quick comment

i absolutely hate the commercialization and marketing of CRAP to children. when I was pregnant with august and facing two baby showers i pleaded with people:NO DISNEY. i hate hate hate disney. i hate clothes with GAP on the front. i will buy gap clothes if on sale and not branded with their logo. my children are not unpaid advertisers. it's bad enough that they get to watch a few things on dvd, but tv is out of the question now that august is getting old enough to notice commercials. i try to limit their exposure even to the dvds, because i get so tired of the constant begging to watch them.
i, however, was not the mom in joann fabrics, at bedtime, with a squirmy toddler strapped to her back. i was not the mom who bought said toddler spongebob squarepants flannel to get him to stop yelling "DUB DUB DUB DUB BOB BOB BOB DUB" across the store. i was also not the mom who stayed up late making a blankey out of the flannel for the toddler and will be getting up early to make one for the toddler's older brother who will be insanely jealous and freak out until he, too, has a DUB DUB blankey. sigh.

breastfeeding

it was the world breastfeeding week celebration tonight at the riverfront. i went last year with h in a sling and felt awkward. tonight i was so relaxed and excited to see all those people there for support of women breastfeeding! woohoo! august and hudson had a blast eating suckers, apples and popcorn and i got to oogle chubby babies and pretty slings. i also found out we qualify for WIC due to jeremy's layoff status so i'm totally going to apply for that tomorrow. it's all healthy food that we buy anyway and it includes fresh fruit and veggies, whole wheat bread, non-sugar cereal...
i walked around with h on my back in the Beco and i felt super proud of myself. from the second i had to stop nursing august i was determined to nurse my next baby and since i worked so hard i don't want to stop. why would i stop now? just because hudson is a giant and likes to stand on his head doesn't mean he is done nursing. i think he's had about a cup total of cows milk since he has been born, no formula, and look at him...picture of health. i'm proud of all the nights spent with an aching back trying to keep him asleep in bed next to me...the hours and hours i spent NAK because i wasn't ready to go to sleep yet, eating the weirdest snacks that were all dairy-free...i'm proud of the feeling i got looking at his eyes roll as he fell into a deep sleep nursing tonight after much fighting and struggling against sleep. i'm also proud of august, who doesn't nurse but chooses to snuggle with his head on my chest "my hold you" so he gets his snuggles in, too.
breastfeeding is so much more than feeding a baby and i'm going to keep on keepin on if you know what i mean. hudson loves his Ny Nys!

three day weekend

i'm counting today as a weekend day, too, because i didn't have to babysit so we sat around and played until my coffee kicked in and i turned into a cleaning tornado..............
we went to taylor's first birthday party. the dress/shirt turned out really well. i used an amy butler pattern for an empire waist shirt but made it big with cuffed sleeves so she can wear it for a long time (provided it doesn't fall apart!) I wanted to make leggings to match but i couldn't find any orange knit so i'm on the lookout for something i can repurpose. the party was nice and i felt so welcomed and loved. it's interesting because i don't see those people very often anymore but they are like family to me. the boys had fun. hudson decided to say a bunch of new words and show off his skills. it cracks me up that even though i am extremely anal about what the boys eat and making sure it's balanced and healthy, the new words were 'chicken nug' 'chee-booger' 'num nums' sigh.........he really enjoys playing with the wooden pizza party set too, cutting slices of toy pizza for me. i wish they were real slices of pizza but that is a forbidden food right now.
today august got out our bible and was flipping through it, 'reading' it to himself. i asked what it said and he read the story: "Three little pigs drive up a hill. They drive fast fast fast. Then they go down hill nice and slow. Ok the end!" LOL
we hung out at the inlaws' farm all day yesterday. it was incredibly relaxing and such a nice day out. i sat on the driveway in the breeze and smelled the sweet corn pollen...i love that smell. that and the noisy bugs at night make me happy. late summer. we'll be squeezing in our last days of swimming soon (i can't believe i'm saying that already) and then august will start "preschool" in our house. my only objectives are to 1. work on what numbers mean (can count to fifty but doesn't know what fifty means) 2. learn how to write, starting with home made montessori sandpaper tracing letters. other than that it will be art projects, cooking, running around, making messes, sorting things, copious amounts of nature time... all the normal stuff we do anyway.

a win and a loss

after the kids go to bed and i do some mindless activity to wind down (run, sew, stare at facebook or the api website) i think about the highlights and lowlights of the day. sometimes there is more good than bad, other times its the opposite, and i usually think of a few ways to improve the next day. i've really been working hard at trying to get august to avoid major meltdowns. he has had them occasionally, but never was a fit-thrower but since the beginning of the summer he has really grown. he uses logic, tells stories, and is very observant about how others are treated and what they do. his newfound mental abilities also came with a great selective memory so i have to repeat everything over and over. i didn't know how exhausting this was until i was in the thick of it, so it's rough.

