Category: family life

Posted in family life

learning to surf your emotional waves

Posted on by kristinabean

Rondel is a little boy with huge emotions (he takes after me in that way…). Seeing Limerick moving towards or touching one of “his” toys (meaning, any that he has used in the last week or so or assigned a personality to, especially a car) can send him into instant motion, screaming and pulling Limerick away. Not having the right tool on hand to accomplish something – like his preferred type of towel for wiping his eyes or nose – or one of us not being able to do something he wants us to do, like reach a toy from the backseat while driving or pull a random object out of a place where it is stuck, can render him completely mentally immobilized, unable to proceed, to let go, or to accept another option. And he tends to express that feeling of being helpless and stuck by yelling rather forcefully at whoever is near and trying to help…

There is the flip side of his silliness, his excitement over everyday joys (he literally ran around the room in circles glowing when he saw my brother the other day), his overflowing affection for the people he loves, and the happy stories he creates – but none of that negates the fact that he’ll need to learn how to cope with and appropriately express his more negative emotions as he grows.

One thing that’s been helping him lately is to remove him from the situation (which he hates) and sit with him until the worst of the emotion passes by, and then talk about what happened, what ideas we can try next time, and what we can do to amend or move on right then. So in the instances with Limerick, we’ll discuss what exactly made Rondel upset, and I’ll try to get him to come up with different ways he could approach the situation (like asking Limerick nicely to play with a different toy, or to let Rondel have a turn, or offering him something else in trade) and suggest some if he can’t think of any, and then I’ll let him know what I would like him to do to make things right with Limerick (usually saying sorry). As we have done this more, I’ve seen Rondel attempting to implement those ideas in the moment, and I’ve seen his understanding of the concept of an apology grow. I know a lot of people argue that you shouldn’t make a child say sorry – but I want him to learn and practice the habits of courteous behavior, and one of the most important of those behaviors is apologizing. It also gives him something he can do to fill the breach made by screaming and hitting and angry feelings, and that is empowering.

However, I’ve been thinking it would be nice to have an alternative option for times when I can’t take him away for one-on-one time! I can’t always leave what I’m doing, or leave Limerick, and it is hard for him to just be sent away on his own. So I’m thinking of making a “calm-down corner” for him to go to (either on my direction or of his own choosing) when he is feeling angry, exhausted, overwhelmed, anxious, sad, or just in need of some space and quiet time. One of my coworkers recently gifted us a massive pillow puppy that I am planning to put there, under a little hanging canopy to clearly set the space aside from the rest of the boys’ bedroom. Then there will be a small basket of toys that are just for the calm-down space: exercise balls to squeeze, bottles with water and glitter or other objects in them that can be shaken, a few soft toys to hug, and maybe a book or two. I talked with Rondel about the idea and he thought it was a good one – so we’ll see how it goes! I’m hoping to start making the canopy and toy basket this afternoon after work.

What are some of your techniques for helping your intense children learn to manage their emotions? I want to give him as many tools as I possibly can, so he’s able to stay on top of those waves instead of letting them pull him under the water.

 

Posted in family life, phfr

{pretty, happy, funny, real} – memorial day weekend

Posted on by kristinabean

We packed a lot of activities into one weekend!

Saturday was our fifth anniversary – but my sister’s husband’s brother (who is also a friend of ours) was getting married that evening, so we dropped the boys off at my parents’ house Friday night for a sleepover so we could celebrate a little early. The next morning I woke up early, being somewhat incapable of sleeping past 6am, and made cinnamon rolls for an anniversary surprise 🙂 He ate six of them over the course of the day, so I think they were a success 🙂 and I ate the other six between that day and the next, shh! So that’s a bit of {happy} and {real}:

I didn’t take any pictures at the wedding, in part because the cameras honestly tend to detract from the ceremony in my opinion, but also because corralling two toddlers with no practice in sitting still through long events took both my hands, all my skill, and most of my patience. Fortunately they had a foyer area where we could watch the wedding without any of our noise disrupting the event! My sister, who was a bridesmaid, said she couldn’t hear anything; the wedding planner, who kept darting in and out of the foyer, seemed to think otherwise by the looks of exasperation and disapproval she kept shooting our way.

