Here are some pictures

Another catch-up post. It's not amazingly interesting to you, but since I make our blog into a book (I'm working this year's), I like keep updated. This picture is so funny to me. Emily and Nathalie were playing with their cousins. The oldest cousin in the picture, E, got all of the kids to shuck corn. So we have E, Emily, Nathalie and L all shucking corn. They did this for 30 minutes and thought it was great!

Matt and the girls filling up our bird feeder for spring.

Nathalie playing with a friend's puppy. She adored the puppy. And can you see her hair is a little curly too? Maybe I'll have another curly girl on my hands.

Emily, my little mother, with the same puppy. When we got home Emily said, "Mommy, I wanted to take that puppy home and put a string around a neck and drag it down the sidewalk." Funny how kids see things sometimes!

The short and sweet version

(All pictures were taken by Emily). Matt is busy with stripping down our old air conditioner-- nicknamed "The Banshee" because of the sounds it makes while it's running-- getting our garden ready, helping people move, finishing dinners I'm too tired to finish, and being a wonderful husband. Matt and Emily were goofing around. He threw her on our bed, she bounced into the bedstand. It was a bleeder, but a little superglue later, she's doing great. Emily is really excited for the baby. She is my little mother.

I will be 38 weeks pregnant this week. I'm nesting like crazy. Also, Emily likes stripes. Her favorite outfit is a stripey shirt, striped pants (as seen in picture), striped socks and she keeps telling me she wants shoes with stripes on them. Emily loves to help me nest and often willingly helps me wipe walls or vacuum.

Nathalie keeps me on my toes. She drew on the walls at a friend's house, drew on our walls, combined applesauce and milk and dumped it all over the floor, and played with the paint Matt was using to repaint our bedroom (and got it all over the carpet and her clothes)-- all in one day. She is a great talker and her favorite sentence is, "I don't like it!" She turns 2 next month, can you believe it? She still seems like a baby to me!

We got to it fast enough. The clothes and carpet aren't stained.

My mom came and visited last week. Spoiled me rotten. I didn't do dishes or laundry for 3 days straight. Seriously, that woman is awesome.

Hair-do

Nathalie's hair has multiple personalities. Some days it's curly. Other days it's straight. Sometimes she wakes up from a nap and her hair is tame. Other days it looks like this:

Busy week behind, busy week ahead

We're still here. Will update soon. My mom is visiting this week!

Twofer

Despite Emily's troubles, she is in a delightful age. She makes me laugh all the time with her funny sayins and doings. I love how bright and happy she is and how she wants to learn all the time.

Take, for example, her obsession with anything medical. Maybe it's because of Matt, but Emily is fascinated by the body and the things we do it. We talk a lot about foods that make you "healthy and strong" and I've caught her sneaking out of bed to floss her teeth on the nights we forget to floss! She is especially interested in bones right now.

We got a book about bones from the library and it had a picture of a cast. Emily LOVES talking about casts and broken bones. So yesterday while I was making dinner I heard her playing with the tape. I thought to myself, "At least she's occupied!" A few minutes later she came into the kitchen and said, "Look Mommy, now I have two casts!" Can you see what she did?

I laughed and laughed although taking them off was rather painful.

Rough

Emily is currently in time-out. She's been there for 20 minutes already.

Emily has a pinching problem. She pinches Nathalie all the time. She also pinches other people like myself, my mother-in-law, people at church. After several weeks of time-out, privilege removal, lovey removal and any other punishment I could think of short of physically hurting her, we have resorted to the ultimate punishment.

The cold shower.

Emily hates the cold shower. But her pinching problem won't go away and she hasn't responded to the various other punishments. (Do you have a child who doesn't respond to normal punishments? It drives me crazy when people say, "Well, you're not doing a good enough job. Time-out should do the trick. YEAH RIGHT!) Since Matt and I don't tolerate the girls hurting each other, this pinching has got to stop.

Currently she's in time-out because we're pretty sure she pinched Nathalie in her room but she won't tell us. So she has to sit in time-out until she tells us. I'm not sure how long she's going to be in there, but I have plenty to keep me busy for the next few hours. Just have to be more patient and stubborn than her....

So fresh and so clean, clean

My house smells minty fresh. Thanks for suggesting toothpaste to get crayon off the walls-- after several hours of scrubbing, my walls are crayon free! (It was a LOT of crayon). I left my bedroom door for later--it'll be more efficient to paint over it than scrub all that crayon off.

