OK so I know I didn’t blog about it but there was like a one week period about a week after I started my crossing where my kids were actually obeying and being good little children and there were hardly any messes. Then Dave started back to work. Now we are in a TRANSITION phase again and my children have reverted back to the crazy mess-making versions of themselves. Did I mention that my kids don’t handle transitions very well. My sweet adorable loving 2 year old has become a whiny screaming trouble maker and my 3 year old has become a stealthy destroyer. It seems as though I cannot leave the room for even a moment. There has been so many messes of late I can barely keep track of them and I sometimes feel like I am going crazy again.Some of our recent messes have included:

Coloring with permanent marker on the computer screen and desk

Ripping open and pouring out an entire box of cereal all over the living room

Pouring a tub of oatmeal all over the kitchen

Dumping dirt from the back yard all over the patio

Pouring out an entire 1 lb bag of tortilla chips all over the kitchen

Throwing almost every meal on the floor when they think they are done

Tossing diapers and socks all over their bedroom during a “nap”

Pulling apart their beds and pushing the bed across their bedroom

Tipping over the rocking chair to use as a jungle gym

Putting small holes in the walls with various items

Drawing on walls with any writing tool the can get a hold of

Unraveling all of the toilet paper

and

Tearing up books

Those are just a few of the ones I remember.  Now in addition to making a lot more messes than usual they have also been a lot more whiny, disobedient, and just plain naughty. Some of the other things they have been doing are eating toothpaste, drinking water from the backyard hose, bring bugs into the house, sneaking outside every chance they get, screaming, yelling, and fighting. It has been very loud and very chaotic at our house. It seems as though there is constantly some sort of mess or crisis happening right now and I feel like I all the work I did cleaning and organizing is slowly being undone because I am spending all my time and energy helping whiny children, cleaning up messes, and separating fighting toddlers. Yikes! I am really hoping that this is just a transition reaction and that with time and routine they will revert back to the lovely children they were a few weeks ago very soon. Wish me luck 🙂

Well I must say it has been tough to try and apply all these new ideas at once. I have been doing much better at several of them. For instance, I have been taking my vitamins and supplements every day so far and have been working daily on my de-cluttering/cleaning (although I must say it seems as though clutter and messes are creeping up much faster than usual and I still haven’t gotten everything put away from vacation), I also bought a ton of fruits vegetables and whole grains and have been serving them at meals (so far the kids have spit out just about every vegetable they have been served but at least its going in before it comes out…progress right?), I have not been more active physically but I do think I have been more active spiritually we read a little bit of the scriptures as a family and I have been reading a book about teaching your children the commandments before bed. So there is still room for a lot of improvement in both of those areas.

Great book! Write them Upon their Hearts by Marcus Barnes

Now for the purpose of this blog post…parenting after vacation. I don’t even know where to begin. This has been a ROUGH week for my parenting skills and I am pretty sure I have been a meaner mom and not a nicer one this week. But to my credit I am pretty sure my kids are behaving MUCH MUCH WORSE than usual. In fact I once again feel like I am losing it on a daily basis. I am not quite sure where to go from here but I am really hoping that once I get a hold on the house again and our schedule normalizes itself and they get used to the idea of no tv again that they will also normalize (or at least calm down a bit). Here is an example of a day to give you an idea of what a month and a half of vacation detox looks like. Wake up to bundles of energy and desires for food, get food, buckle kids into chairs (experience has shown that not to do so is a bad idea) leave room for five minutes to get dressed, come back to discover that somehow they have escaped their chairs and gotten into finger-paints, play-doh, garbage, food, spilled drinks, and thrown their breakfast all over the kitchen. So then you must clean up all the messes and while you are doing that they start screaming and fighting so you go to see what is going on and you see your 3 year old chasing your 2 year old with a bottle of febreeze. So you take the febreeze and head back to the kitchen to finish cleaning. Then you realize things are quiet … too quiet. You walk out of the kitchen to realize the children have decided to play out side without supervision, you corral them back inside and decide it might be best to save the mess for later. So you sit on the couch to be sure you have a view of the whole play area then you become the play area. The children decide to climb, poke, pull, and otherwise harass you instead of playing with toys. So you play with them for a while. Now its snack time. Oh boy this time I stay in the already messy room but it doesn’t seem to matter because when they are done they throw the container of yogurt on the floor or smear it on the table making yet another mess in the already messy kitchen. Now normally I would make the child clean up their own yogurt but seeing as how there are so many things to get into in the kitchen since we have not finished unpacking from vacation I figure it is best to do it myself while the kids take a nap. So, now its nap time. The kids start out in the same room…I quickly realize that’s not going to work based on the giggling coming from the other side of the door. So I separate them. Finally sleep… then time to clean up all the messes from this morning and try to get some of the vacation stuff put away.

Then the kids wake up and it all starts again…mascara on my bedsheets and the walls, bathroom cleaner covering every surface of the bathroom (which happen while Mercury was going “potty” he has been insisting on the door being shut recently), Zeal gets a hold of scissors somehow and cuts up some buisness cards, yelling, screaming, fighting, dumping all the toys, and messes everywhere. Welcome Home 🙂

This is VACATION DETOX!

This has been a summer of vacations. We spent a week in Idaho Falls for the 4th of July and to see Dave’s family and our friends. For the 4th of July we went to see Glenn Becks Independence Day Celebration it was awesome!

then we were home for one day just long enough to do laundry and pack. The next day we hopped on a plane for a three week stay in New York a week and a half with each of my parents.

