Just a mom's take on things... » Mom of 3 Girls

Wordless Wednesday – When there are no paper towels to dry your face…

Deb — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 18:04:04 +0000

Don’t forget to see more photos at Wordless Wednesday, Project Alicia, Live and Love Out Loud, Seven Clown Circus, Parenting By Dummies,Better in Bulk, and 5 Minutes For Mom!

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Wordless Wednesday – When there are no paper towels to dry your face…

Bald is Beautiful?

Deb — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 04:50:00 +0000

For the past several months, my husband has been cutting costs – literally, by cutting his own hair. He inherited a set of clippers last year and has been putting them to good use. Mostly…

Last week, he found out exactly what happens when you’re in a hurry and not necessarily paying attention. As he clipped along, the guide for the clippers slipped off without his noticing- taking a swath of hair down to the scalp accidentally.

Oops.

Given the choice of either sporting a fairly large bald patch off the side of his forehead or…

Well, he took the second option – and shaved the rest of his head.

It’s an odd look for him – although he’s been cutting his hair fairly short since he’s been doing it himself, there’s a huge difference between that and bald.

I still don’t think I’m totally used to it yet. Which is fine, since he doesn’t plan on leaving it this way any longer than absolutely necessary. It’s really not the best look for him. Or at least it hasn’t grown on me yet.

He’s got a little stubble now – it’ll be interesting to see how the ‘growing in’ look does for him over the next few weeks.

I think he’ll pay a little more attention when he’s cutting his hair from now on!

Wordless Wednesday – Four years ago…

Deb — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 04:45:00 +0000

Because I’ve been feeling somewhat nostalgic this week, here’s are a couple of photos of the girls back from February 2008. Why that year? No reason, other than that’s the farthest back I can go on Flickr.

Don’t forget to see more photos at Wordless Wednesday, Project Alicia, Live and Love Out Loud, Seven Clown Circus, Parenting By Dummies,Better in Bulk, and 5 Minutes For Mom!

Brown suede boots – x3

Deb — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 04:08:00 +0000

When my second daughter was born, I do have to admit – I loved buying matching or coordinating outfits for my toddler and baby. Even with my mom’s warnings in my head (she’s the third of 3 girls and hated having duplicate hand-me-downs as a child), I just couldn’t help myself. I mean, aren’t these just too cute?

And yes, when my youngest daughter was born, I still couldn’t help myself. It was harder now to find coordinating options in all three sizes, but from time to time, I managed:

Over the years, it’s taken a while for some of these pieces to work their way down through all three girls. And sometimes it’s a bit sad when I finally have to say goodbye to something I’ve loved watching all three of the them wear in turn…

Then again, once poor Becca has made her way through not only one but two versions of any particular shirt or outfit, often it’s good to finally be done with it!

Nowadays when I buy clothes for the girls that are matching or coordinating, it’s more often either because I’m stocking up on a particular piece that’s a good deal or simply just by coincidence. Then there are times like this past weekend, when we headed into Justice at the mall, “just to look around” (because nothing in there is usually in my affordability range). But then I happened to find on a clearance rack, some pairs of dressy, fun boots – the kind that I never buy because they’re not an absolute necessity and for so long now we’ve only bought clothes that are needed, not ‘just because they’re cool’. And – after all the markdowns, the boots were less than $7 per pair. And of the four pairs they had left, three just happened to be sizes that fit my girls perfectly.

Now how could I pass that up?

So I splurged and spent $20 on three pairs of brown suede boots with sparkly toes. Because they’ve never had boots that weren’t winter boots or rain boots before. And it felt so good to be able to say ‘yes’ for once and get the girls something just for the heck of it.

Although… I do feel for poor Becca, who will be the recipient of both outgrown pairs of these boots eventually – it’s a good thing she likes them because she’ll be wearing brown suede boots with sparkly toes for many years to come!

Wordless Wednesday – Pampered Puppy

Deb — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 05:35:30 +0000

Before:

And after:

At least now she can see!

Don’t forget to see more photos at Wordless Wednesday, Project Alicia, Live and Love Out Loud, Seven Clown Circus, Parenting By Dummies,Better in Bulk, and 5 Minutes For Mom!

