Power Horse

Claire recently abandoned her nap. I am actually ok with it because she goes to bed easily at bed time. The quiet time while I get Macy to sleep recharges her enough to be bearable to be in the room with her (unlike a few months ago.) Once in awhile she even falls asleep.

Friends have said that maybe with school she will go back to napping. I was skeptical about this. True, school is new & exciting, but it's hardly as adventurous as her summertime activites - swimming, boating, playing outside, repeat. She has biked 2 miles after swim lessons on occassion, seems arduous compared to the alphabet and watercolors. But, I am often wrong. I got to school today searching for signs of fatigue. Instead of tired eyes, she walked out the back door of the school and pulled her 30 pound sister the entire 1/3 mile walk home in the wagon. She walked my pace even.

The change I didn't anticipate was the food consumption. They have breakfast upon arrival at school, but Claire ate some oatmeal before she left, too. She got to school and ate an apple, white milk & a cereal bar. She came home, ate more carrots and dill dip than me and three helpings of penne and cheese.

The girl ate like a horse today.

Cry Baby

Screening for 4K last Spring. Cried.

Meet the teacher last week. Cried.

Bus pick-up this morning. Cried.

Picking her up from school. Cried.

My friend Tina is not wrong. I am "a bit of a sap". She blames our baby hormones (since her baby is 3 months older than Piper, I have a few months left with this rationale). More likely, we're both a bunch of saps...

My go-to

So, whenever I go grocery shopping, I ask Bob what he wants to eat. Every time, the answer includes Mexican (pretty broad), pizza and/or sloppy joe wraps. After my excitement about the awesome crock pot yogurt recipe, the last batch I made bombed. It's really runny. I've been pushing the smoothies (my kids are suckers). But, one recipe I can't remember ever f'ing up is the whole wheat pizza dough from my Weight Watcher's cookbook. Love it. I have done various combinations of wheat and regular flour from what I have on hand, and it has never failed me.

8 Servings - 117 cals each, 2 points (if you're into that)

Sponge
2 tsp dry active yeast
1/4 c lukewarm water
1/4 flour

Pizza Dough
1/2 cup skim milk
1 1/3 cup flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1/4 tsp salt

1. To prep sponge, in a large bowl sprinkle yeast over water. When yeast looks wet, add flour & stir hard. Cover with a damp towel and let stand with room temp for about 40 minutes. (This is a major "about" for me- I get side tracked, a lot)
2. To make dough, stir milk into sponge. In medium bowl, combine flour, ww flour and salt (seriously, I just dump this stuff in the large bowl). Add to sponge and blend.
3. Turn dough. I just use the dough hook on my Kitchen-Aide, but the recipe says knead it with your hands for 10-12 minutes.
4. Put back in bowl, cover with damp cloth and let sit til doubled in volume 45-60 minutes. (Again, I have left this for hours and it's been fine).
5. Roll out dough to 15 in circle and cook at 500 (did I mention preheat the oven??) for 10 minutes. I have stretched it to a bigger rectangle when there seems to be more dough (if it more than doubled it while I was off doing other stuff)

So yeah, cover it with what you like. (I like it with ricotta and zucchini /mozzarella and crushed red pepper, but then I wind up eating it all by myself and portion control is already an issue for me!)

Bob just found out I even have a blog. He's not such a good listener...

Facebook much?

So, twice a day you will find me on Facebook. Naptime & bedtime. After the books are read and the potty run is made, I sit on a comfy chair in Macy's room and say things like, "please, stop kicking the wall," "it's time to be quiet," and "please, get back in your bed." She thrashes around on her bed, I'm guessing, because she knows if she stops moving her body will succumb to sleep. This is all made more bearable by wireless internet. So, I see what the people who haven't annoyed me enough to be hidden are up to, and I read up on HuffPo. .

For something that's been around like 1/6 of my life, Facebook creeps into my thoughts often. Someone says something amusing in an e-mail to me, and I try to "like it. A friend's blog has a picture of my kids, and I want to tag it. I want to be able to comment on someone's so true post

about how easy one kid is, and I get flustered having to do the verification to leave a comment (I am really bad at that, it's like those 3D pictures at the mall in high school I could never see...)

Isn't it funny how if I told high school me all the things I could do online I might be pretty impressed (might, computers weren't really that cool to me...), but now if it is running slow, I am so annoyed I might not even go and read it. Technology is a funny thing. Almost as funny as the ridiculous positions Macy finally falls asleep in...

