Category Archives: On My Mind

Tutus and Trucks

I have been ridiculously productive lately and it’s kind of glorious. Did you know painting really isn’t all that bad? Okay, I’m not a perfect painter and the guest room really needs one more coat of paint (but I ran out and meh), but I love how much brighter it is in there now. Granted, mostly it’ll be used for work, but now it makes me want to repaint everything downstairs… especially the cave where my actual office resides. The previous owners really, really loved dark colors, which also means it takes like 3-4 coats of paint to cover up. I’ve been moving things around and making lists of other projects around the house which means I’ve taken hardly any pictures. I think that also just means I’ve been enjoying our downtime and haven’t felt the need to document. Maybe I’m just at a new point in my life.

Phoebe is pretty happy with allowing me to take pictures, but Enzo has decided he mostly wants no pictures taken, so there you go. I’m not going to fight him on that (until our family photos next month). I don’t really see things slowing down in the future, so most likely I won’t be posting as often either… or perhaps they’ll just be short snippets so I can continue to keep track of what’s happening.

I never thought I’d say that I wish these kids would stop growing so fast, but lately I don’t mind as much. Enzo’s imagination gets bigger and bigger and Phoebe is right behind him. Their personalities are fantastic and not a day goes by that one of them doesn’t say or do something that makes us laugh either because it’s just plain funny or ridiculously clever.

Phoebe is my go-to for hanging out still. If the boys don’t want to go anywhere on the weekend, chances are good that Phoebe will want to come with. She always wants to go shopping and will often respond with, “Goin’ to Target?” Why, yes, yes we are. Don’t even think about going to Target without looking in her section, though. I wasn’t allowed to look at cute tops when we were there, but you better believe she was adamant that we stop in the Toddler area. Granted, she’ll happily look in every section and likes to hit EVERY aisle. We’re probably going to need to discuss budgeting sooner rather than later with her.

This photo is out of focus, but I love it because it’s just so HER.

On that note, I’m off… to the Cat Video Festival, no less. I’ll be Snapchatting (@dinosandbunnies) periodically if you want to check it out.

The Wheels on the bus go round and round…

Or rather the wheels in my brain go round and round and really haven’t ceased turning. It seems like we’ve been busy, but also not… I can’t seem to keep up on all the things that need doing and yet at the same time I can’t seem to figure out what exactly has been keeping me so busy. Josh is mending, so that’s good. It means we can settle back into a routine with the kids, which is definitely good. I have been doing some rearranging downstairs due to my business venture, so I suppose that’s where some of my time has gone. It’s exciting, but also nerve-wracking. I’ve been sleeping so-so and decided to crash early last night. Phoebe has been a very active sleeper lately, which wouldn’t matter except she has taken to crawling into bed next to me around 10-11 every night. Between her and Uzi I get minimal space to sleep in and haven’t felt super rested.

She’s sassy, and we’re still working through various sibling growing pains. Enzo has been doing good at preschool, though, which is huge. I’m not sure if it has to do with one of his preschool teachers leaving or not, but he’s had a pretty good week or so. I think that means he’s been saving it up for home, however. I get it, we’re his safe place, I think we just all need to practice some calming breaths now and then. Things should be back to normal soon, so we just need to make do and in the meantime I’m going to take the kids for ice cream tonight. It’s Friday night and it feels like the right thing to do.

I haven’t even picked up my camera much lately just because I’ve been so preoccupied with other things. Such is life, right?

Just Keep Swimming…

I probably should be repeating this over and over this week. I figure it’s fitting since we just watched Finding Dory and this week has been a rough one, so I should probably remind myself to breathe more and Let It Go. If Josh was here he’d probably help me with more Disney puns. It’s been a stressful past week and the kids were thrown off by a few things, as well as Josh and I. I think we all just want everything to get back to normal.

Two weekends ago we pulled the bouncy house outside, which thrilled the kids for about 15 minutes. It was pretty hot, though, so I’m not surprised they didn’t last too long. I wish all days they could play as well together, but they have two very different personalities and they’re each going through various developmental stages.

Quite often there is fussing and whining and “Enzo hit me” or “Phoebe took my toy” which is what I’m guessing he’s saying since really all I hear is high-pitched screaming. We’re really working on the yelling/screaming lately. Enzo’s first response to frustration or outrage or embarrassment is to scream and yell and now Phoebe is starting to do the same. There are some days when I think my ear drums will burst.

His moods are rather like the tide. He’ll have several good days or a great week and then suddenly something sets him off and it can be hard to get through the rough days and back on track. Phoebe’s shenanigans are no help either as she’ll do things that are naughty and laugh at the negative reaction (like her brother freaking out). Parenting is so exhausting.

