Mommy Flaws :(

I'll be the first to admit that I'm not perfect, not even close. I love my boys more than anything but they stress me out and can make me crazy. Today I think I realized 2 of my biggest mommy flaws...

First I realized today just how much my screaming and yelling is completely ineffective. Of course this is something I have known but I have a hard time not doing it. Lately the boys have been screaming more and it's making me insane and I know that it's because I get so loud... I have blamed it on the noise level and trying to be heard above it but that's a terrible excuse and there are ways around it and I'm going to find them. Then I tend to blame my "parenting from the couch" on the baby... but now I find that I do it even if the baby isn't nursing or sleeping on me and that HAS to stop.

The second thing I realized today was that so many nights I use going to bed as a punishment and I'm starting to think that may be playing a part in why bedtime is so stressful for me. I'm always saying I'm going to stick to a routine and what not but then I end up getting frustrated and, again, go to yelling and just end up telling them to get in bed and go to sleep. Hopefully if I stop sending them to bed when they are stressing me out and deal with the problem and then still go through with the routine every night they will be much easier to put them to sleep and lead to me being less stressed.

I have to stop thinking that there is going to be an immediate reaction to this change in my behavior. Whatever I do I have to stick with it and then, and only then, will the boys follow suit and change their behavior. These are things that I KNOW so WHY is it so HARD for me to FOLLOW THROUGH?!?!

Play date!

Sometimes I forget how much fun and how relaxing it can be to go over to someone's house for a play date! Today a friend I knew in high school out here invited me over with the boys to hang out and play on a little water slide. The boys had a great time and it was so nice to have an adult to talk to! I forget how much I miss talking to people being stuck with just the kids and my husband all of the time. Although there is always a problem with house envy! Don't get me wrong, I love my little house but it is, well, little! There are 6 of us now in a 3 bedroom  house that is just over 1400 sq. ft. so there is just no room to function.

More fun with Daddy

There is nothing the boys love more than having fun with their daddy and they got that all day today! The most fun they had was getting to ride their bikes and scooter outside after dinner. Logan FINALLY was doing really good on his bike. CJ does good on the little trike but didn't want to get on his big boy bike so he played on the scooter so Wyatt could practice peddling on the trike. It was H-O-T out so we didn't stay out long, but they had fun. 

I need to remember to pick up a helmet for Wyatt soon too... Safety first! :)

Splish Splash!

We do lots of fun things with the boys... Sea World, Six Flags, the zoo, water parks, etc. But I think their favorite thing ever is to hang out and play with their daddy. Although they were pretty naughty this morning... let's not get into that though, I don't wanna get grumpy again... after dinner they went out side with daddy and after I finished cleaning up a little I headed out with the baby. Daddy was watering, the boys were playing, and I was sitting... soon the fun ensued! Not only did the boys get soaked and sprayed but he got me and the baby drenched and I stole the hose and drenched him right back! We all were laughing so hard and got so wet! It was a blast, I'm not really sure why we don't do that more often... Then baths and jammies and family time watching some X-Men on Netflix before bed.

Trouble

Yup, that's what this could be! I have a bunch of friends that sew all the time and it has peeked my interest more than it already had been peeked. I've been wanting to buy a sewing machine for a while now and my dad had mentioned he had my mom's old machine and I told him I'd love to have it sometime. So this weekend (while we were over helping him move the swing set in his yard after going shopping for our new washer and dryer --- which is a story for another day) he gave me my mom's sewing machine along with the manual he went online and found and printed out! I turned it on last night and it is working! Now to buy some thread so I can play around with it with some random material I have around the house before really getting started and diving in with some new fabrics! I AM SO EXCITED! Maybe by next year I'll be good enough that I can make some costumes and stuff for the boys to play with, or maybe at least make some little outfits to add to their dramatic play bucket. 

Frickin' Frack!

"Moooooommy! Wyatt spilled Water in the laundry roooooooom!"

Ugh... of course he did, he spills water everywhere but I'm nursing the baby so I'll get up later and clean it... WRONG ANSWER! By the time I make it to the laundry room I realize very quickly that Wyatt did NOT spill water, there was WAY more than he could have gotten and my laundry room was officially flooded with a good inch or so of water (probably would have been more if there hadn't already been towels, sheets, and folded clothes on the floor that soaked up a ton of water. So we clean up all that and there is still standing water in the washer so I try to just put it on the spin cycle... didn't work... so I rewash it... didn't work and just stops running in the middle... I give up! Looks like we're getting a new washer and dryer... for now I have a huge mound of sopping wet clothes and towels (etc) on my garage floor... I guess I could toss it in the dryer, since that still works.... but they they'd just be dry and dirty... We're going to my dad's tomorrow so maybe I'll bring that stuff to wash there while we go look for (and hopefully buy and get delivered asap) a new washer and dryer set.

