Stairstep

When the weather allows it (this time of year, usually this means before 9am and after 5pm), the kids have enjoying playing outside at their sand/water table.  Molly loves standing up and grabbing the sand, and the boys have a blast burying their cars and Star Wars guys.   Don't these first two pictures look like those AT&T commercials that show the bars in all kinds of creative ways (I'm so tired and I can't think of a way to explain this more clearly!).

Molly watches intently as Drew pours:

Sweet Drew.....he's brushing the sand off her arm:

Even though Molly rarely put anything into her mouth until about a week ago (and these were taken a few weeks ago), she stuck her finger in her mouth and must have decided she liked the taste of sand.  Weird!  She did it once, then again and again until I had to stop her.  She just licked it right off!

 The boys came inside while I stayed outside for a few extra minutes with Molly.  We walked in to find them sitting very quietly, watching one of those live-action British comedies on PBS.  You know, the ones where the main characters always seem to be old men?  It was so funny.....the boys rarely sit so quietly even when they watch their own cartoons, but they must have thought this was pretty intriguing!

Finally, a break!

Dean has only been able to take a few days of vacation this summer, so most days it's just been me and the kids.  In these late days of summer, the days are starting to get brutal.  The boys complain every time I try taking them into stores, but with 100-degree days it's impossible to play outside (I don't really even want to go to our neighborhood pool, which has no shade).  There are a couple of indoor play options up in Houston, but I've gotten tired of going to the same places (as an aside, I think it is a shame that so few malls in Texas have an indoor play area for kids).  And our house just seems so boring.....I just turn into a crazy mom on those days when we spend more than about five hours here. 

So this week the boys have play days at their school every day from 9am-1pm.  Yay!  Molly and I did some things that I normally can't do when the boys are with me (rug shopping, for example).  And they had a fun time with their friends, especially Grant.  I was so proud because one of his teachers told me afterwards that he was the only one in the class who did everything when she asked and how she asked.  We are still having major issues with him at home, so I'll take this as a sign that I need to maximize the amount of time he spends in school this year!  Too bad our preschool doesn't offer a 5-day option!


We went to the pool last night and had so much fun!  For the first time, Molly had a blast in the pool (she's always been fairly indifferent towards it).  She kicked and laughed and had fun chasing her brothers in the pool while I held her.  Grant does a good job swimming by himself when he's wearing his floaties, and Drew loves jumping to Daddy from the edge.

 I never noticed this with the boys when they were babies, but Molly's feet were so wrinkled after being in the water.  Of course it's hard to tell in this picture, but it was actually fairly shocking!  Has anyone noticed their babies' feet doing this after being in a pool?

Molly's nursery

Finally.....a few pictures of Molly's room.  I have always loved pink, but after it was all done I wondered if maybe I should have toned the pink down a little!  Painting the room was just about the first thing we did, before I added everything else.....which happened to also be pink.  But now I love it.....it is probably my very favorite room in the house!  The color is Rosy Outlook by Sherwin Williams.  I like how it's got some substance but doesn't look like Pepto Bismol.

I bought the crib from a friend who was moving out of state and selling all of her kids' baby stuff.  We used a white crib for the boys that I was planning on using again, but my friend didn't charge me very much and I just couldn't pass it up.....I loved that it was so girly and sweet!  For the wall hangings, I just took the glass out of the frames, and I bought sheets of wrapping paper at the Paper Source.  All of the frames are a little taller than 12 inches, so I couldn't use 12X12 scrapbooking paper (my first idea).  Paper Source sells these sheets of wrapping paper for $3 or $4 per sheet (each sheet measures probably 2 feet by 3 feet).  Very expensive if you're using it to wrap a gift, but cheap if you're using it to decorate! 

I found this dresser and hutch on Craigslist.  And the blue polka dotted paper is another sheet from Paper Source.....I bought a bunch of them that day, not knowing what in the world I was going to do with them or which ones I'd end up using.    I just wrapped it around a piece of cardboard (one of the sides of a giant diaper box).  I love how it stands out a little and is just something other than pink and green.

Oops....I still hadn't filled that little green frame with a picture when I took this.   Oh well.  If I wait to take another picture of it, then I'm sure this post will really never get done!

The chair!  We originally had Drew's old glider in this spot, and I went searching on Craigslist one day a few months ago for a new glider for Drew's room (we had first bought a horribly uncomfortable rocking chair to replace his glider, but we just couldn't stand sitting in it anymore).  Anyway, I found this pink chair instead.  And the people selling it happened to live across the street from some friends (about 2 miles from our house).  It was meant to be!  I just love this thing.....it rocks back and forth and swivels around.  The boys love playing on it too.  See what I mean about adding pink to pink to more pink?

