This Is My Life: Friday

Happy Friday.

I always look forward to Fridays. It means the end of a work week and it means there's more family time coming over the next couple of days. 

First up, again, was two loads of laundry. It's a habit, really. For me, it's much easier to do a load or two every day rather than have an entire day devoted to sorting, washing, drying, folding, and putting away. I prefer to pace myself.

After breakfast, the boys talked to Grandma for a few minutes. Actually, Micah muttered a few words but wasn't all that interested in talking. Even she doesn't rank above Curious George, who happened to be on at the time.

Friday's are typically cleaning days: floors, bathrooms, and dusting.

The boys have plenty of ways they help and they know that every Friday morning it's time to assume their roles.

I pass on the things I don't enjoy doing, cause I remember my Mom doing the same thing to me. I have bitter memories of dusting the chair and table legs in the dining room. Seriously? You want me to lay under the table and wipe up spilled milk spots and dust food crumbs? I know, I know, someone had to do it. And now, someone has to dust my stair railings and floorboards and my boys are the lucky recipients.

Annalyse stayed happy and content in the playroom, probably chuckling to herself: "Haha! I get to pull the 'I'm too little and can't help yet' card!"

A couple of weeks ago I finally discovered which outlets to use for optimal reach with the vacuum. After four years in this house, this was reason to celebrate. I got through all the vacuuming today, but, bummer of bummers, I ran out of time to mop.

While vacuuming, Annalyse prepared a yummy snack of plastic grapes and rubber apples. Delicious.

An early lunch at 11:00 and then we hit the pool from 11:30-1:30. Thank you school age kids for returning to your classrooms so that we can enjoy the pool alone these next couple of weeks. In fact, my boys were rather concerned when we arrived and there wasn't another soul there. "What happened to all the people, Mom? Are they all sick?"

I'm personally tiring of trekking to the pool, but I know the boys will hate to see it close in September. So, in the next two weeks I'm making it a goal to visit as much as possible. Maybe I'll even have Annalyse swimming on her own by then. You never know.

Micah and Annalyse napped from 2-4:00, while Grady Lee watched a movie and I made dinner and folded laundry. Exciting.

Dinner at 5:30 and out the door at 6:15 to an appointment for family pictures. The good news: we were taking pictures outside at a local park. The bad news: we were taking pictures outside at a local park.

The green grass and blue skies with natural sunlight make for awesome pictures. The woods and the dirt and the playground make for restless boys. I win some; I lose some.

Because the boys handled them selves with relative self-control and obedience, we treated them to ice cream afterward. Grady Lee then asks, "But you shouldn't get any ice cream, Mom, cause you yelled at me when I wasn't smiling." Ouch. I'm not sure I yelled, but there were a few of the classic, "You had better smile or else..." statements said through clenched teeth because I was trying to simultaneously smile. Genuine, I know.

Now it's 9:00. Kids are in bed and Grady and I are settling in for a movie.

And I'm done documenting my week. Monday through Friday has been more than enough play-by-play in my family life. More than enough. Way more than enough.

This Is My Life: Thursday

No pictures. Blogger stinks. I think my account has been hacked. Or hijacked. Or infected. Or else I just am missing something simple and can't figure out how to change things. (Sorry Mom - no pics of your grand kids today, but I promise they don't look any different than they did yesterday.)

I remember hitting snooze on my alarm this morning. Well, I thought I hit snooze. Today was one of those mornings where I didn't wake up until I heard Annalyse wake up... at 8:30 am. Eighty Thirty?! The good news is that I had no place to be this morning so it was okay that I slept in.

I walked down the hall toward the toy room and saw Micah in a sleepy-eye state coming out of his room and Grady Lee laying on the futon watching cartoons. I guess everyone decided today was the day for sleeping in. Oh happy day that I wasn't in a rush to catch a school bus or make the kindergarten drop off on time, because I would be that mom who showed up late in the first week of school.

Breakfast at 9:00 am followed by cartoons and computer games for the boys and crawling and pulling and yanking and emptying and cruising for Annalyse. I loaded the dishwasher and stripped all four beds of sheets and started the wash. I hate changing sheets. I really do. I wold prefer to vacuum or clean bathrooms more than change sheets. But, on the flip side, my favorite night of the week is clean sheet night so that is my motivator as I yank and pull and stretch to get sheets on bunk beds, a crib, and a pillow top.

