Every once in a while Hubby and I are jolted back.  We shake ourselves free of the haze of life and schedules– MUCK in general–that had been clouding our view of how precious our children are.

Because they are.  So precious and so silly and so stinking well-behaved and so full of light and life and love.

So I’m relaxing on the schedules and blocking out others’ opinions of me and my children and I’m just going to enjoy them.  I want them to look at me and know I’ll laugh fully at their jokes and take time to listen to their stories and watch them ride their bikes up and down the street.

I need them to know how much they’re loved.

And hopefully one day this song will ring true of their mother, except they’ll know I got my hope from the Lord, and it will give them the desire to follow Him and live in His sunlight as well.

I’ve seen the way you deal with things

The troubles that this life can bring

If it gets to you, I can’t tell by the way you sing

You act like it just doesn’t mean a thing

I see you dancin’ all your

Dancin’ all your

Dancin’ all your days

…

Come on, come on

That’s got to be the way

I want this one to be true of me: “…She laughs with no fear of the future.” Proverbs 31:25

I love to tease my husband about this, especially when he is sitting right behind me as I type BECAUSE HE IS NOT SUPPOSED TO DO THAT, but he does not want me to take the kids out of school.  He says that because I skipped a few classes the second semester of my senior year in high school there is a possibility I do not believe in the necessity of our children daily attending school, that I might willy-nilly pull them out of school just for the fun of it.

So you can imagine my hesitation in telling him about that morning in December.  But they were to school by 8:35!  The teachers barely noticed the kids’ absences.

Yesterday, though, we mutually decided to take the kids out of school so that we as a family could attend the free admission day at the zoo.  Third year in a row of attending, and it’s awesome every time.

I have to say, in all my years of going to the Sedgwick County Zoo, this was the best trip ever.  Those animals were so active.  The grizzly bears strolled right in front of us; a gorilla ate, then laid down, then puked, then ate his green puke right in front of us; a hippo bellowed right up at my husband and kids; the tigers playfully wrestled with each other and then nuzzled right below my kids; the male lion climbed up on a rock and roared, ROARED YOU GUYS, right in front of us.  It was amazing.  I mean, I’ve seen the gorillas in their exhibit, but the bears and the lions are always hard to find.  For the former to just meander in front of us and the latter to ROAR WHILE WE WERE WATCHING… amazing.  Oh!  And some very naughty attendees tore branches from a tree in the rhinoceros habitat to feed to the giraffes, so we got to see the giraffes climb down an embankment and eat leaves until the zookeeper chased away those rule-breakers.

Here are some pictures:

Pretty girl.

G, always ready to protect his family.

Yes, that's my finger in the corner, but it was the only picture of all three kids.

Post-roar. You just know he's thinking, "I've said my piece, now I'm going to lie in the sun."

This is the baby and the daddy giraffe. The daddy had just walked back up the embankment to share a large branch with the mommy giraffe.

Then we came home and were all very tired, but Little Missy had dance and G had Boy Scouts.  But it was fun.  Perfect weather, no sunburns, active animals.  I dare say we should take them out of school again next year!

• Why not start things off with my column from two weeks ago, wherein I discuss the competition between me and my daughter.
• And then follow up with my nearly-stopped-wavering on the More Kids issue.  Because I think there is this spectrum, with Individual Attention for Each Kid at one end and My Alone Time/My Alone Time With My Husband at the other.  With each additional child something has to give.  You’re either going to take time away from one of your existing kids or you’re going to take time away from you and your spouse.  For our family, I think we’ve just about hit the right spot on the spectrum.
• I never dug her bits about beauty creams or fashion at the end of each Lucky issue, but I really like her bits now in blog form.  Makes no sense to me, either.  Anyway, one of my new favorite blogs.
• Bet you didn’t think of all these as you raise your kids.  Especially #3, to which my husband is a testament.  That boy is not oogied out by germs.  One time he told me that as a kid when his grandparents would make him wash up for dinner he’d think, Why?  Because, as his youngest brother pointed out on a different occasion, he’s pretty sure he rolled down hills of cow-poo as a kid and had the best time.  Hubby’s grandparents knew their farm held germs, and said germs should be washed away before dinner.  But Hubby didn’t adhere to that kind of pesky germs-cause-problems hoolabaloo.  AND my husband never gets sick.  Which is only a bit of hyperbole.  Because really, he does not get the flu or colds.  Maybe he’s sick once every couple of years?  Anyway, long paragraph to say that #3 in the above-linked Cracked column rings true with my husband.
• Finally, read this.  Then put away your computer/iPad/iPhone and take Heidi’s challenge to write some handwritten notes.

