Happy Father's Day

This hasn't been much of a Father's Day, mostly because we're missing a father around here. We didn't even really get to talk to him today, sadly. So, I am writing this post to honor the fathers in my life.

I was listening to the talks in church today on fathers and feeling so grateful for all of the righteous fathers I have been surrounded by in my life. I am especially thankful for my own dad.

My dad did/does an excellent job of making me feel important and loved. One thing he has always told me is that he's so grateful that he gets to be my dad. I'm the one who's most grateful, though. I was definitely "born of goodly parents".

My dad is full of faith and willing to serve however the Lord would have him. His faithful example has profoundly affected my life. Being the youngest by 4 years, we had a few years just my parents and I. I remember having scripture study with them or having family prayer and just hanging around to talk afterward about some gospel principle or even something not gospel-related. These discussions around the coffee table are some of my fondest memories and where many seeds of faith were planted for me.

My dad is a fantastic grandpa! His grandkids all adore him. Just look at this picture:

I love you, Dad!

I also have a wonderful father-in-law. I really lucked out with my in-laws. They are all great.

I truly respect and admire my father-in-law. He is a great man and he has raised 5 great sons. That shows you the kind of father he is right there. He is loving, compassionate, fun and also full of faith. I am thankful for his example to us and for the way he offers unconditional love and support.

He is also a wonderful grandpa. On Christmas Eve, he read all of the kids a really cute story about family being the best Christmas present:

(He and my dad are wearing remarkably similar shirts, too!)

I don't know if you'll see this but...I love you, Tom!
I'm glad it didn't take you too long to warm up to me! :)
(Just teasing of course!)

Last but not least, I'm thankful for the wonderful father of my children. I knew he would be an amazing father before we were married. It was one of the things that attracted me to him. And, he certainly has been.

Here's the proud daddy with the 3 beautiful babies, from oldest to youngest:

He is a dad that tries to wake his kids up while they're sleeping to get them to talk to him.

He makes sure we remember to read our scripture stories every day.

He sets the "How much wood would a woodchuck chuck" rhyme to music and does a fake Irish dance around the house singing it, while his girls laugh and follow in a line behind him. :)

He delights in teaching his children about the world. He teaches them to have compassion for others.

We sure miss him.

Only a few more days! He will be home late Thursday night, barring any delays or other circumstances. We'll have to have our true Father's Day celebration then...

We love you, Daddy!

My Evolution as a Mom

Then: Refers to the period of time when I had one or even two kids.
Now: Present-day life with 3 kids.

Important to note: I am making no value judgments on any of these. This is just how it is for me. :)

Then: Made sure I looked nice, with hair done (perhaps in a ponytail but still done) before leaving the house. If I got spit-up on, I would change.

Now: Couldn't care less what the people at the grocery store think of how I look. I have a window of time to get the shopping done, and it must get done whether or not I've had time to shower/dry my hair/change out of spit-up-stained clothes.

(One morning, I literally put a sweatshirt over the pajamas I slept in and went shopping like that. This would have horrified my former self.)

Then: Made sure my kid(s) looked nice before leaving the house. That meant their hair was done and they were wearing decent, matching clothes.

Now: I'm lucky if their hair has been combed, let alone styled in any way beyond a clip to keep it out of their eyes, and if they are in fact wearing clean underwear (or any underwear at all) under their frequently mismatched clothing.

(To be fair: This isn't so much due to a change in me as to a growing need for independence in my kids. Why must they have their own opinions, anyway?)

Then: Carefully dressed the baby in coordinated outfits with matching shoes and socks, long before the child had any use for shoes.

Now: Don't even own a pair of shoes that would fit the baby. Don't bother with socks, either. They'll just end up lost on aisle 13 of Target. I'm sure it's warm enough.

Then: Kind of disgusted at the sight of baby food, particularly such fare as Garden Vegetable or Chicken Dinner. Felt slightly guilty about feeding it to my child.

Now: No qualms about licking the spoon of Garden Vegetable clean in order to put it back in the diaper bag, or licking off a glob that dropped on my hand. It's really not that bad.

Then: Had no desire to touch my kids' uneaten food. Yuck. It went in the trash.

Now: The uneaten food is my lunch. So what if the peanut butter sandwich is smashed and a little soggy. At least it's edible and available.

Then: Made sure the high chair tray was scrubbed clean after each meal.

Now: As long as there aren't any choking hazards on it, we're good. A little dried peas and some stale Cheerios never hurt anyone.

Then: If we were out of baby food, we went to the store right then to buy some. What else would we feed her?

Now: Rarely have much baby food in the house. Have to get creative and have even made a lot of my own. There's plenty of available food the baby can eat.

Then: Made sure to time EVERY feeding while nursing in an attempt to make sure she had eaten enough. If she didn't nurse long enough, I would try to force her to eat more, giving up in frustration if she refused.

Now: If he's done, he's done. He's got some chub and is growing fine.


Motherhood is... hard. Just when you think you've been through some hard things as a mom, you go through something harder. It changes you in unexpected ways. It's humbling--that much is for sure.

It'll be interesting to see what my perceptions will be 10 years from now when I have teenage girls.

12 More Days

I need to catch up on all of our little events, mostly for Joe's sake. I know he misses being a part of the daily happenings so I think he will enjoy this. :)

We just got back from spending some time at my parents' house. We stayed over Friday night and enjoyed some swimming today. The pool was still fairly cold in the morning but that didn't stop the girls. This is them at about 9am:They were having great fun until they realized how cold they were. We came in for awhile and went back out later.

Much better

This was Nathaniel's first time swimming. He wasn't a fan of the cold water but sort of endured it for awhile. Looking at these pictures, though, you'd think he had the time of his life. He's such a smiler, it's not hard to get great pictures of him:

I love how he's just kicking back in his float:

My mom took a bunch of pictures of the two of us and wouldn't you know it, my eyes are closed in every single one. I have a gift for that.

