letters to Emily {potty training, the bond of mother and son, & the life of motherhood}

Dearest Emily,

Well, I was elated to hear about your pregnancy!!!  What a dream!  Four kids:)  Since people aren't having as many kids anymore you have an official large family for 2015.  I am so happy Chase decided to potty train all on his own.  Well, let me just say potty training + me = H-E-double hockey sticks.  It has been the most challenging thing so far with raising Bear.  Strong willed parent plus strong willed child isn't a good match for potty training.  So me, being the strong willed parent has had to learn to be patient, flexible and understanding.  See, they don't tell you that parenting is harder than going to school.  Even though I would much rather experience things to learn them, than to sit and read about them.  I think it stretches you more and it is HARDER.  But the rewards are greater.  Smithy is the most adorable toothless kid in town, I just squeeze him every time he smiles and I see that glorious gap in the front of his mouth.  Him and I have grown much closer these past few months.  I hate to say it was because of the accident he had at school, but I did feel so deeply for him.  I think it was the first time he had an accident that wasn't me or Bryces fault and I felt this mother hen protectiveness wash over me when I arrived at the hospital to be by his side as they pulled his broken teeth out and x-rayed his broken leg.  He was in excruciating pain, and as you know they did a spinal tap on him when he was 2, to measure his nerves and they found the tissue around his nerves was very thin, so he does feel things more intensely.  So he was screaming the whole time, not understanding the pain he was feeling.  My heart was completely broken for him.  So I gave him my heart that day.  I really felt that he deserved all of it.  Ever since then we have really connected and we are a lot closer.  He is my buddy.   He grabs at you so much more now and he really loves to play around.  I was painting one day, while my two kids were at school…so funny that I have an empty house from 9-1 now, and as comfort back ground noise I had stardust (the movie) playing  and the dad gave some advice to his son and I will never forget it.  He says, 

"I can tell you that every man I ever envied when I was a boy, 

has led an unremarkable life."   

I really loved that.  Sometimes when we look at others as children or young adults you never realize that you have all the power to have a life full of whatever you want.  But you are so fixated on wanting their lives you forget to live your own.  Sometimes I feel like I live on a little island here in Germany, that is full of magic and old history around every corner.  It also has its hardships, but I have learned so many extraordinary things and I am so grateful for that.   America is my country, Heidelberg is my hometown.  I feel like being a mom is an adventure of it's own, different from living in another country, and an essential life lesson that will push you to be your best and worst.  It is the remarkable that I searched for and now am living as plain old mom.  All moms live a remarkable life, sometimes it feels unremarkable,  but once you catch wind of the magic and excitement it brings it will sweep you off your feet and carry you to places you never imagined possible.  The life of motherhood should be upheld as the most remarkable thing you could ever do.  And that is why my dear, you are a remarkable woman, living  a remarkable life.  I love to hear of your adventures with your kids and the creativity to bless their lives with beauty, creativity, love and learning.  I love you miss Emiline Harris!  Have a  great and REMARKABLE day being a mom.

love

Beth

the you know what part

so this happened.

chase dragged me kicking and screaming on monday by the hair on my head,

DEMANDING underpants.

it was monday.

i had every excuse to talk him out of it,

mitigation, costco day, preschool day, speech therapy day,

almost as busy as a wednesday kind of day.

but the man would NOT be put in another diaper for one more day of his life.

and even though i had to drag him all around and potty train him on the run,

with extra pants and underwear in my bag all day,

by the next morning,

he was potty trained.

{god bless the third child and their ability to do everything on the run.}

i couldn't even believe it.

the man was ready.

i had no idea he was that ready.

i stood there watching him wave to brennan as he left for school the next day,

just like he does every morning,

and i looked at my family, and they all looked a little bit older.

like a new phase of life we'd hit.

no one in diapers.

people in school with homework, and friends, and lunches, and stuff.

it took him another half a day to really get the hang of the you know what part,

the hardest part in my opinion,

but man oh man, i've AGAIN by corrected by one of my boys.

there's a common theme here.

my boys teaching me things about the world that i thought i already had figured out.

like the fact that maybe boys can ACTUALLY be easily potty trained, not just the girls.

who knew?

i'm so glad he made me do it.

and i could watch his little proud face all day long.

i will NEVER forget the look on his face and the hug he gave me when he finally got the hang of the you know what part.

i watched him grow up a little bit right then and there.

and i felt our mother son bond squeeze a little bit tighter.

because we got through it together.

and it wasn't even all that painful.

