Birthday Parties Suck.

Seriously. There is not one thing I hate more than planning a birthday party. Let me explain...I have 3 boys. Yep 3...go ahead apologize or make that 'awww you poor thing' face. I get it all the time. I actually enjoy my boys. They are loud, crazy and make me laugh constantly. I am pretty sure my middle son is going to be a professional fart noise maker one day. (super proud of his ambitions so far) So, I suck at planning. I'm so not Type A. Which reflects in the birthdays of my kids. I have July 14, August 24 and September 18. Yes...I really did not plan that out well. And do you know what is just a mere 3 months after all these birthday party paloozas are over....CHRISTMAS. Yep. I.am.awesome.

So my fun began in July. My middle turned 6 and asked for...wait for it...LOONEY TUNES. Do you have any idea how hard it is to find Looney Tunes in 2015? I think they stopped making that crap back in 1996. I did manage to find some discounted plates and napkins on a no name party website. I was able to coordinate the balloons and cups around that. The cake was the real challenge. No one...I mean NO ONE makes a Looney Tunes themed cake. And by 'NO ONE' I'm talking Walmart, Sam's, Ingles, Food City. I am too cheap to pay for those fancy fondant cakes. $35 is my cake budget...if your wondering why please re read the previous paragraph. So I explain to the poor girl, who was lucky enough to be working in the bakery 2 days before the party, that I needed a cake that they do not actually make but that I needed them to make. She looked terrified. I ended up saying just make a teal and orange cake. She still seemed a tad confused but I left 85% sure I would have a cake ready on the day of his party. So I still had to find cake toppers. Once again...I stress LOONEY TUNES is the hardest freaking theme. I paid $25 for 5 plastic Looney Tunes characters on Amazon. Yeah that so put me out of my 'cake budget'. GO ME. *sigh* Anyways, this party ended up being super cute. It looked like I totally knew what I was doing. Party #1 was done.





Moving onto Party #2. After begging my almost 8 year old to NOT have a pool party...we had a pool party. I offered everything. Chuck E. Cheese, Wallabies, Hands On!, anything so that I did not have to wear a bathing suit in front of people and expose my pale skin to the sun. I failed. The child who really doesn't even LIKE to swim wanted a pool party. And his requested theme, Pokemon. I admit this party was an easier one to find things for. Which is ironic seeing as it didn't really match AT ALL. I really dropped the ball on this one. I had way more options for plates, cups, napkins, cakes. But I ended up buying 2 packs of small pokemon plates and small cups and 1 pack of napkins. I thought I could just coordinate the colors of red and yellow for the large plates and cups. Can anyone tell me what 2 colors should do for Pokemon? I bought Red and Yellow. WRONG. SO COMPLETELY WRONG. My 8 going on 18 year old informed me that I was supposed to get RED AND WHITE.  But this was the day of the party, so red and yellow it is. I did find pokemon candles that looked much much larger on Amazon than they did when they arrived. I also for some unkown reason ordered an ORANGE AND GREEN cake. Not even close to the colors of anything I bought. I don't even know why. I must have been really stressed out that day I called. I'm pretty sure it was sitting in car line with the baby singing me the song of his people at glass shattering pitches. All that mattered to the kids was that there was water to swim in and cake to eat. BOOM...Party #2 was a mismatched success!

I am currently planning party #3. It is in 4 days. Guess how much prep work I have done...not much. I did purchase a printable download pack on etsy that goes with the theme I wanted for the baby's 1st birthday. I am currently wondering why I do this time after time. This is a party that this child will not remember. I know what your thinking...PICTURES! Yes we all want pictures of these parties. I have exactly 8 combined of the 2 parties I just described. #1 Mom! But seriously I have cut out decorations for about 2 hours. It cost $8.88 for the download, that seems reasonable right? It took me 3 DAYS to figure out how to get the download to actually download. I thought I could do it on my phone or tablet. Nope...has to be a computer. And my laptop had to update when I opened it. Hear that? That's me banging my head on the table and asking why I do this to myself! So downloaded the pack and go to print. The printer is upstairs, and is jammed. I won't go into detail about the things I muttered on that long journey up the stairs. I think I shaved 2 years off my life trying to find the jam inside this printer. I finally gave up and closed all the openings, and as soon as I shut the bottom drawer it started printing. I literally did not DO ANYTHING except open all the possible port things. I didn't unjam anything. But I had my decorations and I headed down to hunt scissors. I found LEFT hand scissors. Why in a house of all Right handed people do we even have these? I don't even have the energy to try and figure that one out. So I get to looking through all these printed pages and I see there are treat bag tags with cute little sayings. And I debate back and forth for a good 10 minutes on whether or not I even want to cut them out and do treat bags. I am pretty opposed to 'goody bags' in general. But since I had already decided not to serve a meal I thought I could throw together some snack bags. I mean I have an entire pantry full of food that my kids tell me the LOOOOVE and HAVE TO HAVE, and then decide 90 seconds later that they don't like it anymore. So after some digging I have enough random snacks for 20 bags. So far....that has been the prep for this party. I haven't decided if I am going to make the cupcakes myself or outsource that. I'm about 99% sure that Walmart will be doing them.

Seriously though, as stressful and unnecessary as this is, I would regret not doing it. Even when my kids pick the most difficult themes, their day only comes around once a year. And it isn't their fault that their mom sucks at planning or that I am not the best at decorating. All the color coordinating and stuff is irrelevant. All that matters is that they are surrounded by their family and friends, and that we get to eat cake! I can't believe that my boys are now 8, 6 and almost 1! I hope they look back and have fond memories of mismatched balloons and cakes and smile a little!

Summer is Upon Us!

