a search for brilliance

We need ideas. We have ideas, but we need input on those ideas and new ideas to consider.

Here's the schedule: mine and my husband's time together at the end of the day is HIGHLY important to us! It is beneficial for both of us to have time away from the children to focus on our relationship with each other. As his schedule changes constantly, so does our flexibility with our boy's bedtimes, but on a normal day to day basis the boys go to bed between 7:30 and 8:00. We understand as they get older (this applies to Elijah more than Judah right now) their need for lengthly night sleep will decrease. Judah is still needing 11-12 hours a night to be fully functional the next day. (fully functional as in NOT screaming and crying about anything and everything) Elijah DEFINITELY needs more than 8 hours (as found this past week in his refusal to sleep, 3 nights in a row he had only 8 hours and it made for a VERY disagreeable boy!) They both take a 2 hour afternoon nap. Sleeping for the full 2 hours rarely happens, but they are required to rest for at least 2 hours. Elijah will often sleep 3 1/2 hours if I don't wake him. If he doesn't sleep at all during naptime (which has happened on several occasions) he's a blubbering emotional mess by the time 6:00 pm rolls around, which in turn makes for a very unrestful evening for everyone. Tonight it was nearly 9 before he fell asleep (I know this because I was checking on him every 5 minutes to ensure he was still in bed - we've been fighting this battle for over a week now and it's been utterly exhausting!)

The problem to be solved:

As the time my husband and I get together in the evening (or I get to myself when he's on night rotations) is so important, we are in search of a QUIET and constructive activity for Elijah to do at night in his room (he and Judah share a room - keep this in mind) while he unwinds from his day. He tires with flipping through books after 10 minutes or so, likes to color but quickly loses interest in coloring ONLY on the designated coloring area, and LOVES movies but we hesitate to pop in a movie for him EV ER Y night (unless ya'll have some awesome ideas of educational movies for his age). We've tossed around the idea of getting him one of those little Leap Frog laptops, but hate to spend the money if he's just going to get frustrated with it and be coming out of his room constantly to ask for help - I also don't want the noise of the laptop to interfere with Judah's sleep and Elijah has proven to hate headphones. He's worn them, but not without breaking both pairs we've tried. So there you have the challenge - brilliant ideas only, please! ;)

Coping with hooligans

I sit and type this as my two boys eat their lunch. Neither of them were asking for lunch or even acting hungry, but for sanity sake we have a schedule where we try to eat lunch right around noon every day. As soon as the prospect of food is introduced both boys seem to lose their composure. Elijah deals with is a bit more maturely than does Judah, but both of them flip out in their own little way. It's as if they were starving, sitting around waiting all morning long for me to pull lunch stuff out and then when I finally do, it just wasn't quite soon enough. Death by starvation is looming around the next corner and lunch is surely not going to be ready in time. This is the precise reason I loathe fixing the boys lunch. It's never a fun time, or relaxing, or a time that I EVER feel like I can be creative and fun with their food. It's a race to see how much of their lunch I can get ready before they notice, in order to minimize the amount of time they are hanging on my ankles crying (mostly Judah) about how lunch is NOT yet ready. The mood you are reading is a culmination of my frustration with my job this morning. It's not complaining, as I see it, just coping with my frustrations as a mother through writing. It's the only way I can process through how the morning has gone, so write on I will.

Elijah has recently taken great delight in the pestering and aggravation of his younger brother. This has been utterly frustrating for me watch. This morning Judah was standing on a bottom brace of his highchair by the table and Elijah came up to hug him. I believe it started out as just a hug, but it quickly turned in to Elijah intentionally smashing Judah's face into the corner of the table and laughing hysterically about how distraught Judah was about his face being pressed into hard wood. I hate bullying! I was the one getting picked on, constantly, when I was little. It strikes a nerve that feeds my temper. It's really difficult for me to discipline and guide Elijah to do the right thing without an emotional explosion. I know it comes with the territory of being a mother to boys (or just being a mother of anything) and that it's natural for brothers to bicker, but it truly is, I can honestly say, the biggest challenge I've faced as a mother thus far. Elijah didn't hit when he was Judah's age (as most babies do for a time) and he's never been physically aggressive with his friends, so to watch the switch from that to him actually taking delight in physically hurting his brother has really been heart breaking for me. He's gone from hugging, kissing and loving on Judah to tripping, slapping, smashing or hitting him at any chance that seems worthy. (as I typed out that last part, I was SO blessed to see Judah run up and rub Elijah's arm and face after Elijah tripped and hurt himself. Elijah bent and kissed Judah's forehead and they both ran off to play - THAT is what a mama loves to see, but these instances seem so few and far between any more). I haven't a clue why God chose three boys for me to raise. It's hard for me to write out how excited I am to love on Joel once he's born, but 3 boys? Gracious! He knows exactly what I need (and what Josh needs) to be a parent to. I suppose it's a good testament to his sense of humor. I never would have pictured having 3 boys in a row! I thought surely 3 boys would be would be more than I can handle, God knows! I suppose God knows I'm wrong about that because come July there will be even more testosterone in this house...oh goodness! I wake up some mornings to Elijah slamming his door behind him after he's woken up and gotten out of bed, and then listening to Judah cry because the slamming door woke him up. These are just some of the mornings I just don't feel up to face the challenge that I'm called to face. Some days it just seems too much. (interesting how I have a hard time, sometimes, living my day to day life when I am more blessed than I could have imagined. Some women NEVER get the chance to grow a baby or even to be a mother, yet I am able to find discontentment in this blessing that God has given me. Humanness in it's purest form) Some days I even wonder why my boys even like me anymore. As I'm sure many of you can relate, there are days I'm just not a very nice mommy. It's hard to be nice, sometimes, when you spend day in and day out trying to train your children out of their "inherent evil" just to have them act like wild animals. These are truly difficult days for me to power through!

