Alert. Alert. Alert.

There was a woman spotted tonight, at around 4:45 pm, driving erratically into the parking lot of Fulton Drugs.  She stopped abruptly in the entrance of the parking lot.  Said lady then proceeded to open the back left door of her minivan, apparently using a button within the vehicle because she never left the vehicle.  However, a light came on in the vehicle's interior and we were able to take note of the situation.  She seemed to be talking quite forcefully to one of her children saying,

"YOU CAN JUST GET OUT OF THE CAR!  GET OUT OF THE CAR RIGHT NOW IF THAT NOISE CONTINUES BECAUSE YOU ARE NOT COMING HOME IN THIS CAR!  GO AHEAD!  JUST GET ON OUT AND YOU CAN STAY RIGHT HERE IN THIS PARKING LOT!"

Then as if she saw herself in the rearview mirror (eyes wild, hair careening all around her head, steam seeming to come right out of her ears and face red) she then proceeded to laugh wildly at the pure ridiculousness of the situation.  A button was pushed, the door closed, Christmas music turned on and all was well after that as far as we can tell.

But it's obvious this woman is unstable.

If you see her proceed with caution, it's uncertain at this time whether or not she is dangerous.

She drives a light blue Kia Sedona.  She is 5 feet 2 inches tall, has long brown hair, gray-blue eyes and is of average size.  She has three children, ages 5, almost 4 and 2.  It appears that the children have the ability to both aggravate a situation and at the same time, and quite paradoxically, lighten the mood.  They appear to be well fed and taken care of by their mother.

If there are any further sightings that warrant reporting please notify your local law enforcement and we will go from there.

Thank you for your time.  We wish you all the best this holiday season!

Letting Go of the Guilt and Surrendering to the Joy

Before Joe and I became parents we began to talk of how to teach our little ones about the love of Jesus, His birth, His life and His death.  We wanted our holidays to be reflective of our faith, our traditions ones that our children would fall in love with and carry into their own families one day.

We put a lot of pressure on ourselves, on our ideas.

As we enter into this season of celebration I found myself starting to panic this morning.  We have most of the presents bought, we have baked cookies, the decorating happens tomorrow, I don't feel pressured about the "business" of the season - it's under control.  But I wonder if I can adequately convey the awe and wonder of the season to my children.  How can we breathe Jesus into every moment of this season?  How can we teach them the true meaning of this wondrous season, this time of miracles?

It overwhelms me just a bit.

Then I remembered a post I wrote years ago, long before ANYONE at all read this little corner of mine.


So my husband and I have had the great debate for 3 years now - yes, even before Fia was born.  We have been trying to figure out how to make Christmas meaningful.  How can you do it with the world pushing in on you from every angle, with Santa on every corner, presents on the mind of everyone and Jesus curiously getting more and more absent from our culture.  This is the first year that I surrendered to the idea that Christmas is truly just about Christ.  We are not banning Santa or presents or lights or the magical feeling of Christmas rather embracing those things through Christ.  I realized that waking up Christmas morning knowing that Christ was born is more magical and exciting and thrilling than any other possibility for that morning and it is one that won't lose it's truth when you get older.   We are going to celebrate Christ with cake and ice cream for breakfast, with gifts from the Magi, with stockings from Santa in remembrance of St. Nick and how much he loved Jesus, with the placing of baby Jesus in his manger and with the giving of gifts and cookies to our friends.  How exciting to know that Jesus is coming in just 25 short days.  Sofia can't wait to get up and have a party with baby Jesus.  She says that he is going to be so messy when he eats his cake and she wants to buy him candyland for his present.  Sofia has taught me that you don't have to "fit" Jesus into your Christmas, He simply is a part of everything.  I am more excited this year than I have ever been before and it is because I finally understand that without Christ Christmas is simply another day just like any other.


And I remembered.


