No More Babies ?!?!

I sold Lil Bro’s nursery furniture on Craigslist, and looking at the empty room is making me sad. My sadness seems a little irrational, seeing that he never really utilized that room. Sure, we called it his room, and his clothes were even folded neatly in the dresser, but he never, not once, slept overnight in that crib. He never played alone in there. He never made it his own. Somehow he managed to wiggle his way into the bed between Hubby and I every night. For 3 years.

Where exactly am I supposed to sleep?

Admittedly, I wasn’t opposed to co-sleeping, at least not initially. Actually, because I breastfed, it was easier in the beginning. There was no getting up in the middle of the night to shush a crying baby, or to nurse him, or to check to make sure he was breathing (as moms tend to do). He was right there in the middle, so close that I could feel each breath. But after a while I began to feel like I was never alone (I was also pro baby wearing so during the day he was on me pretty much 24/7 as well). He and I were together so much that when I finally did attempt to put him in his own crib he opposed it with a cry so pitiful that Hubby intervened and decreed that we could wait a while longer. A couple weeks turned into a couple months. I realized that transitioning Lil Bro from our bed would be a solo effort because he had won his father over. As it stood, both Lil Bro and Hubby were content with the sleeping arrangements. 

The first night sharing a room and
Lil Bro slept in a bed alone.

I weaned my son at 14 months because I wanted him out of our bed. I reasoned that if I didn't supply him milk all night he might be more inclined to sleep in his own space. It didn’t work. Instead of nursing, my son would scoot as close as he could my body, pry his tiny fingers under my arms and bore at my skin in an attempt to get even closer. He made sure he was constantly scratching and wiggling closer and closer, just in case I made an attempt to get an inch of space between us. As time went on he grew bigger, and there was less space in the bed. His intrusive behavior evolved into nighttime acrobatics. I was sure to wake up every morning with a foot in my face, regardless of how many time I readjusted him throughout the night. It was like his foot was drawn to my face like a magnet. Again, he didn’t leave our bed until he was 3 years old.

So you see how irrational my sadness seems.  But I can’t help it. I’m sad because I bought a really expensive nursery set that pretty much sat on display in a room that was never really used. I’m sad because there are no more babies in this house, and although it’s been 4 long years since I had my last baby, it’s only been 4 years. My children are all 4 years apart, and I guess it’s just now hitting me that there are no more babies to be had. I’ve never been at this stage before; this is uncharted territory for me. I can’t believe I’m saying this but I’ve actually gotten used to having a baby every 4 years. So I guess I’m sad because I’m finished with that chapter of my life-- pregnancy and giving birth are in the past for me. That's what I know. That's what I'm used to. I guess I'm a little uneasy about what comes next for us. Anyone else feel these conflicted feelings once their family size was set?  

Garden Update

My garden has been such a successful project. This summer I harvested way more vegetables than I anticipated.  

 

However, not everything grew at the same time. My peppers are just now getting ripe. 

So far there, there is only one bell pepper on each plant, but I see buds so hopefully I get some more. 

I pulled the lettuce and green beans so I have an empty box to fill. My mom surprised me with these 

and I already see sprouts.  I'll probably plant them sometime next week. Well, except for the cilantro. I really don't like cilantro so I'll probably give it to a friend. But everything else should fit nicely in my planter box. I'll probably add a little lettuce too. 

I'm really proud of myself for maintaining a garden an entire season. Maybe I have a green thumb after all!

Oh, and did you notice my red mulch? I decided to spruce up my garden with a little color. I know there is a huge debate over artificial color in a natural garden but honestly I think it's cute. Plus at 5 bags for $10 at Home Depot I couldn't beat the price.

I also spray painted a table I bought on clearance from Target to match two chairs my grandmother gave me.

Overall I'm really pleased with my little garden space. It's a work in progress but I'm thrilled with the progress so far. 

My Garden Has Grown!!!

It looks like a jungle!

