Caleb’s Graduation

Caleb’s graduation was very sweet.

Caleb was so excited the morning of it!  He was ready to go sing all the songs that he and his friends had been working so hard on.

He looked adorable!

This boy warms my heart so much!  I tell him all the time that I need him.  His sweet smiles and encouraging spirit puts joy in me.

What a blessing he is!

I know this is just a small milestone in his life, but it is a step at change none the less.  I don’t like change, so of course I cried a tad this day.

These two sweet teachers are already missed!  Caleb is wanting to still do “school” and practice his letters.  I have been scrambling to come up with some things for us to do everyday while the other two have quiet time/naps, and its been a lot of fun.

I look at his innocence and I miss my own.  Everything seems so much harder and complex as adults.  I’m currently processing that I don’t think it has to be that way.  As I stepped away from his graduation and processed more of my last entry, I feel like I am on the brink of gaining perspective.

(Thank you to all those who encouraged me with messages, talks, and comments after my last post.  It does so much for the soul to not feel alone in my feelings and also have a community to build into me! )

This was such a sad day and moment for me/us as we said  good-bye, but it was just that a moment.  The hardest part was watching these cute kids not really know what to do…and how to process it.  They said good-bye as if they would see each other next week.

I have not been able to shake that.  We got home from graduation and I had a lump in my throat. But Caleb?! We walked through the door and he stripped off his shirt and was running around playing legos and superheros immediately.  He was alright!?!  All my worries and anxiety were for nothing?!  He quickly moved to “working” with his tools outside and was his happy, playful self.   Why not let him enjoy this season as he sees it!?  He is fine.

I hope that promised play dates happen and life and trips don’t prevent them this summer.  But, what I have learned from my son is we/he will be OK even if they don’t.

I looked at him and thought “he is ok!?!  If he’s OK, I am OK”.

I think God has me on a path of re-centering and coming back to the basics.  I know I’m emotional and can be dramatic.  What!?  :)  But that is when I am living solely in my flesh, and life was never meant to be that way.

I need to hang onto the simplicity that God offers with a relationship with him.  I don’t have to try to do it all or wear tons of labels and hats.  God has already accepted me just as I am.  In all my weak/hard moments, I am loved just as he created me.  I will hang onto that God is with me, for me and loves me unconditionally.

So, as we process change and whats next…we are not alone.  Praising God that his “love never fails, it never gives up, it never runs out on me…and it’s higher than the mountains that I face…and it’s stronger than the power of the grave…and its constant in the trial and the change…this one thing remains…his love never fails, it never gives up, it never runs out on me.”

Failing at “Super Mom”

(Note:  Congratulations to Amanda Huyser for winning my hair bow this week!)

Life is changing again for us.  I was so sad about Caleb starting preschool this year, but in the last few weeks I have also been so sad about it ending.  It’s funny how that changed this year.

I have been so excited to get my boy back and to start attacking the list on our fridge of all the fun things we want to do this summer.  I have been so excited about our schedule being freed up and creating lots of memories together!

On the other hand, Roswell Presbyterian Preschool has been such a sweet “routine” for Caleb.  He had the two best teachers.  I literally believe God placed our boy in their room this year.  It wasn’t an accident or by chance.  They love my Caleb and were so patient with my questions and endless emails at the beginning of the year when I was learning to “let go”.  Caleb and his classmates bonded this year, and I am sad for this sweet season to end because of the friendships he has made and the influence of his teachers in his life.

Caleb had mixed feelings about school ending too.  He has been so excited about summer and swimming in “Grammy Pammy’s pool”, yet He’s been sad to say goodbye to his school, friends, and teachers.  I watch his sweet innocence and am trying to help him grasp and process this change in his life.

I think part of why this is a hard change for me is knowing I am keeping him home next year.  He wont see his friends in a few short months back at school.  After our best friends moving, Matt’s job having a different look and routine, my boys not taking naps or even doing “quiet time” anymore, and now this change…I think I’m just kind of emotional!?  In my opinion, one of the hardest parts of being a stay at home mom to three little ones is having changes and being too busy and tired to process it all.  There are all these emotions not sorted out and just kind of on the edge of your heart and soul, so they ooze out the first chance they are “allowed” to.  

On Friday, he had his last day of preschool.

