Living Life by the Refrigerator

Clearly, I am entering the second trimester (and look at these exquisite photos of babies!): typical of my pattern the last two times, my nausea is actually increasing, but my fatigue is disappearing. I'm full of plans and ideas and wondering why I haven't implemented these earlier (oh yeah, because I was totally exhausted and limp on the sofa).

I cook virtually the same breakfast seven days per week. I am inspired to try to vary things, both because it is fun and to help John learn to expand his life beyond toast. I have a list of seven breakfast ideas for this week, all of which should be fairly reasonable since I am a stay-at-home mom and I'm awake very early in the morning anyway. Today: muffins.

My sweet boy eating homemade muffins while wearing homemade pajamas.

Living Life by the Refrigerator: On the front of my refrigerator is posted (1) my goals for our routine of the day (less strict than a schedule, but more ordered than chaos), (2) my educational goals of the week for the children, with a Post-It note of this week's goals for myself (e.g., cut John's hair, sort through camping gear) and (3) my week's meal plan.

Today is the Feast Day of St. Francis of Assisi, one of John's patron saints. He received #11 of the Treasure Box books and was very excited about that. I gave the children coloring pages of St. Francis and then had to struggle badly with my desire for control. I wanted them to color, but John wanted to glue. We actually bickered about coloring versus gluing (which reflects badly on the big person involved, not the little one). So then the kids glued on decorative objects and I struggled with how the sequins and googly eye and other shiny things were being glued on at random instead of How They Should Be.

I also had the grand plan that we would make animal masks to help solidify the concept that St. Francis of Assisi is always associated symbolically with animals. John chose to make a giraffe, and Mary a cat. Well, this was a failure of a craft project for ages one and three. The kids were not competent to do any of the tasks (sketching it out, cutting it out, affixing the pipe cleaners in back), so Mama did the whole project (and that is sort of a neon sign that a project is a failure). I tried to get the kids to decorate with crayons, but they wouldn't and frustrated shouts of, "I can't do it!" abounded while crayons were flung to the floor. Then John was freaked out by wearing a mask and I think he was feeling claustrophobic, so I begged him to wear it long enough for the above photo.

And Mary freaked out because John freaked out, so she wouldn't even try hers on.

In this evening's mail, John received a letter back in response to the "letter he wrote" (drawing) to Grampa Neil and Gramma. Pen pals!

John kept walking around saying matter-of-factly, "Mama, this is a letter for me, not you. Mary, this is my letter, not yours." He asked right away if he could write back!