When you have Hamberger's you make Happy Meals!

At a mother daughter banquet this past weekend, a friend shared that you just have to choose to laugh rather than cry at some of the things our kids do. I constantly remind myself of the need to laugh.  Somehow, the phrase “there is no sense in crying over spilled milk” gets put into constant practice literally at our house. (Unless its breastmilk, then I really do cry.) Our house is always full of noise  excitement   tears  laughter   life.

Here are a few of the things that we have laughed at lately

Alex emptied the ENTIRE newly organized  toy/book shelf (Including actually pulling the shelves off). When I asked him what happened he said “the big giant tomatoes did it!”.  Hmmmm maybe I should reconsider veggie tales.

I set the kids up to do some water colors. I even had them take their shirts off, and still Kalea turned them into finger paints and made me wish I had taken her shorts off too.

Not to be outdone, Alex did the same

Alex (trying to save me from extra work) poured himself an extra bowl of Cheerios… all over the floor.

This was pretty classic of Kalea’s look and mood most of the week 😛

This little guy became mobile:

Which led to this guy getting upset

Because “MOM! Michael is playing with my STUFF!”

When I would ask Michael about it, he merely looked at me, grinned and showed me his new trick: Clapping =)

Welcome to life at the HamHouse! =) I <3 my life!

Kids have a way of really humbling you. Not gonna lie, my kids are great, but they are 2, 1 and baby. So, we have our moments. Well I don’t know what got into them this week but they were pretty well rotten  whiny normal kids. And they were stepping on my last nerve. A. Lot.  I was that mom this week that everyone looks at and says “I won’t be like that”. I lost my temper, put off reading books, snapped, and mumbled under my breath. Which in turn caused them to act even more like 2,1 and baby.  I think you get the picture that it was just a bad week.

But despite my shortfalls as the mommy I should be, I was so blessed by this little girl 

When I went to go get her up in the morning, I could hear little cries coming from her crib. I would walk in with my pleasant “good morning Beautiful!” and then ask what was wrong. “oh *little sigh*, I just tryin.” “why are you crying?” “Tuz, I just missin you”.

Gulp. I wouldn’t be missin me, I would be hanging out in my bedroom to avoid me as much as possible. But my sweet Kalea, had a way of showing me just how I should be loving her. Even when I’m in a bad mood, even when she is in a bad mood. She still loves me unconditionally. She still wanted to spend time with grouchy mom.  After that I kinda shaped up, and tried not to get so aggravated when Kalea shreaked because Alex took the toy sweeper out of her hand, or Alex whined about not having honey on his cheerios, or Michael simply could not be put down and the dog wanted to go out at the most inconvenient time.

So often we look at the parenting relationship as a mirror of us and God, with the children being similar to us. This week, I realized that my kids can give me a pretty good look at the character of God. He loves us unconditionally. We can throw a fit, scream and yell because God isn’t doing things our way, in our time (seriously, do you know how slow a 1 year old can move?) And doesn’t God know that I have dishes to wash and laundry to fold? I just don’t have time to sit and read with Him. We can grumble under our breath about how it just isn’t going as smoothly as it should be. And yet after my fits, He still wants to come up and give me a big hug like my Alex and out of the blue say “I love you so much!”  He still cries just because he is “missing me”.

Now, Jason and I are still working on our three displaying all of the character of God, but they pretty much have the displaying unconditional love thing down.

Today in church we heard a great message about how rules without relationship will lead to rebellion. Right now I can get away with just rules. They pretty much have to listen to me, they are all under 3. But now is the time to really foster the relationship, so when they are teenagers we have a good foundation. Thankfully, as I muddle through this whole mommy thing, they are in a very forgiving stage of their life. And we can kinda learn this together.  I have to keep reminding myself, I only have one shot with these kids, I can either keep beating myself up whenever I have a failure moment, or I can learn from it and learn from them and move on, apologize to my kiddos and do it better the next time.

Now, here is praying I remember this post when the inevitable whining and shrieking start in the morning.

