Motherhood | Page 17 | Minivans Are Hot

Girl and Boy become Mom and Dad

July 14, 2010 by Kelli

With our lovely and eventful honeymoon now over, Lee and I set up house in Frisco, Texas just north of Dallas. We had a sweet little third floor apartment that I loved not only for its charm but also for the fact that I could vacuum the entire place without once having to unplug the vacuum cleaner. Big bonus!

When we returned from our honeymoon, the job that we thought was lined up for Lee had fallen through. But, thankfully, another job opened up immediately as a sales rep for Hewlitt Packard. He was going to make 36 grand a year and we were certain we were rolling in the dough.

I commenced to freelance writing and editing. I had a gig as a co-author with Joe White on an upcoming devotional and I also had several contacts who threw ghostwriting opportunities my way. Because these took a lot of time, I decided to forgo the traditional 9 to 5 job and get something with more flexible hours.

Enter WOGA – the World Olympic Gymnastics Academy. As a former gymnast, I had the experience needed to work at this high class facility. As a russian speaker, I had an immediate in with my bosses, Valery Liukin and Evgeny Marchenko. So every afternoon, I reported to work and while I coached my level four and five girls, I had the unique privilage of watching a then 13 year old Carly Patterson and 10 year old Nastia Liukin train. They were amazing even as little girls. Lee and I also forged some wonderful relationships at WOGA and every time I return to Dallas I try to visit and say hello to my dear friends.

In addition to WOGA, Lee and I attended Chuck Swindoll’s Church where, every Sunday, we sat next to Cynthia Swindoll and soaked up the most amazing teaching. To say those first years of our marriage were blessed is an understatement. From our friends at church and at work, we have nothing but fond and sweet thoughts of those days.

But, as happens in life, we experienced our first blow in 2002 when Lee was fired from his job. We were devastated, shocked and scared. We loved our life in Dallas and didn’t want to leave, but after four months of looking for work, we had to make the difficult decision to pack up and move. Lee got a job in St. Louis and we moved in with my parents.

Humbling.

In October, 2002, Lee and I had a little marital conversation. It went something like this:

Kelli: “I’m ready to have a baby.”

Lee: *crickets*

Kelli: “What do you think?”

And thus Lee laid out a long list of reasons why we should, in fact, NOT have a baby. They included things like – “We aren’t making very much money,” – “We don’t have a place to live,” – “You just started a new job.”

“Let’s talk about this again in six months,” Lee suggested to which I agreed.

One week later I found out I was pregnant.

So I did what any reasonable wife would do with such amazing news. I called my husband at work and broke the news over the phone.

After the initial shock wore off, we were both very excited…and terrified. But look how cute we were:

We did find a house in January of 2003 and spent the next seven months gutting and rehabbing it. Because there’s nothing less stressful than trying to rehab a house when you have a pregnant hormonal wife breathing down your neck…

On July 10, 2003, after five hours of intense labor, Sloan Alexander came screaming into the world. He was beautiful and fat and sweet and perfect and we could not have been more elated.

We had the house finished enough to bring Sloan home to it a week after he was born. We’re still in that home today. It seems to have gotten smaller over the years, but we love it there.

When Sloan was a little over a year old, we decided to give him a sibling. Little did we know it would take almost a year to get pregnant the second time around. It was a very discouraging time for me and while I know that many couples struggle for much, much longer than we did, it gave me a small glimpse of the heartache and frustration of infertility.

Finally, though, after much heartache and prayer, we conceived our second child. When I was pregnant with Sloan, Lee was adamant about finding out the sex before he was born. I, however, wanted to wait. So he agreed that we could be surprised the second time around and true to his word, we did not find out the gender.

We just assumed it would be a boy. There had only been one girl in roughly five generations of Stuarts so we didn’t think we’d change that trend. I washed up all the baby boy clothes and lovingly placed them in the nursery. We chose the name Sawyer Brayden and we waited to meet Sloan’s baby brother. (Sloan, incidentally, though only two years old at the time, insisted that he would be getting a sister.)

On my due date, February 2, 2006, my water broke at 4:20 am. At 6:19 our daughter, Katya Rose, was born. That was a good day.

After Tia, we agreed to wait a bit before having a third child. The only snag came when Tia was 13 months old and we deiceded to take our first vacation alone together since our honeymoon. Four weeks later I held a positive pregnancy test in my trembling hands.

Lee was leaving that afternoon to visit his family in Arkansas for the weekend. I made the mistake of telling him before he left. He was shocked and his initial reaction was anger. In fact, we barely spoke all weekend. I was sick with worry and felt like somehow I had done something wrong. It was a bad weekend.

I even called a friend nearly in tears to get a little reassurance that we were going to be okay and we hadn’t detrimentally harmed our older children by forcing another sibling upon them so quickly.

