Lessons I've learned from my kids #2

One of the pros (and sometimes cons) of stay-at-home-motherhood is a lot of time to think. Occasionally, these life lessons of sort come to mind during the day, and if I can find a moment or two to jot them down, they stick. It's amazing what we can learn through these tiny little people running around, if we're willing. I wrote about one the other day.

Here's another.

One summer night, the four of us were outside after dinner, enjoying the calm summer evening surviving until bedtime. Addie loves playing with water. So, we had the kiddie pool filled, and she was busy scooping and pouring from one cup to another. Then she started filling all the various cups and containers and bringing them across the patio. Her process went like this:

Scoop one cup to be full of water.
Pour it into another cup to fill that cup.
Carefully pick up the now-full cup.
Walk it over to the other side of the patio where mom and dad are sitting... spilling along the way.
Carefully set down the now 3/4-full cup.
Run back to the pool and repeat.

She did this 6 times until there were 6 little plastic cups, each between 1/2 and 3/4 filled with gross pool/rain water. She barely acknowledged us watching her. She was so busy scooping, pouring, carrying. Ben and I giggled lovingly at her concentrating so hard on something so trivial. And then, my ever-so-observant-and-brilliant husband commented, "I wonder if this is how God feels about our work."

BAM.
We laughed.
But seriously.
Do we just busy about, trying to make sense of life on earth, going going going, doing whatever the heck we want, working so hard, spilling along the way? While God is watching, lovingly, maybe even giggling, wondering when we'll realize ... it's trivial. Our projects and busyness, while not necessarily inherently "bad" (and perhaps, even, inherently good) can still be distracting and inefficient. We can be busy our whole lives and miss the point of life entirely.

Whatcha' Been Doing? [Fall Edition]

We love fall around here. Great weather + pretty leaves + Husker football. What's not to love.

By fall, we had figured out a few more things about having 2 under 2, one of which was how to snap more pictures in day-to-day life. You're welcome. [Or, sorry.]

Worth mentioning (at least for my personal record):

We let Addie play with coins and recycled containers. This was a favorite activity for a couple weeks.
Addie painted a small pumpkin in lieu of carving. Prettier and easier. She talked about this afterward for weeks.
Emma loves that fish on the exersaucer.
Ben took Addie on their first date to Burger King for breakfast. She had french toast sticks and her favorite part was dipping them in syrup. Ben noted that he opened the full container of syrup & handed it over only to watch Addie try to plunge the entire french toast stick in the tiny container, overflowing the syrup all over. He said next time, he would do the dipping.
Addie started to want to pick her clothes and hair accessories - see headband picture.
Addie and Lanie (cousin) are becoming very sweet friends. It has been so much fun to watch them grow closer the last 6 months.
Ben sent me flowers randomly one day. I was on cloud 9!
Reading on the potty is a fun pre-potty training activity.
Washing dishes is another favorite in this house - not sure why we own toys.


A fall trip to Chicago included...

#2under2 - kids fly free :) 

A visit to Grandad's office.

visiting grandma cathy's house means extra mommy & addie time because mommy is off chore duty!

Off to walk the dog - "see ya later!"

a fun train day - take the train two stops to the next town over  ...

...where there is a TRAIN RESTAURANT! The food is delivered on a toy train :)

This day was heaven for my choo choo train lovin' girl.  

Emma thought the whole train thing was overrated. And overwhelming.

hip hip hooray - three cheers for Grandma Cathy

and finally, my favorite part of this fall - a trip to California with my main man 10 days after our return from Chicago. Please notice we look much more excited and less tired on this plane selfie than we did on the family selfie with 2 kids on our laps. Hm.

First up: a day in wine country :) 

one of the cooler things we saw was dry ice poured on the fermenting grapes. 

we snuck a peek (and a pic!) where the important fancy wine tasters get to taste their wine. we don't qualify. 

After a day in Sonoma (we stayed here inexpensively - it was nice and a great location!), we drove down the pacific coast towards Palo Alto, where my brother and his new bride live. 

We parked at this random stop off where there were a lot of cars, but no people. A sign of either a hidden trail or an axe murderer. Or both. We hiked down the trail, pretending to be outdoorsy.

Ben climbed up here against my wishes.

We snapped this pic with the timer function on my camera. I love this man! 

We picked up a hitch hiker who was there at this stop. It wasn't our best decision making, but in our defense, when Ben asked her if she was going to kill us, she said "no." I decided not to take her picture anyway.

