Summer's Coming To An End!

It's Labor Day weekend and that means, my husband goes back to school, my son goes back to school, and we get back to a routine.  I love Fall!  I love the crisp clean air, the cool nights, the fun fall things that we do, but I love having my husband home during the summer!

This summer we have had a pretty quiet, but fun summer.  Overall, the weather was really nice.  We had some days that were uncomfortable hot, but for the most part, the days were enjoyable!

Enjoy some pictures from our summer fun!

We celebrated 5 years of marriage

waiting for fireworks

waiting for fireworks

waiting for fireworks

me and my hubby

playing at the beach 4th of July

learning to swim

Ran our first 5K

playing at the park

playing in the sandbox

amaranth from our garden grown from seed

blueberry picking

Hanging in Newburyport

Museum of Science

The Basin Franconia Notch New Hampshire

Making soap

North Conway Railway

Family Portrait at The Basin

Flying airplanes

York Beach

The Park

Michael's granny square afghan

Poppy cat for Michael

Poppy cat for Michael

doll bed, quilt, mattress, pillow, and quilt, as well as a rag rug for Eva Rose's Doll

Rag quilt for Thomas and Eva Rose

We didn't do crazy things this summer, but we had a blast.  I loved being able to share time with our children and  not feeling like what we did had to be some crazy commercialized summer.  I love being able to look back at our pictures and remembering the fun times that we had.  We may not have a ton of money to do crazy expense  things, but we are able to spend good quality time and create loving lasting memories for our children.  I am so thankful that my husband is able to spend time with us.  I love being able to spend time creating things for my children and creating memories for our family!  As happy as I am to be getting back to a routine, I will miss our summer fun and lazy family days.  Here'd to next summer!

Amy

LIFE!!!!

Lately, there have been lots of ups and downs in our family's life.  Some of the ups include oh so much better sleep.  Pretty much every night between 6:30-6:45 we start our bedtime routine.  At one point, the routine was way too complicated.  I've basically pared it down to either bath time or washing up/brushing teeth, diaper changes/toilet time, 2 books, and maybe a song.  We are usually complete with lights out before 7:15.  Usually, the kids are asleep before 7:30, at least the twins are.  Michael, on the other hand, needs his own wind down time by himself one the twins are asleep.  He is usually asleep by 8:00 sometimes a little later.  This has made life so much easier.  I love bedtime so much more now.

The twins have turned 3 and are no longer eligible for early intervention due to age, but Eva Rose is getting speech once a week for articulation issues.  She amazes me though, and even the speech therapist mentioned it today.  She can say alligator pretty clearly, but she can't pronounce the ending of simple one syllable words like cat or cup.  Thomas is not receiving any services.  He is going to be watched, but he really doesn't need anything.  Michael continues to go to a preschool program for 5 hours.  His behavior seems to be testing limit setting at home and at school.  I think I am going to talk to his doctor about my concerns at his 4 year visit to see if there is anything that we should have him tested for, if not just to ease my own mind.

In the down department, we have had some big issues with a family member who has been living with us.  Life has been really stressful and we finally told him it was time to leave.  There are way to many things to write about why it was so stressful, but I am so looking forward to getting our house and life back in order!  I am not looking forward to the potential backlash from the family, but we needed to do what was right for our family not what was right for this family member.  I am hoping that my kids will be better off and I know that I will be better off!

It has been an extremely mild winter here north of Boston, but I still can't wait for spring.  I can't what to take the kids out and play.  I can't what to go hiking and walk the zoos and farms and ll those types of things.  I can't wait to start our garden again.  This year, I want to start planting our early spring plants on time and not wait til it is too late.

Amy

Getting Our Family Healthier

One of my big goals this new year is to work on being healthier.  I don't want to make this a resolution, but with the new year, I decided to start thinking of new goals, or at least re-focusing on goals that I have already had.

