MaeLyn's Musings

Thanksgiving. The holiday begun by Pilgrims and American Indians giving thanks for surviving their first few seasons in the new world has become so much more. It is a time for food, family, and for some, football. This year we had the feast at our house. At my sister's halloween party I found out that my Mom was coming to Colorado because my sister in Colorado Springs and my sister-in-law in Boulder were expecting little bundles of joy to arrive just before and just after the day of feasting. At the time I didn't expect that I'd be seeing much of her, because after all, I'm not one of those having a baby. As the time drew closer, I learned that my sister in C.S. was planning on having Thanksgiving dinner for everyone in the family in Colorado at her home, and that my Dad and unmarried siblings in Utah were planning on coming out to join us for the holiday. Thinking that it would be a bother for her and her husband to host a Thanksgiving dinner for so many people when s

Halloween has come and gone and we are officially plunged into the holiday season. This year Hannah designed her own costume as Pippi Longstocking and the boys were all pirates. I wore the renaissance dress I made months ago and Steven wore a peasant shirt I made for him. The first of the holiday celebration was actually a week before the actual day, when we had our ward trunk-or-treat. We enjoyed the traditional chili and cinnamon rolls, then the kids had fun winning prizes playing games. Peter loved the cake walk especially. I won a chocolate bar as a reward for "best costume" in the adult division. After the games came the trunk-or-treating where the kids gathered a large bag full of candy. Sometime during the evening we lost a red bandana. The next afternoon we went to a Halloween party at my sister Heather's house in Colorado Springs. We had fun playing Frisbee, socializing with family, and eating hamburgers. Hannah got to carve her first pumpkin. Steven enjoyed spre

Yesterday Joshua and Peter watched the Bonus DVD that came with Wallace and Gromit: Curse of the Were-rabbit. This DVD has short clips and descriptions of other Wallace and Gromit movies. I think maybe Joshua took it a bit too seriously. Tonight when he said his prayer before he went to bed he said: Father in Heaven, Please bless that I can build a rocket. And Please bless that I can go to the moon. and please bless that I can bring back some cheese so I can eat it. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

The house we saw and loved and which was the inspiration for putting our condo on the market is under contract. Just not to us. We thought we had everything figured out. My parents offered to loan us the money for the new house, which meant that we could rent our condo if it didn't sell, and so we decided to go ahead and put an offer on the house. We called our real estate agent, but he was out of town but said he would refer us to another agent who could help us. We waited a day or two for her to call, and then decided we would go ahead and call the agent who held the listing for the house ourselves. By the time we got in contact with her, she informed us that the house was just barely out of negotiations with someone else. The house was under contract. That was last week Monday. I cried. Since then we've been searching the real estate listings online, but haven't found anything that even comes close to that beautiful house. Our options are severely limited by the fact tha

Our house has been on the market for a few weeks now. We've had a few phone calls and inquiries, mostly people asking if we would be willing to rent it out or rent to own. We can't rent it out; we have to sell it so we can afford the house we want to buy. So after the whirlwind of cleaning and packing, getting our house ready to sell, we sit and wait. We keep fliers stocked out front, and they have been steadily disappearing, but very few people have called. Two days ago we got a phone call from a lady who asked to see our house-- our first showing! We were excited, and worked over the last couple days to get our house sparkling for a showing, scheduled for this morning. This morning we put the finishing touches on the house, making sure the beds were made and the trash taken out. Twenty minutes before the appointed time, I took the kids to a neighbor's house so they wouldn't be under foot, and then went back home to wait. At first I walked around polishing spots on the