Quality Family Time

I have to say that I truly enjoyed just hanging around the house doing nothing yesterday with all 5 of my boys after my hubby got home from school. My favorite was everyone sitting down and eating dinner I cooked! We don't do that very often since he works during dinner time. And even more than I love being home with them I love when we get out of the house and do something fun, just the 6 of us, like today. Last week we did Sea World so this we we decided to do Six Flags. We've gotten passes to Sea World every year the past couple years and when one of my BILs were in town earlier this year we decided to try out Six Flags. The boys have fun but it's not worth it to get the passes again for a couple more years when all the boys are older.

the elusive CJ smile

The gorgeousness that is Jameson

Mommy & Wyatt all hot and sweaty!

Logan and CJ on a ride all alone together!

little crawl thing!

Blog Changes ♥

Oh I'm so excited! Yup, I'm very easily excited :) I figured out how to get tabs and different pages here on my blog! I guess that's what happens when I'm not on FB or CM all the time and get to sit around and play on here :) So I now have my home page with all the basics in my quest to be a better mommy and then I've added a page for my cooking (when I have a good recipe or try something new and yummy), my baking (my cakes, cupcakes, cookies, etc), funny things my kids say (pretty self explanatory), and just some random thoughts of mine and quotes I find and like. I would really love some feed back and know if anyone out there is even reading my blog and cares about the changes lol. So take a look ^^^^ up there and check out my new pages and let me know what you think!

New stuff!

I love getting new stuff and sadly I think I may have inherited my mom's constant need for design changes! So far I've been pretty good since I'm still building up all the things that I have so when I want to buy something I get something new that we don't have... example... We have a wall that I put pictures of us up on and it's pretty much always just been just that and I new we needed a table or something there. Then, during a birthday party for one of the boys, when we were pulling all the chairs out of the kitchen and into the living room it dawned on me... something with SEATING! Ohhh and STORAGE! I knew we needed to find a bench with some storage but that turned out to be easier said than done. We finally found one we liked and although it's not perfect it's really nice and works and looks GOOD - which really, isn't that all that matters?

Fun in the Sun

Sea World fun with with Daddy is the highlight of the boys Summer (well they love Six Flags too but this past trip on Daddy's day off was Sea World :-D HeHe) Most of the day we spent in the water park and even with the constant reapplication of sunscreen we all ended up with a little too much sun - luckily only Mommy and Daddy got burnt at all.

Logan being a good big brother and helping CJ see

CJ and Logan looking at the penguins

Daddy and Jameson cooling off inside

For Wyatt's birthday he had gotten some really cool side walk paint so we decided to try that out... Guess I'll have to buy more since they used it all the first day! It was a little messier than the regular sidewalk chalk but they did really good and they love to paint so you can't really go wrong!

Then it was water ball fights in the back yard! We're in water restrictions so I have been trying not to run the water too much and since we don't have a kiddie pool or anything I just filled up some sand buckets with water and gave them the balls that soak up the water to throw at each other (although they just really squeeze them on each other). Wyatt loves water but prefers just to dump it out so he rode around on the little trike for a while. And all the while my sweet little Jameson just hung around and enjoyed the sunshine.

Social Networking Fast

A friend I talk to online (how ironic) spawned this idea of doing an internet or technology fast. I quickly realized I couldn't abstain from technology or even just the internet completely (kinda hard to take online classes and not use the internet for a week!) so I decided that what takes up too much of my time are my social networking sites like Cafemom and Facebook (but mostly facebook these days as I have pretty well kicked my cafemom habit - yay me!) I'm also going to try to cut back on my TV time and just limit it to the boys shows or music until they go to bed at night. The time I'm online I'm trying to limit to just when I'm nursing Jameson (like right now) and getting off when he's done nursing and putting him in his bed and getting some stuff done. The goal of this week long fast is to get me more in-tune with my boys and my husband and just my family in general. I keep setting out on this "Quest to be a better Mommy" and yet I just keep getting back into the same rut. I need to get to gettin' and do activities with the boys and get my house clean and kept clean! So this morning I set out on this little journey (after awaking to find my netbook missing - my husband was trying to help my fast by hiding my computer lol) and so far so good... although my husband doesn't think I can do it and suggested that I just fast during the day and I can go on my social networks at night... we'll see... I'm going to try to hold off completely for a week though! Wish me luck!