He is with us always......in all we do we speak the language of Jesus this Christmas season - in loving others, in opening our home to friends and family, in the giving of all we have, in creating -with glue and glitter and stickers - decorations for our Savior's birthday.  We speak of the love that was created in us and through us.  


As you begin your celebration I hope that you surrender to the JOY of this time, the LOVE that is present, the PEACE that comes from the birth of a Savior and the MIRACLE of this season.

I can't explain why but this video always makes me cry - tears of joy and awe and happiness.  My breathe is taken away by the simple fact that people are proclaiming, in such a beautiful way, the message of the season in the midst of every day life.   You are forced to stop and take notice.

How Quickly It All Changes

It's weird....how you come together and all you think about is being together.  You come together and you have the beautiful ceremony and you pledge your love in front of God, family and friends.  After the ceremony, after the honeymoon.......you can't wait to get home to have dinner, to cook dinner for that man you love, that one who makes your day complete and puts the smile on your face.   You spend days and nights working alongside one another, cuddling in the dark of the morning, not wanting to get out of bed, for getting out of bed means letting go of the one you love.

Oh how I loved those mornings.  How I love those nights of preparing a meal, setting the scene with music and dimming lights and everything just so.

I miss them sometimes.

I miss who we were and how we were.

Before kids.

Before those sleepless nights, the piles and piles and piles of laundry, the whining, the crying, the exhausted days of a parent.

Would I trade my life for the one before?  The one before my heart, my joy, my adventure came along?

NEVER.  NOT FOR ONE SECOND.

But does that mean I can't miss those carefree days?  Those days where date night was every night?  Those mornings where an alarm woke us, woke us to mornings of cuddling up close to one another?  Those days where we woke together, rode together to school and came home together?  Those nights where we would come together for dinner and talk and reading and watching?  Those weekends filled with plans for us?

No, I can miss them and yearn for them and love the people we were while still loving who we are, who we are becoming.  Our children have grown us, tested us, loved us and made our lives all the richer for having had them.

I love that I still love my husband, that I yearn for the day that it will be he and I.  For my little ones will leave (though I have asked them to stay......and stay long) and someday it will be he and I.  I hope to still have that feeling 20 years down the road, that feeling of wanting it to be he and I.  I hold onto that feeling, that yearning, that longing.......for in the midst of chaos and sleeplessness and messiness and noise........I know that soon it will die down, much sooner than I ever hoped it would.  It will be quiet and clean and not so busy and it will be he and I at the table again.  The two of us.  Over bread and soup and fruit.  Staring at one another.  A lifetime lived.  A lifetime loved.   And into his eyes I will stare and see the same man I saw walking down the hall towards me.......a blue dress shirt, a red tie, khaki pants, walking towards me in a school hallway......walking towards a life lived together and I will rejoice that we made it.  That we started as one and ended as one......through all the insanity and craziness and reading endlessly at 6:00 in the morning, the peed on beds at 3:00 in the morning, the feedings at 1:00 in the morning.  We made it..........

We are together; forever and ever..........love you, babe.  Looking forward to the rest of forever........

Whose Pile Would YOU Choose?

When you have more than 1 child you notice things.  You start to figure out when kids are "suppose" to do things and when one children does it more quickly, more easily and when one child, well, takes a little longer to do things :)  Sofia, by the time she was 2, could identify all her letters save one or two, knew most of the sounds, could sing songs, count in both english and Italian.  In part, this was because her mama was an at home for the first time, ex-first grade teacher mama.  At 7 weeks I panicked because I hadn't been able to get her to stop crying long enough to sit and read a book with me.  So from that point on I would lay on my back with her and read her books throughout the day.  I had a goal of 10 books each sitting.  (OH MY GOSH WAS I SO PSYCHOTIC OR WHAT?) 

