Saying Goodbye to Summer

I can hardly believe that today is our last official day of summer!  We have had so many adventures and enjoyable times the past few months. [And really hard & challenging times too because I'd be lying if I said it was all perfect.]

Last weekend we made our final summer trip up to Maine to visit our Papa & Gaga. Whenever we visit in the summer we have to spend half the day at one of our most favorite places - York Harbor Beach. It's the perfect beach for our little family and we always have such a great time playing here.

Things we love about this beach:

- free street parking

-short five minute walk through a beautiful grassy park down to the beach

- clean bathrooms close to the beach

- an outside foot shower and full shower to rinse off after the sandy day

- lifeguards on duty

- rocks that line the beach that are great for climbing on during low tide

- a cliff walk that makes for a fun little adventure with a great view

- the beach is in a cove so it is a little warmer than regular Maine water

- the waves are smaller, which is great for young kids

- the beach is on the smaller side, so you can't lose a child ;)

Curly Girl lost her two front teeth in the week leading up to our visit! I demanded that she smile so I could capture the memory forever with a beautiful backdrop. [There were also pouts and a small fit to go along with this picture, because she just wanted to get to the beach rather than pose for pictures.] 

Some of my most favorite flowers! 

They line the edge of the park that overlooks the beach below.

Ginger boy was having a blast running in and out of the water 

and splashing through the waves.

The Littlest Ginger desperately wanted the apple I was eating. So I ate a good portion of it and then let her have at it. She held onto that apple for a while, nibbling here and there. It was dropped in the sand and the ocean and that didn't stop her. Just added more texture and flavor. She's a determined little one!

My Mainer husband and half-Mainer children are generally not even phased by the icy cold temperatures of the ocean water. They have a blast splashing and swimming through the waves. This water is cold! I got a brain-freeze headache from floating around and catching waves with Curly Girl for a little while!

Lunch at the beach always consists of peanut butter and fluff sandwiches. Always. Because that is a treat we get at Papa & Gaga's house that we don't have at home. [Confession: I LOVE fluff. Like, a lot. When I was pregnant with Curly Girl I craved it. If I kept it in this house, I would eat it all the time. And that just wouldn't be good. So I don't buy it.]

As we leave the beach to walk to the car, we look down at the beautiful view and know that we'll be back next summer for more fun times. This is not goodbye, it's just a farewell until next summer. And I know we'll have so many new experiences and things learned before then.

My Simple Solution for the Busy in My Life

I've always liked to be busy. For as long as I can remember, I've been a busy person. I just like to be doing things. I can't sit idle and rest for long, I've always got a to do list running through my head. And since becoming a mom, well, that list usually seems endless.

It shouldn't have come as a surprise to me that I would produce some busy little offspring. For some reason I was a bit surprised, but then my mother kindly informed me that I was the same way as a child, so it really was no surprise to her. And honestly, it's really just my ginger girls that are the busy ones. But they provide enough busy to make up for the fact that Ginger Boy is cool, calm and collected. For the most part. Don't be fooled. He does have a side of fiery fury from time to time.

                                    

Curly Girl has always been the girl who can't sit still. She's just on the go all the time. Either her mind or her body need to be moving, sometimes both, or we have issues. When I think about it, it's really a great quality to possess. The girl gets so much accomplished all the time. She's full of energy and movement and she's always creating new things and coming up with interesting ideas and practicing new gymnastics moves and building new forts and designing new doll clothes and making a house out of the recycling items in the trash. Sometimes I'm exhausted just watching her. Yet, I have to keep up with her all day long! [Side note: the girl has always slept like a champ! She sleeps hard and knows when she needs to sleep. And when she's lacking sleep... Watch out. But that's another story for another day!] In summary, she's very busy which keeps me very busy.

I thought that there couldn't be another child to be as busy as Curly Girl. Enter: Littlest Ginger. Yup. She's on her way to surpassing Curly Girl. At a mere 16 months. Yikes. This littlest one has been moving since she first figured out how. She rolled at 4 months old, both directions the same day. That same week she would roll across a room when she was set down. Less than 2 weeks after first rolling, she rolled herself while swaddled in her crib. By 6 months old she was up on all fours, rocking. By 7 months she was crawling. By 8 months she was pulling up to standing. She also climbed the entire set of stairs by herself at 8 months [with her cheering crew of Darling Daddy, Curly Girl & Ginger Boy close behind.] By 9 months she was a little maniac, crawling everywhere and getting into everything and standing and cruising along all of the furniture. By 10 months she was walking. By her first birthday, practically running. She's also a climber. With no fear! She can get herself up on to so many things and then sit or stand so precariously and make this momma so nervous!

