Boogers on the Wall

I am not a patient person. So why I thought getting a puppy would be a good idea is beyond me.

I have wanted a little house dog for a long, long time. I keep reminding myself of that when I’m tired, and tired of cleaning up after her.

We’ve had our first family dog, Fia, for almost two weeks now. She’s a small, black Cockapoo. She’s playful, she’s cuddly, she’s beautiful. And she’s a LOT of work.

There are many things I didn’t think about when getting a dog, things I didn’t realize.

First of all, I didn’t realize it would take her forever to go to the bathroom. It seriously takes her forever. I can’t tell you how long she sniffs and wanders around the yard looking for a spot to relieve herself.

After having five kids, I can’t comprehend waiting that long to pee. I can’t even sneeze or jump on the trampoline without needing to go. So the fact that it takes her 15 minutes sometimes to pick the perfect spot just blows my mind.

Second, I didn’t realize she’d turn into a demon dog when we were playing with her. She is the sweetest puppy. She really is. But there were a couple times at first when she totally flipped.

It was puppy Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde. She’d be sleeping soundly on my lap, then get restless and turn into a raging maniac.

Thank heavens my sister and her husband taught us a few tricks to put her in her place and tame her inner demon dog. I was scared of the cute little fluffy ball for a while.

Third, I didn’t realize having a puppy is so much like having a newborn baby. She’s always going to the bathroom. She needs help getting her food. And she cries. All. Night. Long. We finally put her kennel in the basement at night so we can try to get some sleep.

Fourth, I didn’t realize how hard it would be to keep her safe from my four and two-year-olds. They think she is their puppy plaything. They pick her up whenever they want. They feed her treats whenever they want. They swing her kennel around whenever they want. And they try to sit on her whenever they want. It has been exhausting keeping her safe from them.

Finally, I didn’t realize how much my kids would adore her. My oldest giggles like crazy when she wrestles with him. My eight-year-old loves teaching her tricks. My four-year-old loves to sit “criss cross applesause” with her in the middle of his legs. And my little baby girl who gets nervous around all other animals loves to let her lick her fingers and cries, “Fia, no,” every time we leave her home.

We have all fallen in love with her.

It has been an adjustment having a puppy, and will still be an adjustment for a long, long time, but I can already tell we are going to learn a lot from this little pup.

Maybe she’ll teach me a little patience along the way.

1. My kids couldn’t care less about the activities I pin for them on Pinterest – I aired my frustrations about summer earlier. I’ve decided that no matter what ambitions I have for my children, they would much rather lounge in the living room catching up on Bunk’d episodes. And that’s all right.

2. When in doubt – Pizza Rolls and Otter Pops are always a good idea. My youngest has been living off of Otter Pops this summer. She asks for one at 6:30 when she rolls out of bed. She normally eats three before 10 a.m. She’s downing them and I don’t care. She’s happy. She’s healthy and it’s hot out there so, why not?

3. It is loads harder to build a tree house than I thought. And more expensive too. It’s been more than four months since we broke ground on ours. Oh the experiences we’ve had with this project. Nothing. I repeat nothing will ever come close to topping this building project for our family. We have learned more than we ever could have imagined. It’s been a third of a year and there the tree house sits nearly complete. Just a few more walls of wooden siding, some outdoor carpet and some insulation caulk. And even though it has taken much longer than we anticipated it has been worth fighting for.

4. Sand is meant to be tossed outside of the box – and Home Depot sells it for cheap.

5. It’s good for my kids to be bored. A recent article eased my mom guilt by saying that when kids are bored they are forced to use their imaginations and that’s a good thing. So I can stop worrying about entertaining them all the time.
6. Unless I want to turn into a permanent zombie, I can’t wait for bedtime to get all my stuff done. I’ve got to vacuum, clean the bathrooms and fold the laundry while my kids are running around crazy in the background. Sure it’s chaos, but I need my sleep.
7. Walmart Grocery is once again my friend. After a couple of bad experiences this spring, I gave it another try. And it’s saved my sanity. I can order the goods online, pick them up curbside and not drag any of my four kids into the store.
8. It will be over before I know it. Time is flying by. My days are filled with never-ending chores, activities and arguments. But the days aren’t never-ending. Before I know it I’ll be snapping first-day of school photos and wiping tears from my eyes.

Here’s to learning more this summer before it turns to fall!

I have spent more than four years of my life breastfeeding my babies. That may not seem like much, but it adds up to about an eighth of my time here on Earth.

