Freedom Festival

We had a great time this morning at the Freedom Festival. Amazingly we sat through the printing press presentations. We saw a guttenburg press print a Declaration of Independence, saw a replica of the 1700's press like Benjamin Franklin made, that would have been used to print the Declaration of Independence, then we got to sign a copy of the Declaration of Independence!


There was a Celebration of jamestown living museum. Raymond loved the weapons guy, and Natalie stuck by the basket woman for one hour. Both of these situations made me very glad that we came today, when it would be less busy. All of hte children enjoyed the presentations given by an ancestor of pocahantas. Here are Natalie, Becca, Kalani and Lydia with her.

Here is Ben in his Jamestown era hat making a carrot covered face...



This is what the babies loved best (when they were DONE with everything else)It was strategically placed for me, because I was within 10 feet of the Pocahontas presentation (which Raymond listened to 3-4 times) and next to the music stage, where Kalani, Natalie and Lydia sat listening to fiddlers and patriotic music.

a day in the life...a very random day at that

I wake up shortly before 6, check my email and start to exercise. My dear son Raymond wakes up and the questions begin. My favorite question during exercise..."Mom why are you still exercising, your stomach is just like it was before the babies" He then runs away and doesn't understand why I am trying to kiss him.

We actually read our scriptures to relative quiet...assuming car and pony noises are "relatively" quiet.

I feed everyone breakfast while Chris takes off to work.

I sneak in a shower...the babies come and find me.

Ben the 3 year old decides that he prefers the living room floor to the toilet or the diaper...I think I need another shower.

Raymond greets me with the question...how many keys are there on a flute. I wish desparately our computer were back from the shop so I could google. How did parents deal with curious children without google? I call BYU info, figuring their computer department has my computer for a rediculously long time, maybe they can work for me...naw. I all a musical neighbor and she googles it, but we are still in discussion. How about the holes that are not necessarily keys? I try to distract Raymond with discussion of Piano's being a string instrument while the organ is a wind intrument...he doesn't get distracted easily.

Snack time...ants on a log. Raymond asks...is the peanut butter the log, or the celery?

We are reading Summer of the Monkeys. In this particular section Jimbo the Chimpanzee gets the boy drunk...he feels disgustingly sick. We look up the words sober, chimpanzee and hydrophobia (did you know Rabies is sometimes called hydrophobia because the animals get so sick the stop wanting to drink?)

Raymond interupts our reading to ask about the difference between a mule and a donkey...

LUNCH and chores (surprisingly painless)and NAPS!

The children watch a short show while I read...Those who love by Irving Stone. It is a fascinating book about Abigail and John Adams. It stimulates a thought..In around 1785 there were about 6000 abandoned babies a year in Paris. How does that happen? At a lecture I attended they suggested a tipping point in government is when the people vote themselves money. I wonder what some tipping points in morality are? I also wonder again at the differences between the American revolution and the French Revolution. I discover that Ben tried to use the whole bottle of soap to wash his hands, and his belly and legs and the chair. Miraculously his face is still very dirty. I throw him in the shower...he screams because he has hydrophobia...or because he'd rather not take a shower.

The babies wake up and all deep thought is drowned out by crying. We all go outside and enjoy the beautiful day.

Dinner is later than expected, which is normal. It is also vastly underappretiated.

I get all the children to bed, except Becca who is having personal difficulties in that area.

Natalie snuggles our cat fuzzy while I read to her for her night.

Chris comes homes and devours the dinner, then changes and runs out to play basketball.

QUIET!! I do dishes and here I sit...ahhh

Now I can google all those questions, as well as the word for the day from yesterday in a black hole video "spagetification"???

Easter children

Here are a few pitures form Easter weekend. As always I wish I had taken more pictures, but here are a few...
This is our cousin Michael sharing his piano time with Susan. She kept climbing up holding onto his jeans.
Rebecca and Susan were slow and careful egg gatherers.
The other children were quick and careful egg gatherers.

Here is the loot.

