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Happy Blistering, Sweltering, Melt Your Face Off Father’s Day

June 21, 2010 by Kelli

We celebrated Dad yesterday. It was a day meant for eating, sleeping and watching golf, just how Dad likes it. And so we ate, we slept, we watched golf and we enjoyed the day together as a unit. We missed being with our own fathers – two men who are the hero’s that Lee and I look up to with all the esteem that can be given to men of wisdom and stature such as they are. Without either of them in town, Father’s Day seemed a bit lacking this year. But we still enoyed our time together doing what we love to do – playing together.

Of course, what better way to celebrate Father’s Day than to watch the US Open together? And as we watched, Lee got the itch to go hit golf balls. I wanted nothing more than to support his desire to do just that – but I also didn’t want to be left alone with the kids who were threatening my sanity, so we packed everyone up in our (rockin’ hot) minivan and trekked to the driving range. And under the sweltering, blistering sun, we made a memory.

Or, as Landon put it, “We hit da baw hawd.”

This smile comes from hitting the ball past the 75 yard marker.

I really, seriously, truly, madly and deeply love this family of mine.

Filed Under: Family, Kids, Landon, Lee, Life, Sloan, summer fun, Tia Tagged With: Dad playing golf, Father's Day 2010, Kids playing golf, US Open 2010

Just call me MacGyver

June 18, 2010 by Kelli

Alternately titled: Why I owe them some Kotex

Thursday’s are our crazy days. A week’s worth of activities are packed into one afternoon and it requires me to be organized in order for things to run smoothly. Me. Organized. Those two words next to one another are a bit of an oxymoron. In fact, I recently wrote up a product review and giveaway for 5 Minutes for Mom in which I lament my organizational capabilities and I now have three calendars in my kitchen trying to help me stay on top of life.

They’re not really working, if you must know. There’s this funny little phenomenon wherein you must actually look at the calendar ahead of time in order to know what you’ve got planned for the day. Weird, huh?

So yesterday we tore out of the house at 4:35 to try and make it to Tia’s Russian class at 4:45 on time. At 4:32 I remembered I needed to pack a dinner because we would go straight from the kids russian lessons to Sloan’s baseball practice. So I threw some rolls, a few bananas, a package of ham and a chunk of banana bread in a plastic bag and off we went.

About 25 minutes before the end of the kids lessons, Landon grabbed my face and pulled it down to his. “I pooped,” he whispered. He didn’t need to tell me – the smell gave it away. It smelled like death – warm death…you get the point.

And then I realized…I had forgotten a back up diaper. I went out to the car to see if maybe, by God’s sweet grace, there was a diaper under a seat. No luck. And the smell was getting worse. Let’s just say Landon had a bit of a stomach ache yesterday. This hadn’t been the first, or even second, dirty diaper of the day. It was foul.

So I took him to the bathroom in the church building where russian school meets and began coming up with a plan. I swept my eyes around the sterile lavatory, trying to decide what I could do to remedy the situation until I had the chance to get a diaper. Toilet paper and paper towls – surely I could come up with a reasonable solution using those materials. Blast! If only I had some scotch tape and a paper clip!

I looked to my right and noticed on the wall were three small white cabinets. I decided to look inside and see if perhaps there might be a diaper in there – I know, I was reaching. The situation was getting desperate.

I opened the first cabinet and found the jackpot – a large supply of Depends and Kotex. Perfect. I stripped Landon of the death wrap around his bum and cleaned him up, then grabbed a Depends and stuck it on the inside of his shorts. But it wouldn’t stick. In case you’re wondering, Depends are not very sticky on the bottom…just an FYI in case you ever need them. Ahem.

So I grabbed two Kotex, pulled the stickers off the back and wrapped them around his waist, connecting them to the Depends to form somewhat of a diaper. Unfortunately this meant they were stuck to his skin which was uncomfortable and made him walk like a mini-Sumo wrestler for the remainder of our time at Russian school. I then hastily sent Lee a text asking him to bring us a diaper to baseball practice.

And that, folks, is how I have officially become the MacGyver of Mommydom. (MomGyver, if you will)

*groan*

The end.

Filed Under: Family, funny stuff that happens, Kids, Landon, Motherhood Tagged With: MacGyver Mom, Mom's being resourceful, Motherhood

I didn’t know, but now I do

June 15, 2010 by Kelli

I was fifteen when I told my mom that I fully expected to have all boys someday. “Why do you say that?” she asked as she pulled away from the movie theater where I had just finised watching Wesley Snipes slay the bad guys in Passenger 57 (I don’t know why I remember this detail so vividly yet for the life of me I could not remember scheduling a dentist appointment for myself this morning…).

