Disneyland Celebration!

Oh, my children! How every penny of our Disney tickets were worth seeing your eyes shimmer with an extra flare of amazement and wonder! Or maybe it was worth the two days of not managing grumpiness about who stole who’s couch space or who poured water on who’s painting in an act of sibling sabotage. Maybe it was worth it for the much needed family time to focus on just being together. I’m pretty sure it was a combination of all the above.

Proof that you begin your family by taking self-portraits or solo pics on your honeymoon with your spouse and then as you grow you are still taking awkward self-portraits on vacation, but now there are just more faces to get in the frame.

Your heart, Josiah…it’s been special from the beginning. You are simultaneously so wildly active and playful along with being incredibly tender-hearted. There is no contest that the carousel was your favorite and the most magical feeling to you. You loved the feeling of freedom on those horsies and the excitement of seeing all the people with you and the music filling the air and your spirit. Thank you for such fun memories of you, a few days into being two years old and so bursting through the brim with life.

King Arthur’s Carousel in Fantasyland. This boy rode it as many times as we would let him, and even stayed awake until almost 10pm repeatedly riding his “horsies” long after Sister had curled up and called it a night in the stroller.

Here you are, Sister. At Snow White’s Wishing Well, arguably your most treasured spot in the whole park. The shows and parades and rides? They’re flashy. Meeting the characters? Lots of fun. But here? It was here in a quiet little nook of the castle that your Disney love-tank was filled and your Daddy and I think that speaks so strongly about how you are made. And it’s awesome. I am so mesmerized and seduced by bigger and louder. You? You come alive in the small, intimate moments of life. The ones that get overlooked or labeled insignificant by the rest of us. That is a gift, my dear, and we love that about you.

Snow White’s Wishing Well. A lesser-known trail.

Or maybe it was worth the trip just to see the way you, Josiah, were absolutely enamored with Minnie. Apparently that’s the face I need to be on the look-out for to discover who your first crush is, who you are digging on, who I’m going to have to share your affection with.

Minnie Mouse – thanks for taking the time to make every child feel seen & special.

Hits & Highlights of CA Adventure & Disneyland:

* Disney Jr. Live

* The Aladdin Show

* Jumping fountains in a Bug’s Life Land

* Meeting Minnie Mouse & Rapunzel

* Fantasyland’s Carousel, Tea Cups, & Peter Pan Ride

* One late evening chocolate icecream waffle cup; four spoons

* Looping around on the Disney train

The “Oops”, Wish We Would Have Known…

* Pinocchio is NOT a ride for children, along with Winnie the Pooh

* Fast-passes do not in fact expire or require you to be back within an exact window of time

* The cheap and tasty Mexican food is on the back side of the Mexican restaurant in Downtown Disney

* To just skip the nap the kids didn’t rest for anyway and enjoy family time at the hotel pool instead

And…out!

We did it! Two days of Disney with two littles and one in my belly and we even spent most of the time not looking like this – or feeling like it on the inside either!

Thanks for being the best kids in the whole park. Happy fourth! Happy second! We can’t wait to do it again with you!

Projects Part 2: DIY Mama Things

I’ve said it before. I take in old pieces of furniture the way other people take in rescue dogs. I see a battered and scarred little unit of wood and I know it needs a home. A home and a new future.

Recreating something old into something new is such an energizing process for me. I love it. It’s the ability to look at something that’s presenting a little funky and seeing past the funk to the potential. Sometimes this gets me in trouble because I’m always living in the possibilities instead of being okay with the face-value present. That can come across as ungrateful for what is in my hand now. But mostly I see this as a mini super-power and a gift. And it’s just bonus that I get so much personal satisfaction out of project-ing something old into something new again. Here’s what I got to do this past week.

Project #1: DIY Yellow Nightstand

Step 1: Wash furniture piece.

Last week I picked this little nightstand up from the 1960′s from a kind older couple for four Washingtons. Deal!

Step 2: Unscrew hardware from drawers. Remove Drawers. Spray-paint main furniture body and drawers with primer.

Step 3: Spray-paint drawers and main body with two layers in a glossy yellow. Let dry. Rescrew hardware into drawers. Place in a cozy little corner of the bedroom! Special shout out to my friend, Lacey, who let me take her yellow spray-paint home to use!

Project #2: Hanging Vases

I share a little wall space in the office of the children’s director for our church where I work as the early childhood coordinator. It’s a bright green wall. Think neon. Think special effects backdrop and you’ll be on the right track. It’s been living empty and needed a little love so the kids and I went to our local salvation army in search of inspiration in the form of cheap mix-matched glass bottles. We walked away with a bounty of hob-nobbed decanters, chunky glass jars, mini salt and pepper shakers, and olive oil  holders for just a few dollars. Add in a bamboo stick from the dollar tree, some decor froo-froo on sale at Jo-anne’s and some twine. Ta-Da! You have a pretty line of hanging vases.