Susan settled into Uncle Bob's lap, which was a sweet and sticky experience for him!

cute children comments

For some reason I have yet to determine, the cute children comments go in spurts. We'll go for weeks with normal, hum drum discussion. Then WHAMMY a few days of great comments. In the last week I can think of three comments that must be remembered. The first is from Raymond, the 7 year old. He always has a zillion questions and is always thinking. Here is a glimpse at what he was thinking for this moment...he walked out of the bathroom and said "Mom, when I grow up, some people will call me a fish, but I still won't have gills."


That's it! No explanation, no context, no background...the mind reels.

Now two darling comments from Ben the 3 year old. He climbed on my lap, put his arms around me and said, "Mom, you are my smooching thing!" Then he kissed my nose.

The next one is really a conversation. I don't know what the background for this is, but somehow the 5 year old, Lydia, got the idea to ask Ben, 3, who he wants to live by when he grows up. She obviously wanted to convince him that she should be the obvious choice...

Lydia "Ben, who do you want to live by when you grow up? Because I've always been.."
At which point Ben interupts to say "Jesus! I want to live by Jesus"
Lydia responds "You could live bythe church."
Ben says "I think I'll live by the Temple"

Just plain cute!

Sisters weekend

All of Chris' sisters were in town this weekend to see Dad. What a gift that all of his children have been able to see him in the last two weeks. Here are some pictures from the gathering.

Natalie and Grandma snuggling.





Katie, Cindy, Chris, Tami and Mom all gather around Dad.


Grovers visiting Dad: Dalynne, Diana, Debbie, Aunt Barbara, and Darylann

Spring is like a box of chocolates

Spring in Utah...you never know what you're going to get. Last week we had a warm day. (What I mean is a warm day for Utah being in the 50s...had I been in California and it was in the 50s I would have curled up with a book and a blanket.)


We walked to the park with a few neighbors to enjoy the sunny weather. Here are a few pictures of our fun...Rebecca
Rebecca
Susan
Ben
Maren and Lydia
Susan

Sunday with Kelly brothers

What a great day! We drove to Pleasant Grove to go to church with Chris' brothers and family. The twins had their first experience with nursery, and thus Chris and I had our first experience with sitting through a lesson, first in a long time...

Here are some pictures of after church...

Uncle Bob shares his pictures with Ben and Lydia..




Susan tries on her daddy's shoes

Steven, Melody and Tyler Drew

Grandpa playing cards with Nick, Michelle, and Steven



Did you notice that when you say the name Tyler Drew, your lips pucker and you are all ready to smooch him?

how to wean twins...

Goodness I have nursed and weaned five babies before. I do have a few coping skills. I have employed variations on the cut out nursings, stretch out nursings and cold turkey methods. I do have some mothering skills. Right??

As with everything else twins...many of my mothering skills don't exactly apply.

First the cut out the least favorite nursing method. Although I hadn't really noticed it before, Susan and Rebecca have different favorite nursings. Rebecca is an evening and all-night nurser. Susan is a morning nurser...well at least that leaves me with a few day time nursings to cut out. I know how to do that, spread the nursing time out and...DISTRACTION! We take more baths, go on walks-when it isn't snowy, play,sing, read books and I hold them standing up instead of in nursing position....A blessing of weaning so late, is the food options. They are excellent with sippy cups and I frequently offer their favorite foods: avocado and frozen blueberries.

Now what? cold turkey couldn't be too bad from here right? I mean they are almost 18 months old and eat lots of different things. They are sippy cup pros and it really is only 3 or 4 nursings...

It feels like my body has somehow developed the potential to make gallons of milk, and I am now storing it all! I have tried hot showers, lot of liquids, rest, massage...I have taught my children to hug me from behind, my husband doesn't need teaching anymore, I carry my babies WAY on the side, and hold them with pillows in front of me.

Of course I also smell like coleslaw. I have read various places that cabbage leaves help with engorgement. It is my personal experience that THEY DO! Of course I feel a little odd cutting up cabbage leaves and stuffing them in my bra, but hey desperate times call for desperate measures (I wonder if whoever said that knew how it would be applied?)

