Uncategorized

Why Daddy is Awesome

Today is Joshua’s 30th birthday.  I feel the need to rub this in a bit since I hit the big 3-0 a mere 48 hours after Amelia’s delivery and therefore, it was glossed over by everything else going on in our lives.  Except that Joshua likes to remind me I am older than him and he’s pretty sure that 4 months is a significant amount of older-ness.

I think it just feeds his ego to know he wooed an older woman.

But today’s his birthday and I wanted to take a few moments to let the world (of this blog) know why he’s an incredible husband and father and person.  And since I never got around to a Father’s Day blog, I figure this can also suffice for that.

30 for 30 Reasons We Love Joshua:

1.  He has A LOT of patience (this is a blessing and a curse. I’m pretty sure his patience is why he’s still married to me, but also why we were given three girls, because man, nothing tries your patience like a whiny little girl).
2.  He doesn’t expect me to keep our house as clean as his mother kept theirs.
3.  He will stagger out of bed in the middle of the night to put Annabelle back in hers or get Amelia if I’m too tired.  Of course, I have to poke him pretty hard to get him to wake up, but he does!
4.  He puts me back together when I fall apart.
5.  He not only tolerates my crazy, loud, insane family, but I think he might actually like them.
6.  He likes my friends and encourages me to spend time with them.
7.  He thinks I’m funny.
8.  He believes in me.
9.  He loves his grandparents and mine and recognizes how special it is that our girls spend time with their great-grands.
10.  He has an amazingly loyal work ethic.  If he agrees to do something, it’s not getting done halfway.
11.  His favorite Wii partner is Madelynne (he will never admit this, but she believes it is true).
12.  He has taught the girls to play computer games, a quiet activity that can entertain for at least an hour.
13.  He sings silly songs to the girls when he rocks them goodnight….well he did until we moved the rocking chair to Amelia’s room.
14. He’s starting to buy into my coupon craze.
15.  He’s always rather eat out than eat leftovers, but he eats the leftovers anyway.
16.  He is the best giver of baths because he plays games with the girls to get them to wash their hair.
17.  He makes the most awesome cinnamon rolls in the world.
18.  Someday we’re going to have enough money/faith/craziness to let him start his own business.
19.  Everyday he drives the 20-year-old Honda Civic (without AC) to and from work so I can drive the much cooler (in the literal sense) minivan.
20.  He is an awesome man of God who truly lives what he believes.
21.  He will understand that the goal for this blog was 30 reasons he’s an awesome husband and father but because I am so distracted and muddled by our kids, I have only made it to 20 over a period of 3 days and now I’m stopping.

Love you Joshua!

motherhood · summer

Lazy Crazy June

It wasn’t supposed to be this way.  I was supposed to be able to kick back and relax once school was officially over.  You know lazy days of summer and all that.

There’s a reason lazy rhymes with crazy.

It’s because you’re crazy if you think a mother of three is allowed to be lazy.

We have been non-stop the past three weeks.  First, it was our impromptu beach trip with Marmee.  Then it was running errands, visiting friends, and dental checkups.  Next came VBS and our houseguests, Aunt Audrey and Hailey Cousin (this is so she is not confused with Hailey Reed).  This past weekend was no down time but here, there, and everywhere as we celebrated Father’s Day with five great dads. 

And this week has brought swimming lessons, wellness checks for Amelia and me, more birthday celebrations, and two days of staff development I agreed to so I could make some extra moula to fund all this summer craziness.

Almost makes me wish we were back in school and following a set routine.  Almost.

Because as crazy as things have been and as difficult a time as I am having dealing with the “supposed to” of life (more in a later post), I wouldn’t trade this random life.

Belle’s first dive at swimming lessons.
Eating dinner with Hailey Cousin.

Aunt Audrey helping out.
Hailey passed out after a hard day.
A pretty good CVS run thanks to SouthernSavers and Laura.  $4 for each pack of diapers!
(and rainchecks for deoderant and toothpaste)
Uncategorized

Millie-Moo

That’s right.  It’s official.  Millie-Moo is Amelia’s nickname. 

 

 I don’t know why.  I think someone (one of my sisters) called her ‘Melia or Millie her first week and it stuck.  I added the moo just because.  So now at 4 months and 4 days, she’s our Millie-Moo.

Here’s her latest stats:
13.2 lbs
24 inches
“average”….which just means she’s in the 50th percentile for everything.

She’s rolling over.  The first time she did it was at the beach a couple of weeks ago.  She was on her tummy, popped up that head like a little turtle, and flop!  She was on her back!