 After reading proved to be a success we would then spend time EACH DAY in front of the fridge doing the leapfrog ABC thing - the goal was to go through the ENTIRE alphabet with each magnetic letter at least once, singing the songs.  I also checked out books from the library with fingerplays and typed up a few of my favorites and kept the papers in the living room so we could go through our fingerplays each day.  (Are your eyes rolling back in your head right now thinking THANK THE GOOD LORD I DID NOT KNOW THIS WOMAN DURING THIS TIME PERIOD?  And apologies to all those I did know at this point in my life......)  I was slightly bored, slightly wanting to do every little thing right and well, there's nothing wrong with a little educational material in a child's life.

All this to say that the first, our first, had quite the head start..............

Then along comes number 2.......................and a MUCH MORE RELAXED mama and a MUCH MORE RELAXED child.  Nico, Nico, Nico......where Sofia came home screaming and wanting things very much HER WAY, Nico came home placid.  Nico slept.  Nico ate.  Nico let anyone hold him.  Nico was calm.......about EVERYTHING and still is.  His baby sister, Francesca, was singing her abcs the other day (she's more Sofia than Nico.....or maybe it's more girl than boy :)  and Nico decided to chime in.  He got to about G and then said something along the lines of oh, well, I don't really want to sing them, I'll learn them later.  The child still doesn't know how to sing his ABCs.  He's almost 4.  Add to that he doesn't really care if he knows them or if Francesca does.  He will read books by himself or with me for LONG periods of time now.  He will sit and will make an effort to do learning games with me.  He's a good kid, a smart kid.  But Nico knows what he is about and that is pretty much playing with his stuff, fixing stuff, eating stuff, helping with man stuff and he really can't work up the energy to care about all the other stuff :)  

I love it.

You need at least one kid who will just roll with the punches.  The other day he said he wanted to be a cooker.............and cookers don't get married or have kids............and he wanted to cook at McDonalds. (This was later changed to some other restaurant but at the time it was McDonald's).  So apparently his plan will be to live at home for the rest of his life.............oh, well, maybe we will use that time to work on the ABC song :)

Oh, and if you are starting to doubt the boy's intelligence, take a look below.............

Nico's pile of candy after trading with Fia - note the excess of chocolate and king size candy bars

Fia's lesser pile of suckers, Dots and fruit snacks AFTER trading

He's a wheeler and dealer.......just like Nonno and Uncle Anthony and well, we all know how well they turned out ;)

Priorities

The other day the smoke alarm went off (my stove top had an eensy-weensy bit of something caked on the burner) when I was making rice.  IT WAS SO LOUD.  I really hate that thing - it has yet to save us from an actual fire, it just goes off at the most annoying times.  FIRE! FIRE! FIRE! it screams at me.   I run from the kitchen to take it down (which is only a few feet away from any other room in our house) and I get it down.  Of course this doesn't stop the horrifying LOUD noise and I rip the batteries out of the thing.  AHHHH.......finally, peace and quiet.

Then I wonder why the kids aren't making any noise, why aren't they complaining and whining about the loud FIRE!! FIRE FIRE! like I am?

Oh, that's right......................

Dora's on.  Priorities, people, priorities.  I don't think they even heard the obnoxiously, loud smoke alarm which was mere feet from them.  They are in the zone.  Good thing it wasn't a real fire, I think they would try dragging out the tv before their own mother.

Random Question of the Day #3....

Or otherwise known as the Wolfe/Wise/Whitehouse  discussion topic of the day.  I actually got a message on the answering machine - there was lots of giggling and it wasn't exactly audible - but I heard "We figured it out......I'm Stan!"  Apparently Megs must have had a job in college selling plastic vomit that I didn't know about.  Ok, the question for this week is........

You first date EVER.........was he more of a

A.  Duckie

B.  Blane

C.  Steff


I choose date because I think it would be more entertaining to see the answers from the Wolfe/Whitehouse/Wise women.  Boyfriends tend to take more consideration.  Picking those out takes a bit more thought than random first dates.  As for me I think my first date was more a Duckie than anything else.  Aaahhhhh, that poor boy.  I think he actually liked me where I was just so excited to be on a "date".   Te idea of it was much more exciting than the real thing...........the "relationship" (I think it was 4 dates) ended when I heard he was going to try to kiss me FOR REAL.  Ugh.  No way.  It ended that afternoon.  I was 15.  I would like to move that number even higher for my girls......maybe 25?

