast on me, but they have.  I wanted to take one last picture with my 2 year-old little guy before he becomes a proper boy, but as I looked at the picture, I realized that at some point in the past, on some unmarked day when I wasn't paying attention, he already turned into that Big Boy.  He is no longer squidgy and uttering incoherent words in my general direction.  He's having conversations (even if I'm the only one who understands what we're talking about).  He rides a pedal-less bike with ease and he can do so many things that state his growth and independence.  

I didn't understand people who used to tell me that boys and girls were different.  I thought they only "got different" around the time they walked into my Grade 6 classroom- smelling differently, acting differently, having different motivations and goals.  But from the moment I found out I was pregnant with this second child, I knew he was different from his sister.  When he was an infant, his fussiness and refusal to sleep confirmed that he was most definitely not his food and sleep-loving sister.  When he started walking and would continually run into stationary objects, ones he had just run into, again I realized he was his own person, and all boy to boot.  And the sadness and nostalgia I feel is different as well.  I'm looking forward to Em growing up, to having her ask me to paint her nails or do her hair.  I look forward to the "girl days" we've just started enjoying.  But this boy of mine, it feels as if the older he gets, the more he wants his Dad, or uncles, instead of me.  It's rather sad since I know, I know in my bones, that this boy who only wanted his mamma for so long is slowly but surely becoming the man who will no longer want to sit and sleep next to me.  I know its proper and needs to happen, but as I realize with each passing stage how much more mature he is, how much more of a "boy" he is and the difference that distinction has, but for now, I'm in the same boat with so many other mothers across the centuries and continents who have wanted their little boys to stay "their little boy."

That said, whenever I get over the nostalgia, I will inevitably look at this handsome face and know that he'll be a good looking man one day... but not today.

 One year ago.

 I think this may be the last picture I have of my baby boy before he became a big kid.

And yes, I fully expect him to love cartoons and Michigan football as much when he's 30 as he does right now. :)

Fun Weekend

Em has always seen her wardrobe as a suggestion but not something desperately worth fighting over.  As a result, she generally gets what she wants, within reason (no I will not send her out in a skirt and sandals when it's snowing, I don't care what continent we're on).  Cooper is a boy, so he could care less except when it comes to the print on his underpants (thank you Aunt Hilary).  Harper, however, seems to have decided rather early that she will refuse, flat refuse and do everything in her power to object to my choice of clothing for her if she deems it "less than."  We just had one such fabulous day.  After 4 complete outfit choices, it was apparent that she wasn't going out the door unless she was in a frilly sweater with a frilly shirt.  Fine, like I really care.

As soon as older sister, Emmerson, saw the girlie nature of said outfit though, she instantly ran to the accessory drawer and picked a matching pink butterfly for Harper.  Great.  Girlfriend has seventeen hairs to speak of and now I've have her pitching a fit when trying to convince her that seventeen isn't a sufficient number for the butterfly clip.  Fine.  I'll put it in to the best of my abilities, and low and behold, with the help of mean plastic elastic hair ties, I managed to get the dumb butterfly to stay in...

 ...which was pretty darn cute once all was said and done.

 And Em had a sleep-over with a friend from church.  This, this right here is why we decided to go with a bench instead of chairs for our table.  Genius mom-moment if I do say so myself.

 Then today at the store I saw these massive, juicy ripe strawberries (on sale!) which I couldn't pass up.  It's been cold and rainy all week, which is unusual to get both at the same time.  I've wanted to climb back into winter clothing, but these massive beauties reminded me it is indeed spring.  I loved that Em ate her entire ration of three with two hands because they were "so big Mommy!"

And Harper tried to put the whole thing in her mouth, like she does with 'normal' strawberries.  In the end, she couldn't mange it but man did it get a good laugh from me!

Peek-A-Boo

When we first got back from the US in June, I felt so sick and tired that just getting the house and kids sorted was all I could do.  But we're over half way through this pregnancy, baby is growing and so are the other three.  Em has been on school holiday for a few weeks, with another one to go, and the adjustment was a bit rough for her.  She couldn't understand why we wouldn't "allow" her to go to school and see her friends and teachers, but once she realized it wasn't anything she had done wrong, her attitude, and thus the attitude of the others, has changed drastically.  Em has taken it upon herself to teach her brother and sister all she knows before returning to school.  She's even promised that "next holiday, I'll be bigger and have more things to teach you."  One of her favorite games to play at school is hide-and-go-seek.  Cooper and Harper have had a hard time understanding the concept, but we've simplified it to simply peek-a-boo, which seems to work much better.  Harper has even taken to playing the game when no one else is playing!  I came downstairs from settling the other two in for their afternoon naps to find her like this...