We are now 48 hours from our last nursing. We have had some bumps in the road. Lucky for me only Becca woke in the night-so I only had one grumpy baby to rock, bounce, sing to , distract etc. During the day, I do sometimes find myself pacing around with two babies to hold (just ask my laundry room what kind of effect that is having on my housekeeping). I expected all of that.

I haven't really had time to mourn, like I normally do. I've been too busy with the process. As with so often the case with my raising twins, I'm too tired to feel much of the emotions involved...too busy living them. I am grateful to have been able to nurse so long. I'm grateful to my sister...who nursed two sets of twins longer than I have (once again i am left to ask HOW did she do that?). I'm grateful to my neighbor for all of her support. I'm grateful to my friend cindy for her wise advice to boost my supply. I'm grateful for my husband-who somehow rides all the emotions and just ignores all the bad ones, sends me to bed early, and gets me lots of water to drink. He supports me very well.

Although I have weaned all of my other children at younger ages than this, these ladies seem so young still. The more children I have, the younger they seem! It wil be interesting to see how the next phase of our relationship develops. I know I will soon be out of pain, not having to constantly distract, and past the back breaking constant carrying. Really I will...

Valenines food

We had fun with our food this year. I learned from a felow homechooler. She put pancake batter in a squeeze bottle to make shapes:
of course heart shaped pizza has been a favorite for years!


Rebecca

Susan

Mom in the hat

Today was generally awful. I am so tired, tred of sick, whiny children. Between the twins and I one of us had a ten minute nap...and it wasn't me. I dragged all seven to a visiting teaching interview at church, and that was the turn around in the day. I'm not sure what even made me go. I didn't want to, I hadn't showered, my babies were still sniffly (though not sick enough to sleep as poorly as of late). Somehow, just that 15 minutes talking with some women about anything but stinky diaper was just wonderful. My partner thinks we are doing okay.

Back at home...dinner. My homemade chili was a big hit, but only with me. Perhaps that was the brownies at the meeting. The lack of interest in dinner, means I spend more time cleaning people up then eating. Fine. Its bedtime anyway.

To get my 3 year old down I help him take apart his whole train track and bring it downstairs..at which point he entirely forgets it. We read PB Bears Birthday Party, as he tries to keep his droopy eyes open. Just as I'm about to call out to my 7 year old son to tell him he may miss his bedtime story, he appears in the doorway. We read until artoo deto and threepio go their separate ways.

The final piece of the puzzle is the 5 year old...always tricky. Which story will she choose, how long will it be, and will I tell it correctly? She chooses the Cat in the Hat comes back...with a few minor revisions. She would like to take the place of both children and I am the Cat. I was pretty happy with the mom eating cake in the tub, that actually sounded blissful...until the cleaning part started. Then the Mom in the hat needed help. So from under the hat on my head, come my children...apparently I have 26 and they make HUGE messes!! Their cleaning techniques did not surprise me, I've seen that before. I did feel 26 was a tad excessive, but my 5 year old disagreed. It was then I realized why the Mom in the Hat is so darned relaxed and happy...the VOOOM! That's it. The missing ingredient in my life is voom!

So now fast forward...bedtime take two is succesful and both babies are asleep. All the dishes are done, and my husband comes home. Exactly how do I explain in the five minutes he has until basketball that I had an awful day but with some cake in the tub and voom I'd be just fine, and doesn't he want some chili?


Why does he look at me funny when I try to explain these things??

Dish duty

Dishes...on a good daythey are ever present. On a bad day they can take over parts of the kitchen, often being carried throughout the house. I have never been a stellar housekeeper and since the twins have been born it just hasn't gotten better. Early on I would set the timer for my 15 minute morning kitchen cleanup and always find myself otherwise involved when the timer went off. It wasn't that I was easily distracted, or that i had run out of dishes to clean or counter to wipe...I was normally nursing, changing a diaper or in general mothering. I couldn't even clean for a lousy 15 minutes!