“Because no matter how hard I try, I somehow seem to always end up alone with all the guys.” I said this as if it were a curse. But it seemed to me at the time to be true. Looking back on it, I see more clearly what happened. Yes, a large group of people were invited to see Passenger 57. Yes, both girls and guys were included in the invite. Yes, all of the other girls were smart enough to decline knowing that two hours of Wesley Snipes trapped on an airplane with terrorists sounded about as exciting as a jellyfish sting.

Ah, but in my youth I felt that it was nothing more than a sign from the universe that I was destined to be the mother of a motley crue of little men since I was obviously so inclined to be surrounded by them at all times.

Fast forward six years to my courtship with Lee when I found out the he was one of three boys, his father was one of two boys, his grandfather had all brothers and so on and so on. For five generations this was the pattern. Tucked in there somewhere was a cousin who had a little girl after three or four boys. Needless to say, the Stuart men possess an abundance of the Y-Chromosome. And this seemed to only further confirm what I thought I already knew – I was destined to be the mother of all boys.

I was really okay with this. I didn’t much care. Until, that is, someone made the comment that Stuart’s can’t make girls and that “hopefully I was okay with all boys”. Well, I was but now I had a challenge and in my stubborn little heart I determined that I would create a girl out of sheer willpower.

(I wonder if that is why I was given the most stubborn little girl on planet Earth? Huh…)

I am always careful not to minimize the blessing of a family full of boys. There is a prevailing thought amongst society that somehow a family can’t be complete unless both genders are represented in the children. While I will agree there are specific blessings that come with girls that are different from boys, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that had Tia been of the male persuasion I would have felt any less satisfied or enamored with that child. All boys, all girls or one of each, the fact is kids are an enormous blessing.

But I must say that there are a couple of things about having a girl that melt my heart. They are things I didn’t know I would love. Like cooking with my daughter and wearing matching aprons while we do it. I didn’t know I would love that so much.

But now I do.

Or the simple delight that takes over her face when I ask her to help me make dinner:

I didn’t know I would love that…but now I do.

Of course the boys love to help me cook too. But there is a different feeling that sweeps over me when Tia and I cook together. It’s marked by the fact that deep down I know our cooking together is preparing her to one day cook for her own family. It is more than fun, it is a mission and I feel deeply honored to share that with her.

I didn’t know I’d feel that way…but now I do.

I didn’t know how much fun it would be to see a little girl dressed in tights and leg warmers prance around a room:

I didn’t know what it would do to my heart to have my daughter ask me to help her with gymnastics. I liken it to the swell of pride Lee feels when the boys ask him to play basketball or baseball with them.

I didn’t know how my insides would melt and flow out my ears every time she crawled up into her daddy’s lap and his eyes turned all starry. I just didn’t know.

But now I do.

Of course, I also didn’t know that little boys, when they belong to you, have the ability to make you love playing ball, talking Star Wars and searching for worms in a way you never thought possible.

I didn’t know this…

But now? Now I do.

Filed Under: Family, Kids, Landon, Motherhood, Sloan, Tia Tagged With: Daughters, Little Girls, Motherhood, parenting

Take me out to the ball game

June 14, 2010 by Kelli

Pretend that these pictures are from Sloan’s first game of the season. Let’s pretend that this wasn’t the first time I actually remembered to bring my camera with the memory card in it. Let’s pretend that I’m much more organized than that and that I would never actually forget to put the memory card in my camera until the season was half over.

Nope not me. I would never do that. Enjoy photos from Sloan’s, ahem, first ball game.

Sloan is the only player on his team with a groupie. We can’t decide if we should change Landon’s nickname from Bubba to Mini-Sloan because he wants nothing more than to be exactly like his big brother. This means that whenever he can get his hands on Sloan’s uniform, he wants it on.

It may possibly be the cutest thing I’ve ever seen…

Play Ball!

Filed Under: Family, funny stuff that happens, Kids, Kids do the darndest things, Landon, Sloan, summer fun Tagged With: Kids Baseball, Sloan

Bits and Pieces

June 10, 2010 by Kelli

Yesterday was the big day. Landon got his cast removed. I’ve never had a cast before, but I imagine that had my arm been wrapped in plastic for almost a month I would want to bend and straighten my elbow over and over and rub my hand up and down my arm like he did. It was really adorable. He seemed quite thrilled with his ability to once again move his arm. He now has a removeable splint that he’s supposed to wear while he’s playing (so essentially all day long) for the next month.