In hopes of trying to boost both our hurting hearts, I tried to prep a fun “Welcome to Summer” activity.  After rushing home from dropping Caleb off at school, I hurriedly started creating a banner for him. I filled up a bucket of water balloons and all of our water guns.  My goal was to get home and to have a huge water war.  In the midst of this preparation, I had a slight melt down.  I forgot to follow through on J’s potty training routine when we got home and the result started my unraveling.

I was annoyed that I couldn’t do everything I wanted without being “interrupted” with my other two children.  I was snippy and edgy with them as I was rushing to do MY tasks.  My mind was busily trying to plan a special day for Caleb, and I wasn’t as sharp with J’s needs. Not staying on it with him caused a step backwards in his potty training and  I lost it.

I started crying and got so frustrated.  I was frustrated with myself.  It was all my fault.  I put all this pressure on myself to make today special for Caleb…I was failing my other two.  After such an emotional high of “miracles coming in the form of poop” literally the day before, I was so discouraged with myself that I wasn’t more on my game with J.  I can’t do it all.

I just cried and hugged my sweet husband.  As I was crying, it all came out.  Hence, my emotions oozed .  I’m tired and going to bed too late.  I struggle to go to bed earlier because if I don’t stay up late and have some me time, I fail at hanging on to parts of “Erica”.  I’ve been sick and can’t run, so I am failing at holding onto one hobby I have worked so hard to keep up.  I can’t look cute and prepped everyday, so I fail at being the “hot mom”.  My house is always a mess, so I fail at being a good “home maker”.  Most of my meals are decided after my husband is home and the kids are beyond ready to eat, so I fail at another level of “home maker”. I cant please each of my three kids at the same time, all day, everyday, so I fail at being “super mom”.  In my mind, I am always letting someone or something down.  It’s so hard.

The day before this melt down, I had celebrated the heck out of J’s first poop in the toilet, and now I was letting him down by trying to make a special day for Caleb.

Matt held me, let me cry, helped fill my water balloons, and brought me back to reality.  What matters is loving my kids and not all the “tasks” I want to do for/or with them.  I put this pressure on my self to be “super ____”, but no one expects me to be that way.  He is God’s gift to me.

I wiped my tears and went to enjoy the end of the school year picnic with my kids, Caleb’s classmates, their moms, and his teachers.

After a good cry with my husband and a laugh with a sweet friend at Caleb’s last day of school picnic.  I was feeling a little better. I can’t be super mom all the time. This is my season.  My special, quick season of having three little blessings to care for everyday.

The water war was a blast!  The kids loved it!  There is nothing like a little skirt gun war and water balloon chasing to make you laugh and feel like a kid.

My cute girl was pretty much big eyed and sat in this chair taking it all in.

The giggles and shrieks of laughter in these moments, do so much for my tired soul.  This is what my season is about.  Enjoying and delighting in my kids is my priority.  I will fail in moments of not being able to be “super mom”, but I just need to keep loving them and being humble in moments of weakness.

So, to all the tired mamas out there, embrace that you wont always be a “super mom”, because it does not mean you are failing at being a GOOD mom!!

Part TWO of this processing is in my next post: Caleb’s Graduation Ceremony.

My Mother’s Day Gift…drink coasters!

For Mother’s Day I made my mom and mother-in-law drink coasters.  I have seen some of these pins on pinterest and been dying to try them out!  One of the pins that inspired me was  Lindsay at “The Cottage Home”.  Her tutorial is beautiful and done with scrapbook paper!  Go check it out!

I fell in love with these things and went crazy making them!  As I saw how cute they were, I added more coasters to my “make” pile!  All of a sudden, I was making over 45 coasters and they were for Mother’s Day gifts, birthday presents, my end table ,  and random gifts!  Who doesn’t like random personal gifts!?!  I thought I would share my process with you!

Start with getting tiles at your hardware store.  I got these from Home Depot for $0.16 each!

Next step, pick your pictures!  I picked mine out, edited them, and in some cases added some words/phrases.  I also cropped them the size I wanted them to be in Photoshop, so when I uploaded them to Target’s website to print I got them back the exact size I wanted.  It made cutting them out a LOT easier!

You then use Mod Podge to glue each of your pictures onto the tile.

Let the Mod Podge dry completely between each coat.  Lindsay recommended three coats of Mod Podge, so that is what I did!

After the Mod Podge has dried, spray a clear acrylic varnish spray to them.  I did two coats of this step.  I really want them to be water proof!