Thankfully, though, Lee came home with a fresh perspective and calmed my anxious heart and, with a little time, we grew excited about this new babe. Then, at ten weeks, I rushed to the ER, bleeding heavily, sure I was miscarrying. We discovered the next day that the amniotic sac had torn away from the uterine wall. The doctor used words like “spontaneous abortion” and “D & C” and I feared like never before. Because as he said those things I was staring at a tiny, beating heart on the ultrasound machine. I could see arms and a facial profile and all I could think was that if my body failed, this life would end.

It didn’t end, though. After a moneth of bedrest, the issue corrected itself and on December 16, 2007, Landon Lee was born after what seemed an unending labor and delivery. (I was in the hospital a whopping two and a half hours before he was born – my longest stay in the delivery room ever!)

And here we sit – a week away from our tenth anniversary, three children sleeping soundly one room over. We look a little older than we did the day we walked down the aisle and our lives are definately filled with more crazy.

But I wouldn’t trade that crazy for all the riches in the world. Especially because these three faces…

Are the product of what began on the Saturday afternoon in July of 2000. From where I sit, it’s been one heck of a decade.

To read our entire love story – click here.

Filed Under: Family, funny stuff that happens, Kids, Landon, Lee, Life, Marriage, Motherhood, Sloan, Tia Tagged With: anniversaried, children, Family Planning, pregnancies

Lemonade for Haiti

July 13, 2010 by Kelli

“Mom! Can I clean the bathroom?”

“Uh…sure,” I reply, trying to keep my jaw from dropping to the floor.

“Will you pay me a dollar?”

Ah yes. The catch.

“Why should I pay you a dollar?” I ask. “The bathroom is dirty because you made it dirty. Don’t you think you should clean it up for free?”

“But I want to raise money to send to children in Haiti!”

“Oh. Well, I guess you can have a dollar then.”

“Great! After that I’m going to go around the neighborhood and knock on people’s doors and see if I can walk their dogs to earn money for Haiti. I want to get $111.00.”

I start calculating how many miles he’s going to have to walk to come up with that money. It doesn’t seem entirely realistic. “Hey bud,” I call to my laboring son. “Come here – I have an idea.”

And thus was birthed the idea for the lemonade stand for Haiti.

I haven’t put on a lemonade stand since I was a kid myself. And it ended…poorly. I was eleven-ish and we lived in a brand new St. Louis subdivision. The neighbors across the street joined me and together we made up lemonade and situated ourselves on the street in front of some new construction. We figured the builders would like to come buy our lemonade.

But they didn’t. Despite our shrills screeches for LEMONAAAAAAAADE!!!!

So we put our heads together and came up with a solution to make more money. My neighbor ran over to her house and raided her parents garage refridgerater. She came out moments later dragging a cooler filled with…beer.

We commenced to shouting: LEMONAAAAADE…BEEEEEER!

And lo and behold, the builders flocked to us. We sold several cans of beer and were racking in the dough when her dad came tearing acorss the yard. The construction workers scattered.

“What are you doing?” he stammered.

“We’re selling lemonade and beer,” we said proudly. “We’re making a lot of money.”

“Girls!” he cried. “This is illegal. You can’t sell beer.”

And that was the last time I worked a lemonade stand.

Despite the popularity of the beer, I refrained from suggesting to Sloan the illegal selling of alcohol. Instead we kept it innocent – lemonade and chocolate chip cookies. I also did the smart thing and put out the word on Facebook and Twitter. Thank you to the sweet friends who came out and supported my tender hearted sons’ dream. You helped him reach his goal and more.

The neighbor kids joined us in flagging down passing cars. Unfortunately there was a competing stand down the road, but that didn’t hamper the spirits of the kids. They waved, they jumped and flapped their arms like chickens, all the while screeching LEEEEEMONADE!

And people, when they discovered that we were accepting donations for this organization, were extremely generous, paying five, ten and in one case forty, dollars for a glass of lemonade and a freshly baked cookie.

I was humbled as I watched Sloan work so hard to earn money. Earlier that weekend, I had taken him to Target to use a gift card he got for his birthday. He had his wallet with him and in his wallet was $20. His gift card had $15 on it. He saw several toys that he wanted that were more than $15. I never said a word to him, I wanted to see how he would respond.

He refused to spend that $20. “That’s the money for Haiti,” he told me. And he picked out a smaller toy and a pack of gum instead. Where did this child of mine come from? It’s humbling to me. There is often an ugliness in my heart that crops up when the need to give presents itself. I get fearful that by giving away my money I may potentially not have what I need (or want) somewhere down the road. So to see my seven year old give with reckless abandon, not caring about what he might be sacrificing, I was floored.