One fish, two fish…

Deb — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 04:40:00 +0000

My oldest daughter is a girl of great determination. Call it stubbornness, a need for control of her life (and everything in it), or whatever else, but there are times when she will simply not give up until she finds a way to make something happen.

She is also one of the most generous people that I know – always the one to give in when there’s an uneven number of something so that her sisters won’t complain. And she loves to do special things for others – she gets incredibly excited about surprising someone.

So it didn’t surprise me at all when she began talking about her teacher’s upcoming birthday – and about wanting to get a her a gift. Not just any gift – she had something specific in mind, namely some new fish for the classroom fish tank. The tank used to have a couple of Zebra Danios, but one had died. Knowing that these are ‘schooling’ fish that prefer to be in groups, Abbi and her best friend decided that the tank needed some more of them. So Abbi asked me if we could get some.

I was happy to oblige – what a fun surprise for her teacher! But then we hit a snag…

The birthday was today – and Abbi was determined (remember that stubbornness/control thing?) that she had to give the fish on the actual day, not any other day.

But, my youngest daughter came home from school sick yesterday and my husband was working late out-of-town, so we couldn’t go fish shopping last night. Even if I could have managed to get the fish bought, I wasn’t about to let her take them on the bus in the morning to school. And while normally I’d have had the afternoon free today, it was likely that Becca would be home from school today as well so I couldn’t leave to deal with fish.

We told Abbi that the fish were just going to have to wait an extra day. This did not make her happy. Not at all.

But instead of getting upset, Abbi thought. And thought some more. She told me that she was GOING to come up with a ‘master plan’ to make the fish surprise happen. I told her she had until bedtime to think, but after that she had to turn her brain off and get some sleep.

Wouldn’t you know it, but even when I couldn’t see a way for the logistics to work out – Abbi came up with a workable master plan.

And it succeeded.

Which meant that I found myself at Meijer this afternoon buying 3 little fishies and carrying them out in a plastic baggie (while my husband was home with Becca – Abbi had talked him into coming home for lunch). Then driving them over to school and dropping them off to my very excited daughter and her teacher.

I’d cleared things via e-mail with her teacher earlier in the day – not wanting to spoil the surprise but also not wanting the teacher to be unprepared about having live fish suddenly appearing in her classroom…

We set the bag in the tank to acclimate before I left and Abbi told me when she got home this afternoon that the fish were doing just fine. Her master plan had worked perfectly.

This child is seriously going to run the world someday, I have no doubt. At least if she puts her mind to it, she will.

Wordless Wednesday – How ironic…

Deb — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 05:15:50 +0000

Don’t forget to see more photos at Wordless Wednesday, Project Alicia, Live and Love Out Loud,Seven Clown Circus, Parenting By Dummies,Better in Bulk, and 5 Minutes For Mom!

I never thought I’d miss the stroller days…

Deb — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 05:02:10 +0000

With an hour to kill the other day, I decided to make a quick jaunt to the mall. Not with any specific agenda in mind (other than obtaining my caffeine fix for the afternoon), but just to wander. It had been a while since I’d walked around the mall – trips there lately have been for a specific purpose or just in and out of one particular store or another. And as I walked around at 2:30pm on a weekday afternoon, I realized how much my life has changed lately – without my even hardly realizing it.

I love watching my kids get older – hitting new milestones, forming personalities that give me a hint of the adults they’ll be someday, becoming more and more independent beings who don’t need me as much as they used to. But it makes me kind of sad too.

For instance, the mall used to be a common destination for us – especially on rainy or cold days when the kids just needed to run off their energy. We were often at the play area at the mall so much that the girls would get tired of being there – defeating the whole reason behind going to begin with, of course.

No more – only my littlest one is still (barely) small enough to technically be able to play in the mall play area. Even though siblings are allowed, my older girls are just too big and I’m too afraid that they’ll trample or knock over the little ones – who are supposed to be in there to begin with.

And speaking of the mall – back when I used to push an unwieldy stroller around, I would envy the moms whose kids walked quietly next to them. They didn’t have to try and squeeze through narrow store aisles or through doors that were shutting on them halfway through because the little automatic button-thingy wasn’t working. Their kids weren’t whining to get out and run (away) walk the whole time.