Things I really love about my baby, who is not really a baby but since she’s the youngest I get to call her a baby for a while still:

1. She smiles at me when I pick her up out of her crib in the morning, then lays her head on my shoulder for as long as I’ll let her, sometimes for up to an hour.
2. She walks with a puffed chest and huge grin anytime we’re in public.  At the grocery store, at church, around the block, when we walk to the door of G and Little Missy’s school to pick them up.  She thinks she’s big stuff when I’m not carrying her.
3. She places a fat baby hand on each of my cheeks and then gives me a big kiss on the mouth.  This happens multiple times a day, sometimes even when I haven’t asked for a kiss.
4. She loves her babies.  She cuddles them and changes their diapers and places them in the highchair to eat and has me wrap them in her favorite blankets.
5. She fake laughs when G and Little Missy are in the truck.  She may not know what they’re giggling at, but she sure is going to be a part of the fun.

These are all things I need to remember when she won’t leave me alone.  I am her playmate, and she wants someone to play with nearly all the time.  This means I have to entertain her while folding laundry and while cooking our lunch and she helps me make my smoothies in the morning.  This means that we’re down on the floor playing or reading or coloring TOGETHER.  Always together.

I’m slowly realizing this is not a phase.  I thought it was, but it so is not.  Now I’m looking forward to the time she’ll understand, “Sweet pea, this is Mommy’s time to read a magazine while you play with your babies by yourself.”  Right now, at 21 months, is not that time.  But maybe (hopefully) soon.

I have to say, this year we owned spring break.  We rocked that week.

My friend Abbie posted on her Facebook wall that she was excited to not have any plans, to just spend time with her kids and craft with them and let them play baseball outside for hours whenever the mood struck.  But I am not such a disciplined mommy.  If I don’t have something planned for us then pretty soon it’s the end of the day and we’ve watched TV all morning before I finally shoved them outside in the afternoon, with the bonus of bickering all day.  Plus with the forecast for rain all week, I knew we had to plan something.

So Saturday afternoon I sat down with them and we made a list of what we were going to do that week.  Monday: Exploration Place.  Tuesday: home.  Wednesday: Geo-caching.  Thursday: home.  Friday: Nana was in town.

Monday we went to EP and it was so much more a pleasant experience than it has been in years past.  Now Gideon and Mia aren’t running in two different directions.  They’re big enough to play by themselves as I corral Daphne.  They played at the water table with friends from school who happened to be there at the same time, they all played in the vet clinic, we watched model trains over and over and over again, then the big kids played in the Castle while I watched Daphne in the toddler area.

Tuesday was a little rough.  With the rain and all there was some bickering.  But Daddy took them and cousin Gabe for ice cream that night, then they all came back to our house and watched Hugo.

Wednesday we planned on geo-caching but it was too muddy from the rain.  We went to lunch with Nana, Auntie Leelee, Uncle Todd and his co-worker Kenton, then hung out at Uncle Todd’s office for a while, then went on a scavenger hunt.  Daddy sent us a list of things to find and we drove around town and took pictures in front of them.

Thursday was another home day, so Daddy sent them another scavenger hunt of stuff to find on our street.  Gideon and Mia took the camera outside and found everything on the list.  At first they were hesitant about going in people’s yards to take pictures, something about respecting people’s property, but they eventually made it far enough into their yards to hurriedly take the pictures before scurrying off.

Friday Nana was at our house and stayed with the kids while Hubby and I watched The Hunger Games.  Woot.

Saturday morning the kids and I went to Botanica.  They painted, made thumbprint artwork (courtesy of Paint the Towne), and completed a tulip scavenger hunt.  It was so much fun.  The day was sunny and gorgeous and I took beautiful pictures of my kids.  Then we went to lunch, met up with Daddy and tried our hand at geo-caching.  You guys, it was a big dud for us.  I think we need tips on how to locate the items.  Plus it didn’t help that at the first place we were looking next to a busy Wichita street and at the next place we looked very suspicious inspecting the bottom of a foot bridge.  My friend Mrs. Y said her husband and two of their boys found stuff in Augusta the first time they tried.  Maybe we’ll try something around here next.

And now my kids are back in school.  Boo.  Monday I really mourned the loss of spring break.  But Mia will be home with me the next two days because of kindergarten round-up, then the next week they’re off for Good Friday, then the next week they’re off for a teacher development day, and I really love that Augusta schools have a RIDICULOUS amount of days off.

I’ll try to post pictures soon, because blogs with pictures are always better than the ones without.

Which is frustrating because I haven’t been able to pin anything in five weeks.  It’s not that I’m on Pinterest a whole lot, but sometimes I want to remember something fabulous I’ve found.  And for whatever reason Pinterest teases me with their login page and then doesn’t let me log in.