And in general, despite the fact that it was an exceptionally nice wedding and reception, and was set up in a very family-friendly way (as I had anticipated, knowing the couple), the attitude of the other guests made it really hard for me to enjoy it. Maybe all those older women were childless, or had forgotten what it was like to have young kids – but I got a larger dose of judgmental glances at that reception than I have ever gotten before. If you really want to make someone feel uncomfortable enough to leave, just keep shooting nasty looks at them… but if you want to be courteous, come over and express whatever’s bothering you and maybe it can be addressed. It didn’t help that our kids were the youngest there. We had a lot of young children at our wedding and reception, and I would have loved to have more – it is weird to me to celebrate marriage, the covenant that leads to new life, in a child-exclusive way – but there were only a few here, and I think the others skipped the ceremony and came late. Sigh. I don’t think I want to attempt that again; my social anxiety is bad enough without the blatant disapproval of others pushing it home.

Sunday was another story altogether, though. Since my sister and her husband were in town for the wedding, we had a family party at my parents’ house, including my uncle, his sons, his girlfriend, and his girlfriend’s daughters, whom I hadn’t met before. Again, I didn’t take many pictures, but it was mainly because I was too busy swimming and eating to think about it! It was good to be with family, to relax, to be free to be ourselves and let the kids be themselves, and to remember the love of family which matters more than the passing judgments of strangers.

I did get a few shots of my husband and Rondel swimming together, while Limerick was napping! The boys absolutely love the pool and spent hours in it throughout the day, with whoever they could persuade to accompany them.

On Memorial Day itself, we stayed at home and recovered from the weekend. I was intending to clean but after doing three loads of laundry, washing a couple batches of dishes, and vacuuming the floors, I was pretty much exhausted. I keep forgetting how much less stamina I have in the first trimester! The floors were in desperate need of vacuuming, though, so I’m glad I at least got that done. Next in line? The bathrooms. (Always the bathrooms… I hate cleaning the bathrooms, so they get put off, and then they get horrible, and then I want to do them even less, but then I finally do them and it is such a weight off my shoulders.) I had found a good routine for housecleaning over the spring semester, but my schedule has completely changed again and I have two fewer mornings at home, which makes cleaning more difficult as the boys are more tired and needy in the afternoon and dinner prep needs to be done. I’m sure I’ll figure something out before the schedule changes again, though!

Head over to Like Mother, Like Daughter for the link-up today! There will probably be a lot more beauty and happiness there than in this rather rambling and complaining post of mine – but I am glad and thankful for the special times we’ve had thrown in with the challenging ones this weekend.

Posted in family life

marriage and anniversaries and slogging through the hard times

Posted on by kristinabean

I wasn’t able to write this up and post it on our anniversary this past Saturday (I’m blaming the pregnancy fatigue), but I did want to post it before the days slipped too far away!

Saturday was our fifth anniversary – the first real “milestone” anniversary we’ve reached together – and it made me think about all that has already happened in our marriage, and where we are now. We’ve packed a lot of things into those five years, between my husband’s school, my job, finding and buying our first home, and having two kids (with another one on the way)! There hasn’t been much time to get used to things being a certain way before they change again; even though we’ve had the same basic setup now for over a year (two kids, classes for my husband, and 30 hours/week of work for me), the exact schedule changes every semester, and we’re forced to rethink childcare and daily routines for both ourselves and the boys. I’m usually up early every morning to work (I try to start at 6:30am), and my husband is usually up late every night doing homework (often not coming to bed until midnight) – so lately, at least, our time together has been limited, sporadic, and fleeting. It’s the kind of environment that breeds misunderstandings and resentment, with both spouses feeling tired and overwhelmed, isolated and worn. I described it to a close friend as feeling as though we have no margin, as though we are using every resource and drop of energy we have just to keep things going.

