We just finished the craziest week of the summer in case you were wondering why F’s birthday post was late. I started it early but nothing was accomplished this week. I’ve been trying to do laundry for days, but just surviving is about where we ended up.
The end of summer means we’re at the start of a new school year. I think we were mostly successful, despite the fact that daycare decided to close for a few days while school was starting. The worst time of the year for them to close? Possibly.
You are an amazing TWO year old. So clever, I find you figuring out problems with ease. Can’t reach something? Next thing I know you’ve grabbed a step stool and grabbed whatever you needed. You watch your siblings and learn from them all the time.
You have no fear (a little fear once in a while might be a good thing, you know? Maybe a few less black eyes?) and literally dive into everything head first. You’ll jump off anything, tackle anyone, and everyone who meets you uses the word “bruiser” to describe you. However you’re also super nurturing. You always “make drinks” for everyone and can also be found taking care of your babies. If your older siblings look sad, you’ll give up your own toys to try and cheer them up.
Did I go overboard this summer? Yes, I definitely did.
But let me explain my thinking: E needed to do something this summer. The other two are in daycare, but we needed to find a care option for E, and that meant paying money for camps. So my first plan was to find a way to pay for less weeks of camps. This was also around the time that my employer was calling us back into the office at regular intervals, which is not something I enjoy.
So I figured if there was a way to not go into the office, not pay for camp, and also go on vacations I’ve always dreamed of going on with my children, it would be win-win-win! Part of this is the pandemics fault, because we’ve been trapped at home for so long that we’ve been dreaming up quite a list of places we wanted to go.
I’ve been spending a lot of time solo with E in the car, which means we’ve been having some good conversations. A few days ago I had my GPS on (which isn’t unusual for me - with so many distractions in my life I like the reminders on where to go) and he was telling me how he likes to hold up fingers for G, so G knows how many minutes until we arrive at our destination.
I told him that was really nice, and that it must be hard being little and not knowing how long we’d be in the car for or where we were going. Following that thought, I decided to ask him a question I’ve seen a lot of people asking their kids lately: “What’s the hardest part of being a kid?”
While I knew I wanted to go to Santa’s Village this summer, it seemed like a long distance to go for just one day. So we decided to take a couple, and explore some more areas of New Hampshire. One of the first things we did was play mini golf, since it was right across the street from our hotel. It went about as crazy as you’d expect. One kid was really into it, one was very frustrated that they weren’t better, and one loved to pick up every ball they saw and take off running with it.
I could have done with 9 holes instead of 18, but I’m pretty sure we succeeded in making some good memories, which is really all I’m looking for with things like this. Somehow I even managed to make two holes in one without even looking! I’d hit my ball quickly and then grab a child only to have Tom let me know my ball had gone in the cup. I actually did worse when I paid attention to it.
I go back and forth about how I want to spend our summers. Relaxing and lazy summers spent outside by the water? Or action packed and seeing all the things? Maybe I’ll alternate - rent a house one year for a slow paced vacation and the next year spend the summer going all over and seeing everything I want to see. Or maybe it’s a result of feeling so locked down the past few years due to the pandemic and getting used to being a family of five.
But as I’ve stated before, I’ve been itching to do more lately. So this summer I planned a few things that’ve I’ve been dreaming about. Number one? Santa’s Village!
I actually wasn’t sure if we’d do Storyland or Santa’s Village - I didn’t really feel strongly one way or another, but eventually I leaned towards Santa’s Village. I felt like our family likes Christmas more than fairy tales, and I heard the park had more shade for hot and sunny days.
The 4th of July has never been my holiday, even before our country started attacking my rights so bad that I’m embarrassed to be a citizen, but it means that I don’t have a lot of experience celebrating it. Sure when I was in Boston I went to the fireworks a few time, mostly because it was easy - all you had to do was be outside at a certain time. But I’ve never done the parades and parties and whatever else you do on the 4th.