3 in 3

Claire's almost 4. Besides her going off to 4K (sniff, sniff), I will have stop saying my "I have three kids three & under" tagline, or will I?





At church this week a grandmotherly woman told me she had "6 kids in 6 years". Touche, old lady you have doubled me. I was thinking, I could start saying I had three kids in three years. Nice ring to it. I am not sure what this will get me, a medal, or say, a job when Piper's off to school? Probably not.

It got me thinking that mommy bragging seems to have no expiration date. I can't decide if it's really annoying (more likely), or if these bragging rights are justified. When I was in labor with Piper the woman admitting me told me she had some 4, 5, 6 children all natural births without meds. I didn't have much to respond because I wasn't really in the chatty mood and was about to have my third child sans epidural on her chair. (She was darn fast, though.) But after the fact I wondered if her colleagues in admission get sick of her telling every laboring woman that. I liked the you can do it attitude, but are her co-workers like, "your kids are 40, shut up!"

So in the spirit of bragging, I found a different yogurt recipe, and I rocked it. My kids love it more than Stonyfield (probably because they get to add honey...) Well, the recipe is from my friend Amy who pretty much has my family plus twins. So, maybe my fear with bragging should also be, there always some woman with more kids doing more!

Unless the girls turn out to be doctors like they say, then I will brag. But, I might be getting ahead of myself since Claire might be a farmer, life guard or a doctor.

The Help

I have heard mothers complain about onlookers that make comments like, "you've got your hands full." I never really understood why that bothered them. People would say it to me, and I heartily agreed. Yep, lady, lots going on here.





But lately I kind of see how it's annoying. Maybe it insinuates that you aren't juggling it all, but you have an excuse because you have three kids three and under. The part I start to hear is, you are not handling this well.





I've been home alone with the girls since Friday. It has been going better than even I expected. (and really, I think how I handle things is to keep expectations low, really low - like if one kid has a meltdown that's better than two kids having a meltdown, right?). My mom seems to be under the incorrect assumption that I need company (I am loving watching hulu and staying up late) and her assistance. Oh, I don't get me wrong, I do need her assistance. She took Claire & Macy on Saturday night, awesome, and she is coming over tomorrow. But I explicitly told her I did not need her to come today. She comes anyway. During. Naptime. Spoils Claire's nap by "checking on her." I know she is trying to be helpful. I know this makes me look ungrateful. Can she not give me the satisfaction of doing it alone one day? On Sunday she really fought to let me buy my dad lunch - on Father's Day!

That's the counter-intuitive thing, sometimes it's hard to receive help because kids are better alone with me. Help sometimes gets them too excited. Help sometimes lets them stay up longer and throws off the routine. Help is often convinced a hyper kid isn't a tired kid by a really tired kid.

But, my mom had a good point. You get what you pay for. And, the kids do love their ga-ma and bumpa. And, my parents do make the most delicious homemade ice cream...

Picture my husband with a lightbulb overhead

The only time the inability to breastfeed is handy is in the husband helping department. I have seen enough of my friend's husbands dump a crying baby on their wife's lap lamenting the baby must be hungry. If Bob thinks the baby is hungry, he can give her a bottle. (And seriously, there are other ways to soothe babies!)

When Claire was born, after my 12 weeks of maternity leave, Bob stayed home for 6 weeks with her. Plus, he had her during the summer while I worked. It made him way more comfortable around babies and appreciative.

I really like being home. My main gripe is the cleaning. It never ends. The dishes never end. I have been saying this all school year. And, when Bob's summer break started I was definitely feeling the need for cleaning skyrocketing. He's a slob.

This past week I have been leaving Bob with the girls a bit to prepare for the week of single motherhood while he is on vacation. He says to me, "you know, what I was doing the other day that isn't that even that annoying, dishes. All I ever do it dishes!" I was like, "Amen!"

It's kind of like a natural consequence. I can tell the girls, "you won't like it, it's spicy" until I am blue in the face, or I can let them try it and & tell me that it's too spicy and they don't like it.

Because if I had a quarter for every time I told Bob how the dishes never end and I spend my entire day in the kitchen serving snacks and meals, then we could pay some poor sucker to wash dishes and load the dishwasher! But hearing him say it was priceless.