And yet, somehow, we’ve kept our trust and love for each other strong. Both of us have striven to prioritize family time whenever possible, and to pick up the everyday tasks of cleaning and organizing as we have time and energy (although, I have to confess, my husband is probably more sacrificial of his time and energy in those things than I am…). For the most part, we understand each other’s strengths and weaknesses, and can support each other through those things; especially when we see each other at the end of our rope, we try to pick up the burden to let the other get rest. My husband is especially generous with his time when he sees that I am getting exhausted, which is something I am incredibly grateful for! My personality tends toward suspicion and jealousy, but instead of letting my husband’s late-night study sessions give rise to paranoid fears in my head, I remind myself of the character and heart I know him to possess, that he has proven to me time and time again. In short, his love acted out in the simple tasks of everyday life gives me assurance in the times when we can’t profess and renew that love in deep or romantic ways, and I hope mine does the same for him.

I hope there will be a time when life isn’t pulling us in quite so many different directions, when it will be easier to create consistent routines that build in space for family time and couple time to strengthen those most intimate relationships – but I am sure that the trust and love developed now, if we keep striving towards that end through the difficulties of it, will be a blessing for us no matter what happens.

Happy anniversary, wonderful! There is no one else I’d rather live life with than you.

Posted in family life

the importance of words

Posted on by kristinabean

Everyone always says that little kids pick up on everything going on around them, and understand far more of what they hear than you might expect – but it’s still hard to really believe it and act on it until you see evidence of it with your own kids! They just seem so deep into their own world that you don’t expect them to be paying attention to what you’re saying to another adult…

Last night, as we were reading our bedtime books, Rondel said somewhat sadly, “You don’t sleep very well.” (He refers to himself in the second person – I brought it up with the pediatrician and she thought it was hilarious and not something to worry about, which was reassuring.) I’m guessing he had heard my husband talking about how our kids in general aren’t great sleepers, because Limerick has lately been having some sleep struggles reminiscent of Rondel’s younger days, and taken it personally, and become concerned about it.

But the thing is, Rondel has been sleeping amazingly well for the past month or so, ever since we settled into a consistent routine – going to sleep without tears and protests, sleeping through the night, and waking up at a reasonable time (you might call it an ungodly early hour, but it’s when I have to get up for work anyway). He doesn’t like going to bed, but what kid does?

So I told him exactly that: that even though he doesn’t like going to sleep and it can be hard for him to calm down after a busy day, he has been sleeping really well. I told him how proud I was of him for getting into bed with a good attitude every night, and doing something that was hard for him, and sleeping so well all through the night. And he just lit up with this shy little smile, and scrunched up his shoulders, and I gave him a big hug for being my sweet and wonderful boy, just the way he is 🙂

Then I resolved to be more careful about what I say about the boys in front of them!

Posted in family life, phfr

{pretty, happy, funny, real} – a big announcement!

Posted on by kristinabean

Well, the boys and I managed to finish our teaser project from last week, and while it didn’t turn out quite as nicely as my Pinterest-addled mind envisioned, I’m still pretty happy about it 🙂

{pretty}

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{happy}

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The second picture has better smiles, but something about the first picture just seems fitting for two boys expecting a new sibling! Rondel’s somewhat suspicious face says, are you sure this is such a good idea? – while Limerick just looks slightly in shock! So I can never decide which one I like better…

{funny}

Of course, most of our takes ended up along these lines:

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L: Mom! It fell off again!
Me: Stop pulling it off then!

It would have been cute as well to have me holding the number 3, but that would have required another photographer so it wasn’t logistically going to happen this week. Another pair of adult hands would have simplified the process greatly though! No sooner would I position the kids and run back to the camera than they would start scooting around or becoming distracted by everything around them. I just considered myself fortunate that they were mostly happy throughout the proceedings 🙂

{real}

They were much happier when I let them run wild on the little walls and hills and explore the number boards in their own way! I have no clue how professional photographers get toddlers to look so good in posed pictures.

