i'll love you forever

i'll love you forever,i'll like you for always, as long as i'm living my babies you'll be. adapted from robert munsch's book, love you forever

my three and i, taken by my dear friend, shawn, this past weekend (thanks shawn...love ya pal).

my three... kiele: tweenish. smiling the way she thinks she's supposed to. my little mother hen. skyler: cute as can be, with the pigtails she begged to have for the photo. her happy, smiley self. ryder: sucking his thumb. a momma's boy. wearing the star wars shirt and tennies he begged to wear. me: a temporary single mom. missing steve. cherishing my three.

my three... they're growing up right before my eyes. no longer my babies, yet always my babies.

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all three went to the dentist this past friday. ryder was the first one out and when i asked him how it went, he replied:

bad.

me: it went bad ryder? why? what happened? ryder: she said i have to stop sucking my thumb.

and he's taken it very seriously ever since. tonight was no exception. when it was time for bed, i laid down with him (as i always do...breaking that habit will come another day). ryder's thumb went in his mouth a few times and he'd say the same thing each time.

no sucking my thumbie.

and each time, with a determined, forceful yank, out came his thumb. at one point he told me that he wasn't going to be able to stop sucking his thumb. i told him he could and what a big boy he was...how proud i am of him for trying. and within minutes, he had fallen asleep, without sucking his thumb. this was the first time ever...falling asleep without his thumb. and a bittersweet moment for me. my last baby of my babies really is growing up. sigh.

if you're a parent and you haven't read love you forever, you must. in my opinion, it's a book every parent should have on the shelf.

harness the wind

if the winds of fortune are temporarily blowing against you, remember that you can harness them and make them carry you toward your definite purpose, through the use of your imagination.- napoleon hill

and the winds were blowing strong at my house this past saturday. most days i do pretty well. not saturday. saturday had me in tears...a few times. before 8 AM that day... ryder bit sky for sitting in his seat sky wouldn't stop whining ryder wouldn't stop throwing fits (the jumping up and down, drive-you-crazy kind of fits) the little ones wouldn't stop arguing i spilled my cup of coffee everywhere i stepped in a pile of dog crap i kept thinking about having to mow the lawn that should have been mowed the previous week the house was a mess and the laundry seemed to have learned to procreate on its own.

while being a temporary single mom, i surely had temporarily lost control of my household and my kids. thank goodness that a birthday party was in the plans and my friend had offered to take my little ones there, with her kids (have i mentioned how much i cherish my friends). so the little ones left and kiele and i spent time together working on the yard. believe it or not, we actually enjoyed it. she and i. alone. sharing time and working as a team, to cover the chores that steve previously claimed as his. and by the time the little ones returned, after a full day of playing with friends, everyone was back to normal--well-behaved and happy.

i can't really explain what had happened saturday morning. i typically pride myself in having well-behaved kids and i was at a loss as to why they were behaving so badly that morning. but my thought is that it's part of the adjustment of daddy being gone. we had skyped with steve friday evening and maybe that factored into the little ones acting out saturday morning. maybe they were sad? or angry? angry that daddy is gone and they don't have the words to express their feelings. or maybe they were just testing? i don't know. i just don't know.

the military tries to prepare us for the deployment with meetings, presentations, pamphlets, resources, etc. but i'm not sure anyone ever fully could. especially the kids. seven months without daddy is simply damn difficult...and no one can prepare a three and five year old for that. no matter how hard i or anyone else tries.

sunday was a better day.

time to hear

if my mind can conceive it,and my heart can believe it, i know i can achieve it. - jesse jackson

Time to Hear. Â that is the name of the book she wrote, for her 6th grade english class assignment. i had a number of teachers suggest that i work on getting kiele's book published, with kiele's deaf itinerant basically insisting on it. so that is now what i'm working on. i've already been in contact with someone, who is going to pitch kiele's book to a publisher.

sorry for the crappy scan of the book; i had the scanner set on color smoothing so it jacked up all kiele's pictures. i plan to rescan once she gets the book back.Â

i can't even begin to express how very proud i am of kiele. Â she amazes me each and every day, with her grace, beauty, intelligence, maturity and immense amount of kindness. Â

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