There are some days where we are able to just laugh the chaos off because some things are just so absurd and ridiculous and exasperating and I’m trying more and more to laugh rather than cry. I don’t know if I’ve told this story yet… but Phoebe can’t be trusted to be left alone – at all. I left her in the bathroom on the toilet for maybe 15 seconds and came back to find that she had unrolled half the roll of toilet paper. There was just this massive pile of toilet paper on the ground. I got her off and then Enzo came in saying he needed to pee, so I got her out of there and told Enzo if he needed toilet paper to just grab some from the pile since I needed a minute. Well… I walk back in to find him with the huge wad of toilet paper in his hand blotting himself and not stopping him in time before he dropped it all into the toilet. I was pretty much speechless… it had been a long day and Josh legitimately thought I had lost my mind when I walked out of the bathroom and just threw my hands up in the air and started laughing hysterically.

They do have moments of sweetness, which are so hard to remember during those rough times when they try your patience and push every single button they can. I’m trying to really respond to these moments, though. Josh spent two nights in the hospital and Enzo cleaned up his floor a bit without asking for which I praised him greatly and he told me he’d take keep me safe while Josh was gone.

I guess we’ll just have to keep each other safe and do our best to get through each day. I call a do-over on this past week, and the great thing is that like I tell Enzo we can choose to start-over and try to have a better day. We choose how we react and we can choose to be mad/sad/frustrated all day or we can choose to accept that what’s done is done. I may have “failed” in my mind as a parent this week, but I can do my best to turn that around. I always make sure that I tell my kids I love them and apologize when I make a mistake as a parent. Tonight my plan is to start over.

A spring in my step

I think it must be the weather, but lately even when I don’t feel all that energized, I still feel like I need to move and it’s a good feeling. The sun comes up early and even if I still want to sleep, I enjoy seeing those first rays of sunshine that peek up over the horizon and listening to the birds singing outside. The kids enjoy it too and often want to go outside right away once they see the sun is up. Admittedly I don’t always mind drinking my cup of coffee outside, unless it’s wet out, which it has been most mornings. Thankfully the deck gets the majority of our sun and nobody has to wait for long to get outside.

Since it always gets so hot in the afternoons during the summer, I’m thinking of going on morning walks with the kids on the weekend. It’s a good way to start the day and I love how quiet everything tends to be in the early hours. Even thinking about it and looking outside gives me a bounce in my step. I’m not a runner (AT ALL), but lately I’ve had the urge to run and when we were camping and Enzo and I started to get rained on we both ran/jogged and it felt surprisingly good. My knees always ache after running, but it was kind of freeing to run in the rain with him. I’ve noticed on days where I get in my lunchtime walk I just tend to feel a bit more energized the rest of the afternoon and less irritable. Amazing what a little movement, fresh air and sunshine (or apparently even rain) will do for the soul.

Unplugging

Well, it’s raining, which isn’t exactly what I had in mind, but hopefully we won’t get too drenched tomorrow. I have a feeling we won’t be finishing up our mulch right away, though. Ha ha! I need to take pictures of our landscaping progress so far, but have a few from the past weekend. We still have so much on our list, but are making so much headway!

Such an improvement over the out of control chives and the grubby shrub that lived there when we first moved in. Is there anything better than lilacs? I think not. However, our sprinkler heads need to be adjusted because one or two of them are hitting the the poor thing head-on.

Looks like we still need to pressure wash the other half of that rug, but you can see some of the chives that we kept and a few flower additions as well. Plus… kitties!

Amazing what a few pots of flowers can do to brighten things up. I’d like to eventually do more with the front “porch” but I’m not entirely sure what.

If we had more time and money, I think we would have done some major damage at the nursery last weekend. There were so many beautiful flowers and plants. We’ll need to return soon to add a few more plants to the section we’re currently working on, but until I saw what we bought laid out, I didn’t want to buy too many things and I wanted to make sure a few of the flowers would flourish. I’m thinking we’ll be getting more lilies. It felt so good to be productive and it’s been ages since we both felt like we’d gotten that much done. It made me start thinking and really part of the problem is distractions. There are so many of them. Before kids we didn’t have smart phones and while they are enormously useful, I also feel like I’ve never wasted so much time in all my life.

So… we’re trying a little experiment this upcoming weekend and following week and seeing what happens. Aside from a Snap here and there and maybe a quick photo upload to Instagram, I’m staying off of social media and my phone in general – no games, no anything… well, except reading. Josh said he’d be willing to try it out too. My hope is that it’ll help me to get out of a rut and force me to quit procrastinating and figure some stuff out. It’s amazing how easy it is to scroll and scroll through various medias and while I enjoy seeing what everyone is up to… let’s face it, for the most part it’s just a time waster – at least the way we’re using it now.

Time to reset, become more present and hopefully awaken some fire within myself that motivates me to do… well, I’m not sure what yet. Either way, it’ll be good for us all, I think and I’ll report back either during the week or after the full week is up… I haven’t decided whether or not I’ll blog.

I’m hoping to get a lot more pictures without a phone in anyone’s hands. 😉

Happy Friday!

Dino and Bunnies

Every day adventures