The enforcer

Violet has loved climbing and jumping on me since she first became mobile.  I have tolerated it for years, but now that she's a little bigger and stronger, I've decided it needs to stop.  I have nothing against playing, even rough housing with your kids.  But when I'm obliviously talking to my friend and suddenly get hit with 35 pounds of knees and elbows, I get pretty mad. She does this a lot, too, and many times it's either after I'm done and I've told her to stop or when I'm not even remotely paying attention.  She's not extremely heavy, but since I'm small and slightly spacey, I get knocked over pretty easily.  She's also the boniest child I've ever seen and has no idea what putting her elbow on my thigh and then resting her entire weight on it does to me.  It's not pretty.

I've strategized a plan for making her stop.  She needs to realize that people get hurt when she does that.  However, enforcing this plan kind of makes me feel like this:

Okay, not that bad.  What I do when she won't stop running and jumping on me is put out my hands in front of me to stop her.  I'm not sure why she doesn't realize that she will fall over if my hands are there, but she gets really mad when I do that.  "MOM!  You pushed me!  That wasn't nice!"  No, Violet, you were jumping on me after I told you to stop and you ran into my hands and fell over.  Sorry you got hurt doing exactly what I warned you not to do.  Same goes for if she jumps on my arms-- I simply don't catch her and she falls on the ground, claiming that I "pushed" her. 

Yeah, she really hates this.  I kind of feel like a mean mom, but it's really hard for me to have sympathy for my kids if they are doing something I've repeatedly warned them not to do.  One way or another, she has to learn that jumping on people is dangerous.  Especially with me around.

Foam.

My city is better than yours.

 

There is a park here in Houston called Discovery Green that puts on a "toddler time" every Tuesday.  Sometimes they just do story time, but every once in awhile it's a full-blown party.  Yesterday was one of those times.  They had a foam pit for the kids to play in, and Violet didn't shy away. Here are some pictures from the event.

 Charlie clung to me most of the time, but when our turn was over he was comfortable chasing around the "snow" that flew out of the pit.

This park is also beautifully landscaped, has an enormous splash pad, and is one of my favorite places to do pictures.

I vote this as the best urban park ever.

Shouldn't she be in preschool?

Have you met Violet? She's tall and smart and wonderful and makes people think that she's a little older than she really is.  And I think that's why I'm always getting the question, "Shouldn't she be in preschool?"

It's beginning to annoy me a lot.  First of all, she's 3.  THREE!  She has TWO YEARS before she starts kindergarten, and even that should only be a half-day thing in my opinion.  But I constantly meet people who send their one-year-olds to "preschool"(which I like to refer to as "glorified babysitting") and I feel like they think it's weird that Violet doesn't do the same.  Give me a break, people.  I already have to take my husband to school every day.  I'd like to wait until he's finished with school before our children start. (I'm not counting the once-a-week co-op preschool that we do.)

So the other day I responded to this question by saying that I may put her in a half-day preschool the year before she starts school, after we move into a house and Brandon starts his job. And the response I got back was, "it's too bad that you don't know where you're going to live yet, because it may be hard to get into a good preschool if you don't apply now.  There are some preschools where you have to apply before the baby is born, and even then, you still may not get in."

At that point, I couldn't contain myself anymore and I replied with a rant in which I might have made myself look like a terrible mom.

IT DOESN'T MATTER. I don't care if she gets into a good preschool. I care that she is in a preschool where she is safe and they take care of her, but that's all. Because once she starts kindergarten, they're all going to the same public schools and there's not much you can do about that.  If you find a highly exclusive preschool that claims that 80% of their "graduates" go on to Ivy League schools, know this:  it's only because parents who are obsessed enough with their children's education to spend months getting them into something when the kids can't even wipe their own noses are likely going to be that obsessive all the way to college.  And when they leave home, those kids are going to be on medication for depression because they've never been given the chance to do anything on their own.  I'm not that kind of parent.  I can let Violet learn things on her own (by the way, playing at home is a great way to learn things) and be confident that she will be successful in school because she is bright and creative. 