So… the details? Our new little one will be arriving sometime around Christmas, and we are so excited to welcome him or her into our family. I’ve been significantly moodier and queasier with this pregnancy so I have my suspicions that it may be a girl, but we’ll have to just wait and see – it could be that I’m just out of shape so my body is protesting more 🙂

I am beyond excited to be able to walk through this Advent season with Mary, growing heavy with child, pondering the mystery of the Incarnation as the mystery of new life blossoms within me (and probably aching for the pregnancy to be over like she must have been at the end as well!). It just seems like it will be a special way to experience Advent and Christmas, a new way to see the wonder and the gift of the baby Jesus. Hopefully I will be able to hold to that instead of letting stress and busyness run my days.

Head on over to the link-up at Like Mother, Like Daughter to share in each other’s everyday joys and struggles!

Posted in family life

Rondel and role play

Posted on by kristinabean

Rondel decided a few days ago that we are all different characters from Pixar’s Cars movie, and assigned us specific roles.

He, of course, is Lightning McQueen. Sometimes he will run through the house revving his engine, screeching his brakes, or crashing into things…

Limerick is Red the fire truck, at least in Rondel’s head – he doesn’t really get it.

My husband is Sally, I am Doc Hudson, and Rondel’s grandma, grandpa, and uncle are the Sheriff, The King, and Mater respectively.

It’s kind of funny because he won’t refer to us by any other names, and he’ll correct us rather emphatically if we refer to someone in the family by another name.

I was beginning to worry about this kind of imaginative play, wondering if the influence of the movie made his pretend play more rigid and less his own, when I remembered that I did exactly the same thing with the Cinderella movie when I was his age. My pretend play probably had even less complexity than his, since I didn’t have quite so many roles to assign and since I didn’t really ever deviate from the movie’s plot like Rondel will – and it didn’t hurt my creativity in the least. I was still wildly creating my own stories all through childhood (and indeed into adulthood).

So for now I will just enjoy being Doc Hudson and race with my Lightning all through the house!

Posted in family life

rondel the storyteller

Posted on by kristinabean

In the last few weeks Rondel’s imagination has really taken off, along with his storytelling ability, and all throughout each day I am treated to the most creative and hilarious stories about us, his toys, and characters from his favorite books.

At dinner, his broccoli becomes the apple tree from Harold and the Purple Crayon (by Crockett Johnson, 1955 – a book that deserves to be on our next favorite book list post), complete with a fierce dragon guarding it – but fortunately he eats it without waiting for the “apples” to turn red!

When “reading” one of his books, all the other literary figures he’s familiar with make their way into the current book to join the main character in his adventures, so that this afternoon If You Give a Mouse a Cookie (Laura Numeroff, 1985) became Tom and Pippo Eat Cookies and Chips with a Mouse, borrowing the delightful Tom and Pippo from Helen Oxenbury’s series and telling me on every page what they were doing with that incorrigible mouse.

His race cars crash and blow their tires and race like he’s seen in Pixar’s Cars movie, but they also take time to snuggle and nurse, and some special ones (his description) have extra seats to hold “big boys” and babies, along with the mommies and daddies needed to take care of them. Some of the race cars themselves are baby cars, who need extra help to do various stunts, while the big boy cars can do pretty much everything 😛

And the best part is the way he tells the stories! He typically starts off very serious and thoughtful, creating the scenario and carefully describing it – but as he picks up steam, he gets faster and faster and more and more ridiculous, until at the end we are both laughing hysterically together at the utterly nonsensical conclusion he’s reached. This is the creativity I’ve always assumed young children have, and which I’ve been waiting to see in my own kids, not being exactly sure at which age to expect it, and it is amazingly fun to watch it develop! I hope he is able to cultivate this ability to tell stories as he gets older, because one of my favorite childhood memories was listening to my dad tell stories (real and made-up) at the dinner table each night, and as I very painfully lack said talent myself it would be the next best thing to experience it again in this next generation.