The days pass quickly. It gets to the point where thinking back, it is difficult to even distinguish between one day and the next because they all blend into each other. Each day we awake and go through the established routines, getting the kids to school, cleaning the house, doing the laundry, fixing meals, sometimes going to meetings or other activities, but not much stands out. The days pass quickly, and each weekend I look back and realize another week has passed in a blink. Meanwhile my children are a little older. I'm a little older. I worry that someday I'm going to look back and realize that my children have grown and gone and that I missed it. Do I enjoy my children at the stage they are at? Do I appreciate that every moment only comes once? Steven and I will celebrate our tenth wedding anniversary in a few weeks. It seems amazing that ten years have passed. I still remember driving to the temple the morning we were married, when Steven presented me with a book, a coll

For a while now Steven and I have been thinking of moving. Our three bedroom condo has served us well for the last five years, but it is starting to feel a bit tight, and every night that we lay awake listening to our neighbor bang around in his kitchen on the other side of the wall from our bedroom we dream of having a home where we own all four walls. It was one of those things we thought about, but didn't do much to promote. A few weeks ago (Tuesday, April 22, 2008) I was looking around online and did a search to find out how many four bedroom, three bedroom homes were for sale within our ward boundaries and in a price range of less than $250k. I found four, although at least three of those were split level, and Steven and I don't like the idea of opening the front door to stairs. I mentioned my search to Steven coming home from church the next Sunday, and the following week he did his own search and on Thursday, May 1st he was looking online and came across a house that cap

A week ago I was so happy. Peter seemed to be making progress. He was telling me when he needed to go. And then came this week. He still holds it for long periods of time, but he won't let it go when he is sitting on the potty! He'll wake up in the morning with a dry diaper and I'll have him sit on the potty, knowing he must need to go, but he doesn't want to sit on the potty anymore, and he won't let go while he's sitting there! Half an hour after I give up trying to get him to go in the potty he'll have an accident. Today he had three accidents before lunch, the last one while he was sitting in a clean laundry basket. (Luckily I had finished folding the laundry that had been in it!) At that point I snapped and put a diaper on him because I couldn't deal with accidents calmly anymore. I'll try again later, when I can remember that this, too, shall pass.

Today for the first time, Peter managed to stay dry all day, with no accidents. What is even more exciting to me is that (again for the first time today) he even told me, twice, that he needed to go potty - before it was too late! I am so thrilled! Over the last two weeks, he's been doing pretty well. I found a bath toy duck that can "pee" into the potty, and that seemed to motivate Peter to want to go in the potty, rather than just sitting on the potty for a few seconds and being "done" and then peeing on the floor a few minutes later. Peter is also really good at going long periods of time without needing to go. He lasted through all three hours of church today, and told me he needed to go just before we left, and he was still dry. I don't seem to need to worry about him having accidents when he takes naps, and twice this last week his diapers were dry in the morning. (I wish I could say the same for Joshua!) I cross my fingers and really hope that this i

In the last few months we bought a new computer and upgraded our creeping dial-up internet connection to a high speed DSL line. For the first time ever, we had a fast enough internet connection to watch the annual General Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on our home computer. Wow. Saturday morning we moved our computer from our office to the dining room table so there would be plenty of room for our family to gather around to watch. (We couldn't put it in the living room which would have been more comfortable because the only phone jack in the kitchen/dining/living area is at the far end of the kitchen and our phone cable can only just reach the dining room.) We went to the Church website ( www.lds.org ) and followed the appropriate links and in short order we were watching Conference in our own home. In past years we have gone to our local church buildings to watch the Conference broadcasted from the Conference Center in Salt Lake City, Utah, via satel

The idea of potty training is enough to send a shiver down my back and make me shudder. You'd think it would get easier after you've trained a few children and figured it out. Someone without children might think that. The fact is that every child is different, unique and special, and that a parent has to figure out different, unique and special ways to deal with each one, especially for something as personal, yet important, as using the potty. When I potty trained my daughter, it was pretty easy. I read a copy of "How to Potty Train in Less Than a Day", bought some M&M's for treats and some princess underwear and set to. It didn't happen in less than a day, but by the third day she had figured out what she was supposed to do and from that time on she was pretty consistent about using the potty. I don't mean to say she didn't have accidents, because she did, but they were rare and far between. And then came my sons. I won't go into details, bu