So, this past year has been busy for me! Really, really busy between home schooling Curly Girl and the busy Littlest Ginger on the move. Oh, and we can't forget about the middle Ginger Boy. Poor sweet boy often just fades into the background of the noise and chaos that his sisters create around him. So how do I deal?! How do I keep things together? And keep kids happy, healthy and clean? Because you know that I'm pretty passionate about clean and healthy living without the harmful chemicals. Well, I'll tell you.

Back in the winter I felt like I had finally hit the jackpot. I had been trying to change out and get rid of all of the chemicals in our household. I'd been on that mission for years. Basically since having kids. You can read about that story here. I'd also been quite interested and had tried some different essential oils for various things around the house and I was liking the changes that I was seeing and feeling. I felt like there truly was a difference.

The wonderful thing that I had found was Young Living Essential Oils. I started trying to remove our chemicals and using them for everything. Making my own hand soaps & face wash & lotions, making my household spray cleaner, using them on my wool dryer balls, using them when I had a headache, a stomachache, when the kids were sick, to boost my immunity when the kids were sick or I started feeling sick, when I burned my hand on boiling water, to make my house smell nice, to get away the fishy odor of baking salmon, to boost my mood, to help with yucky coughs and sore throats, to try to help the littlest ginger sleep better. You name it, I was trying an oil on it! And I was loving it. Chemicals were being replaced with healthier options. The greatest thing about Young Living though, is that they are not only an essential oil company. They are so much more! I'm hooked.

I'm happy to share more with anyone who is curious. I also plan on sharing some of the changes we've made in our home since using essential oils, like recipes, however that might need to wait until after Curly Girl & Ginger Boy start school and I have a little more time on my hands ;) I'm still trying and learning all the time, but I am loving the change that it has brought into my busy little family's life. I feel like I have a one-stop-shop for healthier living. I now of know a safe place to go to in order to keep us healthy. 

Check Out Young Living here!

Our Happy Place

We spent some family time at one of our happy places this evening. There's something about Tangerini's Farm in Millis that just makes everything feel right. Happy kids, happy mom and happy dad who joined us on his way home from work. And sunflowers! So many beautiful sunflowers! 

Sweet big brother took Littlest Ginger's hand as we first entered the farm. They had some special brother sister time together. And despite her apathetic look, she was excited to be there.

As we entered the sunflower field, the Littlest Ginger had no desire to appease my desire for some pretty pictures. I have a dream that someday we may be able to catch a Christmas card photo in these fields. Someday. Probably not anytime soon though because I just don't possess that kind of camera magic. Or patience. 

May this picture, among others from today, serve as reminders that both of Curly Girl's top front teeth are extremely loose. Like they just need a really good yank and they'll come out. She's still hanging on to them though!

The circus that is our life. Littlest Ginger is in that phase where she doesn't sit still and she can't be reasoned with (or bribed) by anything yet. 

Genuine smile and some sunshine in the background.

Girl on the go! She doesn't stop for much these days. Except for puppies. She'll stop only to see a puppy and give it a good pet.

Dinner with a corn field view.

She is such a daddy's girl. She knows daddy will do whatever she wants to do and go wherever she wants to go. For now. Not sure how long that will last...

To end the evening, mommy just wanted a few minutes alone in the sunflower field. I think I want to go back every day for the next week. They're just so beautiful. It was a great way to end the day.

Oh, What a Year!

It's been almost a full year since I last posted on this blog. I have thought about it and wanted to so many times, but never really knew where to begin or what to say. Or where to find the time. If you had asked me last year at this time if I thought I would be where I am now, I don't think I could have ever guessed that the year would have unfolded as it did.


So my last post was about Curly Girl starting full-day Kindergarten. She was so excited about going to Kindergarten! She pretty much ran onto the bus without looking back on the first day. We weren't entirely surprised. This mommy was having a really hard time with it though. I couldn't put my finger on exactly what it was, but I was so much more emotional about it than I ever thought I would be. Looking back now, I blame a large part of it on the hormones which were all over the place because of breastfeeding an infant. And sleep definitely lacking in our two bedroom condo which housed three kids...