And... Here... We... GOOooOooOOOooooo!

Dinner Guests

Most people who know me know that I love to cook and I love love LOVE to bake! Often dinner is nothing special since it's just me and the boys and 1/2 the time they won't even eat dinner so I hate cooking just to put leftovers in the fridge that end up in the stupid trash! So the other day one of my friends and her husband asked to stop by since they hadn't gotten to meet Jameson yet (he's almost 6 months old!!!) and they couldn't make it to Wyatt's party and had a gift for him. Since they were planning on stopping by around dinner time I invited them for dinner! If I had thought about it and had the time I would have made an awesome dessert too but I didn't :( Next time Trish, if you're reading this!! :) lol Then the next day my husband had invited my dad to come watch a movie with him (well all of us but really just for them hehe) and hubby requested homemade Zuppa Toscana soup so I did that and salad with crescent roles for dinner. YUMMY! And I had asked my dad a couple weeks ago if he liked bread pudding - I live on Food Network and I always see bread pudding but have NEVER had it and decided a few weeks ago to try and make some and boy was it tasty! So he said yes (he's from Louisiana and it's a big dessert there) and the key is the awesome sauce that goes on it --- here was my chance to really see how good of a chef I am! I used the reciepe and added my twist and he said it was really good! Well, he liked my whole meal... maybe now I have disbanded the idea in my family that I'm not a great cook lol I really enjoy cooking and baking for people and should do it more often because I make way better meals when I know adults are going to be eating it :-P

It's time for change!

This is it ... it's time and I am ready! I've gotten really caught up on the house (for today at least) and my alarm is set to get up tomorrow and work out. Man, I can't even remember the last time I worked out. Today I cooked dinner and a friend and her husband came over and so I enjoyed some much needed grown up conversations. I also got a call back about a focus group that, even if they don't call me back, I'll still make $100! I'm so excited and so ready to do more focus groups and make some more extra money! HORRAY!!! Today was just a really good day and I'm ready for another great one tomorrow! I spent almost NO time on the computer today and so I spent a lot of time with the boys and doing things I need to do. What a wonderful and free feeling! I'm so ready for tomorrow and I hope it goes as well as I'm thinking it will.

Making some extra $$$$

A friend gave me some info into some places to get some extra money through focus groups. I'm hoping that I can get an extra couple hundred or so a month to help out while I'm finishing school. The stuff, for the most part, seems simple enough and I can pick and choose what I want to do. I'm not sure if I'll just put the money away for a "rainy" day or if I'll put it into our checking account to help with bills and stuff just yet, but who couldn't use extra cash? Not to mention that it is stress free and not something that I have to commit to doing all day every day 5 days a week like a job. Part of me really wants to go back to work, for the money and to be out of the house and all of that, but at the same time I can't stand the thought of leaving my babies. I've been a SAHM now for 3 1/2 years and would love to do that for about 3 1/2 years more, until Jameson is older and more ready for a daycare setting. Unfortunately that's not really an option since I have student teaching next spring and then I have to work after that so I can start to pay off my stupid student loans ::sigh:: what did I get myself into when I decided to go back to school 6 years ago??? Now I'm contemplating going for my doctorate next fall after finishing my masters just to put off working more OY!

Yo Ho! Yo Ho! A Pirate Pool Party for Me!

Well, for Wyatt actually :) Today my baby boy #3 turns 2! My-oh-my, where did the past 2 years go??? Since he has the only summer birthday last year we did a pool party and it seemed only right to have another pool party since it's hot and summer! A pirate party seemed like the perfect theme! I set my sights really high on the cake I wanted to make... it seemed simple enough but I'm not skilled enough to have pulled it off the way I wanted. I think it all would have been ok if I didn't have to over work the fondant to get it to be the right colors (and even still my red didn't come out how I wanted) so the fondant started to crack and in the end I just couldn't get it to look how I wanted. But considering it's only my 2nd actual cake using fondant I'd say it turned out OK. Hopefully the buttercream underneath the fondant (a homemade strawberry buttercream MMMMmmm) won't melt too much out in the heat! We may have to start the party with cake and go backwards from now we usually do parties.

4th of July

Last year was a pretty boring 4th of July with just me and the 3 boys hanging out at home and I thought this year would end up the same since Hubby was going to be working and there is a ban on fireworks this year because we've had pretty much NO rain this year. Luckily my dad told me about a little city near us that was going to be putting on a laser light show instead at their little carnival and he even offered to take us! The boys really had a good time playing at the park, riding the rides, playing the games and of course pigging out and watching the laser show!