In my mind I was going to grow a nice, small garden in a tidy box, but the tomatoes have taken over. Of course I found out that there are determinate and indeterminate plant types AFTER I planted an indeterminate (read: garden taker over) type. Rookie mistake. But-- I'm excited to report that my first tomatoes should be ready to eat in about a week. I already see some beginning

to turn color:

Can you see a couple of the tomatoes in there that are yellowish? YAY!

My other box is a little neater:

The green beans are coming along nicely and thankfully I grew bush beans so they won't climb all over my fence. They should stay fairly easy to maintain. And I'm really proud of my lettuce because I honestly thought my lettuce wouldn't grow. When I was planting the lettuce, the seeds were so tiny that I decided to just dig a trench and dump half the packet in the soil. My "iceberg" lettuce looks suspect to me, like maybe the seed packet was mislabeled. I tasted it, and it tastes funny and has a bitter aftertaste. But, overall, I'm pleased. And all this garden growing has led to some positive changes in the household. 

VEGGIE EATING GROWTH CHALLENGE!!!

Big Bro has been a picky eater for some time. For a while he refused to eat anything that was the color green, in fear that it might be a vegetable. We've had our battles and I resorted to blending his veggies into a smoothie. He, of course, caught on (I actually suspect Big Sis told him) and so even his smoothie drinking habits have been ho-hum. But that seems to be changing. 

Today, while we were out running errands, we were discussing how, in general, kids grow over the summer and he mentioned that he expected to be a certain height by the time school started. My immediate response to my kids when they talk about growing is "if you eat your food you'll grow faster and taller" (Big Sis was a picky eater when she was younger as well). Well today, Big Bro was in eager agreement. I jumped on it and told him that I was thinking about making sure I eat veggies at least twice a day everyday so I could be healthy-- and then I asked him if he'd like to join me. He thought about it for a split second and then agreed. Ecstatic and eager to implement our new commitment, I casually mentioned that the garden he helped me grow was starting to produce. I told him that we should make a green smoothie from the greens in our yard for a snack, and that I'd make sure to cook lasagna rolls with spinach for dinner so we could get our greens in today. Before he could complain about the lasagna rolls, I offered to let him make a healthy frozen treat for dessert. And he agreed to that too! 

When we got home, I immediately took him to the yard to cut some of the lettuce. I told him to cut what we needed and that we would use everything he cut. Surprisingly, he wasn't shy. He even stuffed an extra handful of spinach I had in my refrigerator in the blender, in addition to the handful and a half that I added. I don't know if he is truly motivated by wanting to be taller, or if he is just happy to be doing something with me by himself. Whatever it is, we have a plan and we're both excited about it. 

Big Bro writing our smoothie
recipe so we don't forget the
ingredients.

The Growing Smoothie recipe
(named by Big Bro)

And he made a healthy frozen treat too! Frozen yogurt pops with carrots as sticks. We made a modified version of this recipe we saw on one of the kid TV networks the other day. I cut the strawberries and carrots, but he did all the mixing, pouring, and carrot sticking. They took about an hour to freeze.

And Big Bro is very pleased with the result:

We marked the calendar and took some measurements so hopefully he'll take it pretty seriously. I'm happy to have him on board, even if it's just for today. 

June 28, 2015- 48" tall

 

June 28- Veggie Eating
Growth Challenge
Day 1 

July 28- Veggie Eating Growth
Challenge Final day

It's Gardening Time!

Big Sis, Big Bro, and Little Bro doing more digging than weeding

Sometime within the past couple years the idea of growing a garden began tumbling around my brain. I toyed with the idea, but dismissed it because, well frankly, I didn’t know where to start. That is a really shameful admission because even in my earliest memories, my grandmother has always had a flourishing garden with fruits and vegetables galore—she even raised chickens for a while. But as much as I admire her gardening skill, her green thumb did not rub off on me. As a matter of fact, until a few years ago my allergies were so bad that I didn’t even consider meddling around in anyone’s yard. I could barely make it outside before having a sneezing attack.  But that was a few years ago. I’m not sure why I am no longer suffering like before, but I figure I better take advantage of this allergy free moment in my life and get my gardening on!

