Mak-isms

On the subject of birthdays..

Mak: when is daddy's birthday?
Me: May fourth.
Mak: oh! Maybe he can have a T-Rex birthday.
Me: I think he'd like that.

Spring time in SoCal

It's early March and the Dolfos have started another garden! More tomatoes, herbs and this year we'll be attempting carrots as well.

Every morning the boys go out to tend to our garden. Water the plants, trim the tomatoes, etc. Ellie follows them, but mostly eats the dirt. Hmm. She must be needing more fiber. ;)

Much love.

Release.

I scream. 

I've always relied on the excuse that I'm a loud, emotional, Mexican woman, and we are screamers. I scream when I'm happy or excited as well. But lately, with all the stressors surrounding us, I've been raising my voice as a means to release the energy that I'm feeling inside. It has always, in my (almost) 28 years, been cathartic to scream. 

But now I have kids. And I'm noticing that by releasing my energy, they receive it. And as children, they don't understand how to compartmentalize and ignore it as just my need to release stress through yelling. They take it in, they feel the stress I feel, and they scream back because THEY need to release the energy. 

Take heart - I am not screaming at them. I'm not even screaming at my husband - something he's learned throughout the seven years we've been together - I'm just letting it out. 

But then they scream at me, and the child in me takes it as they do: personally. So I start to scream back until I remember that I'm the adult, I set the example. What are they learning from me? That screaming is the only way to release negative energy? I don't want that for them. I learned it from my mother, and I can choose better (I have an AWESOME mom, by the way, this is in no way meant to criticize her). 

So I've chosen to breathe. Take a drink of water. Yoga. P90X. Running. Writing. I've chosen to model calm voices, and the behavior I *DO* want them to learn. 

I'm not perfect. I know there will be days I forget to be Zen and I will scream. Then I will apologize for not appropriately releasing the energy, and I will remember to model something better. Maybe my kids will even remind me to find my calm voice. I hope they do. 

Much Love. 

The Flu hits.

Sounds like a bad TV movie, but no. The flu hit our household hard. It started with Makani on Saturday night (not the recent one, but two weeks ago). No appetite, not his usual self, and a fever. He spent all Sunday, Monday and some of Tuesday with a fever, too. I hate seeing my little man so down. I tried to get him to eat, but no dice. So it was lots and lots of fluids (with some mashed potatoes in between). 

Also, lots of movie watching. Ellie remained unscathed, and I was crossing my fingers that it would stay that way. Mak also took a four hour nap. It was glorious. 

He stayed this way for a few days. Then came the fun part, phlegm and cough. But before I could blink, Ellie started being crabby, then HER fever hit. 

Thank goodness for babywearing! 

Thankfully, I have the best mom ever. She came to take my energetic three year old so I could mostly sit on the sofa cuddled with baby like this:

I was signed up to run a half marathon on Jan 20th, so I was hoping that I wouldn't get sick, too! But it's so hard to stay healthy when your babies are tag teaming you with their sickness, and you're not getting enough sleep. Lo and behold, the flu caught me the Friday before my race. 

That's a different blog post, though. So I'll be back in a few days with that story. 

Much Love. 

Things to do...

Winters are tough. Thanks to daylight saving time, in the winter, there's a good two hours between sunset and bedtime. Sometimes three. Kids don't like to be cooped up, so evenings are often spent trying to find activities to sufficiently tire them out in hopes of a smoother bedtime.

Tonight, we needed lightbulbs for the bathroom and I wanted to take advantage of a BOGO offer on orchids, so we all got in the car and headed to Home Depot.

What was supposed to be a five minute run in turned into a thirty minute browsing. We looked at the flowers, talked about colors, Makani helped me pick out new orchids for the house. Ellie, I think, was just happy to be out.

It's the little things, right?

Some Mak-isms...

On January first:

Me: Mak, you want some pizza? 
Mak: yeah, because I don't like salad.

On January second: 

Mak: why is fire hot?
Me: ..... um.... well... let's ask google!
(looked up some complex explanation)
Me: well, fire is hot because it's releasing energy. Like when you run around really fast, and you get all hot and sweaty. 
Mak: oh. WOW. 

I'm glad he was impressed with my watered down explanation. He's left alone for the most part since then. Man, this kid is smarter than me. 

Daily story:

Mak: Hey, guys! I have an idea! Let's get our jackets on, get in the car, drive to the airport, get on a BIG, BIG plane, fly to Minnesota and get some SNOW!! 

We ended our last week of vacation with a train ride. Back to the grind tomorrow, and I know the kids and I will miss Brad terribly, as we always do. 

Much love. 

Spider-Mak!

We decided to clean up today, go through books, movies, clothes, etc and just toss out what is taking up space. It felt glorious! And was a wonderful start for the New Year. 

Mak decided to help with the heavy lifting... he even brought his muscles. ;)

Love seeing this kid's imagination blossom. And I love having conversations with him. Today for lunch, we had a short one: 

Me: Mak, you want some pizza?

Mak: yeah, because I don't like salad. 

This kid cracks me up. He had changed costumes by then, and was walking around the house dressed as Batman. Then he follows his 'salad' comment with:

Mak: mommy, does Batman eat pizza?? 

Me: I'm sure he does.

Mak: oh, good! 

He seemed genuinely concerned on what my answer would be. I don't know if he would have cast aside the pizza or the Batman costume, but crisis averted, and Batmak happily ate his pizza. 

It's days like these I know I'm right where I should be. 

Much love.