My husband and I decided to start eating healthier, both us and our kids.  For me, this is a tricky goal.  I want to be healthy, but I have horrible food cravings for foods that are not good for me and unfortunately often give in.  Also, my kids are on the very, very bottom of the growth scale, so I am always conscious of how much they eat.  They are also very very picky eaters.  With the new year, my husband and I started green smoothies again.  Much to my elated surprise, my oldest son is loving them.  He liked them the first time we started and he was about 18 months old, but quit  eating them soon after.  Now he is still loving them and having easily 2 shakes at breakfast.  This means he is getting some sort of leafy green (kale, swiss chard, red leaf lettuce, etc.), and fruits.  Finally I can feel like he is getting some good nutrition easily instead of fighting to get him to eat healthy foods.  My twins, on the other hand, barely touch the shakes.  The good news is that they are eating vegetables much better than before so I'm not as concerned with their healthy eating.  I am trying to be better at meal planning which means I am not so crazed at dinner time trying to figure out what to cook.  Also, I spend less money and waste less food because I know what to buy for when.

One of my friends, another twin mom, is doing a sort of biggest loser challenge on her blog http://goddessinprogressblog.com.  I wasn't sure about joining in, but I decided that it is only ten dollars to contribute to the winning prize.  Also, I figure maybe this would be a friendly way for me to challenge myself and have some accountability.  So here I am joining in.  My husband just bought new running shoes.  I bought new ones last summer, and probably only used them and handful of times so far.  The other thing that we splurged on is winter gear.  We do have a treadmill, but I like getting outside and I can take the twins with me even if it is just a walk and no running.

I actually can't wait to start exercising again.  My husband mentioned getting up early on alternate days so that we can go running without having to push the kids and then getting it out of the way.  I really don't like getting up early and for me the thought of getting up at 5:30am instead of my usual 6:45am is not something I am looking forward to.  I am however, looking forward to feeling better and getting in shape and hopefully liking how my body is going to look.

Plans are in motion to get at least a couple of my goals met.  Hopefully my husband and I can set a good example for our kids early in life so that they don't have to deal with for addiction, food cravings, inability to stop eating even when they are full, and hopefully they will be active.  Hopefully all of this will help them be healthy kids and even grow into healthy adults.

Amy

A Post About Me

I usually reserve this blog to write about my kids, but today I'm going to write about me.  Just because!

I am someone who has always loved to be creative.  I gave it up when I became a teenager.  I was already not one of the popular kids in school and back in the 80's knitting and sewing were not the popular thing to do, not like it is now.  I guess it's probably not a totally popular thing to do, but the whole hand crafted arena is so much more popular with teens than it was back then.  After college I decided that I was going to start being creative again, and since then, I have not stopped enjoying anything hand crafted.  I love craft fairs.  I love craft shows.  And, I love actually hand crafting things myself.  At this time in my life I am interested in so many different crafts; everything from knitting, scrapbooking, jewelry making, and sewing to even wood working.  My biggest challenge right now is time!

One thing that would help, would be to have a designated area to work and keep out everything that I needed to work on a project instead of always having to put everything away even if I'm in the middle of completing a project.  I do have an area that I could do this, but we have a house guest that has been here much longer than I had planned (yes this is also a post for me to piss and moan about having my brother in law stay with us).  We are a family of 5 and live in a small 5 room ranch.  It works for us, but having another adult for 8 months in our basement is totally cramping my style.  I have all of my craft supplies in the basement and could actually organize it so that if I were working on a project, I could keep things set up so that if I found a small chunk of time, I could go and utilize it to my best way possible.  Unfortunately, the basement is where our guest is sleeping.  He will supposedly be moving out the end of this month, but I am not holding my breath.  I would love to have a space to work.  I would love to try to organize what little space I have so that I have a workable area that I can leave up that project that isn't quite finished so that I don't have to take up time setting up and cleaning up!