And honored. Honored to be his mom. Ashamed of my own ugliness. Excited to help him work to earn $111.00.

Who wouldn’t want to buy a glass of lemonade from a face like this?

We were out there about an hour and a half before the sky started to fall. As the rain fell, we grabbed our stuff and rushed home where we counted our money. $120. He reached his goal.

“Oh wait!” Sloan cried as we sat on the floor with the money. He rushed to his wallet and grabbed the money out of it. “I want to put this in.”

Lee and I looked at each other and back at Sloan, his big blue eyes so sweet and big. “You know what, buddy,” Lee said. “Why don’t you keep it.”

We went on to explain how God blesses a cheerful giver and we thought that Sloan deserved to keep the money he had already earned as a blessing for his heart.

“Well, can I put some of it in for the children in Haiti?” Sloan asked.

“You can put all of it in, if you really want to,” Lee said. “But if you want to keep it, you have our permission.”

He thought about it for a minute and took out five dollars. “I want to give some of it to Haiti,” he said.

And then together as a family, we prayed a blessing over this jar of money – and over a certain seven year old who taught me quite a bit in the span of one day.

Blessings.

Filed Under: Family, funny stuff that happens, Kids, Life, Motherhood, Sloan, summer fun Tagged With: Islego Ministries, Kids and lemonade stands, Raising money for Haiti, Sloan

Seven

July 9, 2010 by Kelli

Tomorrow morning, July 10, at 6:21 am will mark seven years since I first became a mother. It is hard to express in words exactly how proud I am of this child and the young man he is growing into.

He is tenderhearted and caring.

He is funny and expressive.

He is smart and thoughtful.

He is spunky and outgoing.

He is quick to anger (we’re working on this) but also quick to ask for forgiveness.

He aches when he knows he’s hurt somone’s feelings and will swiftly work to make things right.

He is also quick to offer forgiveness.

He’s loyal and will be a friend for life.

He is a remarkable little boy who grew from a brute of a baby (9 lbs 3oz – no drugs…Oy):

Into a beast of a toddler:

Into an adorable preschooler:

Into the handsome little boy he is today:

He’s athletic, able to smack a baseball and golfball with the savvy of someone twice his age.

He can speak and read in two languages. This blows my mind.

He harbors a minor obssession with Star Wars and can rattle off a web of details that I find rather shocking. It’s terribly adorable to hear him school his brother and sister on the ins and out of the Jedi Order.

Sloan is accutely aware of the suffering of others and desperately wants to help. Currently he is raising money for Haiti and he is passionate about earning enough to help the kids there who are suffering.

Sloan prays with a boldness that I admire and love. Listening to him pray is like being in a tent revival. He brings the fire in his prayers and it’s hard not to jump up and shout “Halleljah!”

In seven years, Sloan has taught me so many things. He’s taught me to love people, to smile more, to forgive others swiftly, to trust in the Lord’s protection without question, to take a deep breath before speaking, to pray passionately, to care for others, and so much more…

But mostly, he’s taught me that I have the capability to love far more deeply and powerfully than I ever thought possible. I didn’t know I could feel such a depth of emotion for one tiny person until Sloan came along. He is more than I could have ever asked or imagined in a son and I am abundantly grateful to be called his mom.

Happy Birthday, Sloan.

Filed Under: Family, Kids, Motherhood, Sloan Tagged With: Happy Birthday, Motherhood, Sloan

It only took me 20 years

June 30, 2010 by Kelli

I have lived in St. Louis since I was 12 years old, minus the six years during and after college when I lived in Texas. And in all that time, I never once visited the Missouri Botanical Gardens. I’ve seen pictures and heard people rave about what a great place it was, but for some reason, I had just never gone.

Until yesterday. When I found out how beautiful the weather would be, I quickly packed up the kiddos and headed out the door. I have since found out that it would have been wiser to wait until today as admittance is free on Wednesday mornings, but other than that little misstep, it was the perfect day to go. With a high of 84, it was very pleasant. The kids had a blast looking at all the different flowers and exploring the rocky paths that crossed babbling brooks and quaint bridges.

“It feels like Narnia!” Sloan yelled at one point. And it kind of did. You know, minus the giant talking Lion…

We saw the dinosaur exhibit. Landon wasn't sure about the T-Rex...

So he roared at it.

I'm fairly certain those fish were large enough to swallow Landon whole - maybe even Tia.

I'm not sure if this was allowed, but my kids can hardly resist climbing a tree.

Landon with his Justin Bieber hair.

