Random Updates on the Kids

I haven't been keeping everyone up to date on their latest quotes and ventures! Here's an update from memory, going backwards.

Kaylin in the car today after asking me to turn the music down (it was not loud) - "Sometimes Daddy has the music on so loud it makes me sick."

Kavan, hugging me every time after HE goes potty "I'm so proud of you Mommy!" or, "I'm so proud of you Mommy and Daddy!"

The back and forth one-liner fights have begun. "No I didn't" "Yes you did!" "No I didn't" "Yes you did!" You get the idea. And the poor kids are ultra-confused over Ben's ever changing schedule. "Where's Daddy?" Then they battle back and forth in attempt to answer their own question:

"He's working." "He's sleeping!" "No He's working!" "He's sleeping!"

"He's sleeping, and when he gets up he goes to work," I regretfully solve the debate - I wish I had better news for them!

Kaylin at the chiropractor told the dr she was going to be a mom. Ben: "No you're not!" Kaylin, giggling, rolling her eyes: "You don't know how Daddy."

Kaylin and Kavan could each play by themselves nicely at times if the other one didn't come along to bother them. "What are you doing Kaylin?" I asked once, irritated that Kav was reading and she had to go up and start stroking him. "I'm petting him."

Me: "He's not a pet." Kav: "I'm not a pet!" Kjo: "I'm just pretending" Kav: "I'm not a pet! I'm not a pet!"

A while back I mentioned Kai's first food was avocado. This actually isn't true. His first food was pancake. I have learned my lesson about giving Kav food to eat in his carseat without keeping a closer eye on him. Trying to get the pancake out of his mouth while driving 70 in bumber to bumper traffic on a one-lane curvy interstate construction zone of the "unweave the weave" project was only causing him to choke. It was scary.

His second food? A popcorn seed. This time I was burping Kai on the couch and Kav evidently came up behind the couch and snuck a popcorn seed in his mouth. I had no idea this had happened until Kai was choking and spit it out. Kaylin told me what had happened. Usually this would make her the prime suspect since she is now very talented at lying, but Kav fessed up and I could tell it was him.

All for now!

Picking out Clothes

Kaylin seems to have acquired my indecision. Up until now I have thought it to be a stalling tactic when I give her clothing options in the morning and she takes a while to provide her answer. But now she voices her thought process out loud. She begins reaching for the striped shirt and instead points to the other one, plain white with a word and flower on the front. "This one has a pink and purple flower on it that's my favorite." Back to the striped shirt. "But this one has pink and purple and all my favorite colors all over." I empathize with her difficulty in making even the smallest of decisions. She chose the striped shirt. She looks lovely.

Why can't they be like this all day?!

99% of the time they are at each other's throats. It is another difficult stage. But then there a few brief wonderful moments when they are so sweet to each other. Here is one of those times, captured on my camera. It is Kaylin reading to Kavan (she has entire books memorized. Thankfully her memory is from her mom not her dad :) Hope this works! Okay, my video upload didn't work. I'll try to get it on here later. Let's try another one, this is short. This is Kaylin imitating Ben speaking French. Now I'll have to see if Ben will let me videotape him so you can see how funny this is!

Kaylin's First Letter

Kaylin told me what to write today (with minimal coaching:)) in a letter to her favorite babysitter who's away for the summer.

Dear Taylor,
Hi. How are you? I love you. Thank you for loving. Come to my house again some day. Love you come to my house. You're welcome coming to my house. Love your mother and daddy. Thank you loving for going to summer. Jesus died on the cross. (picture of Jesus on cross) I love you in summer. What did you do in summer? I want to come see you again.
Love, Kaylin and Kavan

Please Pray!

Just two more days until the deadline for my "Mommies in motion" class. I so far have only 3 verbal "yes's" and 1 of those has submitted the registration. I'm hoping for a last minute turnout. I'm sure I would have been one of the moms waiting until the last minute! I would hate to disappoint the ones who do want to do it if I don't get enough people.

My upcoming community ed classes are online now and can be seen at this web addy:

https://www.centennialcsonline.org/centennial/ClassCatalog.aspx

Click on the 2 baby and me fitness classes, the exercise ball, and women on weights.

These also need at least 8 participants each for them to not cancel the classes.

I got excited about all these classes and financially we're counting on them - and now I'm starting to realize the possibility that any or all these may not happen!

Thanks for your prayers,
Karissa

The Bridge

We went to see it on the one-week anniversary, had a babysitter for the older two. Ben was not impressed with our far-away views, but what we did see was still shocking to me. Here's some pics:






Pic 1: bridge no more, it was between the 2 other bridges/structures
Pic 2: north end of bridge
Pic 3: south end of bridge
Pic 4: the new "end" of 35W, you see the dropoff here. View from University

Premier Physique site

I finally updated my business website! Someday when I'm ready to invest more cash in my business for the purpose of expanding it I will have it done professionally, but for now I'm proud of the hard work I put in doing it myself. All I know is that it looks a lot better than before! If you click through the links you can find more details on my new "Mommies in Motion" class. Just got the flyers out today!
Check it out: www. premierphysique.com

Trials of Tuesdays

My kids had lunch at 2:30 today, a normal Tuesday. The most difficult hours of each week are Tuesday from the lunch hour until naptime.

Around noon on Tuesdays I need to be in Lino Lakes to pick up our milk and an assortment of other farm-fresh foods. This is the easy part. It's arriving home that I find so difficult. By the time we get home, everyone is past due for needing to eat (including Kai needing to nurse), I am starving and therefore crabby, everyone has to go to the bathroom or get changed, everyone is ready for their naps, and I have milk and sometimes other groceries that have been out in the heat for too long and need to get in the fridge or freezer ASAP. But first I get the crying baby and crabby kids out of their carseats, and then I have to wash the milk bottles before I put them in the fridge (the crate is dirty).