The final step is to glue felt squares to the back in order for the cute coasters to not mess up your tables.  I used spray Elmer’s Glue here.  I had it and thought it would be quicker.  Note to self (and you), don’t cut corners.  I think a fabric glue would have been better!

Here are a few of my coasters on display in my house!!  If you ever come to my house and have a drink, DO NOT feel like you have to use these things.  We really aren’t “coaster” people with our furniture.  Nothing we have is nice enough to require them, but they were too cute to not have a set for ourselves!!

Lastly, if yours are a gift too, wrap them up and make them look pretty!

As you can see, they are so cute and make such an inexpensive, personal gift!  I hope you give them a try!  If you don’t want to try it yourself, but want me to make them for you visit my etsy store, dancingzebrasart, and place an order here!

A gift for…YOU!

Ok, really it is more for your girl or maybe a little girl that you love!

I have been blogging more, and I don’t really know why.  I know I am more an internal processor and I think  it’s helping me to dissect some of these changes in my life by typing it out.  Thank you all for barring with me and reading this thing!

Your encouraging words, comments, texts, and messages (based on stuff I have written) has been a little wind in my sail!

As a thank you, this is my gift to one of you!  All you have to do is simply leave a comment with your email, full name, or some way for me to contact you to get your address if you are the winner!  On Wednesday, I will randomly draw one of your names out of a hat, and you will get this beautiful bow in the mail…FREE!

I hope you have a wonderful Mother’s Day celebrating the moms in your life!!  I love you all!

Miracles do come in the form of POOP

My J pooped in the toilet today!  I can’t tell you how thrilled I am!!  You might already know of my joy from a text or tweet.  Yes, @beyondinspired I never thought I would tweet about poop.  I never thought I would be praising God for it either!!  I had five comments back to me today via twitter about my J pooping.  You know this is such a milestone and I feel so loved others are sharing in my excitement!  Potty training has been such a hard road for us.  I know it’s not over, but today was a HUGE milestone.

No incentives/rewards have worked for J.  The ONE thing we have had going in our favor with this stubborn, adorable boy is he has only wanted to poop with something “ON”.  For example, a pull up, underwear, shorts, pj bottoms had to be on his butt for him to want to poop.  He can control it and hold it for days, so the boy has been ready.  It’s just been a defiance of the wills.  What we had to do was literally remove all of those from him!  He has been pants-less for about a week 24/7.  We didn’t get very far the first two days.  J just held his poop for literally almost 72 hours.  We than had company for four days.  I tried to let J be pants-less as much in there as I could.  When our company was sitting on our couch, it just didn’t seem right to have my naked son doing the same.  So, that was a slight set back to this tactic, but today there was success!!  Running around pants-less was hard on my OCD, and having a son grab his penis and then give me hugs and grab my face was hard, but we have gotten somewhere!

Haha I am still laughing out loud at how sad/cute it was when he was saying “it hurts soooo bad” as he was fighting to hold it in this morning.  He literally couldn’t any more and it came!  The pride on this boy’s face was priceless!

He was so proud!  I’m hoping and praying that any fear he might have had has a notch in it now, and soon that wall completely crumbles!  I don’t know why peeing was “gotten” like over a year ago and this is a battle we are still facing, but I’m hoping we are on the up and up!

The incentives and rewards never worked, but don’t you know he remembers them all now!

Right after he pooped, I was in the car headed to Target to get him more Legos as promised.  When we got home from Target, he got to play with my Iphone (which that and Matt’s Ipad have been off-limits till he pooped in the toilet).  We had a poop party tonight.

He got to play Matt’s Ipad tonight.  The surprising thing was how he was MOST excited about getting his pants back for the day:).  I love this boy!

He is currently in bed with his pants BACK off, so I’m hoping for another success in the morning!  If he keeps this up he gets a beach trip this summer!  Ha ha that incentive might be due to my desires as well .

My Creative Spot (part 2)

As promised, here is what is currently clipped to my memo board.

The two charts are a behavioral system we picked up from Caleb’s teachers at school.  They use it in the classroom.  When our kids are obedient on the first request, do something unusually nice/thoughtful, are encouraging, or have good “quiet times” we give them a sticker.  (Waking up with dry pullups/underwear is also a current sticker get-er) Once their chart is full of stickers they get to pick something out of my prize box.  I also take stickers away for being rude, disrespectful, not obedient, etc.  They HATE to lose stickers.  This has really helped our family.

