Aiming High and Hitting the Middle

 Last week I jumped headfirst into my daily lists and weekly goals.  I am a firm believer of aiming high so you will at least hit somewhere in the middle.  And about the middle is where I hit.  I didn't get everything done each day, and I certainly didn't get all of my weekly goals accomplished.  I DID get the kitchen floor washed!!!  Susannah got up from her nap right before I was getting started and it was kind-of a "now or never" moment, so I decided on "now".  She wanted to help and had fun sloshing water around on the floor with her own rag.  Even though I had to change her clothes when we finished, the clean floor was worth it!

Some of the "hitting the middle" was partially due to taking a last minute overnight trip to visit my sister for a day and a half. :-)  It was last minute because it was all fairly tentative until Wednesday morning when I had slept well and had as much "feel like" as I did "want to".

These are the cousins all together. (This isn't ALL of the cousins, just the ones we were visiting.)

Aside from going to visit so my sister and I could visit, or so Susannah could play with her cousins (and their fun toys!), I wanted to meet my newest niece who is 4 weeks old.  With both my sister and I having little babies, no great, rip-roaring projects were accomplished but we had a wonderful time visiting, feeding our babies together (their schedules were very close to each others) and watching the older kids play and have fun.

This past week my goals were:

• Write 3 thank you notes for baby gifts  {I wrote one.}
• Do 1 hour of bookwork {I got in about 40 minutes, including paying bills.}
• Clean in the Master Bedroom for 15 minutes  {didn't happen}
• Finish sewing the kitchen curtains {I really pushed for accomplishing this goal, because I didn't want to dig out my sewing machine and ironing board for nothing!  I have them all finished except for 1 final seam that I will need to sew once I get the curtain rods and know how much space to allow for the rods to fit through the curtains.}

This week my goals are:

• Write 3 thank you notes for baby gifts
• Do 1 hour of bookwork
• Clean in the Master Bedroom for 15 minutes
• Grocery Shopping trip
• Hem a skirt that I want to shorten
• Possibly shop for kitchen curtain rods and hang curtains
• Exercise x2

I'm looking forward to aiming high again... I'll see where I land!

The Ole Bandwagon

A lot has happened in the past 2-ish months!!  Nothing super-duper exciting, just much of the regular with a few extras thrown in.  I am still waiting to get to a predictable "normal" around here, and I think, hopefully! we are almost there. 

I keep thinking back to this post when I thought we had finally hit "normal" again.  Hahaha!!  April had one "normal" week, and then Susannah had a week of swimming lessons, the week after that was an attempt at potty training (Yes, attempt.  It did not work, but was not a complete fail either), the following week the house was falling down around my ears as a result of the two previous weeks... and well, you get the picture.  Life happens and goes on!!  And I do enjoy my life most of the time.  When I'm not enjoying it, I have to give myself a sermon and soon I'm realizing how enjoyable it is again.  :-)

This week, though, THIS WEEK, I'm determined to intentionally keep myself steered in the direction of a normal that fits our needs.  A normal that keeps the laundry washed, folded AND put away, good meals on the table, the floors picked up, swept and washed as needed, and of course meeting the needs of our girls.

I have a weeks worth of to-do lists already on the fridge (from the last time I made this attempt, cough-cough), and today I put together a very short list of goals I would like to aim for this week.  "Aim for" are the key words.  With a nursing babe I never know quite what my days will be like, though I usually have a general idea.

Aside from the regular housekeeping,  these are the other things I am hoping I can work on or even get completely accomplished:

• Write 3 thank-you notes (for baby gifts)
• Do 1 hour of bookwork (I kinda fell behind when Sylvia was born)
• Clean in the Master Bedroom for 15 minutes (Sylvia sleeps in there so a long cleaning stint would be tricky.)
• Finish sewing the kitchen curtains

 Having a list with actual goals written on it is more motivating to me than just thoughts in my head of "this would be nice" or "I should do this".  Like my husband says, I like to draw straight lines (crossing things off a list).  :-)

Of course my top priority (after being a wife) is being mama to these two cuties:

We'll see what the Lord has planned for us this week!  I can make all the lists and plans in the world, but sometimes He has or allows different plans.

Mother's Day

This is the 3rd year I have been able to celebrate Mother's Day as a mother.  I cannot put into words the joy that was in my heart yesterday as it was the day celebrating what I get to do every day for the rest of my life!  I know that may sound selfish, but I don't mean it that way.  Mother's Day for me now is a day celebrating the most precious role in life I can possibly have: I get to be a Mama!

