Traveling With Tots

April 17, 2014April 17, 20151 Comment

We take two trips a year both over twelve hours long.

I have four kids- all five and under. My husband tends to the driving while I tend to our little herd. I’d love to share the bag of tricks I’ve developed over the years with you. There is nothing fancy or new here. Some ideas are from theprincessandthetot.com and some are ideas that friends have passed on to me.

I hope this will be something useful to you and something you’d be willing to share with others.

This will be my third year using a visual schedule. My oldest especially likes to know what is coming next and I have found the schedule cuts down on the “are we there yets”.

This year I am using words and clocks for the first time. In the past I have used a picture schedule.

I pack all our food. We will have fresh fruit and donut holes for breakfast and sandwiches for lunch and dinner. When we don’t have to stop to eat it saves us so much time. I have noticed we save at least 30 minutes a meal when we pack our food.

I will have four scheduled movie times. My baby is not old enough to care what’s on the DVD player so i have narrowed the movie times down to a choice for each child and mommy’s choice. Mommy’s choice is last because then I get to pick something I can stand listening to for the last minutes of the trip.

Music time is pretty easy. We listen to our favorite CDs. We love Veggie Tales, Jamie Soles and the Curious George Movie Soundtrack. For Easter the boys are getting new CDs in their baskets including

Rain For Roots

Veggie Tales 25 Sunday School Songs

DJ Shuffle from Disney Channel

Now for the good stuff. The Treasure Chest.

Everything fits nicely in this Thirty One Tote which I place between the two Captian’s chairs in out minivan.

We love Lauri Toys Puzzles and Linking Discs

Finger puppets

Lacing Cards

Pipe Cleaners

Books with sounds and lift the flap books

Magna Doodles, Dry erase workbooks and Stickers with notebooks

Audiobooks

Magnetic Tins – these are awesome but also messy and tempting to put in a little one’s mouth. Make sure you open the tin before hand – it does require some pre punching out for the magnets.

This is a newbie to the treasure chest and I am most proud of this one. “Tattoo Parlor” which is a kitchen timer, some baby wipes and loads of tattoos leftover from birthdays and valentines.

For the critical spelling police, it does seem I left a t off of the word “tattoo” that is a word I hardly ever write with four small children. Lucky for them it looks like I left enough room to squeeze that extra t in and hopefully no one will be emotionally harmed for this minor mistake.

For electronics time we have Leap Pads, iPads and a 3DS. These are screenshots of my iPad so you can see our favorite apps.

Finally, there are two miscellaneous items I can’t travel without. My DustBuster and gallon sized ziplocks.

I hope this makes traveling with your tots a little more fun!

Happy trails.

The Tremor Of Her

April 8, 2014September 22, 201610 Comments

I miss her.

Every day.

Every moment.

When I see my sons holding my baby daughter’s face in their little toddler hands – When I am holding a grudge against my husband and digging my heels in the sand because I am right about where that couch should go and he is wrong- I miss her.

Recently I have noticed little ways of how I seem to be becoming more and more like her. How even though she is gone I can feel the tremor of her in my moments. Every day.

Lately I have found myself saying and doing things the same way she used to. When you are younger you never think you will become your mother. But you do.

Her voice tremors through mine even when I least expect it.

Even though I miss her, I believe she lives on in me and I am thankful to be able to share her wise and crazy quirks with my sons and my daughter with hopes they will someday feel the tremor of her in their stories as well.

That secret stash of chocolates I have in my pantry reminds me of her. She used to hide snickers bars in the freezer.

She used to sing “another one bites the dust” when one of my siblings fell asleep. When I was a child I thought this was a cruel way to respond to your babes falling asleep but now I find myself bom-bom-bomming along to that same tune as my children nod off in the evening.

The words, “I’ll give you something to cry about” have come out of my mouth when my children are crying because they can’t find their eyebrows or their bath time is too wet. Again, cruel words I swore I would never say now make a completely acceptable and appropriate phrase to pass on to my children.