It has eliminated some of the asking for things at stores.  If they see something they like, I sometimes buy it and stick it in my prize box, so they have to “earn” it.  It has really helped with nagging/ begging for things.  They know they get prizes by earning them.

I am constantly adding new dollar store/Target dollar section stuff to the box so they never know what is inside.  It’s exciting.  I also am VERY tempted to buy stuff out of the dollar section that I want to do with my kids and just give it to them.  I think, “its only a dollar”, but that was rearing some spoiled attitudes.  This has been good for me too.  I  can still buy the items I want too, but it holds me back from giving them away for just any reason.

Our charts change sizes.  It makes it fun for me .  Some times they are longer than others.  Some days I am more pron to give lots of stickers than others.  Either way though this is something that we constantly have going on and it has helped us.  Thank you to Caleb’s amazing teachers for this gold nugget!!

My half marathon training sheet might also be hanging here.  I was going to train for the Alien Roswell run on August 18.  It’s at night and looks amazing!  Its now looking like we might do a family trip over that time, so I probably wont be able to do it.  I might still train for it anyway.  I turn the big 3-0 this year, and I would really like to run a half marathon before 2013.  It’s a goal.

Our house is almost 70 years old, so it’s small and has lots of fun “characteristics” as in this built-in bench.  I think it’s suppose to hold firewood, but it definitely holds paint cans for us.  I love these three pillows my sister-in-law brought back for me from her World Race.  My house is all about color.  It’s my box of crayons!

That sign I made off one I saw on Pinterest.  As much as my OCD sometimes struggles with letting the house “go”  it’s a needed part of being a good mommy. This sign is a good reminder to me!

Thanks for checking out my creative corner!

Hair is just hair…right!?!?

I am trying to tell myself hair is just hair, right!?!

Caleb has a fascination with his daddy.  I’m so glad because Matt is amazing.  Ever since Caleb could talk…he has wanted to have a hair cut like his daddy.  Matt cuts his own hair and cuts the boys hair, so Caleb has grown up seeing the clippers/”beezers”.  He has wanted Matt to use the “beezers” on his hair cut for over three years.  I have never allowed it.  Scissors only!  Let’s face it.  It is adorable that Caleb wants to have a hair cut like his daddy, but he has better hair than Matt. Sorry Boo! Caleb has amazing curls.  I couldn’t let them get cut!  Even trims have been hard for me!

Well, the boys’ hair was perfect 24 hours ago.  They both had a little length that gave them that cute, rough boy look.  I love it.  We were all outside and they are running around, riding bikes and wearing helmets and just sweating like crazy.  The dreaded “haircut” conversation came up again.  Caleb looked at me and was practically jumping up and down asking to have his hair cut with the “beezers”.  As I watched his long curls be plastered around his cute, red, cheeks I caved.  I caved and said he could have a hair cut that wouldn’t be as hot.  ahhhhh his excitement was crazy!  I told Matt he better get started quick before I changed my mind.

Of course Caleb getting a hair cut made J want one aswell, so I sat there in a chair with my girl and could barely look up because if I thought about it too much I might have gotten teary eyed.

Caleb went first and he we joked all the way through his cut on if he would be the same after getting his hair cut.  I asked him if he would still like spicy chicken or if that part of him was getting cut off.  He just laughed!  Such a cute boy.

Caleb literally giggled with excitement all the way through his cut he was so excited!

J has perfect hair as well.  I have always thought I wish I could have one of my boys hair but not a crazy mix of the two!  Caleb with his curls and J with his perfect, thick, straight hair!  I love it!  I love this length too.  To me it was perfect, but I went with their desire and let the “beezers” come out.

One reason why I hate for J to get his hair cut is because he is HORRIBLE at getting his hair cut.  We always give him a sucker to try to help keep him still, but he scoots and moves the whole time.  His cut always seems a little “chopy” or “uneven” because there is no way to cut a moving target evenly.

As I look at the boys now, they look so much like twins.  When they are sitting down, both with their short/straight cuts it is hard to tell who is older.  Now that I have been staring at them for over 24 hours with their new doos, I am a little more use to it.  I still see my sweet, cute boys.  Hair is just hair!  They are still just as adorable…its just a new look.

Here is to being able to say “YES!” at times so they don’t grow up feeling like they always heard “NO!”

Hair is just hair…right!?!  Excited for the day it grows back…and Matt “loses” his “beezers”.