Now that the infancy days with twins are over, there are new challenges...



challenges like, keeping them from falling off the table, getting into the bathroom, or coloring on every book we own. Generally now I can scrape out 15 minutes, as log as I allow for a mess somewhere else. The biggest challenge has always been between books, babies and cleaning...in otherwords ME. Am I disciplined enough to put down a book, stop playing with the children, get off the computer and clean? Frequently I have help, constantly I have interuptions and I have mess makers active in atleast two other rooms at all times. It still comes down to me getting up more times than I sit down to nurse or change a diaper, starting more times than I am stopped by requests and cleaning repeatedly the same messes. Of course there is also good deal of suprvising, reminding, following up and quality control...also known as chores for the children.

I am frequently reminded that the only way to reduce the workload, is to reduce the number of smiles, the hugs, books, snuggles, and smooches...unthinkble.

2006

I finished our year in review and published it on our family blog ...http://chrisandbrittkellyfamily.blogspot.com/

My Christmas miracle

It was Christmas Eve morning and we arrived at church on time (now that is not the whole of the miracle--but it is quite amazing). As we scurried into our seats, my dear husband leans over and reminds me that he will be sitting on the stand to sing with the choir for the entire program. i tried not to throw a tantrum right there...I am after all the mother. Perhaps as a blessing for not throwing a tantrum...i received this christmas miracle...I sat through that whole meeting! I listened to the beautiful music and even thought some Christmasy thoughts. Of course I also drew endless numbers of trains, hearts and flowers, whispered a Max and Ruby book, played patty cake, played peek-a-boo, tried to quiet the laughing babies after playing peek-a-boo, wiggled and bounced babies, discreetly nursed once, juggled three children on my lap at once, scratched backs...really this meeting is only a little over one hour long! My daughter did take one of the babies out to walk out some wiggles...but I sat through the Christmas Eve service.

For me that is an amazing miracle.

Christmas morning

Christmas morning started at 3:30! I was blissfully unaware of its beginnings. My oldest daughter, 10, woke up to go to the bathroom. As she was walking down the hall our new kitty, fuzzy, ran between her legs and generally scared her almost to death. We had left Fuzzy to roam free, because we didn't like the thought of traping her somewhere all night, or somehow boxing her up. It turns out we are more like PETA than we thought...we spared the cat and scared our child.

Kalani finally caught the kitty and promptly put her outside! Luckily for us, Fuzzy scratched until Kalani let her back in and came to inform me that there was a cat in the house. It was 4:30 when Kalani came into our room, Kalani was very excted to know that fuzzy was not an intruder, but instead a Christmas present. Soon all of the children were up including Susan...it was 5:30AM. I was worried they would be grumpy, but had underestimated the power of adrenilin and stockings and ofcourse the all entrancing kitty.

We understand their excitement. In the middle of our Christmas Eve preparations, Fuzzy was delivered. Chris and I paused to play with her for...two hours. We snuggled her, fed her treats, showed her around...and generally forgot everything we were supposed to be doing while playing with the kitty. She is beautiful, all black with a small tuft of white on her chest. It does seem amazing that we haven't had a cat before now, especially considering how much our children have begged.


We enjoyed seeing Chris' parents, his sister and children and my brother and his family. It was a busy, wonderful, family day.

bed head

I have found it is very easy to go into great detail on the lack of sleep, quantity of diapers and spit up, lack of alone time and many of the inconveniences of motherhood. It is very difficult to explain how it feels to wake up to this...How could anyone not just instantly fall in love with that face?

I have also wondered...at what age is bedhead no longer so cute? I know its somewhere between 5 and 30, because it is certainly no longer cute on me...is it the same age that toes are no longer cute...or knees or ears or noses? Do they each have their own cuteness expiration?

it was the best of times...it was the worst of times

I do not know why we built gingerbread houses. It was definitely not on my agenda, I was talked into it. I see it as definite proof I am not my own woman that I said yes....what was I thinking. I spent one whole afternoon making the gingerbread, cutting it out, baking it, putting it all over my lack of counterspace. Then as per instructions I let it dry overnight. The next day it came time to make the frosting glue, put them together, stand back and let my children take over. Of course that meant the house in front of the three year old ended up in pieces, and the house made for the cousins ended up broken as well. Apparently gingerbread houses are not really suitable for those under the age of four.