Hanging Vases. Since it’s at the office and I’m only in once a week it has artificial froo-froo in the vases. If this were in my home it would as well, but get real flower upgrades to match parties and special occasions.

I made a handful of mini tissue paper pom-poms in white and tied them onto a string of twin that got swooped under the vases to break up a little more blank wall space with something soft. Thank you Mama Martha tutorial.

And here’s where I say thank-you to the Hubby for always welcoming the stray, straggly bit of furniture I bring home. For never having an eye-roll or sideways glance at a precarious tower of thrift-store treasures stacked on the table and for forever finding room for odds and ends and mini paint can samples in the garage. Thanks for supporting my habits and recognizing my need to make a mess and create something.

I hope you find a garage sale wonder and time to recreate something soon too!

Projects Part 1: Preschool Things

This past week I’ve had a few opportunities to do some projects around the house. I’m not talking remodels. For me that means making learning tools with my too-articulate-for-her-age newly four year old, and turning something old into something new.

Let’s start with the preschool projects:

1. Preschool Picture Schedule – A few months ago I reached my mama-limit for how many times I could be asked and respond to the question, “What are we doing today?” Being asked once, sure. Twice, okay. Four-bazillion times in the course of five minutes? We needed a new plan. So I made these picture cards for our daughter to be able to see what the big event for the day will be and who we are doing it with. And I was super excited when I scored this great pocket chart for $3 at a garage sale last week in order to display it for her in the playroom. Our main haunts of the zoo, the beach, the children’s museum, church, the park, and Target are all there. Usually they are all turned over and I just face the pertinent cards for that day forward so she can look at an instant what we’re going to do and who we’re doing it with. The asking has cut way back and now I can just point to the chart instead of get annoyed. Now that our system is in place though I think I’m going to make picture cards for our specific parks we visit because like any well-prepared girl, Selah needs to know if we’re headed to a grassy, sandy, or wood-chip park. Why? Because girl’s gotta wear the right shoes.

Preschool Picture Schedule

2: Tactile Alphabet Book

Selah Grace just celebrated her 4th birthday and declared that this is the year she learns to read. She asked me if I could teach her “tomorrow” and it took a little explaining that learning to read is a long process and that we start by learning the sounds letters make. Back in my teaching lifetime I really enjoyed teaching little children to read. Girl doesn’t quite know what she signed herself up for when she asked me to teach her!

We are starting small and with letters she knows well – the ones in her name. We spent a few afternoons focusing on the sounds the letters in her name say and creating tactile alphabet cards for her. We brainstormed items that start with that sound and went on scavenger hunts for things in the house and garden that begin with those sounds.

Elmo is a diva at our house so he had to make an appearance. For the lower case e, we washed eggshells and removed any membrane. She then cracked it into little pieces and glued eggshell mosaic inside the letter border.

For the l card we went multi-sensory and added some lavender that also smells really great. She chose the leaf from the yard and added a few puffy ladybugs on it.

The a page took a dedicated search for bumpy feeling ant stickers, but was finally accomplished. Those are appleseed glued into the lower-case a. We are adding more as apples get eaten in our house.

That’s the gist. The S page is the letter s cut out of scratchy sandpaper with soft cotton balls around it. The H page has hearts glued inside the letters created from felt and glitter-lined scrapbook paper. All of it is very tactile/ textural for her to be able to trace her fingers on the shape of the letter as we say the sound the letter makes. This way she is learning the phonemes for the letters and also creating triggers in her little brain about what it should feel like to write that letter. Eventually we’ll make an entire alphabet.

If your family has found a “preschool project” that has revolutionized your lives, PLEASE share with me! I want to know! Some of them are so simple, but can totally change the course of the morning, the mama’s attitude, and therefore, the rest of the family’s day!

I know every parent thinks it, but Nate and I are blown away by how sharp-minded our daughter is. It’s going to be a fun year for us teaching her about the world and life and unlocking doors to amazing things, like literacy. Such giant ideas and life-changing opportunities that have to begin in such tiny ways. With the shapes of letters. And phonemes. And bumpy, bedazzled bug stickers.

 

 

Half Way There and a Gender Reveal Update

We are 21 weeks preggo and excited to claim being half way there! Yes, we had our mid-way ultrasound and found out this baby is going to be a…..healthy baby! That’s right. The gender is a surprise, even to us. I’ve always wanted that moment when the dr. exclaims the gender reveal only moments before putting a soft, warm little newborn on your chest. And after all the fetal heart-issue fiascos we dealt with during our pregnancy with Josiah, we will take the news that this little one is shaping up a-okay. 