The first mistake I made was not realizing I should have picked out red, white and blue clothing for everyone. Because apparently that’s thing number one you do when celebrating this holiday. We definitely own a lot of things that could have passed, and I specifically know that G has patriotic PJs. Which would have helped since G pretty much only wears PJs when he can, and also means I should have thought about what PJs he got into the night of the 3rd. But I didn’t, which means he ended up wearing Halloween PJs all day on the 4th haha. It totally doesn’t matter and actually made me laugh all day.
G is my hardest child to get a read on. You have to be patient. If you go at him too strong, ask too many questions or try too hard, and he’ll shut down and literally run away. He’s private and doesn’t want to share too much of himself, even to his family.
It’s also hard to figure out what he likes, because one of his strongest personality traits is that he wants exactly what everyone else has. Ask him his favorite color and he’ll give you the favorite color of the nearest kid to him. What does he want for Christmas? Whatever everyone else is getting. He has such a strong sense of equality and fairness. It doesn’t matter if a sibling has an m&m and he has a whole bag of marshmallows - if he doesn’t also have an m&m, he’ll be upset.
I haven’t done an update in so long, I don’t think I can fit all 3 kids in the same post. So we’ll start with the most recent addition to the family. F is coming up on her 2nd birthday at the end of the summer, and is full on toddler.
Independent and full of opinions, she’s quick to tantrum but also super sweet and cuddly. She loves to be carried around and to lie with her head flopped on your shoulder. She’s constantly studying the world around and figuring out what our processes are and where things go. If you leave a door open or forget to put something away, she’ll be the one following behind you putting clothes in the hamper.
I think she’s hopefully almost over her biting phase. I haven’t had to sign an incident report at daycare in weeks, although she did bite me while I was trying to get her in the car seat a few days ago. That’s become our recent struggle. I’ve been through it with the other two, so I know it will be temporary, but whoa does it give me a workout every day. That little minion is strong!
Life has been crazy in a good way lately. It’s a welcome change.
Sure 3 children is still crazy, and we barely have a minute to sit down, but it’s been manageable and fun. We’ve been doing more things and sometimes I can’t believe how different it is from 6 months ago. Six months ago going to church or on a playdate might have been our only activity of a weekend, and now it’s not even our only activity of a day!
I am not a fan of class parties. It’s so much easier to do a small friends and family party - less stress, cost, planning, less everything! But a certain kindergartener watched all the other children get big parties and was insistent that he wanted one too.
Our class hasn’t been very good at sharing contact information, so the only way to invite anyone is to invite the entire class by sending invites to school. It’s actually helpful that the teachers agree to distribute invites in the folders that go home every night, but it was a lot of control to give up for me. Even worse was when I set an RSVP deadline and had at least 6 kids RSVP after that time.
I had no idea what to expect - would we get 3 kids or 13? The party was out of town, so I wondered if that meant less people would come. Maybe I hoped it would mean less people would come? It was a funny line where I didn’t want no one to show up but I also didn’t want everyone.
It’s been a big year. E has almost finished Kindergarten and has grown so much over the past year. He has learned many new skills. We’ve seen him crush math worksheets, utilize new art skills which landed him a spot in the town wide art show, and enter the beginning stages of learning how to read. He comes home daily with new knowledge about things we’ve never discussed - it’s equally thrilling and scary to no longer be the only source of information in his life.
He regularly does 200-500 piece puzzles and non stop Lego kits that he takes apart and uses to build something else. He’s less into coloring, but loves making cards for people. He still loves crafts but dislikes painting. He loves running until his hair is wet and sweaty, but also loves to sit and cuddle with me - often waking up an hour before anyone else to find me in the house and get alone time with me.
I love a good theme.
I love crafting and creating, but coming up with ideas for things isn’t always the easiest. It takes time and energy and so when someone can give me a theme, I love it. I’ve been known to go a bit overboard, and this is maybe one of those times.
My sister said she was coming for a visit for Earth Day, and we could do some related activities with the kids. After picking on her for being very Vermont, I decided to go all in.
I’m not sure how long I would have waited, if I hadn’t been forced into it. Possibly forever.
I really had no desire to go back to a movie theater. It wasn’t something I was missing, and since the pandemic, it really wasn’t something I felt like I needed to rush back to. Plus the thought of taking the kids somewhere they needed to be quiet for an extended period of time? Nope!