Right. Good luck with that. He’s already figured out how to take it off.

I had to take all three kids with me to have his cast removed. I was worried. But they did great. They didn’t freak out when the saw was turned on and niether one of them asked if they could have a cast put on.

I cleaned out the bins of old clothes in the basement yesterday. I filled four oversized garbage bags to be dropped off at Goodwill and a fifth garbage bag filled with clothes that had apparently been home to our mouse family last year. Do you know what it does to someone like me to have to stick her hand in a bin that has obviously harbored small furry creatures? I’m surprised I didn’t go into cardiac arrest. I kept expecting little zombie mice to start crawling out of the box and up my arms. I didn’t even try to see if any of the clothes were salvagable. I just dumped them in the trash bag.

*shudder*

Lee and I are still attempting to keep up with P90X. The workouts themselves, while hard, are not that bad. Finding the time to do them, however, if proving to be a bit of a challenge. I can only get up at 5:00 AM so many days before I turn into crazy-psycho-needs-some-sleep mommy. I figure I’m of better use to my kids awake and alert but slightly flabby than super fit and walking in my sleep.

And finally, to cap off this most random of posts, I will let you know that it appears someone got a hold of my new camera yesterday and took several pictures. I’m not going to name any names, but the evidence is compelling.

To read my latest post for STL Family Life, click the tab on the right or right here.

Filed Under: funny stuff that happens, Kids, Kids do the darndest things, Landon, Life, Motherhood, Random, Sloan, Tia Tagged With: Funny Kids, Kids and Cameras, Kids and Casts, P90X, STL Family Life

The Carpenter’s Son

June 7, 2010 by Kelli

On Friday the kids were doing what kids do…fighting.

Well that, and playing outside. At one point I looked out the window and saw Sloan surrounded by several pieces of scrap wood, a hammer, nails, the electric screwdriver and a saw. Um…that seemed like a good moment to go check on them.

“What are you doing, bud?” I asked as I stepped out onto the driveway.

“Oh I’m just making a chair for Tia and me to sit on,” he replied. He balanced a piece of wood precariously on another and raise the hammer high above the tiny nail pinched between his fingers.

“Uh…Sloan?”

“Yeah?” he asked, squinting up at me.

“I think we should wait for daddy to come home before you start hammer nails into boards.”

It took a bit of convicing, but he finally agreed to hold off on smashing his fingers and sawing his arm off. And when Lee got home, Sloan pounced.

“Canwemakeachairdad, IreallyreallyreallywanttomakeachairformeandTiatositin. Pleasepleasepleasepleasepleeeeeaaaase?” Lee agreed to help make a chair…on Saturday morning.

And make a chair they did. When it was all assembled, we threw down a piece of plastic and opened up some cans of leftover paint and let them have at it.

It turned out quite nice:

Yep. We like our new chair…

We like it a lot!

Filed Under: Family, Kids, Landon, Lee, Life, Sloan, summer fun, Tia Tagged With: building with dad, Carpentry, Kids and prjects

What We’re Up To

June 3, 2010 by Kelli

It’s summertime. And the livin’ is easy…

But I’m not gonna let the livin’ be lazy. My kids get up at the crack of dawn. It’s not unusual for us to be up, fed, dressed and ready for the day by 7:30 – not because I want it to be that way, you see. I would give a limb for them to sleep until 8:00 just once. Heck, I’d be thrilled if they slept until 7:00! So with everyone waking up so early, what on Earth will we do with ourselves all day everyday? This week we started our summer schedule and built in to every weekday is “learning time” from 8:00-9:00.

It looks a little like this:

And Landon usually looks like this because I make him leave the room and play quietly by himself while the older kids work…something he’s not overly fond of.

This time is being spent on their Russian homework, Tia’s English Alphabet (poor girl, we’ve spent so much time on the Russian that she doesn’t know her English letters at all), Sloan working on his summer packet from school, math, reading and writing in their journals. It’s actually going really well. The kids are able to get all of their work out of the way early which frees them up to play the rest of the day.

We set a reading goal for Sloan this summer. If he reads 10 books, we’ll go to Chuck E Cheese. If he reads 20 books, we’ll go to the Magic House. If he reads 35 books in English and 5 books in Russian we will spend the whole day at Six Flags. So far he has completed one book and is chomping at the bit to go to the library to check out new books.