By 10:00 am Annalyse was down for nap and the boys tackled some school work. Micah learned more about habitats and animal families, while Grady learned about the differences and similarities between a globe and a map. Highlight of school work today: science and geography lessons offer many easy links to relate what they are learning to what God has revealed in the Bible.

The animals? God created them. Their habitats? God knew the perfect place for them to live. And guess what? God created you too and knows exactly what you need and promises to always take care of you.

The Earth? God created it - all of it! It's rotation? God keeps it spinning and considers it smaller than a flake of dust in comparison to all the stars and planets he controls. But guess what? Even though God holds the big things together, he also holds the little things together. Like you. He sees you and knows you and cares about you.

This - this - is school work at it's finest.

At 11:00 am we put the workbooks, pencils, and markers away and headed to the couch for a half hour of reading. This was a yawner for me, but my boys love listening to stories.

Lunch at noon followed by a run to the grocery store and gas station at 12:30 pm. We return an hour later, the boys dutifully help me carry bags in, and Annalyse insists on being in the center of the action and is underfoot for each turn I made while trying to put things away. I thought about giving her a plastic grocery bag to play with because I know she'd love the crinkle sound, but I decided that the suffocation risk wasn't worth it. I think I made the right choice.

Micah and Annalyse take afternoon naps from 2-3:30 pm; Grady Lee played Leapster and did several puzzles; and I folded sheets, replied to email, gulped another cup of coffee, and bleached the kitchen sink. I found specks of paint from yesterdays spaghetti experiment and it drove me nuts that there was paint in my sink. Now that it's gone my heart rate has returned to that of a normally-functioning person who doesn't have a care in the world.

After naps, we all head to the backyard for fun (fun being a relative word here) time in the sandbox and on the swing. Annalyse goes back and forth on the swing and the boys are intense in the sand with trucks and dinosaurs. I mosey around the fence and discover two snails and suddenly have two boys trying to feed them to their dinosaurs.

At 4:30 pm I head inside with Annalyse to get dinner ready and a few moments later, Grady walks in the door from work. He has a fresh haircut - the haircut looks great but the stylists' attempt with gel was feeble at best.

Around 5:00 pm Grady puts shish-ka-bobs on the grill and at 5:30 pm everyone has clean hands and we sit down to eat. I do the dishes and dust-bust around the table and chairs while Grady keeps everyone entertained in another room.

When the dinner mess is put away I take Annalyse and run to Target for a return and to pick up a few things. While there, the cutest pink satin bow accidentally fell into my cart and rather than put it back I decided I should just go ahead and buy it. Who am I kidding - I saw it across the aisle, stopped what I was doing, grabbed it, and promptly put it in my cart.

Annalyse and I made much better time running through Target than our usual experience of doling out crackers or lolipops to two boys while trying to shop.

We got home around 7:15 pm and the bedtime routines began. It's now 8:30 pm and it's my turn to go grab a shower and say goodnight to my duties as mom.

And, on a personal note to myself, I'm not a fan of documenting my life day by day. Too much work and too little excitement. Too much boredom to write about and surely too little fascination to read about. But, I'll remind myself what I said back on Monday, someday I'll look back and appreciate remembering the moments of monotony since life with kids is always changing.

So, cheers to the last three days of this week and what's yet to come.

This Is My Life: Wednesday

Apparently the last night's softball game tuckered Micah out. He slept until 8:30 this morning. He was barely up, dressed, and sitting down for breakfast when it was already time for me to put Annalyse down for her morning nap.

While Micah ate and Annalyse slept, Grady Lee watched cartoons and made Lite Brite designs. Curious George was a rerun of a rerun of a rerun because both boys practically recited the entire episode.

While the boys displayed their memory skills, I decided Sharky was long overdue for some fresh water. Water that was clear and didn't have floaties.

I also got through another two loads of sweaty, sandy, popsicle-y clothes. Summer seems to do that.

