The Lovely Morning After

Mother’s Day did something unexpected for me: reaffirmed my belief in what I’m doing.  Lately, I’ve lost sight of that.  I’ve been impatient, intolerant, short tempered, and really really tired.  Yesterday was a different story -due in large part to the two amazing Sunday services I attended.

Yesterday, the kids and I truly enjoyed each other.  My husband was able to come home from work for maybe 45 minutes before leaving again, and as much as I love having him home, I was grateful for the opportunity to hog my children.

We made no bake cookies.  What can I say?  After my post yesterday, I got a hankering for them.
The kids were really good about cleaning up after themselves (despite the cocoa on Lacy’s nose), and the house stayed pretty much clean all day which I think is a HUGE factor when it comes to my patience.

The girl doesn’t take naps anymore. She vetoed the whole idea a couple of years ago. I instituted “rest time” instead. She has to lie down and watch a movie for at least an hour during nap time. Lately, though, I haven’t held strict to the rest time rule. Sometimes she’ll rest, but sometimes we’ll use that time to play while the boy sleeps.
Yesterday after Trent fell asleep, I told her we would make strawberry jam. She jumped with excitement.
“Go put the strawberries on the counter,” I said.
She did. Then she went to work “making” jam. When I went to the kitchen to make jam, I found that she had taken a butter knife to the strawberries.

And her mouth to the better part of them.

“Honey,” I said, “I don’t think there’s enough strawberries left to make jam.” Her head dropped to her chest.
“I thought you would be so happy about I already made da jam,” she said.
“I AM!” I said, immediately repenting that I hadn’t been initially enthused about the strawberry shortage, “You did a GREAT job!”
“Thank you,” she said, looking up. But her head went down again, “But I thought you would be mad about because I ate too much strawberries.”
“I’m not mad,” I shrugged, “We just can’t make jam now.”
“But we can get some more…” she said.
“Not today,” I shook my head, “It’s way too windy outside. Maybe tomorrow.”
“I’m sorry about eating too much,” she said.
“It’s okay, Lace. We just can’t make jam.”
I told her we would crush up the strawberries anyway to see how much we would have. We needed 4 cups of crushed strawberries.
We got one.
Needless to say, a trip to the store is in order today. Thank goodness strawberries are in season!

Trenton woke up while we were crushing berries, and he snacked on a few blackberries. Later that night, we huddled together and watched:

The kids loved it, and I realized that I don’t remember the last time I sat and really watched a movie with them. I’ve always got my hands filled with a crochet project or something of the like. But last night, I just watched with them.

After our bedtime routine, I told the kids they could watch one more movie (hey, while Dad’s away… we get to play). Trent threw a tired-boy fit, so he went to bed. But Lacy stayed up. I fed her warm milk and crackers, and she asked to watch The Lone Ranger.
It didn’t even take ten minutes for the warm milk to kick in.

(Do you like her hair? She doesn’t like having her hair braided. But she likes having “stones” in it. That’s what she calls braids. If I ask her, “Do you want me to braid your hair?” She says, “NO!” But if I say, “Do you want stones in your hair?” She’ll say, “YES!” I don’t know where she came up with “stones,” but I love it. She loves it when I braid her hair at night while it’s wet because she knows that when she takes the stones out in the morning, her hair is all “spidery.” Gotta love that kid.)