Temper Tantrums

I know that children throw temper tantrums.  I understand it is part of expressing the frustration that is being a child and having to learn what you can and cannot get away with. 

However, while I consider this to have been a good weekend (we went to a birthday party, a play, and had fun relaxing at home) there was that twenty minutes or so, when I felt like calling my mother and apologizing for being a brat at times. 

Big L has anger problems some times.  She does not know how to express herself.  Unfortunately, I am the one she lashes out at.  Whether this is because I have failed to protect her, or she just expects more from me, I am unsure. 

This weekend though she would not go to her room, and I knew a melt down was coming.  For awhile now when she starts feeling like she is going to explode, I tell her to go to her room and she goes.  This weekend I had to carry her.  During this lovely trip down the hall she slapped me.  Now I will admit that I wanted to scream and yell at her right then, (i had just yelled at her to go to her room)but I knew that would be pointless.  Instead, I placed her in her room shut the door and walked away, calming myself as I stood at the end of the hall making sure she stayed.  She screamed and yelled, very mean things, for what seemed like forever. 

When she finally calmed down I poked my head in and asked if she was ready to talk.  We had the same talk we have had countless times about how i am not really mean, and how she is very fortunate to live the way she does, and how she was sorry she hurt our feelings and slapped me.  She cried quietly, and would not tell me what was wrong. 

Kids are hard.

{this moment}

 - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

If you're inspired to do the same, leave a link to your 'moment' in the comments for all to find and see.

Borrowed from Soule Mama, visit her site to share and to see more.

music:: life

i have always been a big music person.  i sang for many years in choir, even in college.  i played piano, flute and bassoon.  music has always been my connection with my emotions.  over the last few years i have not felt very connected with myself. 

my children make me happy, i love them more than anything.  after all that has happened in life, i find it hard to let myself truly feel, to put those feelings out where others can see them.  i don't really want to be this way anymore.  i am in a fairly safe place in life.  excluding all interactions with big L's bio father my life is awesome and safe. 

of all things, girl scouts has made me realize this needs to change.  my girls love me, they love the time we spend together.  it is like having 11 other children.  i love them, and our time, but i need to be able to fully share the gs experience with them, which includes sharing and being close to others; developing close life-long friendships that you can depend on.  i am not sure how to lead them to this awesomeness when i have so much trouble with it myself, but i want them to feel safe sharing in our group, and with me.

i feel like i am only partially living life, like i am missing out because i am too afraid to fully feel all of my emotions.  i should not feel stupid when the beauty of the mountains surrounding our home brings me to tears.  life is beautiful, and so are most people. 

i am not quite sure how to fix myself.  what i do know is that years of counseling and drugs have done little when it comes to a long term solution, and i would like to do something that works for the long term, not just a quick fix.  i don't want to be that emotionally unavailable parent depicted in countless stories.  what i know after all this time, is that only i can fix this.  only i can change my attitude and open my heart.  no one else can help or show me how to do this. 

i think that music may be my way back to feeling.  over the years the amount of music i listen to has decreased in proportion to the amount of feeling i have been able to express.  i try to reintroduce it, but it hasn't always stayed.  the past couple days i have had a tune in my head, "sky", by Joshua Radin.  i am the first to admit that i am not real up on the latest and greatest in the music world.  i am not even sure why i have his music on my iPod, but i do, and it has been haunting all of my thoughts.  this morning on my walk, i decided to listen to music, and his songs are what i listened to.  while they are all a bit similar, what i like (from what i have heard so far) are the lyrics.  i am a lyric person when it comes to music, beautiful poetry is music, and when put with music is exceptionally emotive.  so i think this may end up being joshua radin week.  i have purchased a few more tunes, four was not enough, and so far i love it.  i may have even found little l's lullaby. 

since little l was born i have been looking for a song that could be all hers.  big L has two songs that she is sung before bed every night, but i have always thought that little l should have her own song or songs. 

i am feeling fortunate to live in a place and way that i can concern myself with the emotional cares of life, and not simply focus on the basic necessities.  

Organization and Rearranging

As discussed earlier, we have been thinking of moving our rooms around.  This weekend, after a nice date night (first since the baby was born), we decided it was time to get moving.

Our chosen arrangement required that I empty and move almost every heavy piece of furniture I own.  No small task, but honestly it forced me to reorganize all of my things in a manner that will make it much easier to find and use them.  The initial result, however, was a little overwhelming.  There were piles of things everywhere, and a baby to keep away from them.

Further, we had to move all of the furniture around to move it out of the way for the furniture moving in.  It was like a big furniture dance.  The picture of my books does not do justice to the number of books I had to move.  I am so grateful my husband got me a kindle for the holidays, and i am truly contemplating only buying digital books from now on.  They are much easier to move.  Just don't ask me to get rid of the books I already have.