And two adorable blankets given to us by friends:

The view as you come in her room:

Changing table next to the closet (which I hardly ever use.....we bought this when Grant was born and we had a one-story house.  There is no way I'd bring Molly upstairs to her room just to change her diaper. Does anyone do this?).

The kids

Molly: 9 months already!  Like most 9-month-olds, she's doing all kinds of cute and silly things.  I love this stage so much.  She is crawling all over the place, exploring things and saying "deh deh deh" everywhere she goes.  She has learned to shake her head when she hears one of us say the word "no."  The other day she kept trying to grab a toy out of Drew's hand (she will go right up to whatever the boys are doing and try playing right along with them) and he said "no, Molly!" and she just started shaking her head back and forth.  It's so cute because her whole body moves side to side when she does it.

 She has started to enjoy her books and looks intently at the pictures.  She chirps at the babies and animals, and wants to touch every picture (I don't think the boys were like this).  Then she puts up quite a fuss when it's time to go to sleep.  Even though I've learned my lesson with every child, and with each new baby I've said that I'm going to sleep train them early, I just can't do it.  It just never feels right to lay my one-month-old or four-month-old down awake in the crib and just leave the room.  So my kids get nursed to sleep, which is fine until they're about this age and they don't always fall asleep while nursing anymore!  Molly screams and squirms when I try to rock her, so I really have no choice but to lay her in her crib and pat her back.   Hopefully she will learn quickly how to put herself to sleep.

 She is actually very independent when she plays.  Poor thing is carted around everywhere (we go out almost every morning.....I would go insane if I didn't!), so when we get home, she just takes off and plays like crazy.  She grabs toys and smashes them together, and thankfully she doesn't put anything in her mouth yet.  I can just see her first tooth starting to poke out a tiny bit today, so maybe now she'll start chewing on everything.  Or maybe she takes after her daddy and intuitively knows that things on the floor are disgusting and not worth putting in her mouth!

 

Drew: will be 3 in two months.  He is still my little sweetie....that's the best way to describe him.  He is almost past the terrible twos and you really wouldn't have even known it until just the past few weeks, when he's learned how to talk back a little ("no me WANT to!" is something we hear a lot now).  Remember his old blanky/brownie/ah-yah?  Actually, he had two of them.  They were velvet on one side and satin on the other.  Well, they are wonderful blankets until they start disintegrating.....they literally just start falling apart after so many washings.  So Drew just started tearing off pieces of the velvet (he doesn't really care about the satin) and carrying around those "tiny ah-yahs" with him.  He'd roll some of them up into tubes (see pictures below) if they were big enough.  People made the funniest comments about them in public.  When he's tired, he rubs his ah-yahs on his upper lip and I guess it relaxes him!  Seriously, though, the biggest ah-yahs we have left now are about 2 square inches.  Can you imagine how hard it is to find a 2-square-inch piece of fabric when he loses it?  Madness!

Grant: ah, Grant.  He is 4 and a half and definitely still the most difficult of the three (isn't the oldest supposed to be the helpful one?).  We are still having serious issues with his defiance, so that is a constant struggle.  But of course he has his great moments too.  He is big-time into anything related to Star Wars or Legos right now (or both, preferably!). He is constantly role-playing like he's one of the characters, talking to the other characters and "fighting" with his light sabers.  He has never been patient or calm enough to sit down and do anything art-related, but just recently I've gotten him to draw pictures of himself (drawing his self-portrait was the only part of his preschool evaluation last year that he earned a "progressing" score instead of "mastered," which did not surprise me at all.....I've never gotten him to draw anything for me except a few squiggley lines).  So here are a couple pictures Grant drew of himself, holding his "light savers."  I was so proud of him!

Let's try this again.

Wow, behind-the-scenes Blogger is a LOT different than the last time I posted.  Hopefully they have finally made it easier to insert and move pictures around?  

It has been a long time.  I think I just hit a wall after three solid years of blogging.  Instead of being a fun way to share things, it was starting to feel more like a burden and an obligation.  And when I have free time during the day, I certainly don't want to spend it doing something that makes me feel that way.  Actually, when all the kids are napping at the same time, it's been better for me to do something that doesn't involve the kids AT ALL....to get a complete break for that hour or however long it happens to be.    

But now three months have passed and I am really going to try to give it a fresh start.  The kids are always doing funny things and it seems like a shame to not be able to share that stuff.   I don't want to just let it die away (although now I'm sure people have quit checking back since it's been so long).

More to come!