And it's not going to have a thing to do with her preschool.

I call for a role reversal weekend

Sometimes I am a great mom, and look at my kids and their adorable little faces and think to myself, "I think I want to have 5 kids."

And sometimes, when it's 10:30 and Violet is still not asleep, I look at them and think, "I think I'll get my tubes tied tomorrow."

Okay, it doesn't get that bad. But things get out of hand very quickly around here and the only thing I can do to keep myself from being admitted to the psychiatric ward is to think of how funny it is.  No, it's not funny when I'm tired and my kid just peed on the couch.  But you know what is funny? Thinking of what would happen if I were the toddler and Violet and Charlie were the parents.  And, oh my gosh, just imagine the fun we would have!

When I have a scary dream, I could just crawl into bed with them.  And when they wake up and wonder what's all wet-- Surprise!  That's me!  Time to do laundry!

Or I could wake Charlie up by putting a book on his face and saying, "Read dis. Read dis. Read dis. Read dis. Read dis. Read dis. Read dis. Read dis....."

They could take me to HEB and let me pick out my own shopping cart.  I of course would refuse to get in it unless I found one shaped like a racecar that weighs more than a baby elephant.  I would tell them that I urgently have to go potty as soon as we are in the cereal aisle, and when I get into the bathroom I would definitely put my hand in the tampon dispenser to see if it gave out candy.  And even though I came into the store wearing flip flops, I would mysteriously leave wearing socks and no shoes and just leave them to wonder how I pulled that one off.

I could make Violet make dinner for me, and after it's finally ready and I've been telling her I'm starving for an hour, I would announce that I no longer like rice, or some other basic staple of the human diet.  Yep, I'll just have fruit snacks.

When she finally puts me to bed, I'll be really cute and try really hard to convince her to let me watch a movie in my bed while I fall asleep.  I'll ultimately settle for a cup of water, as long as that girl doesn't have the nerve to put three ice cubes in it instead of four (I'm telling you, I WILL count them).  And she'd better be prepared with an apology if she gives me a yellow straw instead of a blue one.  And I may come out a couple of times if she's doing something really interesting like loading the dishwasher... but other than that, I PROMISE I'll stay in bed.

Yep, having kids is pretty fun. Especially when you look at it from their eyes.

Shooting macro

I don't have a true macro lens. What I do have are tubes that you can attatch to your lens that make it sort of function like a macro lens.  It's a pretty cool concept, but they are incredibly hard to shoot with.  The depth of field is extremely narrow and everything shows up dark.  Anyways, I just wanted to make sure you appreciated how hard these were to take.  

Not such a bad year

Today I felt a little burned out. Brandon has been working so hard lately on internships, theses, and job applications that it seems like we've hardly had time to spend together.  Instead of enjoying weekends I now dread them because Brandon is usually still working and I'm still stuck entertaining the kids.  Because of all his thesis papers, his schedule will be like this for the next 9 months.  I could literally grow a human in the time it takes him to finish them.

 

Tonight I installed dropbox on my computer and it uploaded all of my camera photos.  Looking through all of them reminded me of some moments that I might have otherwise forgotten.  I guess it hasn't been such a bad year after all, and it made me think that maybe this next little while before Brandon finishes school may not be so bad, either.

 

This year Violet learned how to take selfies on my camera and hasn't stopped since.

I got to go to the Nutcracker with my cute girl.

She took her first gymnastics class-- and loved it.

She spent some quality time with daddy.

I got paid to paint for the first time ever.

I was in an art show.

We spent an hour trying to get home from Costco in a terrible Houston flood.

I spent 6 hours at the DMV and got some seriously weird Salvadorian food while I was waiting.

This moment happened.

And so did this one.  I love them so much.