Princess Giggles

23 November 2017, 11:50 pm by Giggles
Categories: Life

Iddo told me I’m not a princess because I don’t wear twirly skirts all the time. But Brett still calls me Princess every night so I’m going to side with him on this one. And I still love the nickname “Miss Giggles” that my students gave me fifteen years ago when I started teaching school. (Wow! Has it really been that long?) Since I’m titling all my family posts with our nicknames this month, and I’ve been told that I need to blog about me on the 23rd, this one gets to be called Princess Giggles.

I remember hearing multiple times in multiple different places that it is the teenage and early adulthood years where we “find ourselves” and figure out who we are. I’m so glad that discovery isn’t limited to those years. I love that my life is a constant source of discovery and growth as I continue to become. How I define myself now is so incredibly different in a lot of ways from how I would’ve defined myself 15-25 years ago. There are some constants though.

I am a wife, a mom (of twins even), a daughter, a sister, a friend.

I am a computer programmer, a runner, a reader, a quilter, a knitter, a crafter.

I am a Mormon, infertile, a PhD, a teacher, an introvert, a recovering perfectionist.

I’m particular about how my laundry gets done, prefer cleaning bathrooms over cleaning the kitchen, and surprise myself with how much I like cooking on a regular basis.

I love the stars and sleeping in.

I dream of marathons, quilting machines, publishing a book.

And I love who I am.

4 Shared thoughts

Warehouse Stores

22 November 2017, 11:12 pm by Giggles
Categories: Family, Life

What is it about stores that sell things in bulk that also means people have to comment when you have kids in bulk? I’m in different online groups of mothers of multiples and pretty much every single one of us has a story of someone saying something weird to us when we’re shopping at Sam’s Club or Costco. Today when we went it was the woman who pretty much lost her voice upon seeing us with our four kids and could pretty much only mouth “Are they all yours?” and then respond to my happy, “yup!” by shaking, not just her head but her whole body, and mouthing “Oh my G–!”

Yes, I am sometimes amazed at the fact that we have four kids as well. Last night in particular as I put the last one down for bed it seemed a bit surreal to me but that’s probably related to the fact that there was a time we weren’t sure we’d have any. But is four kids really that many?

We actually didn’t get any comments about having twins this time around, but that one’s pretty common too. We did have someone point to Shimri and Shimei and ask what aisle he could pick some up on.

And there was the old guy doing samples that asked me how long my labor was with Izri. Which was weird. But then he said he’d been a nurse before retiring and had a woman call the hospital to say her water broke, but she was on the bus on the way to the hospital and would be there soon. His background made the question less weird.

I often watch our kids and comment that we had them purely for the entertainment value they provide. Taking them out in public just provides even more options for entertainment.

4 Shared thoughts

Tuesdays are long

21 November 2017, 10:56 pm by Giggles
Categories: Family, Life, With the Kiddos

Tuesday morning I wake up at least by 7:00 instead of 8:30 (depending on when Izri wants to eat before going back to sleep for a while) so I can make sure I’m not wearing pajamas when the garbage man comes. Because I have to take the three big kids out to wave at him all four times he goes down our street (two trucks, a garbage truck and a recycling truck, going down both sides of the street) and he can come as early as 7:15. Every other day of the week Brett gets the kids up so after Izri eats around 6:30 I can go back to sleep for two more hours.

Lunch starts at 11:00 rather than noon so that the kids can be sleeping by noon instead of 1:00 so that I can get them up at 1:15 instead of 3:30 so they can be in the car by 1:30 so we can be at the children’s museum by 2:00 and be there for the story and craft every week (this week’s story was 10 Fat Turkeys and we made turkey party hats). We stay for two hours and then head home so that I can feed Izri, and maybe one of these days get him to sleep so he doesn’t scream at Brett all evening, so that I can pack up all three bigger kids (Iddo on her bike and Shimri and Shimei in the double jogger) and go running before dinner.

After a 3 mile/30 minute run (Iddo usually has had me drop her off at home about halfway through) I sing in a quick shower to keep Izri, who is resting on a rug at the bathroom door, happy while Brett cooks dinner (which he wasn’t able to do while I was gone because Izri was screaming at him). Then we clean up the toys, start the bedtime routine, and I’m not even wondering why I’m tired by the time all the kids have dropped quickly to sleep.

Wednesday naps are the best we get all week.

4 Shared thoughts

Not where I wanted to be

20 November 2017, 10:33 pm by Giggles
Categories: Health, Life

When I started my breastfeeding journey I swore I’d never be someone who felt they needed to nurse in the bathroom. I did not want to feed my child in a place where I wouldn’t want to eat. But lately I keep finding myself where I never wanted to be.

