Welcome, Fall!

Monday morning, we visited the local farm stand to get things to decorate our front porch.

The boys picked out their own pumpkins for painting

Look at poor PJ's eyes- allergies much, buddy?

Jack, who enjoys pretending that everything can talk, said his pumpkin told him it felt funny getting painted. He reassured the pumpkin that it wouldn't hurt a bit.

Thomas loves watching his silly big brothers.

While PJ and Thomas took a nap, Jack and I found some of Daddy's old clothes to make into a scarecrow. We painted a papier mâchée head that had started out as a dinosaur egg project but never quite made it there.

Jack was fascinated by the scarecrow and insisted on posing next to him for a picture.

I love the Fall, and love that we can get these things for so little money - it was $11 for everything. (In fact, all the corn shocks were only $1.50. Last year, I thought that price was per stalk, so I asked for four of them and the farm stand owner said they'd deliver them and a hay bale to the house later that night in their pickup truck. They came while I was putting the boys to bed and when I came down it looked like Children of the Corn on our porch, so this year I knew just to order one.)

I am also bound and determined to make those gorgeous mums survive for at least a week before they start to turn brown!

A day in the life

I recently watched an episode of Oprah in which Nate Berkus gave a stay-home mom the day off and did her job for her.

At the end of the segment, they posted a checklist of the tasks that Nate had completed that day. While he seemed to think it was a lot, it looked to me like the kind of day I might have if two of the boys were staying with my parents and I didn't really have anything going on. The woman had two school-aged children who were gone all day and a two-year-old.

Now, I'm not claiming to be the busiest mom out there, and I'm not ashamed to admit that I sometimes turn on the T.V. to get a little down time, but I made a list today of the things I did. Just took about one minute every 30 minutes or so and jotted down what happened in that time period.

Let's just say that I call the red parts "Why Nate Berkus ain't got nothin' on me" and the blue parts "Why I have the most wonderful job on the face of the earth."


6-6:30 - Jack, after waking us up by talking too loudly in his room to PJ at 5:45, came bursting into our bedroom at 6 to start the day. Patrick took them downstairs while I fed Thomas and came down by 6:30. (I got about four broken hours of sleep last night.)

6:30-7 - Change diapers/put underpants on boys, pay two bills, drink some coffee while Jack plays in the basement and PJ watches Caillou and holds Thomas a little.

7-7:30 - Teach PJ and Jack how to draw and color flowers. Make oatmeal for breakfast. While breakfast cooks, Pj says he has to do a tinkle (he does), then a poopy (he doesn't), then another tinkle attempt, then another poopy attempt. Underpants are off and on between each one of these and every time I say anything to PJ, Jack screams, "What?!" from the basement despite my repeated explanation that I am talking to PJ. Jack asks if breakfast is ready three times. Thomas screams in his swing during much of this since I can't hold him while cooking or helping PJ on the potty.

7:30-8 - Boys eat breakfast at the table, but only after deliberating (and arguing) about which train they want to bring to the table to "share" breakfast with them. I feed Thomas again and put on a Thomas the Tank Engine DVD for them to watch while they eat.

8-8:30 - Shower, dress, make bed, straighten boys' room, start a load of laundry, load dishwasher, put Thomas up for a nap.

8:30-9 - Help older boys get dressed, watch the end of DVD with them and do activities together learning about shapes and how the trains are alike and different.

9-9:30 - Clean up kids' breakfast, make and eat my breakfast, load dishwasher again (where did all these other dishes come from?), set boys up with Play-Doh and juice at the dining room table.

9:30-10 - Give boys haircuts while they play with Play-Doh, vacuum, and, while vacuuming, help PJ with two poopy false alarms by reading him books while he sits on the potty. Jack made a "hotdog" with green mustard and red ketchup out of Play-Doh and asked PJ and me if we wanted a bite. It looked a lot like a real one!

10-10:30 - Clean up Play-Doh, help PJ tinkle, wipe down the bathroom sink and toilet with Clorox wipes, get Thomas up from his nap, change his diaper, get him dressed and nurse him. Post a funny Mother's Day video on Facebook. Kiss boo-boos on both Jack and PJ. Tell PJ about Jesus on the cross of his rosary beads and what He did for us. PJ thanks Jesus and gives him a kiss.

10:30-11 - Change Thomas's poopy diaper, change and clean up after PJ's pooping in his underpants because he didn't make it to the potty, move laundry to dryer. While putting new underpants on PJ, Patrick sends me an email saying, "Jack is banging on my door HELP" because his office is in the basement, his door is locked, and he's on the phone for work. When I go down to play trains in the basement with the older boys and ask Jack to stop banging on Daddy's door, he says, "But I just wanted to tell Daddy that some little kids don't have any toys and we're lucky because we have all these!" I help Thomas work on learning to roll over and we all sing the Itsy Bitsy Spider to him.

