Mother's Little Helper

Some mornings at our house are busy.

(Busy sounds nicer than crazy, hectic, or frenzied)


Said craziness is caused most often by:
Me oversleeping, or just not getting ready fast enough

Other people have "priority" in the bathroom
(1.5 baths in a household of 4 adults and 5 children really isn't enough)
Aiden waking up earlier than usual
Sean working in the mornings

Otherwise, most mornings with Aiden go pretty smoothly. 
He wakes, I pick him up, and we climb back into our bed & cuddle :) 
Then, I finish getting ready while Aiden cuddles & reads books with Sean for another 20 minutes.


However, on days when Sean works earlier than I do, I'm the main caretaker of our little monkey.


On these very special occasions,
(when Mommy really needs to get out the door)
iPod games are a lifesaver!


While I do my makeup,
Aiden is more than content to sit in the bathroom 
& play his animal matching game.

or Fruit Ninja :)

They can always take a bath

Kids are messy. Deal with it.

I spent far too much time as a new mom constantly freaking out. About everything. Typical new mom behavior? Probably. But looking back now, I wish I would have just embraced things and gone with the flow a little more. 

On the last day of my Infancy & Childhood Developmental Psychology class (a mouthful, yes.) my teacher gave us some excellent advice. Number one on the list?

"Find what is the most important thing to you, and don't worry about anything else."

By this she meant, do you think going to church no matter what is important? Fine, then don't stress about getting everyone out the door looking immaculate, just be glad you're out the door. Do you think always looking presentable and perfect for others is important? Fine, then you can't freak out when you're running late because people were getting ready and looking perfect. 

You can't have everything, but you can strive for the things that matter.

So lately, I've really been trying to put that philosophy into action, and put things in perspective of the grand scheme of things. So what if Aiden has dirt and grass stains on his pants - he was scooting down the hill on his butt and he was happy. 

All of this in perspective of course - I'm not going to be letting him draw on the walls with permanent marker because it makes him feel good and I don't want to hurt his feelings. If that does happen, I'll have to tell him markers are for paper, not walls. If he does it again he'll be white washing like Huckleberry Finn.

Just Kidding :)

So here are some pictures of Aiden thoroughly enjoying himself while eating a s'more, while I stand back and let it happen.

Not too bad, just took the top cracker off and used the chocolate as a napkin to wipe the marshmallow off his mouth.

Slowly beginning to realize s'mores are edible toys . . . 

Maybe more edible than toy . . .

Looks up and says "Mommy, all messy!"

Time to start the bath :)

Sean. Made. Me. Dinner

So this actually happened three months a little while ago, and I just found the pictures on the camera and decided they needed to be shared.

Sean made me dinner. Pretty epic and noteworthy, seeing as he hadn't done this in the past year. Like, ever. He was really secretive about it too, but luckily my mom took pictures as proof of him actually making the whole thing. According to a recipe. By hand. Without help. I don't think you realize what this means!*

Sean reading a recipe . . . not Reddit?

Annnddd, I took pictures of the meal. Except I was so thrown by him actually making me dinner, I didn't stop to admire it until I had already finished my first bowl.

I was hungry! 

And that shit was delicious.

Pretty sure I'm getting hungry right now just looking at it. 

*Just so you know, this means that Sean can, in fact, accurately read a recipe. At the time when he made this for me [ahem, three months ago], I joked that he needed to cook for me more often, now that I knew he could do it.

I lied. 

I was definitely not joking.

Sean, apparently thought I definitely was joking. At the time of this posting [three months after said incident], he has yet to cook me dinner again.

I may need to guilt him. 

Shamelessly. 

Because I have no shame when it comes to people making me food.

:)