At this point I was ready for death by gingerbread...then my son, Raymond, and my three daughters Kalani, Natalie and Lydia sat and decorated their houses for almost two hours. Kalani and Natalie ended up with a garden, with a pumpkin patch, and a path made of smarties. None of our houses qualify forany awards, but boy did those children have fun.

This is all very good, because my house went to pot over those few days. All that baking and cutting and building left very little time for laundry...and there is a lot of laundry when people catch some sort of stomach bug. Tonight we have three children sick, tomorrow is our anniversary...who wants sweet nothings anyway. i'll take a good man who'll clean up throw up and do his own laundry.

fabulous firsts

To break up the monotony of rants and ramblings I will inform you of the new experience I had this weekend. Last Friday I took five children to the grocery store. This would classify as a fear factor event for most people. I was not that worried myself because I have seven children, so really this was a sort of holiday.

The one aspect that needs to be considered along with quanity of children though, that makes this trip not a holiday, is the quality of the children...well really just their ages should suffice. I have children aged 10, 8, 7, 4, 3, 1, and 1. On this trip to the store I was missing the 10 and 8 year old.

As I drove to the store I mentally planned my coping strategy. I was carrying one baby, the other was in a stroller being pushed by an incredibly motherly 4year old. The 7 year old was generally walking near the cart. The 3 year old was sitting in the cart. He is the x-factor. The most volitle member of our shopping crew.

Unexplicably I deviated from my plan. We were going along fine until we got to the yogurt...here is the mistake I made and plan to learn from...I let the 3 year old out of the cart! From that point on the trip was disastrous. We were technically done and just needed to check out, but between the yogurt and the checkout line the little 3 year old took off. He is obviously healthy-I know this from the speed he maintained through the store. I am obviously not as healthy...so my loving 7 year old was instantly deputized and sent to retrieve the felon.

There I was at the checkout line with one 4 year old and two one year olds lookings around distractedly. The checker asks me if I have found everything I was looking for. I reply altogether too honestly, "Except for my son". Just then I hear a squeal from the other corner of the store. It appears my deputy has been succesful in apprehending the felon.

Now what am I to do?

I leave the 4 year old and baby in sight at the check out line and race to keep the deputy from using excessive force.

Ah the joys of parenting. I am reminded that I am always just shy of chaos. I am reminded just how grateful I am for my two older girls. Technically the shopping trip can still be considered succesful as I bought everything on my list and with the same children I came in with. Unsurprisingly we had frozen pizza for dinner.

the way to my daughter's heart

Friday was tiring. I haven't gone out much in the last year and sometimes my children protest. Friday is the result of a delussional mother giving in to the protestations of naive children. We went to a play group for two hours immediately followed by a two hour homeschool talent show, followed by library time.

I made it home and tried to gather myself, while my twins made up for distracted nursing time.

Finally up from the nursing chair I discover it is time to make dinner. In the world wind that is dinner preparation in my familiy I don't remember sitting down until almost everyone was almost done eating. As I sat down to a delicious slice of homemade pizza covered with peppers I ask my 8 year old, one of the cheif protestors, if she had had a good day. "Not unless I get seconds " she says.

November 21

One of the reasons I wanted to start a blog was to capture a "day in the life" every once in a while. Although today doesn't seem typical, I'm sick for example, there were still memories I wanted to capture.

1am Susan and Becca (1yo twins) wake up-Susan is snuffly and struggles to breath and nurse so I sit up in teh rocking chair with her. Both babies fall asleep in our bed-I don't. I drift in and out of sleep until...

4:30 In comes Benjamin (3yo) saying "I wanna watch a show" and "I'm too tired". I choose the second option and convince him to come in bed. This is why we have a king sized bed and this is also what makes this a non-typical day...

7:30 The older children have woken up and the girls are waiting for the babies to wake up. I get up and start breakfast.