11-11:30 - Bring Thomas and PJ upstairs, get a snack for PJ, feed fish, water plants. Patrick leaves for a lunch meeting. Jack stops him before he leaves and says, "Daddy wait! I'll miss you!" Then when PJ, who is in time-out for hitting, cries because Patrick is leaving, Jack comforts him by saying, "Daddy is going to a meeting that is just for Daddies. Some other meetings are little kid meetings and another time, you can go to one of those."

11:30-12 - Make grilled cheese for lunch while holding a fussy Thomas and giving PJ two time-outs for disobeying. Boys eat at the table while watching Bob the Builder and I cuddle Thomas on the couch. Love these coos and giggles! Jack, who's just getting the knack of knock-knock jokes, tells me this one: Knock-knock. Who's there? Bob. Bob who? Uh...Bob cup. PJ bumps his head while running around the table and needs kisses. Help PJ use the potty.

12-12:30 - Bring boys upstairs, help them use the potty, put pull-ups on them and put them in bed for naps. Jack tells me, as he does each day, that he has to poop, so I read books to him while he sits on the potty for ten minutes, at which time, because I suspect he's playing games with me since he does this at each and every bedtime and I have no idea how to handle it, I put his pull-up back on and tell him to stay in his bed. I have a feeling he's going to poop in his pull-up during his nap.

12:30-1 - Clean up from lunch, watch Ahmadinejad on Charlie Rose (that man is crazy), run upstairs to put Thomas's binkie back in.

1-1:30 - Fold laundry, boil water for tea, watch Todd English

1:30-2 - Praise the Lord - the boys are still all napping! Tea with Barefoot Contessa! Run upstairs again to put Thomas's binkie back in. Back up once more to get him because enough is enough already. Nurse him a little while I finish my tea.

2-2:30 - Give Thomas some time on the floor mat, Jack gets up (clean pull-up!), we both play with Thomas.

2:30-3 - Jack and I thin and water his tomato and watermelon seedlings on the deck. We planted the seeds about six weeks ago and they all sprouted on the windowsill in their little red and blue pots. He's so excited they're growing. I teach him a little about roots, leaves, and stems and what they do.

3-3:30 - Thomas eats again, PJ wakes up. Jack offers to go and tell him that I'll be right up and I get to hear them talking together in the monitor (one of my favorite things). Get PJ, help him go to the potty, get snacks and juice for both boys , finish nursing Thomas.

3:30-4 - Give boys some window crayons and let them draw on the outside of the slider. Take funny pictures of them looking through Groucho Marx-type glasses/mustache drawn on the glass. Give them Windex and paper towels and let them clean it up, but it's not so great, so I go out and wash them myself because, heck, they needed to be cleaned anyway. (Let's call that my spring cleaning, shall we?) Boys build sandcastles in the sandbox. I change Thomas's poopy diaper.

4-4:30 - Put Thomas up for another nap, but he's gassy so I bring him back down and let him sleep while I pat his back and he's lying across my lap. Boys race their trains for a while and then fight about who won, so I put on Team Umizoomi for them to watch while Thomas snoozes and I'm feeling a bit icky in the tummy.

4:30-5 - Put Thomas up again and he stays asleep for a little while longer. Fix dinner, which tonight happens to be leftovers since we have a fridge full of them. Thomas starts crying again so I go up and put his binkie back in and stay with him for a few minutes until he falls back to sleep. Boys play in basement for a while and I straighten up the living room.

5-5:30 - Serve dinner for Patrick, Jack and PJ, but I'm not feeling great so I don't eat. Patrick sits with boys at dinner table while I go lie down for 10 minutes upstairs. Tired and sore right now. Clean up from dinner.

5:30-6 - PJ has another poopy false alarm. Patrick helps the boys go to the potty and I help get them ready so that he can take Jack and PJ to the carwash with the van and then to ride their bikes at the park. I put my achy feet up for a little while, have a diet coke, and work on this post.

6-6:30 - Lay out jammies and overnight diapers, fill humidifiers and straighten blankets to get boys' beds ready for sleeping.

6:30-7 - Put away all the sandbox and water table toys on the deck and close them up for the night. Put on Thomas's jammies, feed him, and put him to bed. He fusses, rebink him. He fusses, rebink him. He fusses, rebink him. (This is going to bite me in the backside in a few months.)

