Sigh...

I had this whole post written entitled "confessions in stellar parenting" that was, if I say so myself, incredibly witty and well written. It confessed all the things I thought I would never do until I actually had kids. And I wrote about the time I realized that we were the white trash family with the son with a rattail, the daughter with the mullet, and the baby that's filthy. You know, the one that people look at and say, "they need to learn about birth control." And then I accidentally deleted it. But the pictures somehow saved. So here are some pictures about the amazing job I am doing parenting, and the things I let my kids do (especially if it will result in a cute picture). Except the last one, that one I just thought was cute.

Dora wins again.

My kids have the ability to sense the worse possible times to need to be held. Every time I try to do anything productive (so maybe once or twice a day), work around a hot stove/oven, or eat a hot meal, suddenly my legs are squished between skinny arms and chubby cheeks. "Hode yoo", Zeke will say, standing there with his blanky. "Mommy, can you come nuggle me on the couch? Why don't you want to nuggle me?" Cooper has mastered the guilt trip already. And Payton adds "WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA" for a little extra noise. Do you know how hard it is to say no to nuggling on the couch, or holding my boy with his blanky? But seriously, I would never get anything done!

So today I decided that after my morning routine of returning emails while I eat breakfast (and maybe facebooking just a little), I will devote myself whole heartedly to my babes. I can't even remember how many times I said, "Not right now, Mommy wants to be able to eat breakfast without anyone climbing on me", and "Go sit on the couch, I will be there in just a few minutes." I finished breakfast right as Dora started. Swinging around in my desk chair, arms open wide, big grin on my face, I triumphantly say, "Who wants to come sit on my lap?!?" "Dora!!!" Zeke yells as he grabs his blanky and runs to stand in front of the tv. Cooper is already hunkered under a blanket and doesn't even look my way, "No thanks, Mom."

Sigh.

Long time no...time. To write that is.

You would think that with Cooper in Asilo now, I would have all kinds of time to do stuff like blog. That's what I always think. Unfortunately, I have found I somehow have less time to do stuff. By the time we bundle up, walk Cooper to school, walk back home, clean up whatever messes/wounds Zeke has managed to accumulate during travel, and get the baby down for a nap, it's about time to get all bundled up to begin the pick up trip. And then we come home and eat lunch and by then everyone is so exhausted that my house looks like this:



And I know what you're thinking now- that this is a perfect time to sit and mess around on the computer! Again, this is what I always think, too. However, in reality I have approximately 30 seconds to a) take a shower (possibly the only one I'll get this week), b) take on some housework, or c) sit and eat junk food/watch tv and attempt to not weep out of sheer exhaustion/the feeling of being overwhelmingly behind in, well, just about everything. "A" and "C" get chosen alarmingly more than "B". But then it is back at it, nursing the baby, wiping hineys that have just produced "tree whole poops!!", and partaking in the internal dialogue of "do I spend time playing with my kids, or actually clean a bathroom or mop a floor so that we can take our shoes off in the house without stepping on something crunchy or sticky?" Somehow with three kids three and under, there just isn't time for all of it. So in the interest of saving myself some time, but still keeping anyone bothering to read this up to date, here is the Cliff's notes version of what we've been up to.

Jesse surprised me for my birthday with a trip to Amsterdam. They had Starbucks. It made me happy.

Amsterdam was beautiful.

We wandered around a lot.

We also ate a lot. This was dinner in France :).

It was yummy.

Zeke turned 2!!

He had a Wall-E cake that he liked. A lot.

Poor Payton was left to watch from the sidelines, as usual.

Zeke was really excited about all his cool new toys.

Payton is getting so big and can actually play with things now. She loves her excersaucer.

The kids were all sick, so we spent a lot of time watching movies.

Payton loves her Daddy. Payton loves people in general, but especially Mommy and Daddy.

And she's really cute, too.

We took the kids rock climbing. Twice, actually. This is how they feel about it:

A hand up to get started.

Go, boy, go!

Cooper is a climbing fool.

She loves to climb to the "ABCD's"

She was almost as proud of herself as we were of her.

Climbing away.

Uh oh, Mom's turn.

This looks intense, but I'm actually about three inches off the ground. I was watching the kids run wild, hence the worried look (there is a river on the other side of the road).

"I think you've taken enough shots of the booty. Do you think I could come down now?"

On the sidelines, as usual. Happy just to be there, as usual.

First Day of School

My oldest baby started Asilo today (Italian preschool). I have almost made it to nap time without any major break downs :). This is something I have stressed over for a couple months now, and especially the last week. Are we doing the right thing sending her off to a new environment where she doesn't know anyone and doesn't speak the language? I am terrified, and in all her innocence, she doesn't know to be anything but excited. Which makes me even more terrified! What if she is lonely? What if she can't communicate what she needs? What if ::gasp:: I don't have control of a situation that my kid is in? And then of course there is the aspect of it that my little buddy is no longer going to be around 24 hours every day to be with me and keep me company. Last night as I was crying to my husband about losing my little buddy, it occured to me that our youngest is only three years away from this, and that made me cry even harder..."In three years Payton is going to go off to school, too, and then I'll be ALL ALONE". My loving, patient husband held me and said, "You'll always have me..." He is so good to me.

So off to school we went today. Cooper was so extremely excited. The first three days one of us goes with her, and we stay for two hours. Then, slowly, they will work into Monday through Friday, 9-4:30 (although I am not sure my little one will be going quite that long, as I don't work like most Italians do). Our plan is to do half days, and maybe only three days a week, we'll see. But today was just hang out, meet the teachers, explore the room, and fill out paperwork (which was tedious as I sat with my dictionary and looked up each word). Cooper did really well, running right in to play, and hugging her teacher when I introduced them. We were a little out of the loop as far as what to bring. They had told me to bring a towel, so I showed up with a big, American sized beach towel. All the Italians had matching hand towel sized towels, that were each embroidered with their child's name. And matching, embroidered bibs for lunch time. I was the only one taking pictures, and Cooper's stuff was labeled Stoda, as I had apparently written her name backwards when I was registering her, so they thought her name was Stoda Cooper (neither are names they've ever heard, so they had no idea). That took me about 10 minutes by itself to get sorted out :). But all in all it went really well, Cooper is excited to take Daddy back tomorrow, and I can't wait for him to get to spend the time with her, and for me to get to spend some good time with my boy. And I think I'm doing pretty good for the first day of my kids growing up and starting their own lives!

Photo Dump

I have so many pictures that I have taken lately that I am just going to try to narrow it down to some of my favorites and throw them up here. Be forewarned though, there will probably be a lot. I have been posting them on Facebook, also, so you can always check more out there :)

Cooper has learned how to cross her eyes

The epitome of fat and happy:

I found him watching tv like this one day

Practicing his rock climbing on my couch