Prior to and since then she has been actively trying to roll from back to front, usually accomplishing it three-quarters of the way and then she gets stuck and flops back over exhausted. 

Well, yesterday she finally met her goal and went all the way over from back to front and then front to back.  She is now no longer a baby who stays in one place.  Today she hung out at Mimi’s and rolled from one side of the room to the other, except, Deanne said, she wouldn’t roll back once she reached the wall. 

Well, why should she?  She’s the Millie-Moo and that’s what she can do.

motherhood · Paynes

First Days with Five

No, I have not time warped into my future and seen myself as the mother of five.  The chances of that are about as good as the chance that Amelia will sleep all night.

Instead I’m hosting my niece and sister this week since it’s VBS and if I’m going to have 5 kids it might as well be at a time when they can attend pre-planned activities with someone other than me.  Disclaimer: Audrey doesn’t like being called a kid, but since she’s 14 and my baby sister, I’ll call her whatever I want.  I could really embarrass her and refer to her as Weetsie for the rest of this post, but she is being rather helpful and I don’t want to tick her off.

In addition to Audrey, the helpful teenager, I’ve got my niece who is 8 weeks older than Annabelle and almost as entertaining.  So far she has walked through the Mall of Georgia singing about how she’s afraid of thunderstorms, named off which of her aunts she finds the scariest (not me), and picked our beautiful yellow calla lily next to the mailbox.  Hmmmm….maybe entertaining isn’t the right word.  And she only wants to eat Doritos.  For breakfast, lunch, and dinner.  For that matter, Doritos are about all Audrey wants to eat as well, and she refuses to share.  So now who’s the kid?

They’ve been here since Sunday afternoon and things are going pretty well considering that it’s a crazy week and I’ve already used up my patience quota for the month.  The girls don’t want to nap, but they tend to crash by 8:30 and sleep all night (excluding baby Amelia) and I’ll take that.

Monday was very productive, or at least I thought so until I realized that even though I had vacuumed, done dishes, laundry, made dinner, and been to Jazzercise, I had not made my kids animal costumes for VBS.

Today was crazy due to weather and my belief that I can accomplish more with 5 kids than I can with 3.  We do have a Father’s Day gift, though.  Lovingly selected from the dollar aisle at Target, but they’re sure it’s what Daddy needs.  And we did have dinner with my grandparents, even though it was at the mall food court due to the storms blowing a transformer in their subdivision.

Oh, well.  Tomorrow is always another day with no mistakes in it, right?  No mistakes yet, at least.  Maybe it can include a nap….

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Ruby Holler

I have completed the first of my summer reading!  yay, me.  Think I’ll take a break and watch some Gilmore Girls now since we Netflixed it a week ago and I haven’t watched it yet.  But I digress.

The first book I chose off my Random Summer Reading List was Ruby Holler by Sharon Creech.  I picked it because I wanted something not too heavy, not too dark, and not too hard.  All requirements my kids give me when we visit the library every other week.

Well, it may two out of three of those requirements.  It’s not dark, despite the fact that it’s about a pair of orphans (the “trouble twins”) who were left on the doorstep of an un-homey children’s home when they were about three months old.  And it’s not hard, though I could find plenty of good vocabulary for my students (putrid is a favorite word of one of the characters and I’m not sure they know what that means). However, it is a bit heavy.

These troubled twins are Dallas and Florida (named for the box they were left in) and they have the unfortunate habit of being a bit mischievious and a lot sassy.  But for kids who’ve been raised in and out of unloving foster homes, they’re not bad.  Just rough around the edges.

Enter Ruby Holler.  Literally.  A sweet older couple who miss their grown children and are planning separate vacations to fulfill lifelong dreams of bird watching and river canoeing, offer to foster the twins for the summer and bring them to their little cabin in Ruby Holler.

Ruby Holler is something of a magical place.  It reminds me of Suches maybe.  Remote, beautiful, isolated, a bit lost in time.  I’d like to live there and piece quilts and garden and foster trouble twins.

So while they are in Ruby Holler, Dallas and Florida start to learn a lot about themselves.  Like maybe they’re not so much trouble after all.  And maybe they are special.  And probably they don’t really want to run away and jump the midnight train to….wherever.

The story left me with lots of questions.  Which is good, but I can’t tell you what they are without ruining the story.   Let’s just say if the twins are able to stay in Ruby Holler, they’ll probably figure out who their parents were.  Eventually.

I really liked this book and am considering planning a novel unit around it.  It’s rich with imagery and imagination and innocence.  All things I like to bring into my classroom.

Definitely two thumbs up!