As far back as I can remember, all I wanted to do was get married and have children.  I never had big dreams for college or for a job (though being a mother is certainly WORK).  I had - and still have - dreams of side hobbies I would like to explore one day if I ever take a real notion to, but all of those are distant shadows compared to the dream I am living in real life now, today.

I am a Mama!!

God has blessed my arms and heart to overflowing.  I have two precious daughters that He has entrusted to my care, nurturing, giving of instruction, my love.  As I can do none of this without God's grace and strength in my life, it is as much humbling as it is a delight.

It is an honor to be the one chosen to be the Mama to these beautiful girls.  To be the one chosen to feel their tiny bodies growing in my womb; to birth them into this world and hold their squirmy, newborn, little bodies next to mine, falling in love all over again face to face.  To be the one chosen to receive their love in return, their hugs, kisses, to be the one they hold their arms out to.

Sometimes when I look at my daughters - my gifts from God - my heart wells up with tears of gratitude and praise to Him for allowing me this joy in life.  I love them so much and am truly a blessed woman to be their Mama.

Susannah's April in Pictures

I have been wanting to do a post about Susannah for a while, but have only been able to work on it in little bits and pieces.  :) 

I loaded these pictures into a post draft with a post in mind, but now that I have am taking time to write, I can't remember what all I was going to say!!!

My brother came for a couple days at the beginning of the month, and Susannah had a lot of fun with her Uncle Luke.  He is reading her a bedtime story here:

We have a shoe box for everyone's shoes, but all of the shoes are rarely in it.  Susannah likes to dig out the shoes and clomp around in any two shoes, matching or not. :-)  Here she is wearing Daniel's shoes and my slipper socks.

 One day we went on a little adventure to the local feed and seed store.  It was their open house and I knew they had baby chicks in for the weekend (my MIL works there).  Susannah had fun looking at the baby chicks!

I always check on Susannah before I crawl in bed for the night.  Usually she has thrown off her covers.  This time she was very much under her covers, and her blankie.  I made sure her face was not covered and left her alone.  :-)

 At the beginning of April, Susannah had a week of swimming lessons.  It was a Mom & Me class and it was wonderful.  The first day she was clingy and fussed for the first several minutes (ea. lesson was 30 min.), the second day she was clingy but fussed jut a little, and by the third day she was having fun.  She now LOVES to do pretend lessons with her dolly!!  She gets me to sing the songs to go along with the exercises they did in the lessons while she does the motions with her doll! I've been impressed with how much she has remembered, and plan to sign her up for another week or two yet this summer.  By the end of the week she could go underwater (with help) and pick a toy up from the pool steps, and also be submerged for a couple other of the exercises.  She is silly, though, and holds her breath with her mouth open. :)  I think that will change over time and with more lessons, though.

 

Afterwards I got her some swim goggles.  Mostly for her to get used to wearing so she would leave them on for future lessons (they are not required, but recommended because of the chlorine in pool water).  She is so cute in them, and is wearing them more and more around the house.  Today she wore them to eat lunch!

Susannah is a little mama to her dolly. :-)  One afternoon when I was taking a load of baby clothes out of the dryer, she came into the laundry room with her baby and asked for some clothes for her baby.  I helped her get her baby dressed in some of Sylvia's too small clothes.  Later when Sylvia was awake, she wanted her blankie spread "just right" on her bedroom floor.  Then she put her dolly on the blankie and asked me to put Sylvia there, too! 

And because this face is just so cute and kissable and loveable:

She is growing taller and taller.  Many of her dresses that fit in January and February are getting too short, and I notice that she is taller when she is standing at the bathroom sink, the table, the counters, etc.  Her vocabulary is growing, too.  She still babbles in her all vowel language quite a bit, but she also communicates with real words much of the time using 2 - 4 word phrases.

Some of her Susannah-isms are: 
stoom = spoon
gn (or ng... not sure how to spell it!) = stool  She can say "stool" but still calls it "gn" (but it's not really with an "n" because it's all said at the back of your mouth... )
buhyer = butter or peanut butter
buhyer fanich = peanut butter and jelly sandwich
tashews = cashews (Yes, she is that specific about which nuts she wants for her snack!)