Last of the bitch session and on to more positive ideas.  My friend over at http://www.goddessinprogressblog.com/quilts seems to post a bunch of fun tutorials (Thanks Liz).  I have printed out a few that I want to work on.  My 3 kids all have birthdays coming up.  The twins turn 3 January 23rd and then Michael turns 4 March 8th.  There are a bunch of things that I want to work on for their birthdays.  I also have project that I want to work on for my husband.  Since we didn't exchange gifts this year and I didn't get a chance to finish something else and since he has a new tea cup, I am planning on making him a travel mug cozy with lectures of the kids on it.  I am hoping that I can make it work out the way I want it to.  I love blogs and I love crafts so craft blogs with tutorials are my favorite.  I can't wait to start working on some of these projects and hopefully, next month I can start working on organizing a craft space of my own!

And now for some simple New Year's Goals

1. Eat more healthy-cook more from scratch
2. Exercise more-get off my but and move damn it!
3. Organize my house-get rid of clutter, make sure that everything has a place to return to.
4. Be more involved with the kids-Now that the kids are more preschooler, I need to start doing more organized play with them.  For now we have been just going with the flow (may be an excuse but finally having 3 kids so close in age is fun and not as difficult, even though it is still OMG so difficult) 
5. Create more-Make time to create.  Try to find a way to keep projects out until they are finished or choose projects that are easy to complete and don't take too much time instead of having to set up and take down everything each time for the same project!
6. Spend time learning more about the things I love- I need to learn more about gardening, herbs, art therapy (which will hopefully help me in my career someday), and many other things that I am interested in instead of just having limited knowledge of it.

Those are my simple goals.  There is much more work that needs to go into them, but for now that is all I need to post.

Here are a couple of picture of the kids!

Juice Break at Drumlin Farm 11/30/2011

Stone Zoo 12/1/2011

Santa at the Enchanted Village 12/4/2011

Amy

New Camera

I have been wanting a new point and shoot camera for some time now.  I have a really nice little olympus, but it is literally a  point and shoot.  There is nothing creative that you can do with the camera only after the picture is taken.  That being said,  as much as I love to think of my self as really creative and a photographer, I know that I am such an amateur when it comes to creating and taking creative photos.  I now have 4 digital cameras and 1 film camera.  When I bought my first SLR film camera, I decided to get a Canon Elan 2E.  My husband was into Canon's and a friend of mine also recommended Canon's.  I then moved on to a 7E, also film.  Later I got a very cheap Canon that did me well, but it was sloooowwww!  My husband bought me one of the first Canon Rebels SLR.  I then went on to buy a 20D SLR.  After My older son was born, I decided I needed a new point and shoot and bought the Olympus.  3 1/2 years later it is still going strong, but I wanted something that I could do more with the settings of the camera.  This weekend I was at a wedding and was talking to a table mate that my husband had worked with and he recommended the Canon s95.  The next day, I went out to the camera store with my husband and bought it.  I really didn't want to spend the money, but I really liked the camera.  We took the kids to the park and I played with the camera while they played at the park.  The best part was that I actually used the manual setting and never once used the programmable settings that I had always found myself using.  These are just a few of the pictures I've taken since yesterday!

Michael

Eva Rose

Thomas

Michael, Daddy, and Thomas

Rose at the park on Macro setting

Thomas

Michael and Thomas

Eva Rose

3 across in the car

Playing in the driver's seat

Michael

Oh, and I played with taking black and white, sepia, and color photos too!  I had lots of fun with my new toy and got to get some cute pictures of the kids!  Now I just need to learn more about photography and take better pictures!

Amy

Potty Training

God I hate this part of parenting!  I never realized just how much I would hate this part of development!  We decided to potty train all 3 at the same time.  I don't know if I am a glutton for punishment or what, but all 3 seemed to be interested in going to the potty at the same time.  At first we were doing great, just a for accidents, but now it seems like all they want to do is pee every where except the potty!  I am totally beside myself with where to go from here.  Do I put them back in diapers?  Do I keep pushing forward?  Do I play it all by ear? 

Please tell me this gets better!?  I am hating potty training and am thinking that I would much more enjoy having my 3 in diapers rather than this whole potty training crap!  Part of me wants to keep pushing forward, but part of me says just go back to diapers!  I don't want to do what's best for me, I want to do what's best for them.  Right now I'll just be playing it all by ear!