I have dinner on the table almost every night at 6pm on the dot. This annoyed me as a child but now it is a part of the rhythm and routine of my daily life.

I feel the tremor of her when I make her poppyseed bread at Christmas.

I feel the tremor of her when I huddle all my kids and my husband together for a “hunga bunga” which is a completely embarrassing group hug where the whole family jumps up and down while chanting “hunga bunga.”

I play rummy like her and taught my husband. I despise cooking and do anything I can to make it as easy as possible.

Every birthday party is special for my kids just like she made birthdays special for me.

I am grateful for a season where I can move beyond the feelings of sadness and anger that go along with my grief. In the seasons of sadness and anger it is too hard to find the simple and joyful ways how the fourteen years I had with her have impacted me for a lifetime.

I know through the years the Lord will continue to reveal more ways of how she is a significant part of my story.

I am thankful my children can experience their grandmother through the simple ways she lives on through me and I pray even though they never knew her my kids will feel the tremor of her in their stories for years to come and maybe years from now they will bom bom bom along as their own children “bite the dust” for the evening.

My mom lost her seven year battle with breast cancer sixteen years ago this week. If you have a memory of her please share it here in the comments. I know it would bless my siblings and I greatly to hear about more joyful memories of her and you might help us discover more ways we can feel the tremor of her in our lives as adults.

I Hope You Don’t Find Perfect Love…

February 26, 2014March 1, 20145 Comments

As a young woman I saw perfect loves in the movies and heard of perfect love stories in ballads on my radio in my hatchback manual Saab.

The idea of a perfect love brainwashed me into thinking all my relationships would be saturated with whisk-me-away-romantic moments. I really at my core believed if I ever had a dispute with one of the men in my life it would only be moments before they would show up on my doorstep (in the rain of course) with an I’m-sorry-bouquet of flowers.

And that NEVER happened.

Darn love stories.

Darn love songs.

In a way I was disappointed.

My expectations gave me a twisted view of myself and others.

I was naive. My expectations for this so called perfect love ruined any relationship I ever had.

How could any of my boyfriends ever have competed with the image I had in my head-comparing them to a soaked and sexy Ryan Gosling on my front doorstep with a drippy bouquet of flowers and begging of my forgiveness?

What I was seeing on the screen and hearing on the radio built up my expectations for perfect love and left me waiting in my home for ‘no one’ soaking wet with a bouquet of hydrangeas at my front door.

I was left questioning all the moves of my significant others. If my boyfriends couldn’t execute love like in the movies and the characters I compared them to I became suspicious of men…suspicious of perfect love… I became suspicious of myself.

I began to believe lies that I just wasn’t good enough for a perfect love and believed that maybe I didn’t deserve love at all.

The combination of all of the above became very dangerous for me and like a ticking time bomb my expectations literally blew up every relationship I had.

I would like to point the finger at culture and the misrepresentation of perfect love on the radio and displayed on the screens we hold in our hands.

However, I think the real person to blame is me and how I visualized love as being perfect right from the beginning.

Perfect:

: having no mistakes or flaws

: completely correct or accurate

: having all the qualities you want in that kind of person, situation, etc.

Anyone really in a loving and committed relationship knows that love is not perfect at all.

How can love be perfect when the two people in love are not perfect themselves?

As a Christian, I believe that on this side of heaven I will never be perfect. I believe that my self absorption, my bitterness with others, my desire to be righteous like God is all so bad that it requires the penalty of Jesus’ dying on the cross in order for me to be right with God.

I believe in a gospel, the good news, that on this earth I will never be perfect but I am loved by my God – even with

my imperfections.

I am in process.

I am perfectly imperfect.

Actually I am perfecting.

perfecting: in process of becoming perfect or coming to completion

What I know now is in real life love is not perfect. Love on earth between two people is full of mistakes and blemishes. Love on earth is two flawed people choosing to live and love all the imperfections of one another.

There is a misconception of love in our culture. The idea of perfect love is not only on our screens and radios but it breeds in our expectant minds it is spewing out of our lips.