8am family devotional in which the older children read scriptures about Moroni building walls around cities and digging moats...we discuss how that would NOT be a good thing to do around our house.

9am I am not the only one with a cold...this isn't technically a homeschool day. Both Kalani and Natalie have colds and stay in their pajamas all day. I mention this because this is one of those quiet learning days in which it is blatantly obvous to me that texbooks and desks aren't necessarily the best facilitators of knowledge. The children listen to Peter Pan on tape. I feel gipped that I have never read this book before and amazed at the story. Raymond (7) is reading an illustrated dictionary of mathematics and decides to use the tangrams to make some of the shapes. Much of the morning Natalie (8) and he work with tangrams while listening to the story. Other children join in for various amounts of time. We discuss geometry, names for polygons (not pronounce pol-ya-gons as originally thought by Raymond), various traingles, and quilting.

Meanwhile Lydia (4) has jsut started her phonics workbooks. We use Explode the Code ( http://www.epsbooks.com/dynamic/catalog/program.asp?seriesonly=1460M ). She started yesterday and is on page 20. I end up bribing her to stop when I know she is tired and isn't being careful.

Somewhere in here I do two loads of laundry and make bread-bread and honeybutter is lunch...now that part is completely normal!

The babies nap in the afternoon (simultaneous napping is considered bliss!), I play trains with Ben (3), during which my older daughters answers the phone and I miss an important message because she says I am busy! I read The Return of the King until Pippin and Merry unite and decide the Lord of the Rings is too long of a series to e all in one HUGE book...and much too tempting to read.

5pm dinner is begun, chores are begun, whining has begun, two loads of laudry are folde and put away. Unfortunately they are not the same two that were washed...but atleast we are no more behind then we were at the beginning of the day.

The children evidiently have a strange condition. When i mentioned chores they were all far too sick to pitch in, but are now playing a loud gme of tag through the house...i feel better about enforcing the chores.

6:30 an extravagant meal of spaghetti and meatballs begins...we discuss the differences between Disney and the real Peter Pan-the main difference they all brought up is that in the disney version Wendy is the first one of the plank...in the book it is the boys. We are split on which way we like it...(wendy or boys first)...but all prefer the book to the show. We also discuss planets and the sun (this was Raymonds doing) I ask him the difference between planets adn the sun and he immediately replies that the sun produces its own light...i think to myself that i better start reading what he is reading before he thinks I am really stupid. We also discuss the tragedy of the evening: once again we are denied books at the dinner table. Natalie (8) says this is worse than being grounded for a week. Poor child.

After dinner the girls dressed up and danced...Raymond asked if he could dance too with a prop (a sword). The girls swirl and Raymond and Ben end up collapsing on the bean bag in what can only be wrestling.

7:30 YIPPEE the dinner dishes are done before bedtime...this is not normal adn should in no way be construed as such...what is normal is baby bird and bedtime. I dose the children up with echinachia-which they all love. They stand around with their mouths open, which is why I call it baby bird. Bedtime was relatively easy, except in the shuffle susan fell down five steps.

Ben and Raymond's bedtime story was about volcanoes. Lydia wanted me to sing songs she made up herself-always a challenge.

8pm Kalani's night-we are reading "Growing Up" by Brad Wilcox. although she has already had "the talk", I want to make sure I didn't miss anything and that she understands it a little better. As we read the first page, she interupts and says, ya but how does the sperm get in there...thats what I want to know" I am reminded of why we are usng a book, relieved she doesn't know more, and happy she is interested...we skip ahead and read together. After a bit on birth we turn to Susan and Kalani says "Is that the way it was Susan?" To which Susan shakes her head no and laughs.

8:45 Chris comes home!!! We finish up Kalani's night, Lydia interupts for the third time, natalie comes up to defend herself from whatever Lydia is going to say.

9:15 I go to the bathroom by myself!!! I am quickly discovered and there is much crying at the door..then silence. I would have been happier with the crying, Chris hears splashing and discovers two babies playing in the other bathroom.

9:30 bedtime for newly washed babies!