Amy

Next time, I'll post pictures and something more fun than potty training!

Miserable Monday (and weekend too)!

I have had a sick kid for 4 days now.  My poor 3 year old has had a fever since Friday.  He missed school on Friday, which was picture day, being the first day of his fever.  I figured, he sleep and get lots of rest and then Saturday we'll be fine.  Saturday came, and he wasn't fine.  Bad mom that I am, I said let's go out for a little bit and maybe he'll feel better.  NOPE!  Sunday came and the same thing.  Both Friday and Saturday, he slept all day and then was up way too late at night.  Sunday, I thought, maybe we should let him rest, but not sleep so much since I would much rather him go to bed early than sleep all day and not at night.  So, he slept less during the day, but still rested and actually seemed to perk up a little bit.  We went out for a ride just to get out of the house and he just wasn't feeling good.  Back home, we changed everyone into jammies and put everyone to bed quite a bit earlier than usual.  Unfortunately, my daughter decided that she was going to throw up about 20 minutes after we put them to bed.  Thankfully she is fine, but Michael still has a fever even today.  It actually got to the point that I was ready to take him to the ER since he had the fever for 4 days and our doctor's office was closed today due to the marathon running right by the office.  I love our doctor, but her being in Wellesley sometimes is just too far and too inconvenient.  But the straw that is breaking the camel's back is the office answering service.  I called twice this morning only to be on hold for 10 minutes each time.  The first time, I did speak with someone, but the second time, I was just on hold.  Not exactly the best customer service.  I was all ready tio get the kids in the car to go to the ER and my husband tried again.  This time he got through and we got a call back from the doctor.  By this time Michael had peed, which he hadn't in about 5 hours, not a drop.    The doctor pretty much made me feel comfortable not rushing to the ER but did say that we should see his doctor tomorrow.  We have an appointment tomorrow for his sister and hopefully we can have her see him then.  Hopefully he'll be feeling better tomorrow.  Now the issue is deciding to change doctors or not.  This also means that I will be changing doctors, since the biggest reason we stayed on after she moved to Wellesley, other than we really like her, is that she is a family doctor and she sees me and the kids!

Amy

Gardening With 2 Toddlers and a Pre-schooler

Last year, we dug our first garden.  We had pretty good luck with our first attempt at gardening, especially with tomatoes and eggplants.  We definitely need to do better with a lot of other veggies.  I am thinking that maybe we will go to the local garden center and get some info on planting seeds.  I think we may be a little late.  Having 3 little ones has made it difficult for us to get our act together.  I'm sure that there are plenty of people out there that have things more difficult and do a better job, but we (ok me) just seem to have trouble getting my  act together.

Can't really tell where the garden is since everything is one color!

A couple of my friends have blogged about either gardening or having garden fresh kids.  This made me think about needing to get the gardening started.  I'm thinking that we may end up with garden center plants again, because we haven't gotten our act together.  I am hoping that we still have time to get some plants started.  Even of we don't have time to get the whole garden started with seeds, I still want to start some plants by seeds with the kids!

Our composter!

I think it will be fun to start the kids gardening at such a young age.  I remember having a garden when I was  a kid, but I don't remember it being fun.  I am hoping that we can get the kids to see gardening as fun and something that they want to be a part of.  I'm not thinking that this will always be the case, but I am thinking that if we can start them off with the right beliefs, even if they stray, they will come back later in life.  That was how I was with a lot of things in my life: gardening, line drying, crafting.

I can't wait until Michael gets home from pre-school so that we can go and look at some planting materials!

Amy

Makes My Monday: Play Date and Kids Crafting

Today we met with some friends for a play date and the kids did a St Patrick's Day craft.  The kids had fun and the moms got to talk.  Play dates and crafting certainly make my Monday!