Posted in family life, phfr

{pretty, happy, funny, real} – some crafting with the toddlers

Posted on by kristinabean

The boys being very excited about painting for various and sundry reasons, I pulled out my previous finger paint recipe and took the boys outdoors with some paper and sponge brushes. (A cornstarch-based edible paint would probably be less messy and sticky, but I didn’t have enough cornstarch to make it work. So condensed milk it had to be.)

{pretty}

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I mixed up just the primary colors to avoid ending up with just a brown mess, and I love the way the different colors combined on the paper, brushes, and sidewalk. It was also interesting seeing the different ways the boys painted: Rondel using wide sweeping strokes on the paper, blending the colors together thoroughly and without subtlety; Limerick flinging the brushes in the air above the paper to make fine strings and drips of paint below, far more into the process than the product.

{happy}

Rondel absolutely loved everything about painting. He loved mixing the different colors, testing the different brushes to see what they produced on the paper, and creating something from the raw materials available. He didn’t complain once about the stickiness of the paint, even when it dripped on his legs or when he decided to paint with his fingers to see how it compared to the brushes – which is a huge deal for this little boy who is (or used to be?) so sensorily sensitive. He also didn’t panic or get upset with Limerick at all, even when they wanted the same brush or color paint. It was good to see him so involved in the process of creation that he was able to tune out or ignore the physical discomforts of a hot sidewalk and sticky paint as well as the emotional distraction of a younger brother sharing the brushes and paints.

{funny}

Limerick dove into the painting process with his characteristic no-holds-barred exploratory attitude (which is one of the things I enjoy most about his personality!), dripping paint off his brush onto the papers and sidewalk with intense interest in how the paint flew and fell, with the side-effect of becoming very sticky and colorful himself… and then suddenly he realized how sticky he was and fell apart, attempting to cling to me with wriggly snuggles in his upset. Being set in the bathtub cheered him up considerably 😛

{real}

In addition to their free play exploration painting, the boys helped me with one of my projects with some acrylic paint on wood. But since I haven’t yet finished the project, all you get are the teaser photos 🙂 I promise you it’ll be a good one when it’s done, and I hope to have pictures of the final product up next week!

Head on over to Like Mother, Like Daughter today for the link-up and share your captured moments of everyday contentment with the rest of us!

Posted in family life, musings, recipes

meal-planning for the creative and spontaneous mom

Posted on by kristinabean

I think cooking and grocery shopping are two of my favorite housekeeping activities 🙂 It’s fun imagining different ways to use the fruits and vegetables that are seasonal and on sale, or figuring out how to use up the remnants of a leftover or the last bits of produce in the fridge before they go bad without making an emergency trip to the store, or balancing all the different food groups throughout the day to make sure the boys are eating a well-rounded diet. In a way, it’s like a puzzle that never gets old because so many of the variables are always changing! (And I must confess that I would get bored pretty quickly if the variables didn’t change – I could never work off a strict rotation of menus because I get tired of cooking the same things and like to mix it up and experiment with new ideas fairly regularly).

Most of my inspiration comes from the produce sale list… I see, for instance, that red bell peppers are only 50 cents each this week and I wonder what I could make with them that my bell-pepper-disdaining family would eat (I love peppers so I’m always attempting to convert the rest of them). Maybe on top of a bruschetta with some sort of cheese – something with feta and ricotta, perhaps… I call those “little toasties” to the kids because they sometimes will outright refuse a food just because it has a strange name and I’d rather not have to deal with that if I can avoid it! And there’s one meal down: I would throw together a quick pasta or veggie to accompany it, depending on what leftovers we have and what’s in the pantry, and let the bruschetta be the main star of the meal.