So...Matt's birthday was this week! We actually celebrated the night before, since he worked on his birthday. He requested banana cream pie (the real, custard type) for his birthday dessert. Emily and Nathalie helped me pick out his presents, although I had to remind them not to tell him since they told him the first present we bought a few weeks ago. Emily even wrote on the presents, so he would know they were his. He said it was one of the best birthdays he's had and his parents surprised him by visiting us. Happy 27th Birthday Matt! Matt didn't want to admit it, but he feels old and we tried to make his birthday extra-special.


I also wanted to show you the drying rack Matt made me, a la Martha Stewart. We found this picture in her book "Martha Stewart's Homekeeping Handbook" and we had an extra crib side in the garage, so Matt made the rack in a short time. The best part is, we can fold it up against the wall so it's very space efficient.

I have found that it's better if I dry the diaper inserts in the dryer so they're not scratchy and stiff against Nathalie's bum, but the rack is turning out great for everything else. It's nice to be able to hang dry out clothes in the middle of winter. It works great!

Can you believe it's almost mid-March? This month is flying by!

See this pretty little girl?

She's at her grandma's house tonight, having her very first sleepover. I talked to her a little around dinner. She was having a good time, found 9 eggs with the chickens and was going swimming in the morning. She doesn't miss me at all. Nathalie and I, on the other hand, aren't doing so great. Nathalie is currently shouting "Nakey bottom!!!!" at the top of her lungs in her crib because Emily isn't there to calm her down. And me? I'm getting projects done and delighting in Nathalie's hilarious personality. But there's a little tiny (okay, not so tiny) part of me that misses my little girl. When did she get big enough not to miss me? What am I going to do when she goes to preschool? What am I going to do when she goes to college?!

Okay, that's a tad bit overdramatic. Good thing we've got awhile before that!

(Follow-up: Nathalie started crying a little bit so I went in to check on her. She had taken her diaper and pants off and was a nakey bottom!!! It was hilarious.)

Baring My Soul

A few weeks ago I was playing "catch-up" in my journal. I had to do it in spurts, which actually gave me more time to write about things than just an update. Anyway, this is what I wrote about Emily.

"I often regret that I'm a good enough mom for her. I regret that I don't remember much about her babyhood because I was in school. I regret that my anger and depression has affected her. I regret that I don't play with her or show her much love. I have a lot of regrets with Emily. I just wish I were a better mom to her."

I am nearing the end of this pregnancy. As I get closer, I see myself falling into the same feelings that I had with Nathalie's pregnancy. I wish I'd known then that I was struggling with antenatal depression, which shifted into postpartum depression. This time around of course, I'm much more aware and I'm taking more positive, proactive steps (like getting more sleep, getting outside more which I NEED and not eating chocolate). However I see my behavior becoming less and less patient and positive as the weeks pass.

Do you ever see the image of the mother you want to be, only to realize that you fall short-- unbelievably short? That's what I'm seeing lately. I don't want to be this mom. I've always wanted to be the mom to laugh, play, roughhouse with her kids (roughhousing isn't really an option right now of course), who doesn't do dishes or clean the house because it means being with her children more.

But I'm not that mom even though I really really want to be. In a lot of ways I fall short. I read to my girls, but I don't really play with them. I have a very hard time letting the house go. I don't roughhouse with them, although I do play "doctor" which is really just a ticklefest.

In a priesthood blessing Matt gave me a few years ago he said, "Your daughters measure their minutes and hours by you." I put this as the wallpaper on my phone because I need that daily reminder that my daughters are the most important thing. I fail. A lot. And I'm not patient. I'm not being the example of motherhood that I know I should be.

After a bad weekend where I was struggling a bit (I didn't go to sleep early enough and I was eating chocolate), we had a bad few days. It was all my fault. They didn't do anything they don't normally do but because of me, we all cried more.

So this is one of my New Year's goals officially set out to the public.

Find joy in your daughters this year by devoting more time and patience to them.

It's going to be hard and require some changes on my part, not to mention a lot of prayer. I keep trying though. I guess that'll have to be enough.

It took a long time...

but I finally finished! I love the colors on the purple-blue skirt, but the dark blue ribbon on the pink skirt is beautiful. The girls love them. Next time I'll do something quicker!

Talking Emily

Emily gave a talk in Primary on Sunday. We worked on it all week. But my favorite part was that after her talk was done and we came home from church I told her, "Emily, you did such a good job giving your talk!" And she replied, "But Mommy, I wanted to talk more."

She actually did say her whole talk (all 3 sentences or something) in front of the Primary. Nobody could hear her though. She wasn't nervous at all!