In the background I had a box of spaghetti boiling for a craft/game/project to do with the boys later in the morning. Something that I saw somewhere online... sure wish I could give credit where credit is due, but it was one of those things I stumbled on and knew my boys would have a riot trying it.

When Curious George was done, I sent Micah upstairs to play and Grady took a seat at the table for an hour of phonics and learning about maps. He's making valiant strides with reading and I think that deep down he's finding a sense of accomplishment when he can sound out words and actually read them without prompting. And, if I'm being honest, I love that I get to scream and hug him each time he reads on his own. We have a little party at the table, just the two of us. Kinda nice.

Meanwhile, I stuck my head in the toy room to check on Micah and I overheard him talking to himself about making lunch for the firemen at the fire station. I think he was concocting hamburgers and watermelon and cookies.

When laundry was folded and schoolwork was done, I told the boys to take off their shirts and head outside for "a super fun and super messy and super crazy idea." As they ripped off their shirts and flung them on the couch, they caught sight of the four bowls of colorful spaghetti I had sitting on the counter and they were elated. "What are we doing? Do we get to touch that? That looks gross! Do I have to eat that?"

For the record, the boys painted with spaghetti. An entire box of boiled spaghetti in tempera paint was theirs for the flinging, splatting, tossing, and painting.

They laughed. They created. They played.

The passing jogger stared. The next door neighbor tried to look without being obvious. It was great.

At 11:15, I (literally) threw the boys in the shower to rinse off and by 11:30 we were in the car heading to Grady's new office for a quick tour and to join him for lunch.

His new job has him working from this office about two weeks out of the month and the boys wanted to see "where daddy works hard so that he can buy us food and toys and save money for a boat."

After a quick tour and once Micah started playing with a large stapler and Annalyse cried with a high pitch shrill, we headed out for lunch. Thank you McDonald's for feeding my family entirely from the dollar menu.

We got home around 2:00 and it was nap time for Micah and Annalyse. Grady Lee colored and played with toys for an hour while I... I... what did I do? I emptied the dishwasher and I think I struggled with the computer some more trying to make sense of the current Blogger debacle I'm experiencing. And I think I wiped down the half bath. But I really don't fully remember because before I knew it, it was 3:30 and Micah was awake and I was getting Goldfish crackers and juice out for both boys.

The boys played with dinosaurs in the sandbox until it was time for dinner and I read books to Annalyse and took 15 minutes to sit on the floor and rest while she climbed and drooled all over me. She likes to crack herself up. She opens her mouth super wide and lets out the fakest laugh you've ever heard. Then, because the fakeness really does sound funny, I laughed in response which then made her let out a real laugh. So cute.

My little girl may be tiny and petite, but it is not for lack of interest in eating. Dinner tonight: slice of wheat bread, slice of cheese, a banana, two spoonfuls of peas and carrots, a handful of Cheerios, and a Gerber tub of squash. I think she would have ate more but we needed to pack up and lead out the door in order to make it to Grady's softball game.

His team played hard, but alas, they lost and so the season ended. On the bright side, he wore athletic socks tonight instead of dress socks. And, on the even brighter side, I actually remembered to try and take an action shot of him.

At the end of the game, the boys took turns, along with several other kids, hitting balls and running bases. Micah ever-so-slowly trots around the field and Grady Lee hustles as though something is chasing him and about to bite him. Such a difference in personality.

The routine of three fast bedtime routines is done, I've showered and had a brownie and a huge glass of ice water, and it's now just after 10:00 and I think I'll head upstairs to pick up where I left off on my book last night.

As I close today, I'm struck with how much I do each day and yet how little I do each day. It's ironic. It's oxymoronish. It's called "Motherhood."

I wish I had a camera following me to capture every hug, kiss, and I love you throughout the day, along with the simple moments of quiet discipline and instruction. Even in the down times of the day (I think that periodically I have those), I'm still working on shaping little minds, encouraging little souls, and molding little hearts.

And, that's the stuff that isn't usually documented and remembered, but that's the stuff I wouldn't trade for anything.

This Is My Life: Tuesday

Today dawned bright and beautiful, like 99% of North Carolina days. Showered and dressed, bed made, coffee brewing, protein shake gulped down, devotions started, and then it was time to get breakfast going for three kids. Apparently they all decided to wake up at the exact same second today.