I do a lot of pre-school activities with Alex. Most of the time we do this in the afternoon when the “little ones” are napping in the afternoon. Kalea is starting to show some interest in more learning activities too. She likes to read a BUNCH more than she used to, she is liking to color and do “letter a” with Alex on the iPad. (it is a starfall app). I have been trying to come up with some kind of pared down activities that would be fun and learning for both kids. I of course loved when I found this idea on pinterest. (yep, there is my newest addiction again)

I had the kids making sensory bottles. They LOVED it. Kalea especially (which was my goal!) Here are the supplies I used.

Clear beverage bottles, scrunched foil, little plastic bracelets, marbles, dice, rubber bands

I had the bottles, foil and rubber bands, everything else I got in the dollar toy aisle at Dollar General. I cut the beads off the string so there was more individually to put in.

I filled the bottles half full of water then gave each kid half of the supplies to put in.

Kalea was dressed as a princess for the activity.

;

They both did a great job dropping the small objects into the small holes. I was pretty impressed with their hand-eye-coordination, the rubber bands gave them a bit of a problem, but once I showed them how to kinda ball them up Kalea figured it out right away and wouldn’t let me help her anymore. =)

Please excuse the hair, this was a no hair-do day.

Alex got a decent amount of enjoyment from the bottles. It opened up a great conversation about differences in weight, how all the heavy stuff sank to the bottom and the light all floated. I would ask them to look for a certain color and they would turn their bottles till they found it. Kalea really really loved it, she carried with her all day, just spinning it all around and looking and looking at it. She would bring it up to Jason or me and say “show you! Show you!” because she was so excited about it.

Since we did this one, I would change a few things. I would only use a few heavy items (like the marbles) and more floaty items (the foil was great!) I also found some other really fun ideas for some. So as soon as we get some more clear bottles we will be experimenting with different types and learning different things with them.

Overall: this project was a WIN!

So here is how our not so Little Kalea is doing she is now 16 mos old already!!!! She totally lights up this house with her smile!

She is such a little mom, very concerned that everyone has everything they need. She constantly bringing us our phones, iPods, shoes, Michael his blankets. She loves to push her baby dolls around in her stroller.

She makes the most adorable cheese grin!

Learning how to talk! Mommy and Daddy (she is a HUGE fan of daddy!) And the sweetest “Hi”. Lets see, night night, bath, bye bye, thank you, puppy, Alex, Michael (My-My) More and Milk are also very common things to hear. She knows she needs to say Please but can’t so she just looks at you and smiles real big for please.

Kalea loves to chase and play with Jasper. She gets soooooo excited when she throws the ball for fetch with him.

She is wearing 18 and 24mo clothes (Alex is still in 24 m -2T) size 5 shoes.

She is really getting into reading which I love!

Also quite the helper she has started “helping” me with the dishes.

Getting her to sleep is sooooo awesome, we rock for a few minutes then she points to her bed and says “night night”.

And she gives the sweetest kisses!

And the fun stuff – her updated pictures =)

Flying with daddy

CHEESE!

I have pretty much the best life ever.  This little girl God blessed me with just lights up my life. She is in that kinda awkward stage developmentally. Where she doesn’t sleep all the time, so she wants to be doing something, but she just isn’t quite able to yet. Even still, she is really such a joy. I took a few (dozen or so) snapshots of the little princess the last few days. I just had to share. Plus I have recently discovered ( I am a little lot behind the times) piknik. And you know since I am cheap, er…  thrifty, I just use the free parts. But still I had a lot of fun.

She loves her little bean bag I got her (Dora the explorer - $1 ) Note the totally relaxed crossed ankles

Seriously does it come any cuter?

She is definitely our little princess. Good thing is she hasn't realized it yet.

🙂

I had to edit my current favorite pic of my little boy as well!

Football

Camp fires

Apples

Corn fields

Warm hats

Pumpkins and mums

Leaves

This is what I love best about Autumn!