The Mother & the Teacher

The mother and the teacher. No, not the daughter. You see, Lucy is teaching me sometimes much, much more than I am teaching her. When you see yourself or hear yourself through your child's eyes, well...it is humbling, amazing, heart-warming, a bit terrifying, and sometimes seriously upsetting.

You know those typical stories of the parent who pushes their child to be like them or follow the path that they want? You know, Varsity Blues, Ice Princess, She's All That - that kind of stuff.

"I don't want your life." - Dawson Leary, or whatever his name was on Varsity Blues

or

"You can't quit. This is your dream!" - Mother
"No, mom. It's your dream." - Daughter

I watch those and think, "Pssshhhh...silly parents. Who is so blind that they push their kids like that?"

Well, I may not be that extreme. But, I do see myself pushing Lucy to do things a certain way, say things a certain way, and so on. Then, I am somehow brought back to reality....usually with a metaphorical punch to the gut that leaves me reeling.

What do you see when you look at this photo?

I imagine that most of you will note the pure pride and joy that is plastered across that beautiful face of Lucy's. She is so happy. I bet she really was! She loves crafts and especially painting. I even chuckle a bit when I think about that goofy grin of hers. But, when I see it, I am struck with guilt. My stomach does one of those flips and my heart sinks a bit. I feel a small failure pumping through my veins.

You see, Lucy brought this particular piece of art-work home with her. She was proud. I told her that I loved it; but, truly, I was a bit concerned. It was a blob of black on construction paper. It had bits of green and purple too. But, together, the three colors created a dark, border-line creepy picture. When I looked at it, I saw sadness. I acted happy for Lucy, and well, I really was proud that she painted it herself. I couldn't help myself though; I told her that next time she could use happy colors, like yellow or red - bright and cheery. She completely shrugged me off...like the complete jerk that I was. Good for her.

Then, about a week later, this picture was posted on her preschool's Facebook page. I am a jerk. Look at the colors she had to work with...green, black, purple, and orange. No yellow. No red. I sunk into the awful lesson that I had just learned. I had judged. I had judged my own child. Here I am, thinking that she has some type of deep-seated sadness that came out through 10 minutes of painting time. But, does that child look sad to you? She had no other color options. I bet she didn't even mind. She did what she could, with what she had. Shame on me for assuming anything else...

Today I looked at Lucy and realized that she is growing so fast. There are so many things that I was not and am not prepared for as a parent - things I didn't even think about! But, I am learning and trying my best. I guess that is all we can do...

I forgave myself. The guilt remains; but, I'm okay with that. It's a good reminder...

Lesson learned.
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Whomp, whomp. I know. Sorry to be a downer. I think it is a nice reminder to take things lightly. But, most importantly, I want the girls to know that I recognize that I am making mistakes. I get it. They will also make parenting mistakes. It's inevitable to fail in life in multiple ways. The most important thing is to recognize it, learn from it, and move forward. :)

I will try to continue with the blog posts as much as possible. Occasional posts are better than none, right? My thoughts exactly. We are doing better. I still have my sad days. I have a lot of stressful days (grad school). Overall, though, we are doing well. We are happy and healthy and I couldn't ask for anything more. Welcome 2014! I hope you all have a wonderful year, filled with love and happiness!

Thankful Calendar

After yesterday's post about Halloween, I thought I should "get up with the times" and discuss Thanksgiving. What a wonderful time of year, right?

This year, I saw on Pinterest.com a 'Thankful Calendar.' Every day until Thanksgiving, you would write down what you were thankful for and put it on the calendar. It is a countdown I guess. Although we really should be thankful every day, it's hard to stop sometimes and just thank the Lord. We are so incredibly blessed in our lives, or at least I feel like I am. I try very hard not to take it for granted. We all forget sometimes though. I recently saw a pin that said, Only in the U.S. would we spend a day being thankful for what we have, then spend the entire next day trampling over each other for new stuff. True story! But, I still love Black Friday. :)

Anyway, I want to just state right now that I am not crafty. I do not have the patience and I don't have a lot of craft items on hand. For example, I've never owned a bottle of Mod Podge in my life. I just got a glue gun a couple of years ago, from my mom, and I burn myself incessantly!

So, I thought that when Lucy and I made this, we were doing pretty well:

We decided to hang it on the fridge, at least this year. As you will also notice, I created the calendar for up to the 24th, rather than the 22nd that Thanksgiving is on this year. I hope to reuse this calendar in the future and added a couple more days. Each day, we all say what we are thankful for. Since 'family, friends, four-legged family members and friends, food, shelter, faith, and a few others, are already written on our calendar (not in the picture; I added more after I took it), we try to think of other things - small things in life that often go unappreciated.

