Those Dishes

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How is it that dishes have such an influence on my day?!

I let the dishes pile up the day before yesterday. and yesterday. and today. ahh.

After breakfast I was in a sort of bad mood, not angry, just tired and totally unmotivated. Between all the requests for milk and food and all the clean up that comes with it, I probably passed by the dishes 20 times, feeling even more tired and just blah by the time 11am rolled around. I really think it was those dishes.

I fixed the kids some lunch, cringing at the sight of more dirty dishes. By then I thought, “these are probably the most dishes I have ever had in my sink.” So, while Hyrum continued to paint the highchair tray with spaghetti sauce, I turned on some relaxing music and starting washing (no dishwasher here.)

You guys, this was like magic. It was like I melted. All that tenseness, grumpiness, whatever it was, totally went away the more I washed those dishes. By the time I was halfway done, my headache was gone and I just felt so much happier. Phew!

If I can offer some advice (to myself especially)… just do it. Take your break, then put on some good music and decide you are going to make the best of it. Whatever it is, overflowing dishes, laundry, TAXES, making that phone call, get it done and over with so you can embrace the day easier. It feels so much better.

home life | thatwemighthavejoy.com — typical winter get up in our house

And one more note of something that has been helpful recently…

If you have a a big sweet tooth like me and occasionally get caught in the sugar craving trap, put off the sugar until as late in the day as possible.

I’m not saying don’t eat sugar at all (I’m sure that’s ideal, but this is realistic and totally do-able.) I’m just saying that the days when I eat sweeter foods for breakfast, I want them the rest of the day. The later I can procrastinate (finally a positive thing!) eating sugary foods (like juice, cereal, etc.) or treats, the less I even want them! And then I’ll have some later in the day and it doesn’t have as much of an influence on my cravings. Nice!

Then again, if you can avoid sugary foods all together, go you! And if you don’t even care much for sugar, (like my husband) lucky you. The rest of us will just eat that pan of brownies for you. 😉

Frozen Lake fhe

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We drove out to one of our favorite places today. It was so strange to see this massive lake completely frozen over. It was beautiful though, and we had so much fun sliding all over it! Jake is determined to find some ice skates at a thrift store for us.

On the way home we had family home evening in the car. Sometimes I think we should always do it this way because we have Ava’s complete attention and she seems to like it too. We talked about this amazing Earth that we live on and the animals and people and how God created it all for us because He loves us so much.

We shared some of our favorite creations. Ava said she loves the butterflies and sunsets. Jake loves the mountains and I love the rivers and lakes. We all said we love the ocean.

Then Ava exclaimed, “I love blossoms! You know, in the summertime all the trees will have blossoms! That’s my favorite.”

That’s my favorite too. In the meantime, I’m grateful for Jake because he has so much good to say about winter and it rubs off on the rest of us.

Ava finished with a prayer thanking Heavenly Father for the Earth and the tigers and all the people, and we were all feeling pretty grateful right about then. #mamanotes

Twenty Minutes of Mom Life

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It was 4pm and I stood at the stove squeezing packages of sausage into the soup pot, anxious to get to the bathroom to do my make-up (for the first time all week.) We were going somewhere after Jake got home from work and I was looking forward to getting ready for the evening.

From the bathroom I heard my four year old yelling to me, “Mom, why do you have so many lipsticks?” at the same time the baby was yelling for more food. I grabbed another piece of cornbread from the pan and set it on his highchair tray as I made my way to the bathroom. Ava was already in there with her bright red lips, having applied all four of the lipsticks, apparently. So I wet some toilet paper and touched it up a bit, careful not to wipe any off her lips because “then it won’t look pretty anymore.”

After a quick powder application, I ran back to the stove, stirred the meat, turned on the fan to avoid another fire alarm going off (like yesterday) and gave another piece of cornbread to Hyrum (and wondered how he is able to eat so much.) Then I ran up the stairs to put on some jeans and back down to the kitchen to get the yelling baby out of the high chair. I cleaned him up, set him on the floor with a bottle, searched for some chicken broth, and stirred the meat again.

