Dump Update

Lately...

Davy often asks, "Stroller....tum?"  to let me know that he is bringing this with him and it is always loaded with his current favorite....trains, cars, dogs, bears, or this time it was 3 balls.  He will stroll down the street, in the library, grocery stores, or anywhere else that he can and EVERYONE thinks he needs to be stopped and adored over and he wants nothing to do with the extra attention and just strolls on by. He is serious about his stroller and we are all so proud of him that he is talking and stringing words together! 

 This was our walk down the street to a fancy candy store that has a lot of so-so candy and some really old and stale taffy, and some fresh tasting other candy.  It isn't all good but the all of us were in heaven!

 Davy got a nice black eye when he bonked into the stroller.  It sure took a long time to go away!

I feel like I am just getting into a good rhythm, but that really doesn't mean too much because I am constantly switching up my routine (does it count if  it is a routine for less than a week?).  I have recently felt like we were in a rut socially because Katelyn and I really like having time with friends, so I decided that I was done hiding out at home with the kids and initiated some socialization.  I always think it is so nice to stay home in my pajamas until 2:30 with the kids and just hang out and play at home.  We do stuff like lots of tickle tag, coloring, painting, more tickle tag, attempt to do a group clean up of the home, turn on music and dance and run around to make cleaning up more fun, trip over the stuff the kids "put away" which really means they dumped in the doorway of whatever room it is supposed to be in, make fun food, the usual day to day stuff.  Nothing fancy, but lots of time together.  We got bored of the home environment so we set up a weekly playgroup, started going to the library for story time and filling a bag of books (where did they all go?! of course 15 books would make it back!  I am so glad they give me 3 WEEKS to return them...search the house for them)

Katelyn has been going through a "phase" for longer than a phase.  She has enjoyed dancing since she was under a year old and I kept thinking that she would grow out of it and stop loving to dance, but her love for dancing kept growing.  She loves the books and show "Angelina Ballerina" though she swaps most of her "b's" for "v's" and calls herself a "vallerina" and dances "vallet" and asks often to be presented so I take the honor and in my best presenter voice I say "Aaaannd now, presenting the magnificent and wonderful ballerina Katelyn" and she runs out from hiding in her room so the audience (just me and sometimes Davy) don't see her before the show starts and puts on a little dance for a minute or 10 (I never know how long these shows will last) and always ends with her "curts-eve" and a bow while I applaud.  As a side note, she likes to sing "lulla-vies" to Davy when he is sad or trying to sleep, and "betch-ya-bowls" like celery and cauliflower are no good to eat or "gross and  discussing" ;)  She only has a few words she doesn't quite pronounce right and I am sort of loving them! Anyways, I have felt nagged by the fact that she was so in love with dancing and starting to get more coordinated (she can control her spinning now and it doesn't look like she is dizzy during her first spin attempt) and she copies moves that Angelina does and points her toes and dances on her tip toes.  The dance world is so foreign to me!  I have only done sports like soccer, basketball, tennis, running and I have little to no dance ability (my dance moves are limited to kicks, jumping, and basic Macarena type moves if that counts as dancing)  So we decided to try out a ballet dance class and she is in love!  She counts down how many sleeps she has to endure until she gets to "go valler-een-ing" and it is so hard to wait!

This is about half of her class.  She completely forgets about me, and then every once in a while she spots me and tries to tell me everything they are doing but I can't hear through the window.  She was telling me all about the tumbling part of class doing flips and bunny hops.

 Katelyn is kind of hiding back in the corner and you can see her reflection...I think she has good form and she pays so close attention to the teacher!

 They get a stamp on their hand at the end of class...its always a princess and Katelyn always lines up first ready with her hand on her head.

So we have 3 days a week of getting out of the house together and then usually (like I said, I am not the most consistent person so when I say usually I mean that one time I did something and it worked out nicely so I have hopes to do it again) a grocery shopping trip one day.  Getting out of the house means that I am getting ready and making us all look somewhat presentable (Davy insists on wearing Katelyn's shoes lately so I don't know if we can count that as presentable since all of her shoes are very girly, flowery, or sparkly or all of the above and they definitely don't fit or ever end up on the correct foot). It is tough to get out the door by 9 or 10 or anytime of the day on time.  

And since Katelyn and I painted our toes the other day, he wanted his done too....at least he picked a nice manly blue...the sparkles are just extra.

I am not an on time person.  It annoys me and is totally controllable, but I underestimate the amount of time it takes to do everything.  Like putting shoes on?  Or trying to convince Davy that the shoes he has are Katelyn's and she wants to wear her own shoes.  Or asking Katelyn to pack a bag with two diapers for Davy and a package of wipes, and 5 minutes later she comes to me with her bag full of her favorite bunny, Barbie's clothes but no Barbie, 30 or more flower clips and headbands, a coloring book and 3 crayons, her doctor kit, and other favorite toys and "accessories for a nice relaxing time" as she says with no sign of diapers and wipes.  Or I realize that I haven't washed my hair all week and it is Thursday so I should probably wear a hat or spray in a little/lot of dry shampoo to help it smell and look better because I didn't set aside time to wash it. And Katelyn is begging for a haircut and says that she has "always wished she could have a hair cut like Rapunzel or Elsa" which means she wants longer hair and I try to help her understand that if I were to cut any of her hair then it would not make it longer.  She doesn't really buy it until I have her lean her head back and she can feel her hair drape all the way down to her rear and then she feels that I have worked some magic and is in love with her "long long hair" and then we put a braid in it and we are off.  Davy is great at needing but refusing a diaper change right as we are ready and it is usually a "I need to take this one to the outside dump and put a new wax cube in the candle warmer so the hose doesn't smell like this diaper when we get back" type of smell and then I need to wash my hands because hand sanitizer isn't enough for those ones.  If I need to wash my hands, then everyone wants to wash their hands too and they probably need to because they were picking something off the side of their shoe that is still stuck to their fingers.  Oh and who has seen my keys?  