 Where's Harper?

 Where's Harper???

*Tiger roar*  There's Harper!!!

Sprinkler Fun

The weather has been warming up.  Other than Em outgrowing all her warm-weather clothing, it's been fantastic!  We love the warm days, we love leaving windows open, and we love being outside.  Em has been on school holiday for a few weeks, which she thinks is the worst form of punishment known to creation, and so, as a treat (and because the grass desperately needed the water) we turned on the sprinklers after nap to shorten an afternoon.

 We let just enough water reach the bottom 1/3 of the slide.  That mixed with wet bums and the kids were giggling and squealing for a long while.

 Cooper's favorite was trying to catch Em before she could move out of the way, since he now weighs more than her, meaning he "skids" on the grass a further distance... and can ram into her. 

 When the kids decided they were done with the "big" water, we turned it down and they invented even more ways of having fun.

 I now understand why kids are so skinny... they did this for almost an hour!

And even when the girls called it quits because the wind had picked up and they were cold, Cooper kept going... and going... and going :)

First Hair Cut for the Little Lady

I feel like at some point I turned around and Harper became a proper kid.  I don't know when it happened, but it did and I'm still in a small state of mourning over the whole thing.  But she's so bright and rather stubborn... more so than I ever thought possible for one so young, but in her defense, she's got to fight for her own with Em and Coop as her siblings.  As usual, her poor little mouth has gotten 6 teeth in the last three weeks with another two coming any day.  And, for some reason, teeth mean hair and Girlfriend has grown enough on the bottom half of her head to drive this mama mad.  She wants to do everything her sister does, which includes getting her hair combed in the mornings, but each morning her fine feathers have a full amount of lint as well as tangles.  Harper can't understand why it hurts, nor does she grasp that adding yogurt to the equation at breakfast will make it worse.  So I decided it was time to take the plunge.  Today, after naps, I grabbed the largest strawberry I could (to distract her), the scissors, and a chair, deeming it Family Hair Cut Day.  Harper, of course, was first up.

 I really don't think she was too impressed by the situation.

 But seriously, she has a mowhawk from her cowlick and fuss beneath that- I was over it.

 When it came time for the actual cutting, it didn't take her long to realize that she did NOT want whatever was happening to be happening.  The face just kept souring until she was finally trying to bit her way out of the chair- no exaggeration.

 But with a little help from Daddy, we managed to get most of the longest feathers, er, hair under control.

Nope, it's not straight.  No, it's not even and no I did not intend to have layers, but there they are because she is her own person and you do what you can.  But, in the end, I have a PICTURE of the FIRST haircut, I did it, I have the cuttings in a ziplock baggie, and I'm thrilled by that!

A Friday...

It was a Friday.  Sometimes, that's all I can say about Fridays.  I don't know why I look forward to them so much since Saturday looks very similar to the other 5 days of the week, but for some reason, the knowledge that I've made it through another week is an accomplishment in itself.  Today was packed with laundry, dishes, cleaning the kitchen and the floors, then a project for the garden.  The kids LOVED the project for the garden.  I have a women's thing at church tomorrow, which means Todd is on his own with the kids for most of the day.  Because I know my husband and I know my children, I've set out some things for them to do together, one of which is to plant our garden.  So today, we made markers for the various plants.  It involved rocks and paint and more paint, and my kiddos.  What could possibly go wrong with my throw-happy nearly-3-year-old, paint and rocks???

 My mommy instincts told me that the amount of actual painting I was needing to get out of my kids might be too much, so we made it a party and invited some neighborhood reinforcements.  Between the four kiddos, they were able to paint the 12 rocks we needed before attention spans wore too thin.

I think I have the cutest painters in the world.

Seriously, even with eating his paint (yes, eating) I still love this face with his crocked smile and goofy, asymmetrical eyes.

 These were our final products.  We will soon have markers for all the plants, but I wanted to let some of the paint dry just a bit more.

 Our "To Do" list was still long though.  Todd hasn't been able to find his keys, so we needed to get new ones made, and we needed some things from the store and the hardware shop.  After naps, it was off to the shops to get all those things off our list, and because they're so cute, and it's been so hot (two weeks ago we had snow, it's been summer weather all week, go figure) I figured the kids would like a springtime ice cream for the walk home.  Todd will be home soon, dinner and baths will be seen to, and then it will be time for the kids to go to bed.  Friday isn't over.  I'm tired and I have paint all over my arms and legs, but its a Friday... a very good Friday.