Then, back to the bathroom where I quickly brushed on some eyeshadow while Ava looked through my make-up bag and Hyrum played with a ball on the floor. I had just started on the eyeliner when I heard Ava say, “Oh no Mom look!” She held up her hand with a tan colored glob on it (I’ll spare you the details,) and I think I just stood there for a good five seconds with my mouth open before I asked her what was sitting on the top of her fingers. “Hyrum’s poop!” she said with the same incredulous tone. We stood there for another few seconds just looking at it before we both broke out in snickers of quiet laughter, in a sort of disbelief and disgust. Fortunately we were in the bathroom with sufficient toilet paper, soap, and water, because we certainly used a lot of it. Not sure why she stuck her hand into her brother’s diaper, but I’m pretty sure she won’t do it again.

I carried Hyrum up the stairs on his stomach in search of baby wipes while Ava followed me like a shadow, hanging onto my shirt because there could be monsters downstairs and she’s going through this phase where she’s terrified of being by herself. Hyrum started crying and throwing all his weight to turn over the moment I laid him down on the changing table because apparently diaper changes are pretty terrible. I don’t care for them much either.

A few minutes later we were back downstairs where I stirred the meat for the last time and finished my eye liner. Phew!

Sure felt like an eventful twenty minutes. Fortunately, most twenty minutes aren’t all that eventful, but it’s not uncommon.

This mom life is such a thrill.

Saturday Haze

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A lot of the snow melted yesterday, so with all the brown and haze and old patchy snow, it was probably the ugliest day of winter, at least in the morning it was. Jake worked all day too, making this Saturday like another weekday. We needed some kind of pick-me-up.

So today while Hyrum chewed his apple slices and spit them back out, Ava and I took a break from our quesadillas and shimmied across the kitchen floor to “California Dreamin” and other golden oldies, walking back and forth toward each other with our funky dance moves and our silly faces. We ended up on our backs with our heads together, laughing at ourselves and what fun we were having and honestly I wasn’t dreamin of being anywhere but there. #mamanotes

kitchen dancing | thatwemighthavejoy.com

Cake for Breakfast

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I’m having one of those weeks where I stay up much too late and then ask myself in the morning, “Why did I do that?” So all day I’m super tired, but once the kids go to bed all of a sudden I have this burst of energy and there is so much I want to do! So the cycle of going to bed late continues… Anybody with me on this?

Usually we are pretty good about going to bed early (and I’m a major proponent of this), but with the kids waking up around 8am lately I have been pushing bedtime for myself. Well, then Hyrum pulled a major switch and started waking up a few times at night and now gets up for good at 6:30am. So needless to say, I was pretty tired the first morning that he did that.

Ava could see how tired I was (probably because I wan’t getting out of bed,) so she got Hyrum out of his crib, grabbed a box of crackers and some bananas from the kitchen, and before closing my door said, “We’ve got to close mom’s door so she can sleep.” (Angel!) For the next hour, she put on a movie and played with Hyrum in the playroom. It was amazing! I was so happy and so grateful! I made sure she knew that.

So, when Ava requested chocolate cake for breakfast, we had chocolate cake for breakfast.

And we gave her two “good attitude rocks.”

Ava has had more than her fair share of sass and complaining lately, so we started this thing where we put “bad attitude marbles” in her glass jar for poor attitude choices and if those are all gone, we put “good attitude rocks” in. Once she reaches ten good attitude rocks, we give her something special. So far, it has worked so well! It’s a great reminder for her to think before she reacts, and it’s also a great reminder to us to recognize her for all her good choices! She received her first “special thing” the other night, and it has only made her more motivated to make good attitude choices, and it seems the good attitude choices are becoming more prevalent (that’s our hope at least!) If you know of someone (kids I mean) who may be struggling with this same thing, maybe this could work for them too! Sometimes we just need ideas.