Josiah doesn’t quite understand why mama’s belly is getting bigger. When I put his hand on my tummy and tell him there’s a baby in there, he just pulls my shirt up and says, “no”.

But this little girl has a decided opinion that the baby should be a little sister. (Although she might be disappointed because I’m guessing boy.) There have already been name suggestions from Big Sis, including Aurora (one of her favorite babies we know and a princess, of course) and Selah Number Two.

Josiah’s a little bit of a mama’s boy. Aren’t all toddler guys? He’s in for a bit of a ride when new baby comes and someone else is in his cuddle zone. As for Selah Grace, apparently she just needs more little sibling band members to join her Kiss cover band.

Third pregnancy there’s little time to remember to take belly-bump shots. Forget about day-drifting off into the wondrous miracle of forming life, like you have the luxury of doing in first baby pregnancies. We’ll shoot for posting a bump shot around 30 weeks and then another near our due date in mid September.

Do you know all the old wives tales and tricks? Whaddya think? Boy or girl?

- “Pointy” baby bump.

- Craving red meat and HOT spicy food.

- Still feeling out-of-my-head sick when not on my medicine.

- Feeling little legs doing lots of kicking around in there.

Rockin’ It

I’ve been rockin’ it lately; our family moving to a nice little groove. Or so I thought when we bought birthday presents for little friends over a week early, when the carpet tiles in the playroom spent three back-to-back days free of lego landmines, and when watching my kiddos dance and chant rounds of, “Go Daddy, GO!” to Nate during his soccer games. Rocking! It!

But of course that pendulum swung back to it’s more comfortable side. The side where days are measured by policing play-times and counting out sharing turns and forgetting hats and water bottles and prized stickers in shops around town like little bread-crumb trails of our errand adventures.

1. As I was unloading my kids for said birthday party and congratulating myself for only being 15 minutes late, my heart sank a little lower as each child holding a goody bag filed out the front door. We were two hours late and missed the whole thing. Woops. The host family was very gracious and let us hang around for a while anyway playing in the bounce house and with newly opened toys.

Little Man has discovered the joys of sleeping loose and free. We’ve been finding him de-jammied and de-diapered in his crib each night before we head to bed and more often than not in the morning when we retrieve him from his crib.

2. Cue the Britney music because oops I did it again…Josiah got me laughing so hard in the parking lot on Friday after family dinner that it happened again. I started guffawing and things started trickling and I just couldn’t stop it. Nate drove home while I begged him not to get in a car wreck while I was wearing a picnic blanket like a wrap skirt.

If you want to expand your patience threshold, come along on a shopping trip with us. This is how my kiddos share a cart.

3. I called in for a prescription refill before being stranded without it, only to discover that I had missed my prenatal appointment. Further proof that if it doesn’t get on the master calendar, on paper, at my fingertips, it may as well not exist for me. For all the beautiful advancements in technology, there’s just something about a good faux-leather bound calendar and thin-tipped pencil my brain prefers.

I used to judge other moms for the way they let their children ride willy-nilly in shopping carts. And then I had Josiah and all the rules changed.

Things are a little up in the air and not every rope holding up this Leboffe family circus tent is tethered and hammered into place. But such is life, no? The perfectionist in me, the controlling mini-dictator inside wants all those tethers to be in their place. To not be amiss. To hold taut. But it’s terrifying and impossible to live that way. So please continue to offer us your graciousness and kindness as we show up late to things or need to reschedule altogether or don’t have the best homemade bows on our gifts to you.

Here’s to rockin’ it in your own way this Wednesday.

Letting Go and Falling Forward

Letting go. It’s always been there, an innate and necessary part of the growing process. As a young adult you learn to let go of hurts and offer forgiveness in order to move forward. You let go of the false image of who you think you’re supposed to be and start taking cautious and uncertain steps down the shadowy path of who you actually are. I felt ready for these steps.

Running toward the kids’ salon. Mama has a hair hang-up over Josiah’s beautiful curls.

So why have I been unprepared for the amount of letting go it requires to be a parent? Don’t get me wrong. I don’t lament boxing away too-small clothes into the garage or yearn for the early days of newborn breath on my chest at 2am. But somehow there is still a resistance to them getting bigger. A knowing that as they embrace new things and explore new parts of their personality that they will be shedding some of the quirky qualities they have now, in this moment, that I have fallen in love with. When I ask what is at the heart of this resistance, I see that I’m afraid. Afraid that I’m going to forget these days in the tiredness and day-to-dayness of the small years. Afraid the next stage isn’t going to be better than this. Afraid they’re going to break my heart.