So, what is it ladies?  A Duckie, a Blane or a Steff?

Oh and I DID clean out the van yesterday - all the recycling is removed.  I just have to jump in the back and get rid of the popsicle and clean out the cup holders so Ashley can resuming sleeping at night.  It's so good to have all of you in my little blog world - I, seriously, would never have gotten it clean without your disgust and horror motivating me.

An Hour of My Life..........GONE

I mentioned before that we are lucky to get our milk fresh from a local farm.  I make cheese, yogurt and, on occasion, my husband will make some butter.   I bake with it, we drink it and you can skim the cream right off the top to put in soups and stuff.  (I felt the need to tell you all this so that you would think I was some incredible housewife and how lucky my family is to have me.....I want you to keep all this in mind as you read on..........)

Last Thursday I went to pick up our milk and didn't have enough room in the cooler for all the jugs so I strapped one into Francesca's car seat.  When I got home I noticed a little milk had spilt in her seat but since I am the QUEEN OF DENIAL I promptly removed it from my mind and went about my business (of cooking, cleaning and serving my family in every capacity, so wonderful am I).

Fast forward to Monday morning......................

OH MY WORD.

I open the van door to take Fia to school and it slams us right in the nostrils...................the WORST SMELL IN THE WORLD.  The two older kids are screaming about how gross it is and how much it stinks and it really, really does.  Plus I still haven't cleaned out the van so all that recycling is still all over the place and the popsicle is stuck to the armrest.  It is appalling.

Yet I still seem to block it out of my mind upon arriving home.  (I think that Francesca inherited this from me because she plopped right into her stinky seat and rode all around  town while reading her Dora books - rancid, sour milk under my butt?  Not a problem, got my Dora.)

That night Joe finds out about it and is understandably horrified, yet we have been married long enough that no shock or surprise is registered.

I am thinking that Joe will handle it.....or little elves that come in the night........or someone......ANYBODY OTHER THAN ME.  I go to bed without a thought about the carseat or the smell or cleaning any of it up.  I am so positive that it will be taken care of.

The next morning we go to get in the van to take Fia to school.  I open the door.

OH MY WORD.

It was like crawling up the butt of something that had died 10 days prior.  Obviously Joe is trying to teach me a lesson or was tired and did not fully comprehend my expectations of him for all time (such as he will always be in charge of cleaning up anything in the car).  No elves came either.  It was time to admit defeat.  Further evidence of this was taking Fia to school and a little friend behind her said hmmmm, you smell.....you smell like....a pool.  Fia said yea, my car smells.  I was a tidbit embarrassed for our smelly van and the mom in charge of driving the van.

So I went home and told the kids that I was going to clean the carseat and I lifted it up to take it out of the car AND CURDLED, NASTY MILK CAME POURING OUT OF THE CARSEAT ONTO THE DRIVEWAY.  One more time........

OH MY WORD.

The milk had soaked through the carseat, through the blanket folded up underneath the carseat and had soaked into the chair.  Milk from Thursday afternoon.  We had been driving around town with curdled milk resting in the base of my baby's carseat.  The shame of it all.

So I spent an hour disassembling perhaps the MOST COMPLICATED PIECE OF EQUIPMENT that we own - the carseat.  I actually had to get tools out.  It was ridiculous.  And it was then that I made the vow to NEVER EVER DO THIS AGAIN.  It wasn't the smell that sent me over the edge it was all the dang time it took getting that dang carseat apart.  But it's done now.  Well, actually I did clean it all and wash the fabric parts but when Joe went to put it back in and opened up some secret compartment that I didn't know about - milk spilled out again.  So we just put in a carseat from Joe's car.

Now I just have to figure out how to get the milk out of the chair in the van.............................