Dress Up

The kids finally got interested in the box of my old accessories that I've been stashing away to designate as "dress up." To my delight, they actually got very excited and wanted to put all of the stuff on. Sometimes I envision these great play moments and then they are completely uninterested in the intended use of the item and just want to destroy it or put it away. This time it worked out. 

A lot of "mommy, what's this?"

Jack was pretty excited about dressing his sister up. She was not very receptive to the help

"Are these pants?"

Strutting around the kitchen

It was decided that this outfit is the Lion King. Checking it out in the mirror. 

More unwanted help

Papa's Birthday

We were so excited to celebrate Papa's birthday today with play time at the Discovery Museum in Sausalito. You can't get a better view of the bridge and the activities are pretty age appropriate for the kids. We were loving the "tot zone" which is a slower pace with the littlest kids. Any other 3 year old is probably too tall to enter, but Jack made it in with inches to spare. Very fun day!

Cosette aggressively loves her "Dia" which is her 4 month old cousin Lydia

Hanging in the kiddie zone 

After we got home. The aftermath of a fun day. 

What A Difference

What a difference a year makes. I was all excited to share our latest portraits of the kids. When I was naming the picture file "Portraits July 2013" I noticed that the file next to it was called "Portraits July 2012" and laughed at myself that one year ago, I was doing the exact same thing I was doing this morning: rounding up the kids after breakfast, getting them as clean and booger-free as possible, keeping the outfits in a wrinkle free bag to wrestle on at the last minute, printing my coupons, and driving up to the get their portraits taken for $4 a sheet. The kids look like complete babies 1 year ago, and not just Cosette. Jackson looks like a tiny baby to me at 2 years old. At 3 he feels like he's all grown up. So much has changed in their development, it's like I have a different life than I did last summer: what we do, when we do it, what I expect out of them, what needs they can now meet for themselves. All of it seems different.

But then I noticed that Jack is wearing the exact same shirt both years! That testifies to the fact that I don't buy him many picture-worth clothes, and he really doesn't grow (no wonder all the little girls are 3 inches taller than him!). And when I looked closer I realized that I had almost put Cosette in the exact same tutu as the previous year. Seriously, my kids never grow at all. I'm floored that such sameness and novelty can coexist. And I am the same women, just adapting to the newest stressers and routines the best way I can.

The most amazing thing about it is that I know there will be July 2014 pictures and I will say, "look at Jack and Coco, they were babies last year! Now they are all grown up." I will say "I can hardly remember when Jackson was 3!" But that is now. Today is a day that I will barely remember. Today feels like it lasts a whole week. I just read that time feels like it slows down when you are having new experiences and your brain is working hard to process new information. But I don't agree. Time slows down when you are at home more than you want to be, when you do the same things every day, when there are no minutes when you can just shut yourself in the bathroom and say "Everyone just leave me alone for 5 seconds!" That is when time feels very very slow. But things are slowly creeping towards change at a snail's pace so that one day I look up from the sameness and absolutely everything is different.

Summer 2012

 Summer 2013 - 

look, they're all grown up and posing for their prom picture

Baby face

 

 What a handsome young man!

 

 

A little tiny lady

 My Big Girl

 Big giggling personality

 

 She's got to dance

 

These 2 are ridiculous!

Inspired

Feeling inspired by this quote today in how to love my kids when loving them seems to make them miserable (read: lack of positive emotional response to my "loving actions"):

"For most people, to be loved is to be made much of. Almost everything in our Western culture serves this distortion of love. We are taught in a thousand ways that love means increasing someone's self-esteem. Love is helping someone feel good about themselves. Love is giving someone a mirror and helping him like what he sees.
This is not what the Bible means by the love of God. Love is doing what's best for someone. But making self the object of our highest affections is not best for us. It is, in fact, a lethal distraction. We were made to see and savor God - and savoring him, to be supremely satisfied."
John Piper, Don't Waste Your Life