My brother showed us around his company's new digs, in downtown Palo Alto where rooftop decks are the norm. 

We went to a Stanford game, thanks for the tickets, hudl!

And then we headed home - relaxed and refreshed.

One of those things no one tells you about before you have kids is there is a crazy aftermath & recovery period after traveling, whether or not your kids go with you. It usually involves some version of lots of tears, piles of clothes everywhere, and extreme clingyness. 

Shortly after our return, Halloween popped up. It was WAY fun with kids. It didn't take the toddlers long to figure out trick-or-treating was fun.

These cute pumpkins had hats but they didn't last long. 

It doesn't get any cuter than this, my friends. 

I debated about including Thanksgiving in this post. It is SO DANG LONG already. If you are still reading, kudos! We must be related?

72 attempts at a family pic, and this is the best. Could be worse :) 

Last year, we drove from Cambridge to Charlottesville to spend Thanksgiving with Ben's sister, her husband, and our niece. Elsie and I were both newly pregnant and not feeling so hot. 

But we made 5 different pies anyway. We couldn't decide which was the most Thanksgiving-y: pumpkin, apple, cherry, french silk, or pecan. So we made them all. With homemade crust! 

This year, we continued the tradition, but in Omaha, and with way more efficiency, and only 3 types. We were only assigned pumpkin, pecan, and french silk. Elsie drew the short straw and had to start the homemade crust while I made the pecan pie filling. We had just been poking fun at Alex (my brother-in-law) for getting a giant tub of lard when pie crust only calls for a little. She left her bowl unattended to flour the table for rolling out the crust. I poured myself a cup of corn syrup to add to the pecan pie filling, and absent mindedly dumped the whole thing into her bowl of pie crust mixture! I was about to start stirring when she gasped "hey that's my pie crust!" We burst out laughing, and were thankful Al had bought an entire tub of lard, since I had ruined the first batch of pie crust. 

The girls were happy to get some time with their Great Great Grandma Elaine. [That's not a typo, folks!]

Whew. Happy Fall (3 months later). That's a wrap!
Will you dare join me tomorrow for December?

Whatcha' been doing?

A lot has changed around here since I was last regularly blogging. Kids change fast.
"Oh, it goes so fast" - said every stranger over the age of 50 in public who converses to me when i am out with my kids. ever.

I always smile politely and nod, mumbling some sort of happy, agreeable, socially acceptable norm. But, you know what, they are right. It seemed like overnight, Emma was crawling [yes, crawling] & Addie was talking in sentences. Paragraphs. Novels, really. That girl can talk. (She gets that from her dad.) #sarcasm. My inlaws had the girls overnight recently, and when we came to pick them up, we stayed for dinner. (Good deal, right? Here, watch my kids for 36 hours, and then upon my return, you make me and said children dinner? I'll take it!) Addie was done before the adults and was allowed to get down. She wandered away from the table singing her ABCs and talking to the dogs. My father-in-law said, "she did that the whole time she was here. All day, she just walked around singing and talking." My little extrovert.

So without further adieu, some things we've been up to, in pictures of course.

August & September.

this child loves to play with a ball. our sidewalk is on a slight incline. emma and i would sit on the porch steps and watch addie chase the ball down the incline, then kick & throw it back up the incline. this particular pink ball just appeared in our yard one day. we left it for a couple days in case another neighborhood kid had lost it. no one claimed it, so Addie started playing with it. a couple days later, a neighbor kid came across the street and claimed it as his own. Addie was bummed. She would ask about it every day. Finally, we took a trip to Target and picked out a new one for her, with cars on it.

the second from the left below shows the inevitable result when you dress your kids in cute clothes one time and then try to photograph it to post on social media so the world knows thinks you don't neglect your kids.                                              

                for a long time, 

Addie's favorite activity

was reading to Emma

:) 

            "addie pick bow"                 "wash elmo"                 serious baking                            evening walks 

breakfast selfie.

ben and i had our first ever mini golf date.  

Sometimes, Emma helped me edit photos instead of sleeping.

"addie pump milk emma" 

God bless the neighbor who had his driveway re-cemented, providing this tired momma's toddler with hours of entertainment. 

and because only these children's grandparents would like to see more photos of our past 6 months, we'll call today a wrap. Next up in the "Whatcha been doing? series - Fall."