Filed Under: Family, Kids, Landon, Life, Motherhood, Sloan, Tia Tagged With: Missouri Botanical Gardens

Toy Story 3: Better Titled “Let’s Tear Mom’s Heart From Her Chest and Stomp On It”

June 22, 2010 by Kelli

Thank you, Pixar and Disney, for making me a blubbery, sobby mess. Thank you for gently forcefully ripping my heart from my chest and using it to play ball for 109 minutes. Thank you for making me so emotional that my husband, when asking what I thought about the movie, had to make a hasty retreat as tears shot out of the corners of my eyes like daggers.

Thank you, Pixar and Disney, for Toy Story 3.

I took my kids yesterday to see the final installment of the Toy Story saga. It’s been 15 years since I saw the first Toy Story. I was a senior in high school. Now I’m a mom of three. And the message of this movie was not at all lost on me. Especially given the fact that Tia sat on one side of me clutching her beloved Lovey Bear and Landon sat on the other, his Sock Monkey nestled snug beneath his arm. I couldn’t help but look at those two little toys, both so loved and content at this moment. What will it be like in fifteen years when they are cast off – no longer needed for comfort and companionship?

Excuse me for a moment while I go sob in the bathroom…

It didn’t even dawn on me when we left the house that they were carrying those toys with them to the theater to see a movie about the fate of beloved toys. But looking at my babies as Andy drove away on the big screen with his faithful companions left to watch his tail lights fade in the distance, I got so terribly emotional. It doesn’t help that I’m slightly hormonal, or that it’s been a tough week parenting.

As we drove home after the movie, I glanced in the rearview mirror at these children of mine – children who I love desperately. Time goes by so quickly. Yesterday (or so it seems) I married Lee. And then I blinked and it’s suddenly ten years later. If I weren’t such a prim and proper lady I’d let out an expletive. Instead I’ll settle for a simple, WTH! How does it move so quickly?

I read this on Nicole’s blog yesterday:

“When you’re holding your baby and he’s falling asleep in your arms slowly and the evening is slipping away and your mind is racing through the thousand things at the top of your list, and you begin to feel – as all fathers and mothers inevitably feel from time to time – that you’re wasting your time taking care of this little kid, try to remember that next year you won’t be able to hold him in the same way, he won’t go to sleep in your arms, and after a few more years, you’ll be happy to get a hug on the run. Our children are here to stay, but our babies and toddlers and preschoolers are gone as fast as they can grow up – and we have only a short moment with each. When you see a grandfather take a baby in his arms, you see that the moment hasn’t always been long enough.” S. Adams Sullivan, The Father’s Almanac

This parenting thing is hard. “Enjoy it,” everyone tells you, “Because it goes by so fast.” Even a bunch of animated toys told me the very same thing yesterday. What no one tells you, though, is that sometimes you have to work really, really hard to enjoy it. And that is, perhaps, what had me most emotional. I know it goes by fast, I know I need to enjoy it, I know I need to cherish the moments because they’re over in the blink of an eye – but to be quite honest, I don’t always enjoy being a mom. I love my kids, of course. They are so much a piece of me that I hardly remember life without them. But raising them…it’s hard.

Of course, it’s supposed to be hard now. “Put in the hard work when they’re young so that when they grow into teenagers you can reap the rewards of that hard work.” This is another piece of sage advice I cling to. On the days when it feels like all I do is battle, I remember that it’s better to battle them now when the environment is controlled than to battle them as teenagers when the battlefield is full of hidden mines and has a much larger scope.

But I would be lying if I said that I enjoy every moment of every day. Because I don’t.

I do, however, enjoy more than I don’t enjoy. Stay with me…Yesterday, and the few days leading up to it, was a hard day. There were many battles, many fights, many tears. And I was battle weary. Today, this morning, has been filled with sweetness. The kids have played together this morning without argument (and when I say argument, I mean screaming bloody murder at one another – sorry to any neighbors who were awakened by Sloan and Tia’s death match on the front porch Sunday morning). They’ve been pleasant and sweet, obedient even. And it hasn’t been a stretch to enjoy them. Yesterday, I had to search a couple of times for ways to like them.

So I was partly grateful to Toy Story for reminding me, yet again, that the time I have with my children when they’re young is fleeting. Yesterday was one day. There will be more days like it – days when loving my children is easy but liking them is hard. But I know, without a shadow of a doubt, that I dread this time in our lives coming to an end. There are sweet days to come, moments to celebrate, birthdays to rejoice in, milestones to accomplish – but the days of them sitting in my lap, a stuffed animal tucked beneath their arms…those days won’t last forever. And it’s those moments that I cherish the most. I tuck each one away in the crevices of my heart.

And I will now commence to crying once more. Dumb cartoon movie…

Filed Under: Family, funny stuff that happens, Kids, Kids do the darndest things, Landon, Life, Motherhood, Sloan, summer fun, Tia Tagged With: Crying through Toy Story 3, Motherhood, parenting, Toy Story 3

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

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

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

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: