the zoo!

we went to a zoo with papa - such fun!

love had a blast feeding the giraffes! (i love this photo!)

and so did daddy. (really, all of us did.)

we rode the zoo train. it was definitely a highlight for love - and a highlight for all of us because we got to watch her enjoy it.

jobot was very interested in the goats...

they rode the carousel.

we all rode the tram.

and this kid looked cute, as usual.

we were all tired out at the end of the day, but we were thankful for such a fun day and good memories made with papa!

lately

what have we been up to lately? oh, just the usual. you know...

playing with homemade slime in the sink...

lining up trains in empty egg cartons...

dressing up like a princess...

finding trains "resting" in our slippers...

learning how to use scissors...

looking cute...

riding a pony for the first time and loving it. (she saw another girl riding the pony and looked at me and said sweetly, "mama, pretty please i want to ride the horse". how could we say no?)

being goofy. (the eyes were a birthday gift that love picked out for jeremy at the dollar store. "daddy wants those eyes!" apparently he did. haha. they came in a pack of twelve, so we've had creepy eyes rolling around our house for a week now).

waiting for papa at the airport. he just left yesterday after a fun-filled twelve day visit.

making sure we are prepared for winter...

enjoying lots of time with papa.

 

the kids and i have a cold, so we have been laying low around here. wiping noses, snuggling, waking up more during the night, missing social events, and soothing a frustrated baby who can't eat and breathe at the same time. we also had a short incident of the stomach flu from love. short as in 

(thankfully) only one episode of vomiting. unfortunately, the episode occurred on monday evening during dinner out at a restaurant. she went from happily sitting at the table to walking around hunched over and moaning and crying and saying her tummy hurt. and then all of a sudden we were those people...the ones who were sitting in the middle of the restaurant whose kid vomited all over. and yes, that was my husband who was examining the vomit in his hand and actually asked me what i thought a chunk of it was. seriously, he did that. (sorry, that's probably too much information). we sat there awkwardly while the servers brought towels upon towels, assured us that it wasn't a big deal and that it had actually happened three other times this week. we packed up our food, our just opened bottle of wine, and i took our girl to the bathroom and changed her clothes. it was an unfortunate outing to have forgotten baby wipes and an extra shirt...but we made due and used a baby blanket as a shirt. sometimes you just have to get creative, right?

i'm not such a happy mama when it comes to staying home with sick kids. especially when i'm feeling under the weather myself. i'm ashamed to say i was pretty grouchy this morning before jeremy left for work. i think there may even have been some words out of my mouth that went something like, "i am thankful that i can be the one to care for our kids during the day, but today i really don't like my job."

but...i had a few more swigs of coffee and said a few prayers, and i was "back on the rails" as love would say. the morning went okay and jeremy even got to come home early. he is working...but he is sitting on the couch next to me working instead of being an hour away. i like that better.

my little man

campers

mid-summer came and i got the camping bug. it happens every year. i longed for the musty smell of the tent, the coziness of sleeping bags, the fun of roasting hot dogs, the smell of the campfire, and the atmosphere of a campground.

i knew that camping with a two-year-old and two-month-old wouldn't be relaxing. (and it wasn't.)

but we wanted our kids to experience the joy of camping. so...we packed up and headed out. we originally planned to be gone one night, but after all the work involved in packing and setting up, we decided to stretch it to two. that was a good decision.

we camped at our favorite spot - ludington state park. we ate hot dogs. we introduced our girl to smores. we walked around the campground and went for a swim in lake michigan. jeremy finally conceded and agreed that swimming in lake michigan is better than swimming in the ocean.

we set up for meals and then cleaned up. we found that one of our tent poles had snapped sometime since our last camping trip and creatively made due without it. i forgot our sweatshirts (oops), so we made a stop at the gift shop. we slept on a bed that was covered in sand. we found out that our air mattress has a hole in it, and our lantern needs a new rechargeable battery. we went for drives both nights in a last ditch attempt to get love to finally fall asleep. we put up with her night terrors at 4 am the first night (and so did all of our campground neighbors!). we laughed in shock and sighed with relief when in the midst of her night terror, she suddenly plopped her head down on her pillow and fell asleep. we endured early morning thunderstorms complete with rolling thunder and constant lightning. we sopped up the puddles in our tent in the morning. we packed up a soaking wet tent and set it all up again to dry after we got home.

love touched her first fish. we enjoyed snuggling up with two cozy kids in the cool of the morning. we admired the 18 pound fish our neighbors caught on their fishing expedition. we marveled at our other neighbors who had a flat screen tv set up on their picnic table. we watched our girl sit in her little green chair and wave at cars, bikers, and walkers who passed our campsite. i snuggled with jobot and nursed him by the campfire. we scoped out other people's camping gear. we laughed together the first night after we put love to bed with a glow stick and then saw the light moving all around the tent as she walked around inside. we played games at the picnic table.

early morning in the tent. love these two little snugglers!

special cereals when we go camping!

enjoying some hot chocolate...

tired out from a late night and then some wave jumping in lake michigan.

 

nursing by the fire. something so cozy about that!

  

first smore...haha.

yummy!

a walk around the campground.

and a kind kid who happened to catch a fish right when we walked by. he showed love and let her touch it and then we watched the fish swim away!

we are pretty sure that was our last tent camping experience for a while. it's just really challenging with kids! but...we both agreed that it was worth it and it was definitely a memory maker.

less than perfect

i come across blogs of other mamas who homeschool a bunch of kids while they also care for a toddler and a baby, maintain a garden, care for animals, sew and knit clothes for their kids and themselves, cook from scratch, take beautiful photographs of all the fun things they do, and seem to always be patient and loving toward their children. unless they get more hours in the day than i do, i'm just not sure how anyone is able to do all of that.

it is easy to compare myself to those people...when i am holding a screaming jobot and love is grabbing onto my legs and crying because she hurt herself for the fiftieth time today. or when i lose my patience for a moment because i am tired of my child constantly throwing everything onto the floor when she decides she is finished with an activity. or when i wake up at 5:15 am and am still not able to accomplish everything i want to in a day. i feel like i can barely stay on top of the laundry and meal prep, much less take care of a garden, animals, and a bunch more kids!


i sometimes believe my own negative thoughts about myself...that i should be able to accomplish more in a day, that i must not be good at managing a house and caring for two kids or i would be able to do all of these things...


i have to remind myself that no one is perfect. and that i need to be happy with who i am and what i am able to accomplish. currently, that means that my main priority is meeting the needs of the two little people i am caring for all day. there are just some other things that are not possible at this stage of life...and i am learning to be okay with that. like the fact that until 6 am this morning, our dining room floor was covered in rice from an activity i did with love yesterday and i just didn't have a chance to sweep it up until this morning. or the fact that i have been using store-bought tortillas instead of homemade ones these days...because most days just getting a nourishing, healthy meal on the table is a struggle and there is no way i have time to make tortillas. or the fact that jobot is currently wearing a disposable diaper because the cloth ones are all dirty.


i am my hardest critic...jeremy often reminds me of that. i am learning to have grace with myself and i'm trying to be okay with a less than clean house, and with compromising in some areas. it is just what has to happen these days.

maybe i am writing this post mostly for myself, or maybe other people need to hear it as well.

i often reference the verse i have posted on the fridge...

"he tends his flock like a shepherd, he gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart; he gently leads those that have young." isaiah 40:11

in the craziness of every day and in this work i have as a full-time mom, i am so thankful that God gently leads me along the way. i pray that i am able to follow each day and that following his lead is more important to me than cleaning the house or doing the dishes.

from the mouths of babes...

yesterday we were visiting my great-aunt. we sat down to a delicious spread of dinner. jeremy prayed and we began to eat. love was waiting for her roll to cool down and decided to say another prayer.

her prayer began as it usually does...
..."dear God. thank you for this day. thank you for mommy, daddy, jobot. thank you for bread. I LIKE BEANS!"

we couldn't help but laugh. i'm guessing God found it quite humorous as well.

we just returned home tonight from a week away. jeremy was at a work conference all week and i decided to spend the week at my mom's house. she was out of town until wednesday, but some of my sisters were around to help out, and my mom was very helpful after she got home. i was dreading this week for a while since jeremy would be gone, but i made it through - even with jobot's weird one day nursing strike. looking back on the week is a blur of caring for our kids with a trip to the zoo and the children's museum thrown in there somewhere.

we are very thankful to have our family back together again. this is the fun part of being apart - it's so lovely to be all together again! my heart was very fond of jeremy before this week, but absence made it all the more fond of him this week.

stay tuned for a post about our camping trip last week. we were brave and took the kids camping. it was quite the experience!

saturday

it's been a very pleasant saturday around here.

it's jeremy's day off - my favorite day of the week! amazingly, all of us slept in until almost 8 this morning. it felt so good to get some extra sleep!

i made pancakes for breakfast, with fresh blueberries i bought at the farmer's market yesterday. yum. i made a special caterpillar pancake for love. she happily ate the whole thing!

our kids were both very enjoyable this morning.

it was a beautiful day, so we headed to the local botanical gardens for a walk and some family time.

taking a break to feed a hungry jobot...

a great pic of my two favorite boys...

we went out for lunch and shared a burrito and some guacamole. delicious.

this afternoon i went out all by myself. that time alone is so good for my soul. i headed to the local bookstore cafe and drank a chai while reading a book. then i made a stop for some educational materials for love. this past week, i've started doing some preschool materials with her and she is totally into it. in fact, a lot of the behavior issues we have been dealing with have significantly decreased since i began having "school time" with her.

after i got home, we did some coloring and painting, and our girl played with her trains. she is very into trains these days...even having to kiss her engines goodnight before heading upstairs to bed. a common sight in our home these days...

we waited to eat until after love was in bed. jeremy grilled delicious steaks that were generously gifted to us by my sister and we had grilled vegetables and mashed potatoes on the side.

we watched some olympics while eating a treat of vanilla ice cream with peaches on top. a perfect end to a wonderful day.