Both boys chose the standard fall-back: oatmeal, cereal bar, yogurt, and juice. Win - simple to make and guaranteed to be licked clean.

While I took care of dishes, watered flowers, and emptied trash cans, Grady Lee and Micah played computer games. Thank you PBS Kids for letting my kids laugh and learn simultaneously. Win.

Annalyse went down for her morning nap at 9:00 and the boys and I continued working on Psalm 23. We're in the process of coloring poster pictures for each verse. The artistry leaves much to be desired, but the simple pictures seem to be helping them remember the order of things. Win.

After devotions and Bible memory, we hit the books to get some school work taken care of. Micah flew through several pages of matching, finding opposites, choosing what is larger, etc.

Grady worked on a couple pages of math, which is usually a quick and painless process for him. Not so much today. He decided that he didn't want to count by two's, that writing numbers in the 70 and 80 families didn't sound fun, and that double digit addition was boring.

I started out patient with prodding him to continue and encouraging him to "just focus so you can get this out of the way and then go play. After all, you've done this many times before and I know that you already know this stuff!"

Nope. Not a good enough motivator. Instead, he chose tears and pouting and eye rolling. Fail.

Alrighty then, not a problem for me. No TV or computer games for him for the rest of the day. That was the game changer - he picked up his pencil and had his two pages of math done in a matter of minutes. Win.

Annalyse woke up around 10:00, I quickly packed some lunches, and by 10:30 we left the house to meet friends for a few hours of play at Discovery Place. We've been several times, but so far my boys aren't tired of anything there and are happy to explore things again and again. Win.

Annalyse was all eyes - watching everything. Her eyes always knew where her brothers were.

No pictures of seven kids eating lunch together. No pictures of seven kids playing together. And that's because keeping all seven kids accounted for was plenty enough. By 2:00 we called it a day and headed home.

We got home and Annalyse and Micah took naps. Actually, I carried Annalyse from her car seat to her crib and Micah from his car seat to his bed. Both were tired kids!

Grady lounged in the toy room with books and puzzles for his quiet time and I attempted to get a few things done on the computer. Attempted being the operative word.

The computer moved at a slower than slow pace. Files wouldn't open or upload. Pages wouldn't display. I rebooted the computer. I rebooted the router. And I thought about punching the keyboard. Nothing helped and nothing seemed to be working. Fail.

Fine. Be that way.

I decided to lay down for about 30 minutes before I knew kids would be up and I'd have to get things rolling for dinner. Grady Lee decided to lay next to me and look at books... sometimes it's a real treat to listen to him "read." He's heard some books so many times he can almost recite them and he remembers where to put certain voice inflections. Precious.

At 4:30 Annalyse woke up and a few minutes after, Micah was up too. The boys went in the backyard and played for an hour while Annalyse and I played inside and got things ready for dinner.

A quick dinner at 5:30 since we were leaving at 6:00 to head to church for Grady's softball game.

In typical 485 fashion, the highway was a parking lot at this time of day so it took forever to go 14 miles and get to church. Oh well - it offered some quiet time for me to make a couple of phone calls and catch up with people. Win.

We arrived at church and the boys took off with friends playing in the dirt, kicking soccer balls, throwing footballs, and running under bleachers. Annalyse was passed from one set of arms to another set of arms and I don't remember holding her all evening. Win.

Grady's team won - hip-hip hooray!-  and they're slated to play in the championship game tomorrow evening. And, just for the record, the khaki dress socks my husband wore with this cleats were no fault of mine. I arrived at church with white athletic socks for him and he opted to not bother and change. Now that, that is a confident man.

While driving home after the game, I remember silently thinking how nice it was that it was almost dark.  A sign that Fall is just around the corner and the time change is coming. My favorite time of year!

After all kids were bathed and showered and tossed in bed, I hopped in the shower and then settled in bed with a good book. Win.

Yes, I'm writing this past tense and yes I'm talking about today as if it were yesterday. But that's because I am and that's because it was. Our lovely computer wouldn't let me post Tuesday's post until today... so lucky you gets a double dose of My Life fun. Win? Fail? Who cares.