Heath has been thankful for daycare, technology, football, stuff like that. I've been thankful for cell phones, cars, and baking. We usually explain them a little bit to each other, but just write down a word or two. Lucy's are great! They make me laugh. She always says, "Mommy, Daddy, and baby Olive." It makes my heart melt with love, while wanting to burst with pride! But, she has also said, Aurora (her baby doll), Bonnie (her stuffed horse), her blankey, pumpkins, and really anything in the general direction she is looking. haha.

We have also decided to be thankful in other ways. We have started to say grace before meals. And, we decided to be better church goers. This last weekend, we decided on which one and would like to start going consistently.

It feels great to stop asking for forgiveness, when I take this life for granted. I still complain about stupid, stupid stuff; but, I'm getting better...

Tonight, I think I will put down that I am thankful for...my blog readers. :) Thank you for always supporting me and telling me that I'm not the craziest momma on the block! Have a great hump day!

Toy Boxes

I have been nesting again. I really have the mental energy to do a lot to our house every evening; but, my physical energy only allows for one project a night. I am having a much rougher go this time around...

Anyway, we have two "boxes" or "bins," whatever you want to call them, in our living room.

Note: the black things on the wall next to them, are the latches for the big, baby gate that we used to have to block the stairs. It will be back out soon enough... :[

The bins used to hold photo albums, craft stuff, blankets, etc. They were catch-alls. Then, when Lucy came, I cleaned them out and they currently hold all of her living room toys.

The toys that you see in the picture? They are from Lucy's room. Of course the toys in the bins weren't enough, she had to bring more out!

I was recently cleaning up the living room and going through the toy bins. I've been slowly taking the things that are too small for baby mouths and putting them in Lucy's room. I decided to separate the toys into the bins by "baby-friendly" and "toddler-toys." Then, I decided that each of our girls would get their own toy bin, once Olive's toys started to take over the living room too. Wouldn't labels be nice? :)

I started by making two 7 x 5 in. name tags, one for Lucy and one for Olive.

Seriously, how sick of "olives" will Olive be? :)

I printed them on card-stock and for anti-destruction purposes laminated them. I love my laminater! :) Lucy loved it too. :)

I wasn't sure how to adhere them to the lids of the bins. I didn't want something that would be permanent necessarily or leave a gross residue. So, for the meantime we pined them on there. I think I can staple them...I'm not sure.This part is to be determined, and I lean heavily on my intelligent husband for a fix...

 

Lucy was so proud and told me who's bin was who's, over and over again. :)

It was a small change; but, I love it. 

I know that once they hit a certain age that it won't matter who's bin is who's anymore. But, this way they can each decide what toys they want in the living room and what toys they want in their bedrooms. Each of them only get what fits in the bin! Also, when it comes to clean-up time, they know where it goes....hopefully. :)

What do you think?

Valentines Boxes

When I was in elementary school, we would always make the funnest Valentine's Day boxes. I think we usually used boxes from home, or perhaps we used Kleenex boxes; I can't remember for sure. Whatever we used, I remember it being so much fun! I liked to think I was creative back then. haha.

Well, one weekend I just happened to have two empty tissue boxes that needed thrown out. I looked at the opening and realized how perfect they were for Valentines boxes. So, I gathered Heath and Lucy, and lots of crafty supplies, and we sat down on the living room floor to make our V-day boxes. I would work on Lucy's and Heath would make ours (mine and his).

We started with the empty boxes. They were the vertical boxes, like this one.


Both boxes were designed for Christmas - one was red with reindeer on it and the other was green with ornaments. So, we chose to wrap them in paper. I wrapped mine, like a present, in red paper. Heath wrapper his in white paper.

I left the oval opening in mine; I just removed the plastic. Heath decided to go a different route and covered his top opening (defeating the whole Kleenex box purpose; but anyway...). Then he put some decor, including a 'lips' sticker.

As you can see, he went all elementary school on us and put the 'H + C' on it too. :) It made me smile. So how does he access his valentines?

Of course, he made a real mail box.

It included a black door and he tried gluing a sweetheart for the handle; but, it kept sliding off. So, I busted out the glue gun for him and it stuck.

I decided to do more of a collage style. I had a lot of these little mulberry scraps. I got them for scrap booking and hadn't really used a lot. So, I decided to overlay them, gluing them on with good'ole Elmer's.

With the red paper behind, it came out really neat. This is what it looked like when it was dry.

For the opening, I needed to make it look more 'finished'. So, although it didn't match perfectly, I decided to trim it with sweethearts.

Here are the finished boxes. They are ready to be filled with candy and sweet nothings. :)

This was a really fun project. Lucy wasn't able to help much; she really doesn't even color yet. She just chews on the markers or crayons. So, she played with the paper and then fell asleep. Heath and I had fun though. It is always nice to do something on a winter day, besides watch TV or clean.

I was really happy that he indulged me too. What a sweet guy I have! And, what a cute v-day mail box! :)

This is one tradition that I would LOVE to continue! I recommend it for any mommies out there - and, to be honest, anyone else who wants to be creative!