Ideally I suppose I would feed them before we get the milk, but the morning seems to fly by and I can't get my act together quickly enough. And of course when we arrive home I have no idea what we're going to eat for lunch.

And it's never just as "simple" (Ha) as I described above. The incredibly ironic fact is that there are always extras to do that day or something else that goes wrong added to this mix. Examples: Having to get gas, Kaylin going to the bathroom in her pants at a park I occasionally take them to before we pick up the milk, breaking a glass and spilling a drink, spilling a crate of raspberries in the car (leaving red juice everywhere), one of the kids being extra difficult, untimely phone calls, road construction detours...

Today Kai was extra crabby because he wouldn't nap this morning. On the way there I missed our exit, adding 12 miles to our trip. When I got off the freeway finally at the next exit I saw a certain unnamed fast food restaurant I go to about once a year. "A-ha!" I thought, starving "This makes my detour worth it."

I got in the very long drive thru line and wasn't so confident of my decision as I didn't think the kids would like this lengthened trip. Then the truck just turned off, I thought the battery had died! When I started it back up it started just fine, but I got out of the parking lot as fast as I could because I would be too embarrassed to tell people where my car broke down if I ended up needing a tow. It actually was difficult getting out of there with the lunch-hour traffic jam.

When we finally were on our way home from getting the milk I realized I'd never put Kaylin's seatbelt on after the park, so I pulled over on the freeway. Then I had forgotten our exit is closed and that I should have taken an alternate route home, so again I had to go up to the next exit and turn around. By this time I did not think my kids could handle being in the car one more minute let alone 10. Our arrival home went smoother than usual but Kai got to eat first and I didn't have the other kids' lunch on the table 'til Kai was asleep. Of course by the time Kaylin and Kavan went down Kai was awake again. So goes Tuesdays.

Nectarines Good, Candy Bad

Today on the way home from church Kaylin was singing about nectarines. "Do you like nectarines?" I wanted to learn more about her inspiration for this melody.

"I love them. Nectarines are healthy food, right mommy? We need to eat healthy food because it's good for us. Candy is bad for us, right mommy? We don't eat candy because it's bad for us..." she then went into a confession about eating a piece of candy because "you were too far away to ask" when she was at camp.

I was so happy for this understanding I didn't know she yet had, and also proud of her confession. Later tonight Ben prayed with her before bedtime, where as usual, she carried on about whatever was currently on her mind. "Thanks for all the healthy things cuz candy makes our tummies sick so we need to eat healthy stuff cuz candy's not good for you..." She is learning at such a young age what foods God did and didn't design for our bodies. I am realizing at her age now that I need to be a better role model. I've been getting away with a lot... but now I'll be held accountable! (As I am for driving too fast, rolling through stop signs... she catches it all!)

Playing Dead?!

I hired a babysitter so I could clean their rooms. This is something I can never get done because my "time-to-get-done" is when they're asleep.

I asked Kaylin what they did with Amy. She said they played dead. "I was the police officer and Amy was dead. Kavan crashed into her. She died. She went to Heaven."

I did not know how to respond to this. I loved her understanding of Heaven. I hated everything else about this type of play. In light of recent conversations I assume this was Kaylin's idea and not the babysitter's. I want to ask the babysitter about this but having a conversation with this quiet girl is harder than having a conversation with Kai.

Solutions All-Around

It has been an exciting week for me. I took a brief moment of inspiration and decided to make it happen.

It's been a long-term challenge for me to figure out how to get into an exercise routine with these kids, but one I haven't taken seriously until realizing I'm done having babies now. An idea I had quite a while ago was to teach fitness classes as soon as I was ready to work again. That was not assuming we would need the money, just that we would get a discounted gym membership and I would be accountable for working out.

That idea got pushed aside when we realized that we DID need the money, and fitness classes through my available workout gyms just didn't pay enough. Then I got excited about waitressing again, thinking it would be easy to find a job.

Since I don't want to "have" to work I found myself putting off applying at additional restaurants. But our already super-tight budget hasn't been able to handle the last year, with an unanticipated escrow shortage driving our house payment up and gas prices costing us almost double our "gas budget".

This week I remembered "oh yeah, I have my own business" and decided to teach classes independently. I brainstormed a fitness club that would meet in a local park with regular exercise classes for Forest Lake moms, especially geared towards exercising with baby. My flyers are ready to go and will be distributed to at least 250 homes in my immediate neighborhood. I'm hoping to have time to distribute them to other neighborhoods as well. This will be a 4-week pilot program, and has a great income potential, but only if there's enough interest, so it's a "maybe." I was too late to get this in the fall community ed catalog for the Forest Lake district. I was NOT too late to get in on some action in the Centennial District. So here's what's for sure:

In the last 2 days before the Centennial deadline the coordinator and I arranged for me to teach 2 rounds of these twice-a-week "baby and me" fitness classes, one outdoors in the mornings and one indoors at night, later in the fall. In addition she needed an instructor for some of their regular classes, which I was willing to do only on Saturday mornings back to back. So for 10 weeks I'll also be teaching "exercise ball" and "women on weights" in a middle school weight room. I talked her into giving me their top instructor pay, even though I'm new to them! So for now I'll be teaching 4 classes a week. What a great workout plan! It will be 6 classes if my "Mommies in Motion" club turns out to be a hit.

Thank you, Lord for providing answers even in ways we don't anticipate. Your plans are even better and I'm grateful for the many times in life you've shown me this.