While moving I decided that all of may fabric that is waiting to be made into wonderful things needed to be reorganized.  It was a mess.  This was my fabric holder....I am not sure the play yard was meant to hold so much weight.  However, since little l refuses to be placed in it, other than for sleep when traveling, I guess it was good to have some use of it.

Thankfully, I have made a lot of progress over the last few days.  This is our new dining room.  It is much more comfortable than the way it was, and much harder to put things on the table that don't belong!  Now to finish the picture on the back wall the former owners left for us to complete.

I have not completely moved the children's play area out of the other room, I am still deciding how much should move.  I am happy to say that the cubby shelves we use now hold far less toys, and most of my fabric collection.  Goodwill here we come! In fact if you look closely, we have a whole row plus two of just puzzles and games, which we love to play around here, but couldn't see all of before.  Little l spent a good 40 minutes playing with the "kitchen" while I cooked last night, which was glorious!  The table in the corner is my scrapbooking station.  Can't ask for more than a dedicated table for scrapping.  The cupboards in the picture above actually hold all of my sewing and scrapbooking supplies, plus some girl scout and kid crafting items.

The last section to be completed is my desk, which is really my sewing area/bill paying area.  I have not completely decided how I want everything placed, so it is taking longer, plus, I have a lot of year end paperwork to go through......

I am happy it is almost done, but I am a bit tired, and don't want to rush through the last bit just to finish.  The goal was to purge while reorganizing, and you have to be in the right frame of mind for that.  It may take another week, but my hope is to be sewing a new apron to hold my clothespins by next week.  I am sure it will happen, maybe not by Monday, but before Friday at least!

This Moment

{this moment}

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

If you're inspired to do the same, leave a link to your 'moment' in the comments for all to find and see.

Borrowed from Soule Mama, visit her site to share and to see more.

Little l's habit...

Little l has a bad habit.  She picks up everything and puts it in her mouth.  Every little crumb, every thing that we drop, pieces of the grout coming out of one of our tiles, you name it.  

I don't remember having this much of a problem with big L, and when she was an infant, I had dogs and all that comes with that experience.  

I don't know what to do about l's issue, I know she will eventually outgrow it, but it worries me that she will choke.  Yesterday I was chopping carrot for soup and dropped two little circles on the floor.  I immediately looked for them to pick them up.  Finding only one, I thought maybe I was wrong about dropping two.  Twenty minutes later, I noticed that l was chewing on something, only to find my missing carrot.  Thankfully she did not choke.  

Other than trying to be careful I am not sure what else I can do at this point to protect her.  She just seems to like chewing on things for long periods, and she will chew on whatever she finds.  Our house is not dirty, but I do have a six year old fond of leaving crumbs everywhere.  What does everyone else do?  

Purging, cleaning and reorganizing

We have lived in our home for about a year and a half now.  I love my house.  It works well for us, but after living in it for a year, I have begun to rethink how I have things laid out.  In my opinion we have way too much stuff.  Big L disagrees, but she doesn't miss things when I purge toys from her pile.

We have a room that was added on to our home and is not connected to our heating/a/c ducts.  This is the room we currently spend the most time in.  I think this is a bit silly.  In the summer I am hot, in the winter I am cold.  While I like that the TV is in this room, and that it is the only room with natural light yearly 'round and day long, I want to switch things up.

Thus begun the negotiations.  I can't do this myself.  There is a lot of heavy furniture that will have to be moved, so my hubby has to be on board to help me.  What I want to do is move all the toys/crafts etc, out of what we call the "sunroom", and into the great room of the house.  The great room is currently a sitting area/dining room.

Pluses to making this move include:
1.  The ability to regulate the temperature in the room we will be spending more time in/not having to use the wall A/C in the summer.
2.  The children's toys will not reside in the same room as the TV.  We have been watching less TV lately, but I think we could reduce the amount further.
3.  The children can play while I cook, and my run when someone screams will be MUCH shorter, plus I will be able to see them from the kitchen.
4.  We can eat in a room that has windows, watching the weather/sunset, etc.
5.  I think it will be a more efficient use of the space we have.

The minuses:
1.  It is going to be a pain to move all of this stuff.
2.  I have too many books, moving them is a pain, but it is unlikely I will get rid of many if any at all.
3.  We may have to use lighting more throughout the day as the center of the house is only light at certain times of day, and those times depend on the time of year.
4.  Big L may notice if I get rid of as many toys as I want.  Mind you she rarely plays with these toys and I consider most of them junky, but you know.....  Big L is bordering on being a hoarder.
5.  It won't be as easy to dump everything on the dining room table.  Wait, that is a plus!

This is my currently very messy dining area.  Can you believe we find room to eat here?

So we have begun the discussion.  My hubby has remeasured all furniture and rooms, put all the numbers in his computer, and we will be playing around with the furniture configuration for a little longer, then hopefully the change will happen.