And now I’m done.

I will miss nursing.

It was a way to bond me to my child.

A way to give them what they needed.

A way to keep them close.

It allowed me snuggling time with my babies.

It gave me an excuse to sit down and open up a book.

I liked that my kids needed me, that they wanted me.

Especially my baby girl. She nursed until she was 20 months old – far longer than my boys. Granted she didn’t start eating solids until she was 16-17 months old so that may have impacted things. But she was old enough to start shouting, “Milk” (which sounded kind of like “meowk”) and tug on my shirt.

I think she would have nursed until she was five! But it was no longer working for us. She was doing it for comfort not for nourishment. And she started hurting me while eating.

So sadly I stopped.

At first it broke my heart. She would cry and scream, “meowk,” while I rocked her in my chair.

I’d hold her and she’d cry until she fell to sleep.

But that only lasted about a week. Then she realized I could help her go to sleep without milk.

Now I look forward to rocking her just as much as I did nursing her. I think she looks forward to it too. I’ll cuddle to her in my chair and sing songs to her. Many times she sings along.

We sing and rock until she’s sound asleep.

And with that I’m closing my chapter on nursing.

It is a bittersweet closure.

Never again will I be bigger than a size A cup. And never again will I get Mastitis or engorgement.

It’s strange to move on. I swear I’ve been pregnant and nursing off and on for a decade now. But life moves on.

As long as I can find other ways to cuddle and care for my little ones I’m OK with that.

I wish Pokemon Go would just go away! OK not really, we have had a lot of fun playing the new virtual game. But we’ve also shed a lot of tears and thrown a lot of fits about it.

I guess it’s just one more thing to help my kids and me learn patience. I’m sure that’s Nintendo’s goal, right?

Well, not really. I’m sure they have other intentions, but we’re going to learn patience along the way. Or stop playing.

Why has it been hard? Can’t we just have a blast tossing Pokeballs and capturing characters? Well we could if we didn’t have to share. But my boys are 10 and 8 years old and don’t own their own cell phones.

Gasp!

So they insist I let them walk around the neighborhood with their noses glued to my new expensive phone. One of them was ticked when I wouldn’t let him take my iPad around.

I am the meanest mother ever.

To compromise I told them I’d go with them – then I could keep tabs on both them and my phone.

Of course that meant I was killing their social life.

When they finally realized it was Pokemon playing with mom or no Pokemon playing at all, they begged me to take them.

I loaded up my 2 and 4-year-old and we hit the streets with a couple of friends.

We walked around for two hours in the heat catching Pokemon, fighting to take back gyms and stocking up at Pokestop.

The game is really fun. And really addicting. I like that it gets people out. Gamers have to walk around until they spot virtual characters on their phones. Then they try to “catch” them for their collections.

I love that players have to walk specific distances in order to hatch their collected eggs.

I love that I have seen more people out and about.

I don’t love that my boys can’t play Pokemon nicely with one another. They fought over my cell phone the entire time we were playing. After one of them caught a Pokemon they were supposed to hand the phone over to their brother, but it didn’t run smoothly.

I heard them snap at each other back and forth. They would cry when one of them caught the one that the other one wanted. They would shout demands and directions at each other.

They would snatch the phone from each other’s hands and scream in their face – all in front of their closest friends.

It was stressful. It was embarrassing.

I don’t know how many times I said, “Play nice!”

On our way home I told them both that I wouldn’t take them again until they could prove that they were kind and mature enough to handle it.

They spent the afternoon sulking while making clay Pokeballs to play with.

They may be a little young for the game – especially because they don’t have their own device to load it onto, and I don’t feel comfortable letting them wander all around the city by themselves.

But they are still dying to play.

So I’ll let them play as long as they can be patient and kind – as long as they can share.

We’ve gone twice now. The second time was a tiny bit better. Maybe next time will be better still.

Maybe we’ll learn to get along thanks to Pokemon.

I sure hope so, we’ve got a lot of Pidgey’s to catch.

I love birthdays. I love Harry Potter. So when my 7-year-old said he wanted to have a Harry Potter birthday party I was thrilled. What could be better? The combination was going to be magical.

We had the party last week and magical it was.

I may have gone a little overboard. I don’t normally do this much for birthdays. (At one point in my party planning I had to ban myself from Pinterest. I kept pinning more and more ideas and stressing myself out that I hadn’t done enough.)