i hate to think about the tantrums as "losses" on my part, because i'm not out to win him over or control him, i just don't want him to freak out. i know that, come 4pm, august needs a balanced meal, a bath because he has been playing outside all day, and lots of snuggles and books. however, he doesn't think he needs those things, and if we are all going to survive until tomorrow we have to pretty much convince him. the times i've tried to force him to put on pj's as best i could it was ridiculous...he is huge, what's the point...

i'm trying to see it not as a fight but as a way to further develop his independence and reasoning skills. it is highly annoying, though, to hear "I NO TAKE BATH RIGHT NOW. MY TAKE BATH NEXT WEEK! I BE STINKY!" over and over and over

tonight i came to a realization. once in a while i go in to do bedtime snuggles with him (daddy reads since he's home at night but i still have the magic touch) and he is all kicks and hits and snarls. i know from my connection parenting skillz that he needs a connection and there is a need i have to fulfill and i try everything to get him to be calm and lay still. sometimes it takes forever, and sometimes i just tell him that hitting hurts, lets lay down, quiet legs, etc and he conks out. tonight, i was done. i didn't yell, scream, shame, i just let him know that i was not going to tolerate being hit and kicked. that's not nice, i don't deserve to be treated that way, i don't hit and kick him so i was going to leave. i gave him a second chance to stop, he didn't, so i came downstairs and he flipped out in his bed.

it breaks my heart when this happens, because i know that snuggles will cure it and relax him, but it has to be his idea to allow me into bed. he is growing up and i have to let him be independent and live with the disappointment of me not laying with him. it hurts me, i'm not letting him cry it out because of course i went back in to see if he was ready to snuggle and he was...but i know that he is able to make these little decisions bit by bit and i am able to keep calm and not get hurt.

parenting these boys is really hard lately.

still around

i didn't go anywhere. we dumped our cable and internet service not because of cost but because of the constant draw of screen time. for a month we had nothing, then i got internet access on my phone so i was able to look at a few sites and reconnect. we recently got internet service back up so jeremy can do his job search from the house instead of having to rely on public computers.

we are all doing fabulous. august had his third birthday a few weeks ago and we got him a basic starter set of the Plan City. i highly reccomend plan toys because of their responsible use of 'waste' trees for making the toys and paying a fair wage to workers in thailand. plus, the products are freaking awesome. my parents bought several add ons to the set as it's expensive and funds are tight around here. we had a nice party for him the week later and he still sings happy birthday to himself.

i've been working to perfect our house, painting and changing things. our room is now an adult bedroom because we don't cosleep with husdson anymore. i miss it but he can't stay up there until he is able to do stairs alone. august likes to visit in the middle of the night after he wakes up to go potty. we are pull-up free now and it's awesome. he's so big. i am going to post more often but it won't be much more than what he and his brother do because there is so so much...every day there is something new and exciting.

my favorite so far: at the park last week august looked up at me and said, "my a big boy, but my a little boy too, mama. my hold you." 'my hold you' is his way of saying PICK ME UP! love love love love. i adore the way hudson shakes his head and goes 'ya ya ya Ny Ny!" when i ask him if it's time to go night-night.

they are both obsessed with watermelon, Cars movie(august will tell you by name the ones he has to buy to complete his collection), tractors, friends, the sandbox, my protein bars that i have to share every morning...

i cannot sit still

and sitting still is somethign i have to do in order to be online. i've been running, running every day and sewing, and painting, and GARDENING.........
my mom got me seriously hooked on the plant thing. i got my first pot all planted, let gus plant a cherry tomato start that he named Cookie Plant, we did the garden which is coming up...and i can't wait to dig up the east side of the house to do something there. the cuteness of the house is all on one side.
i havent used the dryer in a week. all the clothes go on the line. we are pretty much living outside. we went for a hike last saturday and saw all the green-august pointed out how different it looked than last time, just a few weeks ago, when everything was pretty much all brown. we saw 5 wild turkeys, a pheasant, and one deer in an hour!
mothers day was spent with both sides of our family meeting in the middle at miller park in bloomington. we spent all day there and toured the zoo at the end. august had a blast, and hudson perked up when he was plopped in the beco for a while to relax.
i have fallen in love with taboule. hudson knows 9 words now, including apple, and he has climbed up into august's toddler bed to take a nap. august is learning how to pedal on a trike, and will be getting a balance bike soon. we have already encountered enough splinters and scraped knees for me, but i'm sure the season will bring many more.
we've been in our house for two years now and i love it more every day. i love it for what it is and i do not wish it to be something it is not: new, spacious, drywall-smelling. i love the homey way it smells and the way the sun shines in august's room in the morning. i love the way our backyard tree makes the yard seem room-ish and private. i don't even mind the lack of a dishwasher. i love our kitchen.
i've taken a forced night off from running due to a throbbing knee, but i've plowed through ten pounds already and it feels so so good. i have pics to post of all my the things going on around me, and i promise to post them soon.

it was a stressful day

but i'm about to make it end positively. it will be my 2nd attempt today, but i am going to go running, for real. it has been so so long. please cheer me on. this is a good thing.