New toddler in town

Judah has thrust full throttle in to toddler hood this past week. He's exploring fit throwing tactics that are new to us, as parents, and has got a scream that will bring attention to a mile of surrounding neighborhoods. This boy is opinionated! Elijah has always had a temper, but his expression of it when he was 18 months old was much more subdued than Judah's. I'm sure there's more than just personality to account for. Judah has an older brother to watch. He copies EV ER Y THING that Elijah does and tends to mimic Elijah's fits and then dare to take them to a whole new level. Even Elijah just sits and watches in wonderment as Judah experiments with how shrill he can make himself sound when he's upset. He's asserting his independence, and when he feels that is threatened he pronounces to the world his disbelief that anyone should have an say in his behavior. This morning I made hot cereal for breakfast. The boys LOVE their hot cereal. Lately Judah has been growing ever so discontent with me feeding him....ANYTHING, or even helping him eat. He seems to believe that he's perfectly capable of running his own utensils no matter what the consistency of food he's dealing with. We sat down to eat and I scooped up a bite and extended it toward him. The screaming started instantly (the above picture is not from today...clearly), as he thrashed this way and that in his chair. He slapped the table with both hands while yelling indiscriminate sounds at me. He made his point. I sat watching him, bewildered at how such a little body can cause such a racket and asked him if he wanted to try. He quieted down and said, "mmhm", so I slid the bowl over. He devoured a couple of bites, his bib taking more of the cereal in than his mouth, and then clearly took great pleasure in how the cereal slid off his spoon onto his lap. He scooped up a hefty dollop on his spoon and slapped it down on the table. The spoon was hurled as his hands came down with force on to the cereal on the table. He smeared it all around, all the while concentrating with great discipline. Elijah stared at the ritual and then looked at me with a look that said, "So...what are you going to do about it, Mom? I mean, really? You're going to just watch that happen. Psh!" I sighed and reached over to take the spoon and bowl from Judah. I told him, "no no", and scooped up another bite of cereal for him. Breakfast continued this way for ten minutes or so. I took breaks now and then to finish off my bowl before it got cold as Judah worked himself in to such a tissy about not being in charge of his own breakfast that he didn't even want to feed himself anymore. All in all, in more than 30 minutes, he had only 3 full bites of cereal. He'd stop screaming now and then if something distracted him and then when I'd sit back down to ask if he wanted a bite the rage would bubble back up. I supposed he was done and asked him. He reassured me, "dah done". I cleaned him up and he went and played. He was plenty hungry by snack time. This isn't the first time this little firecracker has blown. And it really is only with food. If he's not able to feed it to himself he really wants nothing to do with it. He's demanding independence, full scale! I'd let the child feed himself the hot cereal (and other like consistencies) if I knew they weren't going to end up on all the walls. If even he'd let me help him. But if he's going in for a bite and I reach out to take his hand and help the whole earth gives way. Lord knows I'm not going to be the mother who's children sits by and watch as I scrub their dinners off the floor and walls because they felt like flinging it all about. Perhaps I seem a horribly controlling mother to some of you, but I will NOT have wasted food for the sake of playing. Does that mean we don't have fun at the table? Certainly not. We have plenty of fun, just not at the expense of the food. My children play all day and have endless possibilities of playtime imagination when they are not at the table. The table is for eating, not foolish wastefulness.

That being said, I've thoroughly enjoyed watching Judah transform out of his baby-ness. He's precious and blesses mine and Josh's and Elijah's lives daily.