“Oh, he is perfect” or “You are the perfect couple”.

Sure the idea of perfect love is in the movies but we are perpetuating it with our words.

Loving relationships are not perfect. They are perfecting. Love is the perfect moments mixed in with the refining – imperfect ones. I can tell you with certainty I love my husband more now than I did when I met him. Sure he was charming back then and always on his best behavior but in perfecting love I get to be alongside him as he grows and changes into the better verison of who God is making him to be.

Perfecting love can be tough.

Perfecting love is a love that grows.

Perfecting love goes through seasons of giddiness, gladness, anger, sadness.

Perfecting love experiences disappointment.

Perfecting love dwells in the colder seasons knowing that a new season will come.

Perfecting love makes us better men and women as we walk alongside one another and experience a front row seat in the perfecting process of one another.

Truth connection:

I want you to go back to that image of Ryan Gosling soaking wet at your front door with a bouquet of flowers. (Hard to go there I know)

I want you to know it is right to desire this kind of perfect love where from the beginning you are sought after and constantly pursued with a never giving up always and forever kind of love.

I want you to know this kind of love exists but we look for it in a man on earth when this never giving up always and forever kind of pursuing love is actually found in God.

Perfect love is only found when we find it nailed to a cross. Crazy I know but true. The idea of a man loving you so much that he would die for you originated with God. We are hard wired to long for perfect love. You just won’t find it in a boyfriend, fiancé or spouse.

I hope you never find perfect love in any earthly man. I wish you will find perfecting love. The kind of love committed to the process of you being made perfect over a lifetime of some of the coldest and warmest seasons.

And I hope you do not find perfect love anywhere else but on a cross – where a God that loves you so much He died for you. He pursued you. He is still pursing you. He is where you find the man soaking wet on your doorstep pursing you with a never giving up always and forever kind of love.

I hope you don’t find perfect love in anything else but Him.

Romans 5:8

But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us.

Don’t Give Me Diamonds

February 12, 2014February 12, 20147 Comments

We got engaged on Valentine’s Day and you gave me a diamond. That was eight years ago.

In eight years we have lived in three cities, had four different jobs, one master’s degree and four kids.

Eight years ago on that night I imagined Prince Charming and Cinderella. Gazing and frolicking into eternity. I knew the words from 1 Corinthians 13 but I had no idea what they meant.

Love is patient, love is kind. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.Love never fails.

This Valentine’s Day eight years later, I have learned that love is so much more precious than diamonds. Sweeter than candy. More beautiful than a bouquet of radiant red roses.

Love is a choice. Built on hard work and moments together that are not as “frolicky” and glamorous as I thought they might be.

Eight years later I am thankful that we have chosen to love in all of our moments, the good and the bad. We have persevered through the pressure cooker of four kids in less than five years. We have built a life together.

We have moments more important than diamonds.

This Valentine’s Day I don’t want the diamonds or the gifts. I just want you.

I want your time and your laugh.

I want you holding our baby daughter late at night.

I want you leaning over the twin sized bed in our son’s room; teaching him the Doxology and explaining what the word “faith” means.

I want you to swim with our sons and toss them around in the water.

I want you in the driver’s seat of our minivan when the sunlight hits your graying temples and I can see how our moments together have aged you.

I want you in the good and the bad. Even when I make you crazy mad and upset with me.

I want you to love me in this postpartum mess of emotions and elastic pants.

I want your patience, kindness and faithfulness even when I don’t deserve it.

I want your southern smile when I ask you to take a trash bag of stinky diapers outside in the polar vortex and ice and snow.

After eight years I don’t want the diamonds or the flowers or chocolates. I just want the moments.

Not the frolicky. Not the glamorous.

The kissing before we’ve brushed our teeth with four kids in between us moments.

The love is patient, love is kind moments of everyday life.

The moments when we go on a date in our sweatpants because we are too tired to get dressed.

The moments that prove we have chosen love. We have chosen one another. We have persevered through the good and the bad.