Believe me I did plenty. Enough for this busy mama anyway.

Why did I do it? I couldn’t resist transforming our house into a mini Potterworld. And seeing the kids’ reactions was priceless. It has been my favorite party we’ve had to date.

Here’s what we did.

We let the kids gather in the front yard until everyone had arrived. That way they could go through platform 9 ¾ together.

We taped a brick-patterned paper backdrop that I bought on Amazon to the doorway and the kids had to go “through” the brick to get to Kings Cross station.

There they all waited in our Hogwarts hallway before we guided them to the Great Hall. I printed off a bunch of poster/bulletin-board decorations that I found on Pinterest for the hall.

I also printed off a picture of Moaning Myrtle for the bathroom. I used red lipstick to write about the chamber of secrets opening on the bathroom mirror.

My mother-in-law painted a few refrigerator boxes to look like brick for a Christmas party she did last year. I borrowed the “walls” for our great hall. I made floating candles (tutorial here) , house banners (free printables here ), and our very own sorting hat (out of paper mache.)

Each guest found a spell card (download our spells card here), Marauder’s map (we used this map) and Snitch (we painted Styrofoam balls gold then stuck craft feathers in them) waiting for them at their place in the great hall.

We sorted the partygoers into four different Hogwarts Houses houses. I downloaded a Sorting Hat app from the Google Play store that said random phrases after you pushed a “sort” button. But my oldest son really wanted to be the sorting hat. So we typed up some of the random phrases from the app and my son hid behind our refrigerator box walls and used a microphone and karaoke machine to announce the house that each child was sorted into.

We also hooked up our video baby monitor so that he could use it to see the exact moment when the sorting hat was placed on someone’s head.

After everyone was sorted, I announced that our guests were unprepared for their stay at Hogwarts and that we were going to have to pick up a couple of things at Diagon Alley.

Our first stop was Ollivanders where we picked out and painted our very own wands. For the wands, we used chopsticks that I also bought on Amazon. I used hot glue before hand to make designs on the wands. I’ve blogged about this before. You can check out a better tutorial here. This time we didn’t wrap any beads in our hot glue, just kind of clumped it on heavy in spots, thin in others.

I didn’t have any paint shirts so we cut arm and head holds into large kitchen garbage bags and used them as makeshift paint shirts for the kids.

While waiting for our wands to dry, we stopped at the Quality Quidditch Supplies shop to select brooms. My boys and I made brooms several weeks ago out of bark, sticks, hot glue and string.

Each guest got to choose which broom fit them best.

Then we had a show down on the quidditch field.

My husband hung two purple hula hoops on one side and two red ones on the other to set up the field. We used a vollyball for the quaffle, a few light-weight plastic balls for bludgers and my husband as the snitch.

We found muggle quidditch instructions on this site. It was great fun. They ran so hard with their brooms between their legs trying to toss the balls through the hoops and trying to catch the snitch, all without being hit with a bludger.

After quidditch we went back to the great hall for cake, ice cream and butter beer. I used the top recipe on this site, the one labeled Harry Potter Butterbeer Recipe #5 recipe. It was absolutely delicious! My son opened his presents while we enjoyed our treats.

By this time our wands were dry. I handed them out to each guest while we waited in the hall. We were looking for the Room of Requirement. We wanted to use it to test out our wands while practicing the Patronus Charm.

We found the room with a dementor inside! (A balloon wrapped inside a black tablecloth.)

The kids practiced shouting “Expecto Patronum” to scare the dementor away. I made a slideshow video of several different patronus images I found online. Then I set up our video projector so it would shine the image after the kids shouted their charm.

My husband sat on the top bunk in the Room of Requirement and helped the dementor “fly” away when the Patronus appeared.

After each child tested their wands and patronuses we found a secret passage to Honeydukes.

There the children got to take a handful of Potter-style candy. I used labels from this site for the jars and this site for the candy bars.

When the guests had their fill of candy, we headed out front to wizard duel until their parents arrived.

We used these rules for the dueling. We altered the rules a little, but they were still kind of complex for the kids. After trying a few times we decided to let them duel however they wanted and get rid of the rules. Well, nearly all of the rules. We kept the ban of unforgivable curses in place. If anyone used one of those then they forfeited.

I’m not going to lie, this party was a lot of work. But, it was also a lot of fun. I only wished it would have lasted longer. And that my house really was Hogwarts.

Mischief Managed!

My oldest son backstage before he performs at our local idol celebration on Tuesday.