4 months without ANYONE in diapers.

this my friends, is awesome:)

first time in 7 years i have not been changing someone's diaper.

not gonna lie though, i'm so glad to be having another bum to change on the way.

because i'm just not ready for my family to be THAT grown up and out of babyhood quite yet.

this WILL be the first time i've had a newborn baby without a toddler in diapers.

awesome awesome awesome.

awesome baby man.

thank you my sweet little baby man.

he's got a future in the food and beverage industry

{please note the stool that leverages him onto the garbage can above}

...

the third kid waits for NOBODY.

you want a piece of bread,

you get YO OWN piece of bread.

he's getting really good at serving dinner too.

i had to risk my life fighting him off of his system of climbing onto the kitchen counter the other day when he tried to go between the coco motion that was literally in the process of MOTIONing hot chocolate and the toaster that was toasting english muffins.

the two year old brain. sheesh.

and he's so quiet about it.

you don't even know he's up there until you turn around and dinner is all plated all over the place.

but would you look at those chubby hands and feet???!!! 

he's FOR SURE got a future in the food and beverage industry.

maybe comedy too.

or rock climbing.

no doubt about it.

"boys come out nice, but then they get mean." -max

the night we told the kids we were having a boy,

max cried for 25 minutes.

non-stop for 25 minutes.

like she couldn't breathe she was crying so hard for 25 minutes.

devastated might not even do her feelings justice.

it was sad and a little bit funny.

mostly sad because we knew this was the first time in her life where she was really having a real life moment.

i told her we could get him little pink bow ties for church,

and use him as her baby doll all day long,

but nothing would cheer her up.

finally, between sobs and gasping for air she choked out why she was so sad it wasn't going to be a girl baby. 

she just kept telling us over and over and over again that she just wished it was a girl baby so BADLY because "boys come out nice, but then they get mean!!!"

my heart ACHED for her.

and then i stifled a laugh at her honesty.

and told her that this baby has already proved me wrong about everything i've ever known to be true about being pregnant with boys,

and maybe if she gave him a chance he might surprise her.

and maybe she could train him to be a brother that grows up to be nice???

then she said "maybe the next baby will be a girl"

with a glimmer of hope in her eyes.

we didn't even get into THAT.

after about two weeks of that i think we've finally got her convinced,

plus we told her she got to go with just me to pick out an outfit for the baby to wear home from the hospital, and that basically made her entire life,

and now she's planning his entire ensemble down to every detail from head to toe.

she still will say she would really just rather the baby be a girl,

all with a "but this is life" kind of smile on her face,

and it just makes me smile to watch her through it all.

oh how i LOVE this little girl!!!

in brennan's defense, he really is a sweetheart,

but max and brennan are either best friends or best of enemies.

there is no in between.

but when it's good, it's GREAT, and those are the moments that are my favorite.

chase is her little boyfriend that calls her mom, but she told me she thinks is going to grow up and treat her like the enemy times with brennan too.

being almost 5 is a complicated time in a girl's life i guess.

i'm just so glad she gets to be almost 5 with us. 

the boys on the other hand have all of the plans in the world to have bunk beds,

lego tables, and basketball teams.

thrilled is how i would put it.

thrilled beyond measure.

i've never had so much fun being pregnant than i have watching the kids this time around.

also, i've never been so tired.

i'm in heaven.

must be the second trimester:)

like a fly on meat {"educators"}

there was never a boy that loved cars a much as chase ray.

i used to think brennan liked cars,

and he did, but it's nothing like the love affair that chase has with his.

they go where he goes.

playing with them everywhere is his entire life.

i never knew a boy could be entertained for HOURS on end with anything, let alone a tiny little toy car.

he can find or make a race track out of anything.

there were tubs at brennan's basketball practice last wednesday night,

and he was set for the entire hour.

he sleeps with one race car clutched in his hand during his entire nap,

and then brings it out of his crib like we glued it into his hand.

when i check on him before i go to bed at night i will usually find about 5 cars stowed away until his back, and one in each hand, with the binky laying next to him in his crib because his hands are full of cars.

