Join the Mureens

So yesterday while I was feeding Caroline baby food (a beating...it's so messy and it takes FOREVER) Anna Kate and J.R. were upstairs "watching a movie." But they were really painting, and J.R. was eating paint and dumping it on the floor and then I cleaned them up and called the poison control center to make sure he didn't need his stomach pumped b/c of the latex paint he consumed, and got back to feeding Caroline and low and behold J.R. snuck back upstairs and did permanent marker art EVERY WHERE!!! I looked at him and said, "Are you joking?!?" He said, "No?" And then while I tried to clean up that mess Anna Kate was "cooking" by putting ALL our vitamins in water (child-resistent tops don't EVEN phase her, she can reach ANY cabinet in the whole house and she can open ANY door/container in the whole house and she has an uncanny knack for making ANY and EVERY mess you can imagine). That's where kids get expensive, not so much in the clothes and diapers and food they need as in the food they waste, the things they lose and the destructive messes they make. Ok, so this morning we went to the Y and the Sam's and now I should be cleaning the house, but I keep fantasizing that the kids will finally fall asleep for their naps...wake-up April, the kids aren't napping today. Maybe we need to just go get some sunshine b/c it's a gorgeous day!!!

But in all seriousness, daily I face many challenges. Lately I just don't know how to address all of them and I kind of feel like I'm losing control of my life and I would LOVE to have someone non-related give practical advice on how to be a more organized better mom and to help me address challenges like...

1. Anna Kate has become even stronger-willed as of late...I just hadn't ever imagined that could be possible
2. our dog has dug up most of our backyard recently (I don't know if this falls perfectly into the mom-rhealm of expertise?)
3. keeping sane while getting your house ready to sell and then selling it
4. it takes me an ENTIRE WEEK to clean the house when I REALLY want it clean in one day
5. i have no idea how to keep our family fed...i do love to cook, but 3 meals a day for 5 people is a lot of food to come up with and I want us to be healthy, too
6. budgeting - I spend too much money...but we don't have cable and I hardly-ever buy new clothes
7. what to do when 3 kids are making messes all day...isn't there a way to more positively direct their energy besides more preschool? how?!?!
8. making kids help with cleaning, laundry, cooking and to sleep or eat when they don't want to?! making kids do things they don't want to do in general...

It was my 29th birthday Wednesday. It was a rough day. This picture is an actual photo from our day. All 3 kids got flu shots and Caroline got 4 other shots as well. At least Caroline and J.R. aren't very dramatic about shots, but boy oh man Anna Kate sure is...she gets so dramatic it's indescribable. That's all I can say.

Jon and I celebrated it a few days before by going on a date to our favorite little sushi restaurant...Jon's love-language is spending quality time together, so I've learned from him over the years how getting to spend quality time together is a gift in itself - in lieu of having something to unwrap :)

We were "all" taking naps, but actually, unbeknownst to me, Anna Kate was awake and decided to paint. So after naps I see red paint on her and ask her if she was painting during her nap. She said no. She's started lying a lot lately. So we had a lesson about lying and why it is very bad and the terrible lie that Satan told Adam and Eve about God that ended up causing all the bad things in our whole world (like animals eating each other, and people eating animals, and always wanting things we don't have and not wanting to share the things we do have, and getting sick and having to get shots, and every one getting old and having to die, and hitting, and daddy having to leave us for work each day rather than us being together as a family all the time, and God being invisible to us on earth, and lots of dirt and trash). And then I realized how people really come into the world knowing absolutely nothing about how to behave properly (selflessly) and behaving inproperly (selfishly) is so instinctive and how it's my job as a parent to teach each of my children how to behave properly b/c no one else is going to do it, and gees, there is SO MUCH I need to teach them. It was kind of a wake-up call.

YAY for all 3 monkeys looking at the camera :) :) :)

Sweet sister love.

J.R. LOVES Caroline....

He always says, "Hey Crine! Hey!" to her and smiles.

He LOVES her SOOO much!!!! It's so sweet the little bond of love they share for each other.

So I went to my high school reunion this weekend. Gabby totally saved the day and made it possible by watching the kids since she was already in Dallas. The weather was so bad that my parents took a "rain-check" on our original plan to meet in Waco.

I was really glad to get to see a few old dear friends like Brittany and Emily...but there were many other people that I was hoping to see that didn't come! I had no idea that it's normal for only 10-20% of the graduation class to show up for those things. People hadn't changed nearly as much as I thought they would in 10 years, either. Overall, I left feeling extremely thankful for my "real" grown-up mom-life and that I never have to go back to high school (or junior high for that matter) again.

We took a tour of the new high school...the choir room is exactly the same and we have lots of choir memories together. Choir, student council, theater and my spirit group and the 1st Baptist Woodway youth group were my "things" back then.

Jon and I stayed at the La Quinta since I don't have family living in Waco any more. The entry REALLY cracked us up...maybe we could get their decorator to "spice up" the entry to our house...haha!

The kids started preschool today...it was J.R.'s 1st day of preschool. They LOVED it!!!!! Anna Kate's teacher said she "colored beautifully." My children are such artists. I'm blessed to have their work on our walls in a few spots...hopefully it will help sell our house ;) I really enjoyed some mommy/Caroline time...I went to the dentist and they said she was "hands down the best baby who had ever come to their parent's dentist appointment." The only downside to going to the dentist is that I don't ever feel like I have long enough to talk to the dental hygienist, Anita...she is truly one of my favorite people in the whole world. I like the dentist's wife, Susan, who works the front desk a whole lot, too. After preschool the kids did NOT want to come home, so we procrastinated by going to Happy Hour at Sonic for cranberry juice slushes (our favorite!) and getting gas. Now they are watching me do this blog post and I'm waiting for the total and complete melt-downs to occur from exhaustion since it's too late for naps and too early for bed-time. It's hard for me to know exactly what to do with them at this point???