Today was a fun day. On Friday mornings I usually play volleyball with a bunch of friends. We meet at a local church building and play in one half of the gym while the kids play in the other half. It is usually a highlight of my week. Today it didn't really happen as planned. We showed up, and two other girls showed up, but because of spring break, or sickness, or whatever, we were the only ones. Four just isn't enough to get a good game going so after about forty five minutes of waiting to see if anyone else would show up we took down the net. Meanwhile, some other ladies arrived to use the church for an activity--relay races and games and such for the kids. They invited us to stay, and since I had nothing better to do we stayed. The kids enjoyed the relay races with pool noodles. They batted balloons around with fly swatters, they popped balloons to get candy out of the middle. They traced around their bodies on huge sheets of paper and then colored them in. They made paper a

I am ready for this week to be over. Today has been a long day. The cleaning this morning went fine. The kids finished almost all the job strips that I had. I think the only one they didn't finish was "Clean Peter's chair". I don't really blame them; the food is stuck on and the chair is filthy. I guess I'll have to do that one myself. After the hour of cleaning the public areas of the house, I told the kids that if they could get their bedrooms clean before noon, I would take them out for ice cream. That was motivation enough for Hannah. She cleaned her room pretty well, although her closet still needs work. The boys, on the other hand, were not motivated by ice cream. At noon, I don't think they had even picked up one thing. They spent most of the afternoon in their room, playing. It wasn't until about 5pm that John started picking up some things. Hannah spent much of the afternoon complaining that she was bored, and that she doesn't get to go ge

We made it to the park today! Today has been the best so far. The cleaning went smoothly, and John even asked if we could keep the job strips until Summer. I guess he really likes this way of doing the work. I like it because the kids help with the cleaning and it doesn't feel like just me. After the house was clean we packed up buckets, shovels, sandwiches and water bottles and went to the Sensory Park in Westminster. The kids had fun there and we actually stayed for about 3 1/2 hours. I brought a book to read while the kids played, so the time seemed to pass quickly. After about 3 hours, Hannah was ready to leave, and it took a while to convince her brothers that we had been there long enough. When we got home the kids watched TV for a while and then John went to a friend's house and I played Hide and Seek with the kids in the yard until Steven got home and I had to make dinner. This has really been a fun day, even if I did get a lopsided sunburn at the park!

Day two of Spring Break is drawing to a close and the biggest question on my mind is, "Will we ever get to go to the park?" This morning the hour of cleaning went well. Hannah did ten strips, but one was put back in the bucket because it wasn't done well enough. John did five strips. I had an appointment to go to the park at 10am to meet a couple sisters I visit teach. About 9:40 I was ready to go out to the car, kids were dressed to the shoes, I had a snack packed, we were ready to go. And John threw up. So I called my companion and let her know we couldn't be going after all. Hannah was really disappointed, and blamed John, who proceeded to throw up twice more in the next hour. The remainder of the day was not fun. We couldn't go anywhere with John sick. After a while I tried to do some things on the computer and the whole time John, who was feeling better by then, was asking, "When are you going to be done?" and "What more do you have to do?"

Today was the first day of Spring Break: four kids at home all day, instead of one or two, twice as many kids to keep entertained all day, twice the mess. Today actually wasn't all that bad. Last night I made a list of all the things I could think of that the kids could clean, wipe, dust, organize, sweep or wipe in the public areas of the house and then cut the list up into strips. I ended up with over forty items; most things could be done in five to ten minutes. Then I consolidated all the candy in the house to one large jar. This morning during breakfast I explained what we were going to do. From 8 until 9 the kids could pull job strips from the bucket and do them. At the end of the hour, they could trade in their completed job strips (I had checked them for completion as they did them) for candy. I had intended to do some of the job strips myself, but ended up doing things that weren't on the strips, helping Joshua do his job strips and checking and instructing Hannah and J