Eva Rose was the only one who stayed at the table while I got my camera, along with our friends

All the shamrocks we made

Update on my mom:  She goes tomorrow for her lymph node biopsy.  One we have the results from that she can then make a decision regarding treatment.  She will either get to choose between chemo and radiation or just radiation if lymph nodes are not involved, and if they are then she will have chemo and radiation for sure.  What we do know is that it was a small but invasive tumor that is semi aggressive.  We can certainly use any all all prayers!

Amy

Dairy Allergy

So it has been about 3 weeks that we have been dairy free with the kids and we have totally noticed a huge difference.  For the longest time, I felt like I was always wiping their runny noses and just chalked it up to the season and them being kids.  Michael's breathing was really loud even in the daytime (I didn't realize how many people noticed it).  Michael had horrible snoring.  All 3 kids (but Michael and Eva Rose were the worst) had horrible diaper rashes off and on.

Now that milk is no longer in their diet (though I'm sure that there are times were we have inadvertently given them some sort of milk product since it seems like it's in everything), we have begun to see so many changes for the positive.  I haven't had to wipe runny, drippy noses.  Michael's breathing has improved, to the point that people have commented that they no longer can hear him breathing.  Michael's snoring is much better, and he seems to do more breathing out of his nose vs his mouth.  Michael has really come out of his shell and others are noticing it!  There really hasn't been any diaper rash issues (granted the detergent change seems to have been a major help too) and their poop, yes their poop, seems more normal.  Tom and I were recently just really sick with either a major cold or the flu and the kids didn't get even a sniffle.  The other unexpected benefit is that their meal intake and snack intake and even water intake seems so much more improved.  Granted we have made some major changes to how we react to Michael's sleep issues, but his sleeping is much improved and it didn't take any where near as long as Ithought it would for the sleeep to improve nor was it as horrific as I had expected that it would be!

I am in the process of making an allergy appointment for the 3 kids and we may look at other things in their diet as potential allergens, especially given my allergy blood test for which I have made enough diet changes but that is for another post.  We need to take Eva Rose back to evaluate  the fluid in her ears.  I'm not sure if we need a follow up for the tonsils, but we will be seeing the PCP in a couple of weeks and I'm sure she can see how they look.  I think either way, taking milk out of their diet seems to have helped.  Now I just need to get myself to make the same changes in my diet because I know that I'll feel better too!

Amy

Children Teach Us

I think my children are here to teach me to slow down and not to expect things to happen on certain time frames.  They are here to teach me patience and I'm sure much more.

One of my recent posts was about starting to potty train Michael.  This has not gone well at all and I was starting to feel like I was doing something wrong because I couldn't get him to pee on the potty.  I posted a question to my twins group and so did another mom.  Most people responded that kids will train when they are ready not on your time line.  That made me stop and think about my life.  I need to stop and slow down and not expect that everything happens when I want it to happen, but when it's meant to happen.  My kids walked when they were ready, they are talking on their time frame, they will be out of diapers when they are ready.  Life takes time and I need to be patient and let it  happen

I can't wait to see what else my kids will teach me as life goes on!

Amy

Winter Wonderland

Here is MA, we got a ton of snow.  I think there was about 24" according to the news.  Yesterday, daddy spent most of the day snow blowing our yard and about 4 of our neighbors.  Since we've had our dog, about 7 years, he has snow blowed a path for the dog.  This year, it is also for the kids.  This was our second storm of the season.  The first time, none of the kids would keep their mittens on, so we had to go back inside within just minutes.  This time, Eva Rose had new mittens and I made some make shift mittens for the boys.  All three kids kept their mittens on the whole time we were out and that was about 35-40 minutes (it took about that long to get them dressed to go outside).  Here are some pictures from our outing!

My new favorite picture of Eva Rose

Thomas walking the path that daddy made

Eva Rose and Michael is the path

Eva Rose and Thomas is the path

Three kids walking together in the path in the backyard

Michael and Eva Rose heading out back while Thomas hangs back by the back door

In the sled last year

Last year snow suits

Keep warm,

Amy