Samantha's Spring Break

Samantha: 58 Months, Week 3
Aedan: 23 Months, Week 1 (Week 101)

Since we were out of town and then had our friends over to visit, we had some catching up to do on Tuesday with grocery shopping and laundry. Samantha was on Spring Break, so I took both of them to Kroger with me. Aedan and I have a pretty good routine going when it is just him and me. However, with Samantha there with us, she wants to help me grab things and put them in the cart, which I appreciate, but then Aedan wants to get out of the cart as well which doesn't work that well with him since he wanders around too much and touches to many things on the shelves. I eventually convinced her to stay in the car cart with Aedan even though they were both pretty squished together. They were both big helpers at the end when unloading all the groceries to be checked out. It is their favorite job. Even though it was hectic having both of them, the shopping trip went well, and we got back home in enough time to put the groceries away and play outside for awhile before lunch.

Samantha was pretty overtired from a busy few days, so I had her take a nap that afternoon, especially knowing that we had small group that evening and would be out later. She must have been pretty tired because she fell asleep with me in the room, stayed asleep when I left her room, and then slept for over an hour and a half, until 4:30 in the afternoon.

Aedan was pretty fussy and clingy that day, crying quite a bit, sometimes for no reason I could ever figure out. However, since it was March 29th, that meant he was now 23 months old and a month away from being two. I can't believe he's that old already sometimes, but I can also see many ways that he is turning into such a big boy. He has become much more comfortable in his own body and loves to wrestle Sissy and Daddy. He loves to gallop and jump up and down using both feet. His language has also exploded, and he's started to put together sentences like "Bless you my Daddy" (He always says bless you when anyone sneezes or coughs, even Roscoe.), "Sissy downstairs," and when we talk about eating a meal and he always says "Bagel, pancakes," even when talking about lunch or dinner. He's a cute kid, and I love hearing his new words and trying to decipher his language.

On Wednesday morning Samantha and Aedan were playing with each other and she told him that he's her best friend, that he's her little brother, and that she's always gonna love him. Then she asked, "Are you my best friend?" To which he replied, "No." Then Samantha said that it made her sad that he sad that, so he changed his answer, saying that he is her best friend. It was a cute little conversation between them.

Since Samantha was on Spring Break, I had all these lofty ideas of doing something special with her every day. I tried to get some moms together to go somewhere like the zoo or museum on Wednesday, but it didn't work out and ended up turning out for the better because Samantha didn't fall asleep until 10:00 on Tuesday night, partially because of taking a longer nap that afternoon and also being out at small group which always riles her up. It was going to be a nice, warm day outside, so we decided going to a local park would be a good plan for our morning. We did some jobs around the house before meeting Stephanie and Isaac at the park around 10:45. The kids had a lot of fun sliding, climbing, and riding on the merry-go-round. The merry-go-round had been out of order for quite a while, so Samantha was super excited when she saw it back in working condition. Aedan had no fear in climbing, even making it all the way to the top of the tall slide. We brought a picnic lunch with us to eat at the park, and Corrine and Olivia joined us for lunch as well. It was a fun morning playing outside, enjoying our favorite Oxford park.

That night when putting Samantha to bed, she and I had a conversation about heaven and hell and how, if we believe in God and love Jesus, we can go to heaven. We talked about how it's not about what you do or how well you obey, but whether or not you have Jesus in your heart. She understood that and said that there can be good people who don't do too much wrong but will still go to hell if they don't believe in Jesus. After a little pause, Samantha then started talking about our neighbors, Tessa and Ella, and how they don't believe in God and how she should invite them to church and go down to their house to tell them about Jesus. I also talked with her about how praying for them is important as well, and that Jesus gave us the job to tell others about Him while we are here on earth. I don't normally let bedtime conversation go on like this because I know it is mainly a delaying tactic. However, when we are talking about heaven, believing in Jesus, and telling others about the Good News, there is no way I would stop that conversation short. I love that her mind is trying to understand these complex details about faith and trust in God.

Samantha really did a good job being respectful and listening well at the park, but as soon as we got back home, she started being pretty disrespectful. Her way of being disrespectful lately has been in her tone of voice, sighing, and even raising her voice at us. It's infuriating sometimes when she escalates things so much when we are trying to approach her calmly and rationally. Then, at nap time she decided not to nap, even though I told her I wanted her to since she was acting tired and being disrespectful. Ben and I were feeling so frustrated with her attitude as well as feeling like she is never sleeping enough, which we can't help but believe are linked together.