The problem isn’t intolerant and uneducated people who think breastfeeding should be done in back rooms and closets. No. The problem is small children who want to use the bathroom but can’t do it unsupervised yet and a baby that wants to eat while they’re in there. So I sit on a stool in the doorway and nurse the baby while making sure everything is as it should be in the bathroom. Our bathroom is the only bathroom I’ll nurse in.

Actually, one of my prouder moments breastfeeding happened in the bathroom. It was 2am and Shimri was nursing and I was suddenly hit with an intense wave of nausea and knew if I stopped her so I could go to the bathroom that she’d wake up and I’d have to start the process of getting her to bed all over again and I also knew that this wasn’t merely a wave of nausea. So I got up off the bed where I was nursing her, kept her on, went to the bathroom, opened the toilet with my free hand, puked over her, getting it all in the toilet and none on her, wiped my mouth off with a wet washcloth, and went back to her bedroom where she finished and I put her to bed. THAT was a breastfeeding moment in the bathroom worth being proud about.

Just goes to show you, never say never, especially with anything regarding small children.

4 Shared thoughts

Izri

19 November 2017, 10:25 pm by Giggles
Categories: Family, Happy Things

Mom & IzriDo you know how you can go along and think you have everything you need and that everything is great and it’s only because you can’t imagine that anything is missing? And then something comes along and you realize it’s what’s been missing this whole time and you can’t believe you didn’t realize how much you needed it before?

Izri is that for our family.

We didn’t know just how much we all needed him until he got here and now we can’t imagine our family without him.

He’s brought out traits in his siblings we didn’t know they had as we’ve watched them take care of him and be so sweet with him.

He’s given me opportunities to do things (like run while pregnant) that I didn’t realize I wanted so badly.

He has the biggest, brightest smile (even when he’s sleeping) and he laughs with such pure joy that we just know the world is a much better place because he’s in it and our family wouldn’t be complete if he weren’t here.

4 Shared thoughts

Bye for now

18 November 2017, 10:16 pm by Giggles
Categories: Quilting/Sewing/Knitting/Crafting

I was never into Saturday morning cartoons growing up. They required waking up early to watch, something I don’t really do. But as an adult I had my two hours of “cartoons” I loved watching on Saturday morning. It started at 9:00 with Sewing With Nancy and then Fons & Porter’s Love of Quilting. Then I watched the This Old House Hour. It was a great start to my Saturday. And I learned a LOT watching those shows. In fact it was a technique I saw years ago on a Sewing With Nancy show that I’d wanted to try ever since that I used to make the nest panel for my Halloween costume.

It’s been a while since I’ve tuned in to my shows, but this morning I sat in our family room with, based on their interest watching me, at least three future sewers sitting on/around me, and watched the final episode of Sewing With Nancy. She featured two of her granddaughters and shared projects that big sewers can help little sewers make. My little sewers are eager to get started.

Nancy Zieman died this past Tuesday after a battle with cancer. She will be dearly missed in the sewing world. I was touched that she ended this last show just as I remember her ending all of her previous shows by simply saying, “bye for now.”

Death is definitely a sad separation, but it is temporary. And her legacy of what she taught and what she sewed will go on. That’s one of the beauties I find in sewing. My children have been wrapped in blankets that my grandmas, who they’ve never met, made. We’re all connected.

So, bye for now, Nancy Zieman. Seams like you’ve managed to do quite a bit of good in the world. Thank you.

4 Shared thoughts

Something new

17 November 2017, 11:40 pm by Giggles
Categories: Family, Food, Learn Something, With the Kiddos

Tonight I introduced our kids to pomegranates. We have a pomegranate bush in our front yard that has gorgeous flowers in the spring and then we get fruit that the birds love to eat. But we’ve never eaten the fruit off it because it doesn’t ripen to where we can eat it before the birds do and the few we have opened the seeds have been white so I don’t know if it’s the eating kind or not. So the bush with the pretty flowers and then the balls we have to pick up when they fall off is what our kids knew about pomegranates until tonight.

pomegranate flower

Last week they were on sale at the grocery store so I had Brett pick up two. He wondered if they were for something specific. Nope. Just thought they kids might find them interesting. For dinner tonight I cracked one open and pulled out all the seeds and gave them each a few to see what they thought. Then I had to give them each a handful because they all thought it was super yummy.

I love introducing our kids to new things. There is so much in the world for them to still explore and that I get to be part of some of that is such an adventure for me too. I get to see it all new again through their eyes.

5 Shared thoughts