Mine. Mine. Mine...

My 3 year old owns us. She refers to each of her siblings with the suffix of ‘my’. For example, “Where is my Ellie?” And  “My Ellie has my Gussy!” Evidently, property rights in this house include persons and are exclusively given to toddlers. Since the aforementioned toddler is really cute, we have allowed such said ownership to continue uncontested. We’ll see what happens when ‘my Gussy’ becomes a toddler too.....there may be a coup...

If the Shoe Fits...

Nicky is four. Four year olds like to have fun and can be very creative. They also tend to not think through their creativity and the consequences of such inventiveness.....Nicky is four.
Using his playful inventive mind, he set up a whole bunch of pillows in a pile on his bedroom floor. Cool right? Yeah he must have thought it would be really fun to jump into a pile of pillows. I have to admit that it even sounds fun when I think about it. However, it turned out to be quite un-fun. The mistake seems to have occurred from the location he chose to jump from before landing in his pillow pile. Not to waste such a pile on a measly leap from the floor, he climbed up onto the bunk bed. From his lofty precipice, he leapt! Learning about the law of gravity can be hard and occasionally painful. The pillows, whose sole responsibility was to ensure a safe landing, were not up to the task and relinquished their duty. The end result seems to be 2, maybe 3 fractures in his right foot, and a really cool blue ‘shoe’ he gets to wear for three weeks. All in all, he seems to be fine with it all, and was proud to be able to see the special pictures of his bones. Perhaps next time he will remember his visit with gravity and stay a little closer to the ground.

A Day of Rest...

Sundays are good for reflections. Having at least one day per week that you can just stop rushing from project to project is good for the soul. I’m sitting in my room alone, listening to the sounds of a father spending time with his kids. His voice as he talks with them is light, with an unburdened tone. There is a sense of joviality and eagerness to each sentence that is spoken. Fatherhood sits well on his shoulders. And I for one, am enjoying the chance to silently listen without reply. There is peace in this moment. Peace and satisfaction at a life well spent.

Once Upon a Time...

There was a blog, and that blog was all about the amazing things that happened to a mom while raising 5 kids. Silly moments and stressful tales abounded wordfully on each page. She was a Storyteller, and these were her tales. Those that came to read her stories were momentarily entertained by her prose. However, as life does tend to move forward, she added another child and soon another. At long last the blog writing faded into the background of her life, being swept away by the constant draw to serve her ever pressing army of progeny. And so the blog sat, patiently waiting. Quiet in the still, vast void of the Internet. Ready for another word, a sentence, a story. Waiting for the Storyteller.

Short, Sweet, and to the Point...

Two nights ago I was entertaining the twins with dramatic retellings of their former years, when I recalled that I had once written a blog. Long ago, I had transported my thoughts from my mind to carefully crafted words on a page (or screen as it happens to be). I searched for my old blog and found it without much fan fair.

Here it sits...alone...forgotten...why?

After two days of reminiscing about my glory days, I realized the fault lies in few words. Literally the lack of word using. That is to say, that the world of Facebook (and Twitter for those who use it), has stolen our use of words. We no longer write stories and tales about our journey, but instead write clips and snips about trivial moments in our lives. Gone are the deeper entrenching histories, replaced by often surface, sometimes vapid, self-promos. Sometimes less is more, but sometimes less can miss the beauty of what lies deeper. We are so much more than a few words on a page...we have dimensions that cannot be expressed in 40 characters or less.

So here I write. It's not short, or necessarily sweet, but hopefully it has a point...

I think I might just expand my horizon once more.

A Rose by Any Other Name...

So after much thought, (and an all too agreeable husband) we have decided on a name for our new little family member who is arriving next year.

Rosalyn Gabrielle.

Or "Rosie", as we plan on calling her.

Of course this all pivots on the assurance of the ultrasound technician that the baby is a girl. We do not plan on using this name for a boy.

Learn Something New Everyday...

Sammy decided to take off his diaper while "napping" in his crib today. This is a first for him, and as much as I'd like to applaud his ingenuity and learning curve, what he removed was stinky and very messy. Although I have had to deal with this kind of mess before with the twins, the difference here was that he didn't like the mess he had made. He seemed quite upset about the whole thing before and after clean up. The worst having to do with his favorite blanket now needing a wash, and therefore out of his tender grasp.