On Thursday morning, Ben and I were trying to capture Aedan saying some of his cute words, like how he says yes that sounds more like "zess" always accompanied by an eager head nod. Then we also got a video of him saying "bagels," "pancakes," and "raining." He definitely is in the copycat phase of language development right now. I definitely need to take more little videos of him talking. :)

On Thursday morning they had an Art Explorers program at the Miami art museum. Samantha always enjoys this program, so I try to make plans to do them whenever we can. Probably because it was Spring Break, there were not very many people at story time. In fact, it was all people that we knew which was really fun for Samantha and Aedan. The Schroers with all three kids, as well as Stephanie and Isaac were there. Miss Connie does a wonderful job with story time. In fact, Aedan is much more interested in her than other librarians. She incorporates a lot of songs and even hands-on props for the kids to manipulate as they sing or do an activity. They even sang "E-I-E-I-O" which made Aedan incredibly happy. The stories were all about trucks, so the crafts involved making trucks and then scratching pictures out on black covered fluorescent paper. Then, we took a few minutes to walk around the museum. However, the kids were getting a little too rambunctious and were running and yelling too much to be inside an art museum so we all parted ways for the morning. It was a fun time.

Thursday was a long day for Ben at work as he had a dinner and lecture to attend that evening, meaning he did not come home for dinner or bedtime. Samantha had been asking for awhile to eat at Big Boy, so I decided to take them there for dinner since Ben was out. She was really excited about eating there, and we decided to all order pancakes and sausage for dinner. The kids were very excited for their dinner and it was all I could do to cut up their food fast enough for them to eat. They both did really well out to eat with just me, and I was glad to be able to do this with them.

When we got back home, Samantha wanted to do a ball, which meant getting dressed up and dancing around. Aedan decided he wanted in on the action as well, so we picked out a small Minnie Mouse dress for him to wear. When Samantha and I saw him in the dress, we couldn't help but laugh out loud. He was cute, but it was so funny to see him dressed in a pink dress. They both danced around for awhile before it was time to put them both to bed.

I have to say one thing about this little boy's hair. As it grows out, it looks exactly like Ben's hair when it gets long. It gets longer, but it also gets poofy, especially on the top. It's so fun to see these certain characteristics in your spouse also coming out in your kids.

On Friday the kids and I decided to take a day trip to the Boonshoft Museum of Discovery in Dayton. With our membership to the Cincinnati Zoo, we get half off admission, so I figured we'd try out a new museum. It was one of those mornings where the kids weren't the best listeners, so I second guessed even taking them there. Plus, I woke up with a sore neck from sleeping on it wrong and pulling a muscle. It took us about an hour to get there, and Aedan was not very happy in the car. He was acting fussy and tired, and it was only 10:00. I actually thought about just turning around and going back home. However, it was Samantha's last day of Spring Break, and I was trying to do something fun for her.

Exploring a new museum is always fun, so after putting our stuff in a locker (and having Samantha wander away from me since she wasn't paying attention and following me), we started in the area for children under four. There were magna-tiles, a sensory wall, a water area, and other areas for kids to explore. The was much more up Aedan's alley, so he was having a good time but Samantha was bored and saw a large climbing structure that she wanted to get to, making her pretty impatient while waiting for Aedan.

The climbing structure was all made out of ropes with slides coming down off of different levels of the museum. It was really fun for Samantha, but Aedan could not do any of it, which really frustrated him. I also didn't like how Samantha could get off the climbing structure at different floors, while I was still on the bottom floor with Aedan. It was very difficult to keep track of where she was, and I did not like that at all. Plus, I wish some aspect of it would have been toddler appropriate so that Aedan could have participated as well.

From there we went into the space area of the museum which was geared towards older kids that could read and follow directions for certain activities. We walked through, though, and looked at all the planets in order from the sun, discussing how hot or cold they were. Samantha at least learned something scientific for the day, that the farther a planet is away from the sun, the colder it is.

We had completed the first floor, so then we were on to the second floor. They have small zoo area with a few animals to see, so we walked through that area together. Aedan particularly liked watching this little owl hop around.

Then, we entered into the part of the museum for imaginative play. The first area we played at was the pizza parlor and the grocery store. Here are Samantha and Aedan sitting in an old pizza delivery car.

Then, they both spent quite a bit of time pretending in the grocery store. Aedan was busy filling up his shopping basket, while Samantha put on an apron and was checking out anyone in the store who had groceries. They were both having a lot of fun in this section.