Crafts, Naps and Paint

For some reason, life seems to have run away from me.  Harper is 16 months in a few days, Cooper's 3rd birthday is in less than a month, and I have no idea how that happened.  The kids and I have been working since the beginning of June to finally get the house "put together."  I have friends who will paint before they move into a place because they know exactly what they want:  where the furniture should be, where the pictures should be hung, and all those details.  I, on the other hand, have to live in a space for a while.  It drives Todd mad when he comes home to find every piece of furniture has been rearrange, replaced with something he didn't know we had, or out in the garage.  He does love how clean things get in that particular room after said event, but with our crew, the immaculate room never lasts that long.  This holiday season will mark 4 years here in South Africa for us, and almost 3 years in this flat.  I figured it was time to buck up and take the plunge.  So, right before we left, I had Todd put six nails in the wall.  Most of them were for wall hooks for backpacks and jackets for the kids, but I also hung a picture frame that I'm in love with (gotta love dumpster diving windows out of someone else's trash to hang on your wall!).  

When we got back from the States, I decided to take it one step further and PAINT.  I know, crazy, huh?  I painted Cooper's room, painted the girls' room, and painted the downstairs, well, one wall.  In order to paint, we needed to make a trip to the paint shop, where Cooper wanted a totally typical blue (yeah for easy!) and fought that Em was set on Pepto-pink.  I'm not into pink in general, and the thought of walking into a room that made me think of Bazooka Bubble Gum was just too much.  So we worked it out and got a lavender.  Not a huge fan of that either, but what can you do?  I didn't think it was a battle really worth fighting, so purple it was.  The curtains we brought back with us, which are supposedly "black out" are an aqua marine blue.  I thought they were that lovely blue that girls clothing has and is just a great, vibrant color.  Turns out, it's more marine than aqua and so we struggled to get things to match the now purple and aqua-marine color scheme. That was the point where I realized I'd need to start making things.  So I bought fabric and then realized I had no idea how to sew a blanket or quilt.  Lucky for me, a friend just had a baby and I made this one for him, and learned just about every quilting mistake possible along the way.  Now, I'm working on Harper's, hopefully with less drama the second time around.

Em loved helping me pick out the fabrics, and then arranging these into the baby quilt.  She dutifully sat by my sewing machine as long as I'd let her to put the pins in the pincushion.  It was during this time when she told me she wanted butterflies in her bedroom.  Great.  Another thing to work on.  Okay, butterflies will be there, somewhere.  Promise.  As soon as the quilt was done, I started work on other things for the girls' room.  It's taken nearly 3 years, but I finally amassed enough Crayola Crayons to do a project I've been itching to do for a very long time.  

With helpers in tow, we went to the shops to find the frames we needed, then the paint and the ribbon and all the rest.  I let both Em and Coop help paint (one for each girl) until I discovered blue on my dining room table.  Not a happy mom moment.  Then, they were relegated to just watching, but they got really excited every time I "cut" a crayon into pieces.  The hot glue gun was another first as I used to only bring it out while they were sleeping.  Coop loved to see the glue "change colors" as the wax melted with the glue. Amazing how easily amused he is.

All these projects would be picked up as nap-time started and would continue until disaster happened, like blue paint on the wood table.  For days on end, Em would rush down the stairs after waking up to see what we were going to do next.  It was rather fun as that's the closest thing this stay-at-home mom gets to a kid excited to see me.  

Then one day, as we were wrapping up all the projects and things were slowing down, I went to do some laundry and came back in to the house to find Em like this.  I guess she'd woken up from her nap too early because she wanted to do something with me, but the lure of the warm sunshine was too much for her.

I love this face, all sweet and innocent... and not asking 437 questions all at once!  The weather has been getting warmer and warmer and that always signals that it's time to head outside, into the garden and get some Vitamin D into us.  We're all excited to plant our garden, go out without seven layers of clothing and not be cooped up inside.  I hope things will settle into a pattern soon, but if the last 3 months are any indication, this hectic-busy schedule of chasing two pre-schoolers and one toddler might be our new 'normal' for a while... not sure I'm ready for so little picture taking and blogging and story telling, but I'm loving all the things I can do with the kids at this age, and every now and again, I'm reminded that even the incessant questioning isn't as bad as I think.