While in New York we went to the Strong Museum of play…

A friendly race 🙂

Had a pool party and BBQ….

Got to meet my new baby brother for the first time….

Michael holding his Uncle D

Then we will be coming home for about two days then we will drive down to St George to stay with some friends in their parents vacation home. Then we will come back home for about a week or so then head back down to Idaho again before school starts. We have had a lot of fun so far but I am surprised at how much I miss home. I have actually had the urge to clean and de-clutter my house. I have been reading a lot about minimalism and de-cluttering while I’ve been here in New York so I am excited to get home and try to apply some of it.

So, as you may have noticed, I decided to add an element of anonymity to my blog by changing the names of my children for security reasons. Meaning it makes me feel better. 🙂 So here they are:

A happy Mercury

Mercury: My oldest son age 3. He is so named because he is very mercurial meaning animated, lively, sprightly, quick-witted, fickle, flighty, erratic, and fleet footed. He seems to move more often and more quickly than the rest. Mercurial is another way of saying spirited. Mercury is extremely spirited. He doesn’t walk he runs, he doesn’t cry he wails, he doesn’t giggle he shrieks/ squeals with joy. He is very intense. When he is happy he is a joy to be around and can light up the room and bring a smile to everyone’s face. But he is like the little girl with the curl in the middle of her forehead if you catch my meaning.

this is a younger one of Mercury but it perfectly captures his personality

and…

My beautiful little Zeal

Zeal: My younger son age 22 months. He is so named because he is very driven, persistent, warm, alert, and determined. He knows what he wants in life and will do what it takes to get it. He will not do something unless HE wants to. He can also be very intense at times. He is also hilarious and can always make us laugh. He is so adorable that we find it very difficult to ever be upset with him. He is even cute when he is angry possibly even more so because he makes this face.

This is what happens when you ask Zeal to make his grumpy face 😀

So, I think this might be my first blog story about only Zeal. It goes something like this. Driving along and suddenly we hear a weird gagging type sound coming from the back seat. So, I look back just in time to see Zeal sticking his hand down his throat but not soon enough to stop him before… yum… puke all over. You might think that was the end of the story and it would make a decent story but no there’s more. So, we get home and it is time for a bath. Zeal is having a grand bath, one of his first baths without his big brother (we thought a bath with his puke should probably not be shared). Zeal is playing with his toys and suddenly I realize wait those are not toys…I didn’t give him toys because of the puke…what is that…..oh…oh no…oh sick… he is playing with his own poop and it is everywhere. It was too gross for words. It was not just one big piece it was everywhere and I did not even know what to do. So I had to go fishing and catch as many pieces as I could with a plastic bag over my hand and then sanitize the tub and re-wash the baby. So gross!

Mercury and Zeal have really been pretty good these last couple of weeks (besides attitudes and whiny-ness). We spent last weekend in Idaho visiting family for Mercury’s 3rd Birthday. We didn’t have and real messes to speak of UNTIL… today they decided it would be fun to dump a whole bottle of cooking oil on the kitchen floor. That was crazy and I had no idea how to go about cleaning it up so I had to go online to look for ideas because I knew it was a bad idea to get a lot of oil on a towel because of fire risks when laundering. So I found a website that said to pour baby powder on then scrape it up and throw it away. Well it was such a big spill that I didn’t have enough baby powder to cover it so I had heard that some people use corn starch instead of baby powder so I figured it would be about the same so I used an entire box of cornstarch and the oil was still not all covered so I had to resort to flour which I had plenty of so I cover it all with flour then scraped up the oil, baby powder, corn starch, and flour mess with a spatula and threw it away then I swept up the excess flour and wiped up what was left with some hot water and dish-soap. Phew! That was a lot of work but no towels were ruined so I guess it was worth it. But I still have 2 little pairs of socks and pants to wash from the 2 little boys who were playing in said mess. But GUESS WHAT!!! I didn’t even yell or freak out because I had just been waiting for our next mess! I am so proud I took all their clothes off, gave them a bath then put them down for their nap. Although I didn’t really deal with the issue other than to tell them that they didn’t get a story before their nap because mommy had to go clean up their mess. So I thought about pictures but the oil didn’t really show up so all I got was an in the process of clean up shot which I will try to post later (it is on my phone since all the battery’s for our camera are dead so I am not entirely sure how to get it onto the computer so I have to wait for Dave t come home and tell me if it is possible).

Hello Everyone,

So, at long last and after much prodding from friends and family I have given in and joined the land of the bloggers. I have decided to use this as a way to vent and to share some of the crazy experiences I have being a mom. I have two very rambunctious boys. My oldest son Mercury will be 3 in a few weeks and my younger boy Zeal will be 2 in July so needless to say my life is pretty crazy right now. Any mother of 2 children will tell you that it is difficult but I have come to realize that my situation is a little bit more difficult than most. This is because my soon to be three year old is exceptionally spirited and full of intense energy, creativity , and curiosity. It sees that he is constantly finding something to explore, get  into, mess up, or destroy. He is extremely intense in his reactions, emotions, noise level, and activities. He doesn’t cry he screams (and does it quite often as he is extremely sensitive). I finally found a book that describes my child it is called “Raising Your Spirited Child” it was recommended to me by a friend as she immediately realized that the book was made for my son. Mercury is always getting into trouble in creative and frustrating ways.  I think that many of these experiences will make great blog entries. I hope that by sharing my experiences I will be able to lend comfort to other moms who are going through similar experiences. And help parents of not quite so spirited children realize how much easier they’ve got it