So—after saturating my “gardening” board on Pinterest with ideas and tips, I felt like I’d developed a good idea of what I wanted to do. I ended up with the following list:

Sungold tomatoes

lemon cucumbers

red, yellow, and orange bell pepper

iceberg lettuce

green leaf lettuce

green beans

zucchini

If my garden actually grows, I’ll save myself some coins in the produce department for sure.

At this point, I’m still not 100% confident in my gardening skills, so I relapsed into my nerdy ways and do what anyone who needs to learn how to do something does—I hit up the library and checked out some gardening books. I know this shows my age, but no matter how many online tutorials I watch, sometimes I don’t “get it” until I read it in a book. Little House In the Suburbs: Backyard farming and home skills for self-sufficient living by Caswell and Siskin was such a good resource.

Preparing my mind for gardening

I didn’t read the whole thing, but the introduction had me super motivated to get started. If I ever develop enough patience to attempt to raise chickens, goats, or bees, I know where to look.

So after boosting my confidence, I realized we needed a clear space for this garden.  Somewhere we could get full sun exposure for 6-8 hours. The side of my house was perfect, except for the fact that that was where we stored our garbage cans and any other random items we wanted hidden from our visitors. It was overrun with weeds, a rusty, barrel style barbecue pit, and random recyclables from the many times I’ve attempted to get the kids to sort cans, plastics, and bottles. There was also the beginning of an outdoor project that Hubby and I started by laying paver stones, but never got around to completing. So it looked like I was going to have to pull weeds and haul garbage and heavy paver stones before I could get started on my garden. That certainly put a damper on my garden starting enthusiasm but I didn’t let it discourage me. I enlisted my three garden helpers (Big sis, Big Bro, and Little Bro) and we got to work.

Big Bro quickly realized that he had been tricked into cleaning up the backyard under the guise of starting a garden, so about 15 minutes into the clean up, he disappeared into the house to “go to the bathroom”. Soon thereafter I heard MarioKart from the upstairs window. Thankfully, the other two didn’t bail on me until the space was free of random items.  

Doesn't look like much, but you should've seen the randomness we cleared

But that was only the beginning.

I was 80% sure I wanted to build raised beds, but after beginning the battle with those weeds and packed soil, I knew that once I cleared the weeds out and leveled the soil, I was going to start with some prepackaged “good” soil. That dirt was a beast.

Working hard

And I'm tired already

                                                                                                                                              

It took a couple weekends. Everyone pitched in to pull weeds (even Big Bro), and finally we cleared a space that was for the most part weed free and level.

Nice and sunny, great space for a garden

Then came the fun part: building planter boxes and planting my garden!!!

Boxes built and garden almost done

  

Initially, I thought building planter boxes was too difficult of a task for me to accomplish. But seeing so many diy boxes on the internet inspired me, so I talked myself into attempting to build some. And I’m so happy I did! They turned out great!

As much as I want to take all of the credit, I can’t. It was a total group effort. The whole family pitched in and the end result is great. Here are a few pictures of us getting the boxes ready.

Materials

Hubby looking handsome 

Drilling the boxes

Me insisting that I drill too

Setting the boxes in place

Setting the boxes in place

Weed block so HOPEFULLY I won't have to do too much weeding 

Pouring store bought dirt (for some reason this feels foolish)

Hubby smoothing it out for me

Red, yellow, and orange bell pepper,
Sungold tomatoes, lemon cucumbers, and
packets of green beans, iceberg and
green leaf lettuce

Gardening supplies

Lil Bro getting the holes ready 

Planting green bean and lettuce seeds

Marking them so I don't forget what I planted

Lil Bro making sure the tomatoes, peppers, and cucumbers aren't thirsty

Planted and watered-- I hope they grow!!!