I took a hiatus from blogging it seems. Completely unintentional. Life has just kept me busy. It is rare that I am at home sitting at my laptop. I have been living out of my car doing drop offs, pickups, dentist appointments, etc. It is that magical time of year when all the kids are getting out of school and I start to panic. My kids are going to be home every day. All of them. And this is my first summer with 3. 2 bored kids at home was rough last summer. So this should be interesting.

With that said, I am ready for them to get a break from school. They both have worked hard this year. Zack has made some great strides in his writing skills. I am so proud of that boy. If I could just rewind 2 years ago and post a short clip here you would be as amazed as I am at how far he has came. Zack graduated Preschool a couple of days ago, and was such a cutie in his little cap and gown. It was really awesome to have the experience of watching him up on stage with his friends. Eli always had a hard time with things like that, so this was brand new for me. I loved every minute. I tried to soak it in as much as I could. Warren was wiggly and fussy during the program, but we managed like we always do.

Eli has had such a great year in 1st grade. He is such a bright kiddo. He loves to learn and spends his down time at home researching things. He has such a love of knowledge. I hope that continues and I hope the stresses at school do not take away his love of learning. But I can tell that he is agitated and ready for some days spent in his comfort home. He is really getting into sports, not playing them so much, but just liking to talk about them.  He came home from school the other day and was so excited telling me about playing soccer with some friends at school. He got really into it and was passionate giving me details of what happened! He ended it with saying 'It was AWESOME.'  I felt my heart jump a little. I was happy to hear that he was playing with other kids. That other kids let him play with them without the taunting and bullying. But before that feeling could sink in he said 'It would have been REALLY awesome if they would let me kick the ball...just once.'  And there it was...the kick in the stomach. The same one I felt when I enrolled him in art last summer only to have the teacher call me after 1 class and tell me that he couldn't attend unless I stayed in there with him because he was too energetic and wanted to touch everything. These kicks absolutely shatter my heart for my baby. I wish the world could see him the way I see him. Yes, he is challenging and rigid. But he is also one of the sweetest kids on the planet.

So, I am ready for him to be home for a bit. I am planning on keeping us pretty busy though. Because Warren seems to do better when we are on the go. He gets pretty bored sitting at home. He is growing up so fast. I just love this baby. He is content and happy. I love his demeanor. He is fascinated by his brothers and love when they talk to him. He loves for people to smile at him. It just makes his whole face break out in a large grin. He is such a blessing in our house. I could not be happier with my little family. We are complete. I love that feeling. The feeling that we are all here and we can watch our kids grow and enjoy this season.

These Days are Numbered

I realize that I am way behind on blogging. These days I feel overwhelmed more times than not.  And surprisingly it is not from the stress of a new baby or the stress from having 3 kids to take care of. It's more from the realization that the days that I have with these little creatures are fleeting.  The days that I thought were never ending quickly slipped through my fingers.  They left without warning and left me wondering how I ended up with a 7 and 5 year old. Weren't they just babies? Wasn't I just asking for advice on potty training or trying to wean one from a pacifier? How did they grow up so fast on me?

While in the thick of sleepless nights, colic, tantrums, doctor appointments, colds, stomach viruses, potty training and first days of preschool somehow my babies grew up on me. And it all happened when I wasn't looking. It happened when I was trying to keep the house organized or trying to get one more thing done for work.  The times I shoo'd them away to go play and let me have 5 more minutes, it all happened so fast.  The times I promised myself that I would be a better mom...tomorrow, but tonight they need to go to bed 30 minutes earlier. The nights I promised I'd read another book...tomorrow night.  Those promises were quickly forgotten the next day and the story was never read or the cookies went unbaked.  Those days seemed endless, stressful and just overwhelming. There were days I would sit and cry with them both, wondering if I would ever get the hang of this Mommy thing.  I would go to bed feeling guilty because I had put them off all day, promising to play in a few minutes.  "Just let Mommy get this last thing finished..." I didn't do it on purpose or because I wanted to hurt their feelings, it's just life happens and things come up and sometimes the important things get pushed to the side.

I'm being so completely raw with this post.  I'm exposing some of my biggest failures as a mother.  I have put meaningless things above spending quality time with the most precious gifts that I have ever been given.  But I think it is something that almost all parents are guilty of.  It is hard to balance life sometimes.  And I didn't even realize I was doing it, until I had Warren. When I held his tiny body and I looked at my big boys it hit me.  They are so big now.  I didn't savor the time I had with them as babies.  I'm not soaking in the time I have with them now like I should.  I am not enjoying them the way I should be.  I need to unplug, hang up and go play legos.  I need to grab another book at bedtime and read it like it's the first time, not the 900th.  I need to not rush the bedtime prayers and let Zack thank God for every single person he has ever laid eyes on. I need to go see that picture he drew, because if I keep saying 'just a minute...' he may stop asking.  If I keep putting off that 2nd book at bedtime he may not ask me to read them tomorrow night.  There is a last time for every single stage of parenting, and many times we don't even realize it was the last time until it's over.  I don't remember the last time I rocked them to sleep because I was too busy trying to get them to fall asleep on their own. I didn't savor and relish that last rock, or smell their hair and drink in the sweet sweet smell of baby before they turned into little boys.

So I am officially making a New Year's Resolution. It isn't to lose this pregnancy weight, or start eating healthier.  Although, I need to do that too. But instead my resolution is to try and appreciate these days, no matter how stressful or overwhelming they may seem.  I want to play battleship with Eli and drag out 900 socks with Zack, because one day they won't want to do these things with me anymore. I will sit and hold Warren if that's what it takes for him to get a nap.  And I won't complain about getting up with him through the night, because these days are numbered. They are fleeting...slipping through my fingers like grains of sand never to be gotten back.