I think one of the factors that makes this sort of meal-planning easier for me is that I don’t think every dinner has to include a meat. I was a vegetarian for eleven years, so as long as there is some sort of cheese or bean in the main meal I feel like it is complete, and especially if we had a high-protein breakfast or lunch I don’t think it necessary to emphasize the protein at dinner. Instead, dinner ends up being the most vegetable-heavy meal of the day most of the time. We’ll see if this needs to change as the boys get older, of course 🙂 Meats are just harder for me to be creative with because I lost those eleven years of experimentation, so I get more easily bored by the options I can reliably cook.

Right now we’re entering into one of my favorite meal-planning seasons because there is so much seasonal fresh fruit! Fruit is an easy side dish to round out a meal, a healthy dessert if I’m feeling nibbly after dinner, a no-guilt snack to pull out if the boys are hungry an hour before dinner, and a quick breakfast if I’m running late to work. It significantly reduces the amount of prep and forethought I have to put into meals… and the hot weather in general lends itself to quick, light foods instead of the heavier meals that require thawing time, prep time, and cooking time (as delicious as those meals are in the colder weather!).

What are some of your tips and tricks for feeding your family every day?

Posted in family life, phfr

{pretty, happy, funny, real} – our trip to San Diego

Posted on by kristinabean

This past weekend we were able to drive out to visit my husband’s brother and his family in San Diego! They were incredibly gracious in opening their home to the four of us and squeezing themselves into one bedroom so we could squeeze ourselves into the other bedroom – without that hospitality, it would have been a lot harder financially for us to travel out there, and we want to try to maintain the friendship between the cousins in a way that is difficult if we only see them for Thanksgiving and Christmas, so the trip was a priority for us.

While the weather didn’t exactly encourage the kind of outdoor beach-y activities we’d hoped for (cold and rainy, anyone?), we did still have a great time with family. Limerick in particular loved interacting with his cousin F (who is Rondel’s age) and Rondel loved the adventure of a new city. And to my great surprise and relief, both boys handled the long car ride incredibly well; we only had to stop in Yuma both coming and going, and the boys were relatively cheerful even when they weren’t sleeping or snacking.

{pretty}

My in-laws have a year pass to Sea World, and used their guest passes to take us for the day. The sea turtle exhibit was one of our favorites – the kids wanted to sit and watch the fish forever! Fish always leave me amazed at God’s creativity: there are so many unique shapes and colors that you don’t see in land animals.

Rondel was also hugely impressed by the orca whales and their ability to jump right out of the water!

{funny}

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The sea lions were another exciting exhibit as Rondel and his cousin actually got to feed them by dropping tiny fish over the edge! It kind of looks like he is trying to climb over the edge himself though! This was also the first exhibit where Limerick (who had fallen asleep on the drive over and then woke up too early) stopped clinging to our necks and became keenly interested in what was happening around him, which made me quite happy.

{happy}

The next day we attempted to go to the beach despite the cool and cloudy weather, and Rondel and his cousin had a blast running and digging in the sand. Rondel even got completely knocked over by a wave at one point and got back up with a huge smile on his face – not at all a characteristic reaction for my sensitive boy. But he has always loved the beach, from the first time he set eyes on it two summers ago, and this visit was no exception.

{real}

Limerick, on the other hand, was not impressed by the beach, which really surprised me. He is normally my adventurous and free-spirited boy, and I was expecting him to be running with cousin F up and down the sand. But I think he was just overwhelmed by it all: the roar of the wind coming in off the sea, the crash of the waves, the endless water stretching to the horizon, the unfamiliar feel of the fine, soft sand. He spent the entire time snuggled up with me or my husband 😦

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The closest Limerick got to the water – see how he’s nestled up to my husband so sadly? It wasn’t like him at all.

To top off the whole weekend, my parents surprised us by deep-cleaning the entire house while we were away! There isn’t much nicer than coming home to a sparkling clean house after being gone for a few days 🙂 And so I have been basically feeling very blessed and very loved this week, basking in the friendship of our extended family and the generosity of my parents. Sometimes I think I must be the most fortunate person in the whole world, to have these people loving me so much!

Head on over to Like Mother, Like Daughter today to join the link-up and share in each others’ joy or travails from the week!