There were many other rooms for imaginative play, but it was getting close to lunch so I figured we should stop and eat first. I was not familiar with the museum and didn't know there was an eating area on the second floor, so I thought our only option was to eat outside. I pulled a table more into the sun, and we enjoyed our picnic lunch together. Aedan must have been really hungry because he ate all his food, including his entire sandwich, which he never does. It was a bit chilly when the wind blew, but not too bad, and the kids were in better moods after getting some food in their stomachs.

We went back up to the second floor for more imaginative play. They had a vet office in which Aedan enjoyed playing with the pretend x-ray machine. Samantha usually really likes playing in the vet clinic at the Cincinnati Museum Center, but this museum didn't have as many props to use so it was hard to really pretend at all and she lost interest quickly. That would be one of my complaints about this museum, for they had a lot of different areas to play in, but they didn't have enough props for the kids to use in the different areas. Or, if they did have props, it was only enough for one or two kids to play with, so that made it challenging.

They had a pretend courthouse with a jail, and Samantha liked pretending she was sent to jail. She said she was in jail because she was telling people about Jesus. I wanted to take her picture and told her to make a sad face. I think she did a pretty good job with a sad face, don't you think?

There was also an area with a pretend recycling truck where you could pretend to sort recyclables, as well as an area to show you how a landfill works.

As the afternoon went on, Aedan was having a harder time. He was crying over the littlest thing and was getting pretty tired. We spent some time in a tree house area reading a book, played with legos, and then saw a room with a giant sphere that had images projected onto it about the different planets in our solar system. We stayed in there for a few minutes and the kids were laying around on the benches, clearly tired, so we made that our last thing and headed for home. Aedan fell right asleep in the car, and Samantha was resisting falling asleep for awhile even though she was tired. She eventually fell asleep when I wasn't expecting her to, but then woke up three minutes later when I stopped at a light and then would not go back to sleep. Aedan woke up while stuck in traffic going through Hamilton, and I decided not to put him back down when we got back home. I figured we could have an early bedtime for both of them and a more relaxing evening for Ben and me.

When we got home from the museum, Samantha continued to act disrespectful, so while Aedan watched a little show (since he took a nap in the car), I had Samantha go lay in her bed to think about what bad choices she made throughout the day and a few things that she could be more grateful for. I don't know if I was overtired or if it was because my neck was hurting pretty bad, but I got pretty emotional when talking to Samantha. I actually started crying in front of her, telling her how it makes me feel when I try to plan a special, fun day for her and then she talks back, acts disrespectful, and never says thank you. I told her how we won't be able to do as many special trips like this next year when she's in kindergarten, so I want to spend this time with her now. I think Samantha was shocked to see how much it affected me, how her actions and words made me sad enough to cry. She started crying when she saw me crying, and then she leaned in and hugged me and we both cried together for awhile. Then, I scooped her up into my arms and just held her for awhile, telling her how much I love her and how much I love being her mommy. I hoped that our little heart to heart would mean something to her, helping her to see a little glimpse into other people's feelings.

Saturday morning was back to our normal routine with Samantha going to art class and ice skating lessons. She was in a really good mood that morning, and part of me wondered if she has a harder time with behavior during breaks where her routine is different and her days are less structured. I think she's a lot like me in that way, she likes having structure and a plan. She had a great time at art class and always looks forward to going, then Daddy took her to ice skating so that he could continue to work on his paper for the upcoming conference. He did not have his phone with him or else he would have taken a video, but he said she was skating all by herself! He said she was one of the best in her class, only falling once, not needing any help at all, and even being the first one to reach places as they were skating around the ice. Whenever she talks about skating she says positive things and is excited about learning how to skate better. I'm so glad that we seem to have found an athletic activity that she enjoys and feels confident doing. Plus, living in the U.P., she will definitely have numerous opportunities to ice skate! (Now Ben and I need to learn ourselves so that we can go skating together.)

Saturday mornings are sometimes difficult for Aedan because Sissy is gone all morning, and he misses having her around to play with. Ben was trying to get some work done on his computer because he was pretty behind on his papers for the conference, plus writing tests, plus grading papers and tests. I tried to give him as much of a chance to work as I could, even though it's not easy to work with Aedan running around. I was working in Aedan's room, putting away and organizing clothes that no longer fit him, and hanging up the next size of clothes that were given to us by family and friends. (I had to try a couple shirts on him which is why he is shirtless in these videos. He decided he wanted to be shirtless for a while after that.) Throughout the past week, Aedan has been singing a lot of songs. "Oh Where is My Hairbrush" and the Menards' theme song are two of his old stand-bys, but now he has really enjoyed singing songs from church like "Hosanna," "I Want to Be Like Jesus," and "Jesus Loves Me." It is so cute to hear his little voice singing songs about Jesus. In fact, you can hear him say Jesus in the first video. At meal times he is always the one to remind us to pray, and before nap time and bed time he always wants us to pray and sing "Jesus Loves Me," which he calls "Bible, Bible Tells Me So." When I pray over him, I always pray that he will come to know Jesus as his Savior at a young age and that he will live his life following Jesus.