We’ll do that as soon as I pay off our overdue book fines. Ahem…

I think I’m going to like this schedule. It’s tough, for sure. I would much rather let them watch TV all morning so I could play on the computer, but I know this is a more productive way to spend these early morning hours. It means I will have less time to blog, which is probably not a bad thing. It will mean I need to be much more disciplined with my time, which is definately not a bad thing. But it will also mean that I will be able to send Sloan to 1st grade prepared and Tia will finally know the difference between the letter H in English and the letter H (which sounds like N) in Russian. It’s kind of important that I teach her that…

What are your summer plans?

Filed Under: discipline, Family, Kids, Life, Motherhood Tagged With: Kids, summertime, teaching kids

Memorial Day Weekend

May 31, 2010 by Kelli

This weekend has been full of time together. Blessed, sweet, down time together. We’ve done things like:

Hit the baseball…with our eyes closed.

Worn our soccer shirt because we’re sad soccer is over.

We haven’t let a little thing like a broken arm slow us down.

We’ve enjoyed having daddy all to ourselves for three whole days.

We’ve made funny faces while hitting the baseball.

We’ve let daddy give us instruction on our batting stance.

We haven’t worn shoes.

And we’ve eaten Star Wars Pancakes.

We’ve all spent time at the park and the pool as well as spent time this morning as a family praying for Sgt. Jeremy Nevil in Afghanistan. We love you Jeremy! We can’t wait until you’re home with your precious family.

Happy Memorial Day. I pray that it’s been blessed as we remember the men and women who have sacrificed so that we could enjoy the blessings of freedom.

May the Force be With You All!

Filed Under: Family, funny stuff that happens, Kids, Landon, Lee, Life, Sloan, Tia Tagged With: Kids playing ball, Memorial Day

Like Fish to Water…and other stuff

May 27, 2010 by Kelli

Yesterday was a big day in the life of the first born. He graduated.

Kindergarten, that is. I’ve never fully understood the point of kindergarten graduations to be honest, but if having a promotion ceremony means I get to watch 60 five and six year olds sing songs and beam with pride, then I’ll take it. Because it was awesome. I almost got a cavity from all the sweetness.

But here is my dilemma, oh internets. When I was three, I sang my first solo in church. It was Away in the Manger and I belted it out with pride. I have a vague memory of my dad standing at the bottom of the steps snapping a picture. By the time I was in Elementary School I was a performing addict. I would put plays on at my home making my brother suffer endlessly as he played a host of characters in my little productions. I loved drama (shocker, I know) and I loved singing on stage.

I was like a tiny Rachel Berry with a Wisconsin accent.

So how is it, my friends, that I have a child who is so terribly stage shy? Even more? He’s got a great voice, loads of personality and can feel the nuances and rhythms of music extremely well for a six year old. Yet every time he gets on stage he looks like this:

To his credit, he was one of four children who were asked to stand around the microphone for one song and he did it without bursting into tears. He didn’t sing his heart out, but he DID stand up there in front of the mic and I was thrilled. That was a big step for him and I almost clapped my hands raw.

I tried to upload the video but YouTube was being funky and I don’t have all day for it to load. I know you’re disappointed.

In celebration of the graduates accomplishment, I let him pick the restaurant for lunch – he chose Cheeburger, Cheeburger. So off we skipped to the mall, his graduation cap firmly placed on his head throughout the entire lunch. He is a first grader now.

How is it possible that I have a first grader?! Didn’t I just graduate college, like, yesterday?

My birthday’s coming up next week. That, combined with the fact that I have a first grader is causing a minor panic attack.

In addition to the commencement ceremony, we decided to hit the deck for the first time this year. The pool deck, that is. I’m so glad my kids love to swim. And they’re really good at it. They take to the water like little fish. And for the first time, I don’t have to be right in the water with them. I have to be close in case Landon’s float flips him over, but I don’t have to be in the water with kids hanging on me.

Which means I can sit on the side and work on my tan – because that’s what life is all about…gettin’ tan.

I kid. Don’t worry, I do watch my kids while they swim. While I’m getting a tan…

Sometimes I watch them through the lens:

This child is starting to look like a little man. Totally freaks me out.

I'm glad I sprung for the waterproof cast.

Filed Under: Family, funny stuff that happens, Kids, Kids do the darndest things, Landon, Motherhood, School, Sloan, Tia Tagged With: Kids swimming, kindergarten graduation, summertime

Wordless Wednesday: The Tooth Fairy is Going Broke

May 26, 2010 by Kelli

For those of you keeping track – okay, I’m probably the only one keeping track – Sloan has now lost six teeth. Two on the bottom and four on top. Every time he smiles I crack up a little.