As the school days went on, Curly Girl was liking Kindergarten for the most part, but she was having a really tough time in the afternoons and evenings after school. She would get home from school and not want to do anything except for lounge around. She didn't want to play with the neighborhood kids. Actually, she didn't want to play at all. All she wanted to do was workbook pages that I had for her at home. The little girl had been in school all day long, but came home and wanted to do more (challenging) brain work but not move her body to play. It was sad to watch and be a part of. This was not my energetic, spunky little girl. Kindergarten, or shall I say full-day schooling at the age of 5, was changing her as a person. [Sadly, there is no half-day option in our town.] She just was not ready for it. As a mom, I felt horrible. How could I have failed to realize that she wasn't ready for the full day? Oh, that's right, I had an infant and 3 year old too, that's why. I had been looking forward to a bit of a break in sending her to school, but instead I was about to get the opposite...

This went on for three or four weeks. Things were getting progressively worse. Everyone said the beginning would be tough, but things were not getting better at all in the afternoons or evenings. It was a real struggle for me in the three hours between Curly Girl getting off the bus and Darling Daddy getting home from work. And the weekends were no better. All during this time I felt as though God was speaking to me through random people in many different places. The lady at the grocery store who was unloading her groceries in the car next to me one night, the neighbor kids who rode their bikes over to me and started talking to me mid-day one day, seeing and talking to friends who were homeschooling their children... I felt as though I was being called to home school Curly Girl.

Wait, what?!?! Home school?!?! No way. That was never part of the plan. Never part of MY plan. This was supposed to be my easy year. Send my oldest off to school so I could only have two kids to take care of for the better part of the day. And plus, I was a teacher by degree. I taught in a public school. The plan was to send my kids to public school and then teach in a public school again one day when they were all in school. That was always my plan. Why would I feel as though God was calling me to home school?

Well, here we are a year later and I now know why. He wanted to grow us and teach all of us some life lessons. He wanted me to depend on Him and trust in Him more than I ever have in my life. This past year was hard. Really hard. But it was also a year in which I learned so much about myself as mom, person and teacher, as well as learning a lot about my children. We all needed this year together at home. Curly Girl needed to grow physically and emotionally to be able to handle a full 7 hour day away at school. She needed to be able to get through the day without a nap and still be a decent human being by 6:00 pm. Ginger Boy needed to learn how to play games and share and have fun with his big sister around, both teaching and tormenting him. And the Littlest Ginger needed to have her mini mommy around to give her lots of attention and love :)

So yes, I spent this past year homeschooling my oldest child for her Kindergarten year. And we had a really great year! [Side note: Did you know that Kindergarten is not legally required in the state of Massachusetts? Well, it's not. You don't need to send your kid to Kindergarten and you don't need to provide any kind of curriculum to the town for teaching them at home. That made that decision easier!] Curly Girl is now reading like crazy. She loves to add and subtract. She will listen to books on CD for hours. She creates anything and everything with random art supplies and recycling materials. She got another year to just have fun and be a kid. And she still learned a lot. If I were to go back and do this year again, I'd do it the same way. We certainly had our ups and downs, but we came out of it with some great sibling relationships (for the most part) and some great new routines, structure and discipline in our household.

You're probably wondering what this next year will bring? Well, it will bring change once again. As much as we all loved homeschooling at many times, and as well as it went at times, it was also very challenging. Bet you couldn't have guessed that?! The teacher in me felt like I was failing so often. Failing Curly Girl, failing the other two kids. I just wasn't able to give homeschooling the full attention that I wanted and needed to give to it because as our Littlest Ginger has grown, she has became a very challenging toddler. [I have such admiration and respect for all of you homeschooling moms out there who do it with many young children. Hats off to you!] So, in about 3 weeks, Curly Girl will start First Grade at our local public school and Ginger Boy will start attending the preschool at our church 3 mornings per week.

In some ways, I am looking forward to this coming year, but in some ways, I'm also a bit sad. We had some really special moments together during our days at home this year. But we also had some days where I wanted to lock myself in the bathroom and just cry. Come September, for 12 hours a week I will only have one child. It's going to be quite strange after this busy past year! I'm looking forward to being able to run errands with only one child! Maybe I'll even be able to go running sometimes and only have to push a single stroller! I won't have to break up fights between Curly Girl and Ginger Boy! Maybe I can read a book to myself during nap time and not be reading chapter books to Curly Girl! Just a few mom dreams ;)

With that being said, we're not closing the door on homeschooling either. We're taking it one year at a time. We don't know what this next year will bring, only God does. We will have to be seeking and following His will and direction for our family. I'm thankful for my year of learning. I'm thankful for all of the friends who came alongside me to help me and guide me in the ways and methods of homeschooling. I had no idea what I was doing a lot of the time! I would have struggled so much more without the help and guidance of so many friends. So, thank you. 

And now, I have this coming school year to be challenged by this little character. It should surely be an adventure! Stay tuned...