GOOD SPORTSMANSHIP

A few weeks ago, I took my boys (8 & 3) to the bowling alley. We rarely go bowling so we are not good at it. At all. My 8 year old started out having a good time, but completely lost his desire to play once he realized his little brother’s score was higher than his own. Nevermind the fact that little bro used bumpers, a ball ramp, and couldn’t even carry the ball on his own to the ramp. Big bro was so distraught that he fought back tears the entire second game. He begged me not to print a copy of the score and we all left the bowling alley in a bad mood.

BEFORE BIG BRO REALIZED LITTLE BRO WAS WINNING

Recently, I’ve noticed more and more incidents like this— my children devaluing a fun experience because they lost a game due to lack of experience, skill, or patience to learn something new. Somewhere along the short course of their lives, they’ve picked up the idea that winning is easy and is the only goal of participating. I want to realign their values so that they understand that winning isn’t everything and that good sportsmanship is mandatory.

I am not going to lie—we are a competitive family. I will also admit that most of the competiveness comes from me. I get great satisfaction from beating someone fair and square. Most people who know me know this is true.

I have a sister who is 3 years younger than me, and when we were younger, I dominated her in games. Card games, board games, made up games—you name it I beat her. Over time, she got better and better and soon could match wits with me in any game. To this day, I still consider her a worthy opponent and to date she has beaten me more times than I’d like to admit.

I think the thing I enjoy most about competing with my sister is that we both try our best and although someone has to lose and someone has to win, we enjoy pushing ourselves. She is very intelligent, her mind is sharp, and although I’ve always had a slight advantage over her (because of my mind control over her J), she is someone that, even now, I have to bring my A game to beat. After putting in hard work, winning feels great and, honestly, with the right attitude, losing isn’t so bad. Losing builds character and helps a person learn and grow. Just like when I compete against my sister, I want my children to learn to use their physical and mental tools to better themselves, learning from the experience win or lose.

My sister and I have unspoken, established rules of play that were probably founded sometime in the eighties. Watching my children play together, I realize that they do not have a set of unspoken ground rules. This causes Hubby and I to constantly have to interfere in their games to make sure everyone is playing fair, regulate, repair bruised egos, etc. I don’t want to have to referee their games and I’m tired of consoling the losing child. So I’m laying down a set of ground rules for them. The rules are as follows:

-       Pick a game that everyone has a chance of winning and/or establish a handicap. This is a tricky rule, but it is necessary for my household due to the large age difference between my children (my 3 children are 12, 8, and 3). An 8 year old shouldn’t be content with dunking a basketball over a 3 year old (big bro and I had to talk about this one). Establishing the handicap beforehand helps each person try his or her best and everyone has a fair chance to win.

-       The rules of the game must be established before play, or when the first dispute occurs. Like I said before, playing my sister is easy because the rules have been long established. Inevitably, however, there will be some discrepancy over the rules at some point. In these instances, the principles behind the established rules should guide the rule making. Whatever rules are established at that point stand indefinitely.

-       You cannot cheat. No matter how tempting it is to look at the other person’s hand when they leave to use the restroom, or sloppily set up their dominoes, it is never okay to cheat to your advantage. There is no respect in winning in this manner.

-       You cannot quit because you are losing, or are going to lose. Who likes a sore loser? We must all lose sometimes so don’t make a scene by quitting or pouting or crying.  Losing gracefully is an art.  Eat your humble pie and take the loss. Hopefully the loss will motivate you to try harder next time. At the very least, you can pick up some pointers from the winner you may be able to use on a different opponent with lesser skill.

-       You can boast, but not in a mean spirited way. This rule may not be for everyone. Some people cannot take even lighthearted teasing, and most people do not know how to give it. I have to admit, I trash talk, but there has been many a time that I’ve initiated it in a humorous spirit, only to realize too late that the person I’m taunting is not taking it well. Not everyone is motivated by it and, sometimes, it actually intimidates people. Assess the situation and proceed with caution.

Hopefully with these rules, the kids will enjoy playing with each other more, and hubby and I will get a break. Does anyone else have any tips that they’ve instilled in their children to promote good sportsmanship? I’d love to hear them!