You know when your kids say they want to do something and you hesitate to let them? Like jumping off the diving board or taking the training wheels off their bicycle?

Maybe I’m the only one who hesitates.

But for two years my oldest son asked me to let him try out for our city’s American Idol competition. And for two years I hesitated.

His dreams of becoming a local idol champion began when he saw my sister compete in the competition. He watched his aunt bring down the house two years in a row and cheered her on as she won the competition last summer.

But I was nervous to let him try. Would he sink or swim. Ride or crash?

I knew he could do it, but was he ready? I encouraged him to participate in his school and church choirs and told him we had to make sure he was prepared to audition.

This spring we started singing to YouTube karaoke videos together trying out different songs for his youthful voice. He picked one and I took him to tryouts.

He seemed cool and confident. I was a nervous wreck.

I waited by my phone checking it every day until we were emailed the news. He made it to the second round. Then to the finals.

Tuesday night he sang in front of hundreds in the grand finale.

And he rocked it.

I have never been so nervous in my whole life. I grew up performing and felt at home on a stage. I remember getting butterflies in my stomach and adrenaline rushes before singing to big crowds but I have never experienced motherhood nerves.

My sweet 9-year-old was going to sing in front of hundreds of others who were going to judge him as part of the finale result.

Scary!

I knew he was ready but doubts flew into my mind.

Was he prepared? Did we pick the right song? Will he remember his actions? Is he going to smile?

I took him to sound check in the afternoon and saw him walk onto stage, grab the microphone and sing his heart out. At that moment I knew he was ready.

He was the very first performer of the night – which I actually think played to his advantage. He didn’t get the chance to see the others and compare himself to them before he sang. But he did have to break the audience in and get things going.

And that’s just what he did.

He belted it. He got up and walked around. He raised up his hand and fake punched the air. And he smiled.

And I smiled.

My heart felt like it was going to burst. All of the nerves were replaced with pure joy.

He rocked his song the entire time. I could not have been more proud.

He and I sat together while they tallied the votes – 40 percent of the score was audience vote, 60 percent judges’. I thought we were both going to go out of our skin waiting for the results.

Then we screamed and jumped when they called out his name. He was the idol for his age group. He did it!

And I let him do it.

I shouldn’t have hesitated. But I wanted to protect him. He was braver and stronger than I could have ever imagined. I should not have been worried.

All that hard work paid off. Now he is living his dream. And he can’t stop smiling.

But make no mistake, if he had not won, he would still have been my idol. In more ways than one.

It’s summer. It’s hot. School’s out. Days are filled with pool swimming and late-night barbecues. So when it came to planning our most recent relief society activity, we wanted something quick and simple.

We held a Sister Big Shots Backyard BBQ and Talent Show. It was such a success I thought I’d share what we did.

The past few summers we have held a relief society BBQ. Three years ago we had a few sisters speak to us about their experiences with doing family history. Last year we had a sister help us refresh our first responder skills. This year we decided we wanted to see the different talents of sisters in the ward.

So we had a talent show with the BBQ.

We passed out sign up sheets for several weeks. Sisters could sign up with the type of talent they wanted to showcase as well as a list of special requirements their talent may need (keyboard, microphone, auxiliary cord, easel, table, etc.).

We emphasized the fact that we wanted all kinds of talents – those that could be performed live as well as those that could be displayed.

The sisters in our neighborhood did not disappoint. We have the most amazing women here.

From loom weaving to cake flower making, we had a variety of talents. Several sisters brought quilts and blankets they have sewn, crocheted or embroidered.

One sister brought plaques she had made with baby shoes from her children. Another brought a wooden bowl she had turned in her dad’s wood shop.

A few sisters sang and a couple played the piano.

We were going to type up an official program for the night but decided instead to draw names out of a jar to determine what order we’d go in for the talent sharing.

The sister whose name was drawn first got a $5 gift card to Fiiz – a local soda shop.

It was so fun to have a casual night where we got to mingle as well as see a different side of the sisters in the ward. We had a fun time hanging out and getting to know one another better.

As far as the food, our food committee member made some delicious pulled pork sandwiches. Then we had sisters sign up to bring salads and desserts. Delicious!

The decorations were simple – pink dollar store table cloths and colorful tissue flowers that one of our committee members had already made. Another sister on the committee had just decorated for her son’s wedding. She brought the burlap backdrop from the wedding dinner and we used it behind our “stage” area.