It always takes me a while to "recover" from traveling away from home. I don't know if we are more tired or why it is, but things just seem especially disorderly proceeding a trip and it really overwhelms me.

We have cars stuck in our blinds by their wheels. J.R. calls them his "stuck cars."

I asked Anna Kate to pick up this trash she put on the ground and she said, "It's manna God put on the ground."

We got a package - yay.

At least Caroline is getting baths more often b/c of her messy baby food meals. I love her precious rolls, but the down-side to them is that she is HUNGRY all the time...she eats baby food like a champ, but it's so messy and it seems to make her want even more milk!! I do NOT like nursing...it is my least favorite thing about having babies. I won't complain about nursing even though I'd really love to :)

They say being a stay-home mom is a full-time job, but I think feeding kids and bathing them and doing laundry is a full-time job...never mind all the other stuff you do!!


So what's been going on besides our messes, meals, laundry and getting Jon's "pleasure" reading books stuck in the after-hours library shoot because the books are too fat to fit?

1. my computer issues are causing me to switch to Jon's computer...getting our pictures trasferred and organized seems like a beast


2. getting our house ready to put on the market (and my efforts are being severly hampered by lack of cooperation on the part of our wood-floor installer who will not fix our buckled floors...argh)


3. looking for a new house in my favorite neighborhood in.the.world. (I'm really excited about moving to this place where every one knows every one and neighbors hang our with each other outdoors and there are tons of families with young kids!!!!)


4. my NEVER-ENDING PURSUIT to keep the house from chronic CHAOS (Can't Have Anyone Over Syndrome) and to find a good system for producing 3 healthy, nourishing meals a day for all 5 of us on a regular basis


5. Our fall activities start today...preschool, PTA, ballet/tap, Wed night church and MOPS...I'm just REALLY thankful I'm not on the boards for any of these things or in charge of anything, except...


6. planning Anna Kate's 4th birthday Disney Princess party...which I majorly need to get on the ball for that...I always get stumped at which group of friends to invite? preschool friends? church friends? friends that go way-back? family? neighborhood friends? how do we come up with the perfect mix of all these great friends? anna kate wants to invite them all :)


7. Oh and meanwhile Jon works long hours on his trial and goes to weddings on the weekends, but I'm thankful he has a job and that these weddings have given me a chance to get a taste of the lives of our worlds' true heroines, single moms -- how do they do it?!?! The glass is remains half-full in spite of the lemons in it...or soming like that.

We went to Bastrop 2 weeks ago to visit my parents while Jon worked late hours on the trial and went to Bryson's bachelor party fly-fishing in Wyoming. We had a lot of fun. I wish it weren't so far away so we could visit more often. We went to a barber shop downtown because J.R. really needed a haircut and has never had a "professional" one before since I'll just give him a buzz, but he pretty much just threw a fit and wanted "no haircup" at all. Meanwhile Anna Kate got up in the chair and looked at me and said, "Mommy, all I have ever wanted is a haircut." So I felt terrible for depriving her of one her whole life because she never has had enough hair to cut, and I told the barber to just take a tiny bit off the ends in the back. Oh, Anna Kate felt so beautiful getting a haircut while smiling at herself in the mirror. Meanwhile, my mom and I were trying to come up with all kinds of bribes to get J.R. to get a "haircup." And before we knew it Anna Kate had a mullet with the sides of her hair shorter than her chin and the back 3 or 4 inches longer, but she still felt beautiful :) Now I really felt guilty for not taking her to a cute girly place for her very 1st haircut, even if it was more expensive. I ended up cutting the back to make it even when we got home and she has a really short little bob right now.

J.R. kind of ended up cooperating by sitting him in my lap and promising him a peppermint.

Mammaw took us to a dinosaur park! The triceratops is Anna Kate's favorite dinosaur. She likes the dinosaurs that only eat plants :)

One morning a neighbor of my parents called and said he wanted to come show the kids what he'd caught in his trap last night. These racoons were MAD and MEAN. But these were the 2 luckiest racoons born in hunt-happy Texas to land in this trap because this sweet neighbor drives 30 minutes away to drop off and release all the wildlife he catches in his garden in this humane trap.

Bubba took the kids fishing in one of their neighborhood's many ponds. J.R.'s 1st fish!!! A wide-mouthed bass.

Anna Kate fishin with Bubba caught her first fish...this catfish!!

They also caught some little fish.

We released them all to go back and live long happy lives with their families :)

J.R. liked wearing his fishing boots the whole time...and played with cars.

Another huge highlight of the trip for Anna Kate was that she took her first private swim lessons while we were there and totally loved her teacher, Jennifer, and can now jump in and swim to the side by herself!!! She LOVES to swim :)

I'm a little behind on posting.
wobbly to the right...

wobbly to the left...sitting up for a few seconds all by herself :)

eating at freebirds after church, JR thought he'd go ahead and dig in.

when I took all 3 kids and our dog and our cat to the vet for the pets' annual exams...all by myself...photography courtesy of anna kate. no need to call me supermom, i already know :)