Because if I could pin again, I would pin this, which is so apropos to my previous two columns:

Yesterday three of us got showered before school and the other child took a long bath immediately after returning from dropping her big brother and big sister at school.  I unloaded the dishwasher, made breakfast for four of us, lunches for two, wrote checks for school pictures, played on the floor with Daphne, wrote a blog post and completed one load of laundry.

I did not load the dishwasher, make the beds or put away any clothes.  Not making the beds is one of my triggers to a bad day.  But the biggest trigger, I’ve realized, is stressing about getting a certain amount done around the house and then trying to work around my kids to get that stuff done.

This is in my head a lot–A LOT a lot–trying to find the balance between taking care of my children and my husband and myself and my house, and because it is in my head a lot I also blog about it and a lot and I’ve columned about it at least once before.  But I wrote about it last week and the week before because I sort of feel like I’m just now getting a good handle on maintaining a clean home while being sweet to my kids.

So: Shifting my focus and then taking my own advice.

Daphne is in my business from the time she wakes up until she crashes in her bed at night.  This non-stop in-my-face means that she pulls on my legs to be held while my hands are wet from washing dishes; she closes the dryer door while I’m still folding newly dried clothes or putting in wet ones from the washer; she sits on the counter next to the hot stove while I’m making our lunch; she plays in the bathroom while I’m using the facilities; she screams to bounce on the bed while I’m making it.  Which means: I rarely do the dishes or the laundry or make the beds.  I sit in a dirty house to avoid fights from the little one.

It’s too much.  I need a little space and the girl is unwilling to give it.

When she finally goes to bed at night I turn into a zombie on the couch. But there is still more to do.  Laundry and dishes and grocery shopping.  GROCERY SHOPPING.  I haven’t done a really good grocery run in two weeks, which means I duck into Dillon’s and back out with enough food for a meal or two.  (And I hate Dillon’s.  They’re overpriced with a poor selection and I really hate giving them my money.  But right now it’s the best I can do.)  It also means we’ve been eating out nearly every day.  But there is little point in trying to menu plan with a teeny girl who promptly sits on my lap and grabs the ink pen so that she can scribble all over my list.

Sometimes in the mornings I plan to hug her and squeeze her and give her kisses and read with her until she’s tired of me and let’s me go about my business.  But that does not work.  Instead I devote an hour, hour-and-a-half just to Daphne Time, and as soon as I get up to pour myself a cup of coffee she’s following me, pulling on my leg to pick her up.

A resolve will enter my head that I’ll change the way I parent her.  I’ll make her cry it out when I can’t attend to her immediate need and I’ll make her scream in the shopping cart just so that I can get food from Target, but I’m not going to change the way I parent her.  I raised Gideon and Mia the same way and I really like the way they turned out.  They’re confident, sweet, easy to get along with, role models in their classes and outstanding academically.  I think if I can just make it through this season then it’ll be okay.  But through this season I’m really on edge.

I’m still here, but Daphne is at a stage where she needs constant interaction.  This makes sitting at the computer and typing nearly impossible.  I sat down and had a little talk with myself about how she is only this age once and I need to soak in the times that she wants to sit on my lap and shut the dryer door for me while I’m in the middle of doing laundry and sit on the counter next to me while I cook.  But the pep talk didn’t work and I continued to get frustrated over the fact that I couldn’t sit by myself and type one line of an email before a certain Baby Chickadee was sitting on my lap and commandeering the keyboard.  Then I prayed about it and my heart was changed.  Now Daphne and I giggle while she pours canned peas over the eggs that I’m frying on the stove.  Messy yes, but pretty hilarious.  And Daphne was awfully proud of herself for helping Mama cook.

I do still write for the Gazette most every week.  They pay me.  And aside from Christmas break and a few sick days, every week I write for them.  Last week I wrote about my time at the gym: The conscious effort to politely ignore.  The week before I wrote about my new reading plan with my husband: Yes, I’d love to analyze the particulars with you.

So I’m still around, just not on the computer as much as I once was.  Daphne and I are eating eggs and spilling peas on the counter and laughing the whole time.

Sometimes you forget that your baby is just a baby, and instead believe her to be a genius stuck in the teeny body of a toddler; the only reason she does not wow you with her erudite thoughts on philosophy and theology is because her large command of language gets thwarted by her tongue that is still working to form the words.  Otherwise, WOW, you two would have profoundly important conversations during the day.

But then she motions to put on her brother’s (clean!) Spider-Man underwear over her pants and BAM! you remember, nope, she is just a baby.

Pretty fly.