But then we realized that E has a field trip to the movies coming up, and I changed my mind. We could have kept him home, but it would mean a harder day for us, and him missing out on some fun with his friends. So even though it feels weird to let your kid go off somewhere without you or anyone you know (the theater is not close to home), we decided to let him go - with a bit of prep.
Sometimes I wonder what our Easter will look like ten years from now. What things will have stuck as traditions, and what things will look different? It equal parts fun and frustrating trying to decide how we celebrate our holidays each year. Is there special food that we eat? Places we visit?
This year we celebrated at home with the five of us. The kids had their matching PJs, eggs were hidden, and everyone ate a lot of candy. We did color coded eggs again, which worked pretty well for us. F was able to find all of her eggs, and she had so much fun putting them in her basket and carrying them around. E’s were the hardest to find, and took him the longest to find all of his eggs.
Recently we’ve been hitting our stride a bit. And I was feeling a bit confident. So I told Tom he should take a night away, and get a bit of rest. He had some vacation days he needed to use, and I was pretty sure I could survive getting the kids to and from daycare without him.
Sure it involved solo bedtime with all three, and getting them all off to school the next day, but it was feeling doable. So off Tom went.
It’s time for a bit of an update. Things that seem totally normal in our life right now, but I know if I don’t write them down, I’ll forget them. And some of these are things I don’t want to forget.
First, let’s talk F and her sleep. SHE SLEEPS! The sleep consultant was completely worth it, and I’ve been recommending everyone I know who has kids to immediately get one. At bedtime we’re back to just laying her in her crib and walking away. That’s it. Some days she’ll happily sing to us over the baby monitor, and others she’ll just go straight to sleep. She’s sleeping 11.5 hours a night, which is slightly less than her siblings probably slept at this age, but I’ll take it. We’re not getting up in the night anymore, and she’s not waking at 4am. Naps seem to be fixed too. I’m sure that’s where a lot of my optimism has come from lately, because everything seems easier when we’re not all tired.
Some days are still really hard. That’s not new. But occasionally.. some days are less hard? We find our self getting brave and leaving the house more and more. This past weekend we went on 3 separate outings as a family of 5. Most were less than an hour, but even a month ago we weren’t even averaging one.
Pickups have been hard for me since F started walking. There were days when all three of them would be running in circles in the gym and there was nothing I could do. I love that this daycare has a gym, but it definitely makes my day harder, since you have to walk through the gym to exit the building. I can’t catch all of them at the same time. I can catch one, and then the minute I try and catch a second, the first one is gone again. They know they outnumber me and they just laugh. I really can’t do much but wait it out.
I can’t decide if the past 6 months have gone quickly or not. Sometimes it felt like a never ending slog that we were sleepwalking through, but on the other hand I swear we just celebrated F’s first birthday. Either way, we have an official 18 month old on our hands. And thanks to a sleep consultant, we are back on track with sleep and everyone is feeling more like themselves lately. F is back to sleeping and happily chatting in her crib, and it feels like at least one layer of stress has evaporated.
F remains the happiest Spearson, excited to be a part of things, and loves it when we go somewhere. She mostly gets mad when we try to remind her she’s a baby and can’t always do the same things that the older two can. Oh how quickly she’s going to demand equal treatment though. Already she fights back if someone tries to push her away.
When the end of January came around, I went looking for the bin of Valentine’s decorations. I was surprised to realize we only had 3 wooden hearts, a table cloth, and two things that hung from the ceiling. I was sure we’d decorated in past years, but couldn’t figure out why we didn’t have more. Which is why I love this blog, because it reminded me that last year we decorated with homemade Elmo and Abby Cadabby decorations, because that was what the kids wanted. And the year before I think we taped paper hearts to the wall.
So this year I was determined to find some more permanent decorations. The kids made it clear they were not happy with what we had, and honestly neither was I. There’s nothing like a nice distraction when life feels too heavy. So throw ourselves into Valentine’s day we did. We ended up with banners and hearts on the walls and a fully decorated house.