One day each week Hannah and John have an early dismissal day where they get out of school over an hour early. Being the mean mom that I am, I don't let them use the extra time to play with friends or watch TV or even play games on the computer. No, early dismissal day is the day my kids are supposed to clean their rooms. They aren't supposed to play or do other fun things until their rooms are clean. (By clean, I just mean the clutter is picked up enough that the floor can be thoroughly vacuumed.) I assume my children are somewhat normal when I say that they don't like to clean their rooms. Instead of picking it up quickly so they can join their friends who are constantly knocking on the door asking if they can play and if they are done yet, my children will play with the things they are supposed to be picking up, occasionally making a worse mess than the one they started with. Sometimes they try to ignore me, and don't clean their rooms at all, hoping I'll forget

This morning we were driving home after dropping my older two children off at school, and my four year old son asked me, "When we get home, can we have lunch?" I looked at the car clock, and realized I hadn't changed it for Daylight Savings Time yet. It read 7:42. AM. Joshua had just finished eating his breakfast maybe forty minutes before. I hadn't even gotten around to clearing his cereal bowl from the table yet! I've been a parent for about eight and a half years, and I'm still trying to figure out kids' eating habits. Here are a few rules that I've found apply to most kids. Remember that all rules, especially ones that pertain to children, have plenty of exceptions, usually when it is most inconvenient. Rule #1: Any time is (or should be) snack time. Kids always seem to be hungry. It doesn't matter if they just ate a huge meal half an hour ago, or if dinner is in five minutes, they are hungry now . A few days ago I was putting the finishing to

I wanted to sew today. It is Monday, and Monday mornings are busy with cleaning up from the weekend (I don't do much picking up on Sundays.) Steven painted the master bathroom on Saturday, and so this morning I needed to take down the newspaper around the edges and tidy up in there. The floors throughout the house were also in desperate need of vacuuming, and since I did the shopping for the month on Saturday, I also needed to straighten the pantry and get the food cans in order. (For some reason my kids like to play with the cans, stacking them and who knows what?) So most of the morning was spent cleaning, straightening and vacuuming. I also made Jell-O (Joshua's choice) for dessert for our Family Home Evening tonight and I've got chicken stock simmering on the stove. On top of everything else, John has caught some kind of stomach bug and was throwing up much of the morning. Finally, about 11:00 I could begin the project I had hoped to do today. I'm using Simplicity

My newest hobby is sewing. Last year I got a sewing machine for my birthday. I was thrilled! I started learning how to quilt, but lacking any knowledge about quilting, or my own rotary cutter and rulers, it was rather slow going, having to wait until my friends were available to let me borrow their tools and show me what to do. But it was fun. For Christmas last year I received a gift certificate to Joann's, so not only was I able to buy my own rotary cutter, mat and rulers, but I could buy fabric and patterns. Since then, I've really enjoyed sewing. One of my first projects (besides the quilt which is still in progress) has been a renaissance dress. I don't know why, but I've always wanted one. Maybe it is just something that has stayed with me from my childhood--the love of dressing up, the romance of the past. But for whatever reason, I decided to make one. I finally finished it on Friday. The pattern I used was a simplicity pattern . It was easy enough to follow and

It's been a busy day. Josh had preschool this morning--at our house. We do a "Mother Goose Time" preschool, where the moms take turns teaching preschool at their own homes. So about 9:00 this morning five of Josh's four and five year old friends came over to join Josh (and Peter) for an exciting morning of learning about things that fly. We went for a walk, made bats, colored ducks, played games, had snacks, and had fun. By the time 11:30 rolled around and the kids' parents came to pick them up and take them home I was exhausted. That was when it was time to feed my own kids some lunch and go visiting teaching. This was our first visit to a new girl on our route, so I wanted to check the address online really quick before I left. So I turned on the computer, logged on to our brand new computer (bought with our tax refund this year) and after the welcome screen, it faded to black and I was left with a black screen with a white cursor. I could move the cursor around