7-7:30 - Patrick gives the boys a bath, helps them brush their teeth, puts their jammies on.
7:30-8 - Patrick reads boys a story and puts them to bed.

Tomorrow, after having slept in comfortable beds, in a safe home, we will,
Lord willing, wake healthy and
able to do it all again.

And I wouldn't change a single thing!

Making room

If there's one thing that having our third boy in three years has shown us, it's that we needed a little more room in our home.

Well, that and the fact that sleep is overrated.

So the room, and the sleep.

And that children really test your patience.

The room, the sleep, and the patience.

And that we really go through a lot of milk.

So it's the room, the sleep, the patience, and the milk.

Not to mention the fact that your boobs look like crepe paper once you stop nursing, and stretch marks are...

Wait, where was I?

Oh right.

The room.

Sorry about that.

So, we had this unfinished basement that doubled as Patrick's office. The man donned a hat and gloves to go to work in the winter time. It was far from ideal working conditions. If he didn't work from home, I'm sure he could have sued.

But he did work from home, and we wouldn't have paid, so we needed to do something about it.

And the room.

Two toddler boys need a lot of space in which to burn off energy. A couple of blizzards this past winter proved that point beyond a shadow of a doubt.

So come with me as I show you how we transformed our space.

We can see how things changed as we look down the stairs.

Here's where we started:

Show us the studs, Jack.

Drywall

Primer

Paint

Carpet

Railing which, along with that little door covering the circuit box, will eventually be painted white.

This space will become Patrick's office:

Tadah!

This main space, which used to be his office space, will become the play area:

Doesn't that look fun?
The paint color is hard to nail down and depends on the lighting, but I love it. It's called "Lion's mane" and is mainly a camel color, but sometimes more yellowish and sometimes more orange.

A few more wonderful touches. Watch as this space

becomes

this gorgeous built-in bookshelf!

And these shelves

disappear behind a closet!

This view

goes from here

to here!

And this

becomes this!

We have doubled our living space in a matter of three and a half weeks, and feel like it's Christmas!

In addition to having the extra space, my favorite part of the whole endeavor is that Jack told every workman as he went down to work that if they needed him, they could just call him and he'd grab his (toy) toolbox and come down to help. Dead serious. Every time. I love this kid!

The boys are loving that they have enough room to walk all the way around their train table, let alone rock themselves silly on that cool bouncy horse that's been holed up in the garage until we had the room to put him anywhere. (Thanks, Hoovers!)

If anyone local needs a contractor, please let me know! We're happy to recommend ours!

Super boys!

I have two days until my due date, and, for obvious reasons, we've been looking for ways to have fun around the house.

This morning, Jack asked me to tie a blanket around his shoulders so that he could be a superhero. He's never asked this before, and we don't watch too many shows that have superheroes in them, so I'm thinking it must have come from seeing Super Grover on Sesame Street.

Anyway, we tried a few times with a blanket, but it kept falling off, so I got a couple of pillowcases and some rubber bands and made them each a superhero cape.

I have never had more fun watching the two of them play together!

This superboy needs a little rest from all the running around and helping.

Bringing out the big guns

This is what we do at the dinner table sometimes. Does that make us weird?

Don't answer that.

Spring crafts

I don't really consider myself to be a crafty person. I'm artistic enough, but not super-dooper creative. I usually need someone to give me an idea and then I can run with it.

Still, I've been excited for Jack to be old enough to do little crafty activities with me. Yesterday, we painted egg-carton "caterpillars" (that idea was in an email from Huggies, I think. I don't even use Huggies, so I'm not sure how I got on their email list, but thanks, Huggies!) while my neighbor's little girl was here for the morning. Two two-year-olds and paints might sound like a crazy combination, but it was actually a lot of fun. I had two little smocks for them to use and taped some garbage bags onto the table so they didn't make a mess. Washable paints and cotton swab "brushes" helped too. Not too messy. I still have to put pipe cleaner legs and antennae on our little caterpillar and then I'll take some pictures of him.

But in the meantime, here was another easy-peasy craft we did a few weeks ago: construction paper Easter eggs.

I have these little windows on either side of our door, so I like to make seasonal things with Jack to decorate them. We made paper snowflakes in the winter and crayon leaf rubbings for the fall.
It was a great project to do in the hour or so while PJ takes his morning nap, and Jack loved taping the eggs onto the windows.

He knows how to spell all of our names, so we made one egg for each family member, as well as a few that don't have names.

Our eggs were so easy. Jack picked the colors and helped to color in the lines.

For more Easter craft ideas, check out the Usborne book of the week over there on the right. It's a fun time to start learning about bugs, flowers, and all things Spring!

Have a great weekend!