Oh, do I miss those stroller days! For one thing, ‘big’ kids don’t always stay quietly next to you and mine tend to complain about their legs being tired or their feet hurting from ‘all the walking’. And with no stroller, we have nowhere to stow coats, purses, shopping bags, etc. Which means that I end up getting loaded down carrying everyone’s stuff – or having to watch them drag or drop their coats along the way…

When my kids were smaller, I could walk through the mall with the kids safely strapped in the stroller and browse through what I wanted to look at. I could even hit multiple stores – yes, I might have to endure the whining or complaining about wanting to get out and walk, but still… I could ignore it if I had to

I hate taking the girls to the mall nowadays – all they do is beg to go to the stores that they want to look in (toy store, Claire’s, Justice, Game Stop), and then they either beg to buy stuff or complain that they can’t buy anything. And if I want to take a few minutes to browse through ‘my’ stores, I get the ‘I’m sooooo bored…’ thing over and over. Oh even the bookstore isn’t as much fun lately – the girls still want to sit down and read books, but now it’s chapter books, not picture books. And they want to finish the whole book while we’re there.

I wandered through the mall that day – at my own pace and in the stores I wanted to browse through. And I watched those young frazzled mothers pushing their kids in strollers, juggling diaper bags and sippy cups as they headed to the play area so their kids could run off some steam. Not so very long ago, that was me.

But now I am the stranger helping to pick up and return the dropped bottle or blankie to its rightful owner and to hold the door open so strollers can get through without banging mom’s shins. All while smiling to myself because I know that those moms can’t see past the frenzy which is life with babies, toddlers and preschoolers…

But soon enough, they’ll be the ones wandering the mall alone for a stolen hour wondering where the time has gone.

Weekend Update

Deb — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 06:45:21 +0000

The reasons I want to remember this weekend don’t have anything to do with the kind of activities that get marked on a calendar (although we did that too). They don’t involve a lot of photo-taking (sorry!) and I really can’t put a pin in exactly why the past two days were any different from the other weekends we’ve had.

Or maybe I can.

On Friday, we had five girls in the house instead of three – Hannah invited a friend over to play after school and Abbi’s new neighborhood friend was finally able to come over. Not only come over, but she stayed for dinner… And slept over. And hung out with us for a good portion of the day on Saturday.

We fed all five girls pizza for dinner Friday night and even though Becca didn’t have a friend over to play, she had enough fun with her sisters that she didn’t seem to mind. And she was (mostly) included in what everyone else was doing.

On Sunday, Hannah ended up over a friend’s house for the afternoon. It had snowed overnight, so Abbi spent a lot of the time outside playing with the kids who live next door and then invited the girls’ friend from next door over to play inside for a while as well.

It was one of those weekends when almost nothing was scheduled ahead of time, and we didn’t plan any family activities. But…

We played two family games of Apples to Apples.

The girls got to dance their hearts out at a wedding reception for Ron’s cousin and watched Ron and I slow dance together for the first time in way too long. And all five of us did the Hokey Pokey, the Chicken Dance, YMCA and more together all out on the dance floor.

We had our usual family ‘movie night’ with a movie that Hannah had ben dying to see (Dolphin Tale) but without Abbi, who was watching a different movie elsewhere in the house with her friend who slept over Friday night. Giving both of the older girls something they don’t usually get – snuggle time with Daddy for Hannah and social time with a friend for Abbi.

Oh the weekend wasn’t perfect – there was the usual share of whining, arguing and fighting amongst the girls. But somehow this weekend it didn’t seem to matter, at least not to me.

Maybe it’s my own outlook that’s changing – now that meds are kicking in and my moods have been improving.

Or maybe it’s just that we had a really good weekend together as a family.

Either way, I’ll take it. And hope for many more just like it.

Wordless Wednesday – Sixth Birthday Party

Deb — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 06:20:39 +0000

Don’t forget to see more photos at Wordless Wednesday, Project Alicia, Live and Love Out Loud, Seven Clown Circus, Parenting By Dummies,Better in Bulk, and 5 Minutes For Mom!