I borrowed a keyboard, microphone stand and a bunch of easels from our church’s library. One of our committee members brought her karaoke machine, microphone and speakers.

We had each sister bring her own chair.

Oh I almost forgot – the committee members broke the ice and kicked off the talent show with a musical number set to The Little Mermaid’s Daughters of Triton song. We laughed and danced on “stage” as we opened the talent show with the following lyrics written by one of our talented committee members:

Oh we are the sisters of Ponds Park

Great talents are given for us to share

Like canning

crocheting

and baking

and singing

and eating

and dancing

and then there is another one that we would like to share

she’s great at hair and makeup and dressing with a flair

she grows a lovely garden full of vegetables to spare

she’s the lovely YOU

In all serious though the sisters in our ward really are lovely. I had a great time enjoying their talents. If you’re looking for something fun and casual, try a simple talent show in your ward.

What came first the chicken or my boys’ Google search on how to fertilize an egg? Sadly for us it was the latter.

Let me interject a disclaimer here: We have rules about Internet use at our house. That doesn’t mean those rules always prevent my kids from searching for crazy things online.

A few weeks ago my son’s friend brought him over a special surprise – a chicken egg. They were both convinced that if they built their own incubator equipped with a heat light then the egg would hatch.

So all afternoon they searched for supplies. They settled on a rectangular storage tote, piece of egg carton and my piano lamp.

I let them work on their little project for hours despite the fact that I knew the egg was not fertilized. It came from my son’s friend’s grandma’s neighbor’s chicken but it wasn’t going to turn into a chick – I had called and asked his mom about it.

But it was a fun thing to occupy them for hours. I gently cautioned them that it might not be the right type of egg; it might not be a hatching egg. But they brushed me off and went about their business.

When they had their incubation chamber complete they took it a step further and started planning a chicken coup.

That’s when they asked me to search the Internet. They asked if they could look for chicken coups for sale on the local classifieds section.

I didn’t see the harm in it so I let them. My husband came home from work right after that and found them searching Google for “How to fertilize an egg.” Ha!

Completely innocent to them but not to the World Wide Web. Luckily they didn’t get very far into their search.

I quickly reminded them of our family’s computer/Internet policy and came clean about their egg.

I didn’t get into details about fertilization or the birds and the bees, I just told them that their egg didn’t have a dad so it wouldn’t turn into a chick.

They were sad and I felt guilty for dashing their chicken-raising dreams so I let them keep the egg and incubator on our kitchen counter for a few more days – until they were ready to let it go.

Then I kind of told them we could look into getting chickens next spring – after I had time to look into the city code to see what poultry regulations there are before my treehouse-hating neighbor could have anything to say about it.

And after we could search the Internet TOGETHER for chicken coup supplies. Since they didn’t really get around to finding any on the Internet classifieds.

We are exchanging dandelions for dollars over here because once again I have made a mistake as a parent and I continue to underestimate things.

My boys are always looking to earn money. I don’t (at this time) believe in giving them an allowance. You can read all about that here. But my oldest has been begging us for money lately and he’s been driving me nuts.

So when I saw a lawn full of dandelions last month I had a great idea. I’d pay my 9 and 7 year olds 10 cents per dandelion.

There were rules – they had to pick the dandelions, put them in a bucket, let me count them and they couldn’t sneak off to other people’s yards to add to their lot.

They also only had one afternoon. I was planning on mowing the lawn the next day so there was a time limit.

I have never seen my offspring work that hard or fast. They ran out to the backyard before I could finish laying out the ground rules.

And they picked, and picked and picked until their little fingers turned yellow.

I thought maybe I would fork out $5 or $10 per kid for this special assignment. Oh no.

I had to run to the bank to get enough money to pay up – $110 total – $52 for one kid and $58 for the other.

That’s crazy good money – a lot more than I ever imagined they would earn.

Together they picked 1,100 dandelions. It took me 20 minutes – no joke – to count the yellow-flowered heaps.

I was flabbergasted.

But I set out the ground rules and I felt a responsibility to own up to my end of the deal. This was my first special assignment job for them and I learned a valuable lesson.

Now that they’ve seen how much money they can make, they are begging me for more jobs.

Little do they know I wised up about weeds. I’m going to lower my rate and settle closer to my husband’s proposition – a penny each.

I still can’t drive by a yard full of dandelions and not mentally estimate how much my boys might make picking it clean.

But then again based on this experience they would probably make a lot more than I could ever guess!