That is an always and forever kind of love.

Please this Valentine’s Day, I just want you. I want you next to me even if it’s in our sweatpants on the couch with a bag of Kirkland popcorn.

No diamonds. Just you. Just the way you are. With your graying temples and my more rounded hips.

Continue to just give me the moments. It is not in the frolicking or the glamor but in the real moments of our life together when I experience the 1 Corinthians 13 kind of love.

4 Tools For Your Parenting Survival Kit

September 18, 2013February 5, 20143 Comments

I have pretty much seen just about everything a toddler can get into. Not too long ago I was prepping my meals for the week when my one year old walked into the kitchen with a battery in his mouth and my two year old had figured out how to get his head in the oven behind my back. Thank goodness the oven was not turned on.

I am also very certain that the water on my toddler’s toothbrush yesterday was from the toilet instead of the sink.

So what should I do? Hop on my phone and google the horrors that might occur from drinking a little toilet water or look up other horror stories about babies and batteries?

#1 I try to find the humor in the chaos.

The things that happen around the house on a normal day can actually be quite comical.

I get peed on and my freshly washed hair, that I hadn’t taken the time to wash in three days, gets chunky throw up in it almost right after I finish with the straightener and my four year old has found a new love for peeing in a cup and handing it to me ever since he took a visit with me to my OB GYN.

I could get really angry about the vomit and the batteries or whine about the fact that there is actual urine in the cups I drink out of but what good does that really do? The anger and whining and the horror stories of the Internet just breed anxiety and frustration.

So I try to find the humor in the chaos.

I choose to find the comic relief behind the situations that do not seem to go my way.

#2 Don’t jump at every single opportunity to correct you kids.

If I corrected every wiggle, every spill and every selfish moment I would be correcting my kids every second of the day. Sometimes you need to just let them be kids and figure it out on their own.

I am trying to learn to correct my boys if they are causing serious danger to themselves or others or if there is direct defiance towards me.

You know the sayings:

Choose your battles.

Don’t major on the minors.

Pick one or maybe two things that you are going to work on with you kids and correct only those behaviors. You will find rest and peace when your whole day is not spent bickering at your children.

#3 Don’t freak out.

Imagine you’re in trouble, let’s say trapped in a burning house, and the first responders find you and start freaking out.

“Oh, my… What did you do? How did you do this? What were you thinking? This is terrible! This is the worst burning house I have ever seen.”

I would die from anxiety if first responders were not trained to remained calm.

Try to remain calm when your kid falls off the couch or gets their fingers pinched in the door. It happens to pretty much everyone. Your fretting and worry only makes the situation worse.

You are their first responder. Remain calm for your child and don’t add to their anxiety.

Just breathe and don’t freak out.

I have sent my oldest son into a frantic tantrum when one of my other children pooped in the bathtub. Because I was anxious he was balled up on the floor hyperventilating in the fetal position because poopy water touched his body.

I have scarred him for life because I was a poor first responder.

Remain calm.

#4 Be flexible and be nice to yourself.

My kids have been known to put themselves to bed and my 20 month old never forgets to tell me that 8am is “breakfast time.” Like clockwork we eat, sleep and play but I have learned that the needs of my children are more important than my routine.

Some of my four year old’s best memories include times like when we skipped the zoo and ate our breakfast on a blanket while watching Cars movie.

If you have planned a big day out but everyone is melting down because they are tired from a long weekend, stay home instead. If maybe you are just too tired to get out the play doh and finger paints on craft day, skip the crafts and go outside instead.

Be nice to yourself. Experiencing story time or another finger painting activity is not worth the thirty minutes of torturous tantrums from kids or mommy. It is more important if everyone is emotionally and physically rested than getting through that structured activity you had planned.

Be flexible and be nice to yourself.

It’s simple really. Breathe and relax there is grace for you, grace for your children and grace for this day. His mercies are abundant and never ending.

Find the laughter in the chaos.

Don’t correct every little thing.

Be a good first responder.

Be flexible and be nice to yourself.