I thought this one was pretty funny, though.

I think we had just gotten splashed by Elizabeth:

We had such a great time with Grandma and Grandpa. Thank you so much! It was very rejuvenating for me.

Natalie took a pretty bad spill last week and she wanted to take pictures for Daddy:

Here's right after it happened:

She was just walking down our front steps and slipped. I took another picture the next day since it just kept looking worse...

It looked even worse when it scabbed and we got tons of remarks about it everywhere we'd go. So many that she began to get self-conscious about it. We were in line at Costco on a busy day and I looked over and saw Natalie with one hand covering her forehead and the other over her nose. It was so sad. I told her how beautiful she was and that owies are nothing to be embarrassed about and that seemed to help. She was happy when the scabs finally fell off today. Hooray!

Speaking of Natalie, I guess it was a rough week because I discovered this on Thursday:
It might be hard to see but that is pen all over our piano. On EVERY key. Oh it was so frustrating. This girl should know better. The magic eraser helped but you can still see the lines. She is now in the middle of her punishment: a week without coloring of any kind (except on her Magna Doodle). This is hard for her and I am hoping it will prevent her from doing anything like this again.

On a lighter note, one morning Natalie was whining to me about "watching a show" (she is a "show"-aholic) and she suddenly stopped and calmly asked, "Wait--what was I whining about?" I laughed a lot and said, "If you can't remember, maybe you should stop." She proceeded to scowl at me for laughing. Heaven forbid I laugh when she says something funny. :)

Elizabeth is entering another endless-question-asking stage. The thing right now is that most of her questions come from completely out of the blue. Sometimes I can trace back her thought process and figure out what she's talking about but most of the time I say "What?" and ask her to clarify, to which she repeats the same question over and over in frustration like I should know exactly who "she" is or what on earth she's referring to.

Tonight as we were getting ready for bed, she asks me out of nowhere, "Why did he want his teeth for Christmas?" ??? I did recognize the reference to "All I Want for Christmas is My Two Front Teeth" (did you?) but had to laugh in wonderment as to how her mind traveled to that thought, especially in the middle of June. She makes me laugh.

This boy makes me smile...(I really need to stop referring to him as "the boy". I think I noticed him answering to it the other day. Oops.)

The above picture was taken one night when he just refused to go to bed, for some unknown reason. I finally gave up and put him down to play and he was just happy as can be. So proud of himself for getting his way and wanting to spread the joy. It worked--he melted me. He did eventually go to sleep, luckily.

He has some pretty awesome hair, too...
I noticed this poking out the other night and couldn't resist a picture...

Baby feet: one of the best things in the world.

Sibling Love

Why is it so wonderful to watch your kids loving each other?

I really don't know, but it sure is. :)

In this next one you can see how Natalie was turning his head back but he was just laughing and laughing.

The other day in the car, they all three were laughing about something (I can't remember what) and it was the greatest thing in the world. It made my heart happy.

I just felt so blessed to have a back seat full of these beautiful, wonderful kids.

. . .

I am in a funk and I'm not quite sure how to break out of it. The first week and a half or so of Joe being gone went pretty smoothly. These last couple of days--not as well. I have not been very patient. The girls haven't quite been on their best behavior. For one thing, Natalie has now had 4 accidents in a little over 24 hours. I have no idea what is going on with her. I thought we were done with all of this. She's also developing quite the little attitude lately. She is just getting to that age. You know--hitting or throwing things on the way to her room when she's been sent to have a time out. Stuff like that.

Elizabeth has just been blatantly disobedient. Sneaking around doing things I've specifically told her not to do, or trying to convince someone else to do those things. Lying, pretty frequently. Hopefully this is all a phase, too.

So... life is hard right now. Life is hard for everybody. Still, I have noticed blessings along the way and I would be really ungrateful if I didn't acknowledge them. First off, I have good friends, who have been great supports to me, bringing me meals and helping with the kids (thank you!!).

Yesterday, I was pretty humbled. My garbage cans were still on the curb (this was Wednesday, and pick up was on Monday--I know, I'm lazy). I looked out the window to see my elderly neighbor, who lives in the other half of the duplex, pulling them up to the house for me. He has a pretty severe limp which almost makes me think he may have had a stroke but I've never asked about it. He is always out every morning walking down the path. Anyway, I was touched by his willingness to help in that way, even though it was clearly difficult for him.

The kids have their cute moments as well. Now I'll move on to some more positive things I wanted to post about...

Here is a cute picture Natalie drew of our family:

I especially love how she drew Joe with his glasses

Elizabeth has a love of learning that honestly amazes me. She frequently says she wants to be a teacher when she grows up and I could totally see that. She literally jumped up and down in excitement one time when I told her I would print off some math worksheets for her. She is always asking me to give her word problems. Needless to say, she is ready for school.

Yesterday, she was kind of sitting by herself writing on a paper and I later learned that she was making her own worksheet:

I thought that was hilarious and pretty cool, too. She even did the first one wrong on purpose, she said, so she could correct it. A lot of her numbers are backwards but you get the picture. The down side of her always wanting to play teacher is that it can get annoying to those who are being taught. If she could just scale back the bossy, know-it-all aspect of her teaching style, it would be perfect. :)

We've had some crazy weather lately. Rain at the end of May! That's unheard of here. It did give the girls a chance to play in it, though:

OK, this has been therapeutic. This is why I love blogging. It helps me to remember all of the good in my life.


P.S. Joe is doing well. We talk pretty much every day. He is busy and I don't think getting very much sleep but seems to be loving it. He mentioned sending me some pictures. I will post some if he does.