Martha Stewart I Am Not

My two oldest kids are "in school," placed in parentheses because we're talking half-day kindergarten for Aidan and a total of six hours of preschool per week for Taylor. This is not REAL school, right? I just have to teach them things like being on time and laying out clothes and backpacks the night before...but we're not into homework territory yet or anything like that.

Sort of.

Aidan gets a small amount of homework every Friday that has to be returned by Wednesday, and in a manner that makes me wonder how she is my child, she comes home every Friday and does her homework as soon as she walks in the door. She returns her homework folder on Monday, two days before it is due. I cannot relate to this as I was the student finishing up the last few math questions right before the bell rang, but I am thankful it is her personality. Hopefully it will stick when she gets older.

This week, my kids both brought home essentially the same assignment (from two different schools): decorate a turkey as a family. Both kids were give cardboard turkeys to cut out and then decorate.

After we ate lunch Saturday, Terry went to work and we pulled out the turkeys and any crafty stuff I could find. I have friends who are very good at this type of thing, and therefore, in my mind, are excellent mothers. It is not my area of strength, but I wanted to give it my best shot.

Taylor decided his turkey needed to be a Rock Star and Aidan went with a ballerina. After almost three hours, these are what we ended up with. They may not win any awards, but the kids love them, and I realized later that although we made a huge mess of my kitchen, we also had three hours of creating and laughing and talking about all kinds of stuff. I'll help them with homework for years to come if it results in those things!

She's Here!

I have not posted in quite some time as I was busy getting ready for our new addition, Kinley Olivia Kelley. Finally last Saturday, October 17th, she was born at 4:55 p.m. I was five days overdue and was induced.

I must admit that I struggled a bit near the end, just not knowing when she was coming (I had hoped with this being my third that she might actually be early, but she was late). I was so relieved when my doctor decided on a date to induce.

The labor and delivery itself was quite smooth; I feel fortunate that I've had three good birth experiences. My parents were also able to be here for an extended period of time, which was invaluable help with the older two kids and around the house.

Since we have brought Kinley home, Terry and I both have just been so thankful and loving the experience. I reminded him that he wasn't convinced a third was a good idea, and now he's talking about a fourth! (I give that a few more weeks to die away.)

I am determined to post more now since Facebook is only pictures, and I'm sure there will be stories to tell in the near future. Stay tuned...

Five Going on Fifteen; or, Choices

I never wanted to raise a spoiled child (who does?), and the last few weeks, we are having to work to figure out how to avoid this. My daughter is five going on fifteen, proving it on a daily basis.

We took the kids to a Rockies/Cubs game in Denver (Cubs being the key team, there). Coors Field has a section called the Rock Pile where the tickets are somewhere around $5 apiece. That's what we were intending, but we don't go to Coors Field enough to know the ropes. Rock Pile sold out early on, and all that was left by the time we got there were really bad $25 seats. There are four of us, and why would we pay $100 for really bad seats when we wanted it to be kind of a cheap night? Terry and I decided to forget it and try some other time, and Aidan started pouting. Don't worry--we didn't give into the pouting (would just encourage more), but we didn't want to feel like we lied to our kids after we'd been telling them all day we were going. So we bought the horrible, horrible seats and went. They were ready to go home about the 2nd inning, mostly because they couldn't see anything.

One Saturday morning, I got up to run a few errands and decided I'd take Aidan with me and leave Taylor at home with Terry. We went to the store, and I was thinking about the little mani /
pedi place nearby. I told Aidan once that I'd take her to get her toenails painted sometime, and they were open, so we went in. She was THRILLED! She grinned the whole time and just thought it was so neat. She got purple toenails with flower designs on them. However, when we left and got into the car, she seemed to quickly forget that I just took her to do something special and asked me if I would take her to breakfast. I said no, she claimed I never do anything fun with her, and we ended up cutting our errands short and just going home I was so frustrated.


Final story: we took the kids to the Denver Zoo one day, which, by the way, was also way more
expensive than I had anticipated. Things were fine outside of a pregnant mama who could only walk at a snail's pace and the fact that it rained just a bit. However, the route we took around the zoo led to seeing the monkeys last. I was so ready to leave, but you can't ignore the monkeys. That's one of the reasons you even go to the zoo in the first place. As we walked back to the last section, our path took us by the mini-train and carousel. Both kids started begging to ride them, and we said that we'd consider after we saw the monkeys, hoping they'd be too tired to care. They weren't. They both still wanted to ride, and so we decided that I would take Taylor on the train and Terry would take Aidan on the carousel. We've been working with choices, lately, though, to try and help Aidan especially learn that what she decides has consequences and to give her responsibility. We walked past an ice cream stand, and Aidan said, "Ooooh! I want ice cream! Ice cream!" So Terry gave her a choice: ice cream or carousel? After an eternity of deliberation, she chose the carousel, we rode our rides, and started walking to the car.

Aidan started begging for ice cream and claiming that she never gets anything like that, etc. etc. Terry reminded her that she had had a choice and had chosen the carousel. After lots of grumbling, she said, "I wish I was my own boss." Terry explained that because he's her dad, he's her boss, and without one, she wouldn't have the other, and she'd have to make her own money, all that kind of stuff that's over the head of a five-year-old. Aidan was quiet for a few seconds and finally said, "Well, I want you to be the boss of me, but I want you to let me do whatever I want."

Okay, so that one is kind of funny, and Terry has been able to use it as an illustration in some devotionals, etc. But the bottom line is that we've hit one of those spots in parenting that we're just working our way through the best we can. It's a reminder of what a huge responsibility parenting actually is--these kids are going to have lots of times where they need re-directing, and while we won't always handle it perfectly or even know where to begin, we signed on for that job when we had them. :) It's a privilege, though a bit of a scary one, and I just hope we do them justice because they deserve it.