also, he calls elevators "educators."

and he'd like to spend his entire day in just a diaper, and never have his car playing disrupted by anything. too bad for him that he's the third kid, and his entire life revolves around car pool pick ups, dance and basketball practices, and grocery store runs.

good thing for him,

cars can go everywhere.

even in "educators."

this is about the only rule i follow

i'm not responsible for this behavior.

and i don't make the rules.

i just follow them.

this is about the only rule i follow,

but it's a good one.

listen to the cravings.

that is all. 

all a dollar $

if that doesn't make your monday great,

i don't know what can:)

vacumm vaccum vacuum {adventures in housekeeping}

i was cleaning the bathroom downstairs a few days ago.

{the most used, messiest, and most cleaned bathroom in our house might i add.}

chase couldn't be entertained by A THING.

all he wanted to do was play in the potty with his toys, 

and spray toilet bowl cleaner all over the walls.

i kept trying to get him involved in ANYTHING other than helping me clean the bathroom, 

so that i could get my cleaning done before it was time to pick max up from preschool,

but he wouldn't be pawed at.

finally, he wandered off into the pantry,

and i got the last of the bathroom scrubbed.

i can tell i'm pregnant b/c i've been cleaning potty's and counter tops multiple times a week, and sometimes twice in one day. this never happens to me except when i'm pregnant. like the nesting type of pregnant. when i feel the need to have spick and span bathrooms all of the time. it's amazing. then the baby comes out, and we're not sleeping, and i'm going a little bit crazy from the lack of sleep and having no control over any part of my life, and i feel like if i could just clean the bathrooms everything would be ok, but who can clean their bathrooms twice a week with a newborn anyway?? who can clean the bathrooms twice a week without a newborn?? no one, unless you're me and you're in the nesting phase of being pregnant, that's when. it's unnecessary, it's OCD, and it's amazingly FABULOUS:). also i buy new garbage cans for my bathrooms, organize closets, and get rid of things, and stuff like that. so like i was saying, the baby comes out, and i usually have a meltdown about three weeks in, i clean the bathrooms for the first time in a month, and i come back to my senses with a two hour cry, followed by a 2 hours nap, and i get over my clean bathroom thing. then we go back to our weekly {ehem, ok maybe it's every other weekly, bathroom cleaning routine, with the exception of visitors coming b/c lord knows my house is never cleaner than the 15 minutes before someone is coming.

so just when i got this bathroom scrubbed to sparkling perfection, chase came walking around the corner with a tupper ware full of fishy crackers.

and just when i went to take it from him to open it and lure him to the table so i could clean the other bathrooms upstairs,

he pulled the lid off and fishy crackers went everywhere.

LIKE EVERYWHERE:)

and i thought about how funny it was that this would happen.

like the universe telling me to quit trying to tell me to slow down,

get less done, and just let the toddler help.

so i decided to give up on my independent cleaning mission,

and i went to get the little dust buster out of the coat closet,

and by the time i got back chase had managed to step on about 100 fishy crackers, 

squishing them into abooooouuuuut a million billion pieces.

and that's when i had this genius idea:)

i handed that little dust buster over to chase,

who was BEGGING for the job,

and i just knew this was the universe giving me a little bit of appreciation for my moment of submission.

oh yes, yes it was.

and for the next 25 minutes he vaccumed vacummed vacuumed {it really took me three tries, and i looked at the spell check each time. i will never learn how to spell that word.} up every particle of fishy crackers in that little bathroom of ours off of the garage.

and i cleaned the other two bathrooms in peace upstairs:)

and pretty much we BOTH felt like champs.

give a toddler a job,

and they will always pay you in dividends.

free ones too.

next time i'm giving him the vacumm vacuum {uHHh!!!!} from the start.

who needs a house keeper when you have THE baby man chase ray?

"the time has come"

"Mom, the time has come for me to be a kid that wears tie shoes. Teach me. I don't want anyone doing it for me. I DONT wanna be one of those kids who have OTHER people tie their shoes anymore." -brennan

...

DIRECT QUOTE.

"the time has come"

where does he get this stuff???

i hope he let's me hold him and kiss him when he's all grown up.

like literally overnight

and then one day,

i kind of started showing.

like literally overnight.

weirdest thing.