Just this past week we found out that people will be moving into our current house in the middle of June, meaning we need to be out sometime the first week of June. Knowing that our moving date is two months away, I have made a couple goals for myself. I don't really need to start packing things up seriously until May so that way we aren't living in boxes for too long, so my goal for April is to go through closets, clothes, papers, and boxes. I want to throw away or give away anything that is not needed, organize the things that are needed, and make sure we aren't taking unnecessary things with us when we move. That is one of the good things about moving, for it gives me an excuse to go through stuff that we have just shoved in closets or drawers. Then, I can also start packing up baby stuff and toys that are still in Aedan's closet and room so that they don't get put back in his room in Sault Ste. Marie. I figure if I just tackle one thing at a time, I won't get overwhelmed with all the tasks at once. I really enjoy going through things and organizing, but it's not quite as easy with two kids running around, distracting you, or making more of a mess with what you are trying to organize. I will definitely have to utilize nap times for getting a lot of organizing and packing done.

Here is what Aedan was doing while I was hanging up the next size of clothes. He had Samantha's little music player and was dancing and jumping around the room. I love the energy of this little guy!

On Saturday evening I had thought it would be fun to attend an Easter egg hunt at Hueston Woods since we missed the one in Oxford last weekend. However, a cold front was coming through, bringing with it strong winds, rain, and cold air, so we decided it would not be so fun to be outside. Ben and I had a hankering to eat at Chuy's, so we decided to pair that up with a trip to Menards to get some paint samples so we can decide what color we want to paint our bedroom and the office/spare room in our new house. As we walked around Menards, they played the theme song over the speakers, and Aedan perked up, frantically looking around for the Menards' bear that was playing that song. It's funny how much he likes music. Then, as we were leaving Menards, the weather had gotten even windier and colder.  In fact, snow was blowing hard, straight across the sky. The weather was crazy and unexpected.

Sunday was a pretty relaxing day together, which is the best way to spend a Sunday, I think. We decided to go to second service so that we could give the kids their baths in the morning. Then we had our lunch time, nap time, and family play time. I like our weekends at home together. It's nice just to have Ben around more, and the kids certainly love to spend time with him.

On Sunday afternoon Ben and I talked for quite a while about how to help Samantha with her attitude and propensity to talk back. Awhile back we were doing a reward jar with cotton balls. Whenever she did something that was good behavior, she could put a cotton ball in the jar and when it was full, she got to pick a reward. We kind of stopped doing that for awhile because we have been busy with life and planning our move. However, we decided we would start it back up again, except this time adding a different twist. She can now earn cotton balls for good behavior, but also have them taken away for bad behavior like hitting, pushing, yelling, talking back, fighting with Aedan, etc. We really want to see an attitude change in her, and we know that she is a sweet, caring, empathetic little girl, but sometimes her emotions get the best of her and she reacts or speaks without thinking. Hopefully by pointing out both the good and the bad, Samantha will become more aware of her behavior and how it impacts others.

Monday was back to our normal routine as well, and both kids woke up with lots of energy. Samantha was super excited about going back to preschool again, and Aedan was thrilled about going over to Bennett's house to play. I got the morning off and didn't have any grand plans, just had to run by the library, do some grocery shopping, and start on laundry at home. I also continued a project I had started during nap time on Sunday afternoon, one of those projects I can only do when the kids are not around. We have a two drawer filing cabinet in the garage that I have just been shoving papers and artwork in for the past two years, and one of my jobs was to go through it and organize it before we move. I took pictures of all of Samantha's preschool artwork, only keeping a handful of really good or meaningful ones. I organized some of their keepsakes into folders and threw away lots and lots of paper we no longer needed. It felt good to purge so much stuff, and I was also able to put together a binder of the calendars I have made of the monthly photos of our kids. I just took the binding off and placed them back to back in clear plastic pages. It's like I have a photo book but didn't have to put the work into making another one. And now I can just keep adding to it as I create new calendars. Getting projects done and checked off my list is very fulfilling to me. We will see what I get done in the next week!

(Blog about March 29-April 4, 2016)