We put together a morning and evening to-list for the kids and they helped me pick out what needed to be done to be ready for the day or for bed.  They each have their own and I am hoping that it will help them to be able to get ready on own without nagging.  So far, they need help and nagging to stay focused to complete the lists, but it is helping them know what is expected, and I just have to remind them to check their chart.  They are getting it and it is better than the scrambling that we did before, but don't think my kids wake up and start cleaning and prepping for the day.  When I initiate it, we get through the charts and it is great.  If I forget, we all forget. And I have my own cute chart that sometimes gets paid attention to.  

  I have been letting him do his own hair.... so he reeeeeeaches on his tip toes for the water to get his hair wet and then brushes his hair into some masterpiece!

 He's all ready!  I love that sleepy face/black eye look on this sweet boy!  I have decided to let go of some control and I let them choose their hair and outfit for the day as long as it is clean, so his hair is only somewhat done on the top, but we didn't have anything important that needed nicely done hair/clothes.  I like to have control, but sometimes it just doesn't matter!

Here is Katelyn "ready for the day"  She put on shoes to tap dance on the cookie sheet and put a tu-tu over her pajamas....this is our exciting life here full of performances!!

Usually by the time we get through the kids' charts I am done and have done enough to call it good, but I have my own daily/weekly/monthly chart that I am trying out to see if it helps me remember to take all the garbages out once a week or actually wash everyone's sheets before they get too stinky.  I usually clean in survivor mode....if we are out of clothes, then I do laundry, if we don't have space in the fridge for the 3 gallons of milk we drink each week, then I will clear out some old leftovers that should have been taken out last week.  I am hoping to stay more ahead of the clean up and not be in a "hurry...I just told someone they can come over...clean up everything!" type of panic.  I have heard of it called CHAOS...Can't Have Anyone Over Syndrome and I am guilty of it.  All these check off charts should solve the problem right?! David teased that if I spent the time it took to make these cute lists actually cleaning then the place would be clean by now...probably true, but not as fun.  So we will see if this system has any magic it can work for us.  We had a couple of good weeks and then a week of sort of, and then....We all got wiped out with fevers, stuffy noses, and annoying coughs last weekend that had us all pretty miserable and half breathing and have slowly been getting back to our happily full-functioning selves.  So now that the sniffles are nearly done, and I have thoroughly done the closet kitchen (it really doesn't take long to clean a kitchen that is smaller than most walk-in closets) I am ready to tackle putting away the clean clothes before they merge with the dirty ones.

I sneak away from the house a couple nights a week to go to a class at the community college.  Every 5 years I have to renew my teaching certification and since I am not teaching, I am doing that by taking 6 credits at the college.  They just have to be college level so I excitedly chose to do a Ceramics class and then picked a "fitness and wellness" class because it would be a simple basic class.  It isn't too touch so far except for the time.  David is leaving work early to meet me across town at the school and we swap his scooter for the car with kids and then he takes on the night duties alone while I get to enjoy nearly 3 hours of quiet kid free class time creating masterpieces!  I really got the good end of this and he is doing well and not even complaining.  I could have done 2 online classes to just be home, but I have been eager to do a ceramics class for a few years and we are making it happen.  It is just one semester so I think he will survive and I better get an A!  

My to-do list currently is...

-I am trying to figure out what I want to paint on my canvases around the house because I was tired of the old bird and tree ones and painted them all white but they are all still white and blank on the walls. 

-Mail the $20 to the dentist back in Pennsylvania for an old visit that we keep forgetting and losing the bill to

-Call the dentist we went to for Katelyn's chipped tooth in Virginia when we were at Chris' house and have them mail the $20 to us that we overpaid (they can just mail it to the PA dentist and we can skip this circle right?!)

-Mail out the birthday gifts I got in the fall but just barely un-packed and send them as "thinking of you" gifts instead because that isn't as awkward as a 3 month late birthday gift.

-Figure out what I need to hint to David for plans for Valentine's day because he is in charge this year but doesn't like to be creative and I don't like lame plans, so he just wants my  "hint" so we can both be happy.  And this needs to be wisdom-teeth-surgery easy plans since David is having his pulled on the 13th.  He will be such a miserable chubby-cheeked Valentine....so I will probably hint at doing something celebratory on the 12th and then just plan on being a sympathetic wife ready to blend every meal into a smoothie/pudding/jello or shake for the weekend while I switch out the bags of frozen "betch-ya-bowls" on his cheeks!

-photoshop Sean (the new brother-in-law) into the picture taken of the whole Rudd family at his own wedding and somehow he wasn't in it (?!?!?!?!)  and then put it on the wall

So life lately has been interesting, exhausting, and we keep making changes to make it go as smooth as possible which is proving to be the tough part.  It isn't anything fancy, but we try to enjoy the ride. Sometimes we do a little bit better than other days and sometimes we fail so hard it is just too pathetic!  As Katelyn would say "Sure thing, Mom."