Driving his fire engine cutting chair. Getting ready for the chop as Mama talks with the stylist, saying phrases like “surfer cut” and “please keep as much curl as possible” and things as ridiculous as “if you can cut it without making it look like it’s been cut, that’d be great”.

I am left with two choices. Fight against the inevitable current of change, of life moving forward, or lean in. Lean into the fears. Lean into the risks. Lean into the letting go and trusting that we will fall into a new space that is just as beautiful and dear to my heart as the place we’ve just left behind.

Pigtails and Crewcuts in NTC, Point Loma. Worth. Every. Penny. When Josiah turned one Nate nudged that it might be time for a haircut. I bargained for another year that seemed to go by too fast. Thanks for the extra year and for not making me be the one to hold the scissors to his sweet curls, dear Husband!

Victory sucker complete with a smirk

I was dreading this. But it turned out to be a great adventure. Friends sent encouraging texts while we were there and I wielded my camera like the paparazi. The stylist was amazing with him and even didn’t act scared when I tracked her down into another room afterward to say thank-you in an overly loud voice.

We’ve been watching her move from a stance of watching other kids have fun on playground equipment she is scared of, to testing it out for herself. Courage. Growing up. Feeling proud of herself. These are good things we want for her.

When I look at my daughter I see the two day old baby with the soft and slightly pointed head we held at the hospital. I see the toddler wildly flapping her arms to practically “shout” at me in baby signs that she sees birds and thinks they are wonderful. I see her now as the four year old in her princess hat. But I also see her on her first day of school yet to come, and going off on her first date as a teenager, and as a strong young woman post college.

Selah’s new bed now that she’s a 4yr old! I couldn’t resist the castle loft bed with slide and hidey room underneath.

With Josiah it is the same. I see him in my arms as a newborn. I see him now. I see him in daydreams of when he has grown into a young man. The crystal ball of my heart sees all these points in time for my children. And I’m excited. My pulse quickens and a quick “thank you” prayer is muttered inside for the 1,000th time that day.

Taking a picnic lunch to the park. Eating in the sunshine. Coming back home a little sandy, full-tummied, and tired for afternoon naps. This is my new favorite way to spend 11am-1pm.

When it comes down to it, there is no choice for parents. As parents we want to give life to our children. And there just isn’t fresh life in stuck, stagnant ponds of pulling back, of trying to make your past also be your future. Hear me mamas. This doesn’t mean we can’t grieve for moments being left. It doesn’t mean that if we do cry while folding tiny clothes into a storage bin or if we do need to say yes when the kid’s stylist asks us if we’d like to keep a locket of baby curl for our scrapbooks that we are weak or unwilling to embrace life.

It is good and, dare I say, a spiritual act to recognize the wonder in a moment and to be hit fully with both it’s goodness and how painful it will be to move past. That’s why I try to take more pictures. That’s why I do these blog posts. To remember. To file away these moments. Because remembering is an act of honor that gives me the courage to turn my face forward and believe that our next stage together will be good and challenging and wonderful all in it’s own way.

I know the answer is yes, so I won’t even ask if any of you parents of littles out there got blindsided by the letting-go blitz. I just hope you’re finding your own ways to remember and to gain the courage to fall forward. Letting go. Leaning in. And having a million silent “thank-you” prayers in between.

Simplicity and Stillness

Yesterday and today I’ve been a little laid out with my preggo sidekick, Nausea. The good news is I have a happy little magic-pill that helps me not have to wear a toilet for a necklace around my face all day. The bad news is that it leaves wicked side-effects of headaches. BIG headaches.

But a three year old still needs mama time, headache or not. So yesterday I asked Selah Grace to choose something to play with me and bring it to the couch. There was no big production or prep on my part. She chose to bring five pipe cleaners. Really? I thought. That is going to be fun for us? All I did was snuggle her in beside me on the cushions and we twisted and re-twisted those five pipe-cleaners into wands and numbers and imaginary pets and I was reminded of how simple it can all be. Do you know what? It was my favorite quality time with her this whole week!

Today I rested on the couch and got to be the perfect patient while Selah Grace played “Doctor”. She had a blast. She was getting mommy attention. I was resting. These were lovely moments and it was a good reminder to enjoy the simple things of motherhood.

It’s easier for me to really see her when I am still; when my body, mind, and soul are at rest. While twisting pipe-cleaners and getting imaginary shots in my foot, I am able to watch her little mind work and see the way the wispy hairs around her face are lit golden in the sunlight. I am able to thank God for how incredible and incredibly gorgeous she is!

Seeing it all while laying on the couch with a refreshing Cherry Coke in my hand doesn’t hurt. The only thing better in the moment would be a minty & limey mojito, but we’re saving that for September celebrations!

If you have a toddler or preschooler and have zero energy today, try some pipe cleaners and couch cuddles. It just might work for you too.