The thing that has taken up all my free time for weeks

This month has been straight CRAZY. I am beyond sleep deprived trying to squeeze everything into my day. I’m not going to lie…there have been tears. There have been tantrums. And sadly, I’m not talking about my kids.

Let me start off by saying this post isn’t meant to be a big fat whine fest. I just want to document the crazy so I can one day look back on it and either think, “Wow, how did I do it? Thank goodness things slowed down!” or “PSHHHH. That was nothing. I can’t believe I called THAT busy.” (I really hope it’s the first, but I’ve heard life just gets busier as the kids get older!) I am SO SO thankful that I’ve been so busy with my photography biz, and I am so grateful for how much that has helped my family. I still LOVE doing it. But even that wasn’t enough for the help we needed to recuperate from the big changes we made this year. So when a company I did some digital design for a few years ago contacted me and asked me to start designing for them again, I felt like it was a blessing from above that just fell into my lap and I jumped at the opportunity. Even though it meant that I would be extremely busy for the next few months. Seriously…let me break it down:

6:45 roll out of bed and scramble to get the kids ready for school, lunches packed, etc.
7:40 take Diego to school
8:45 take Celo to school
9:15-12 bits and pieces of the following: edit pictures, work on digital design, clean up the house, spend time with Eliana, run errands, do stuff for my church responsibilities, get dinner started, take Eliana on playdates or to the park, do some couponing, doctor’s appointments, meetings, and more.
12 –1:30 Celo comes home, lunch for Celo, PEPSI TIME for me, more editing, more digital design, answer emails and fb messages, spend some time online looking for a dress for my bro’s wedding, look into school stuff for Marcelo, etc.
1:40 go pick up Diego…for 15 to 20 blissful minutes I just sit in my car and read a book.
2:35 run errands if I couldn’t in the morning (ohmygosh walmart in the afternoon with 3 cranky kids is a nightmare…just fyi. I was in there one day and the lady in front of me in line was like, “You have the same face I do when I shop with my kids.” I like to call that Exasperated Poo Face.) If there are no errands, we go home and play for a bit inside, have an afternoon snack, work on Diego’s school stuff, go on a playdate, or just do something they think is fun.
4:00 Time for my 4 o’clock problem, which is the gaggle of neighborhood kids knocking on my door and wanting my kids to play outside, which means I have to choose, should I a) be a nice mom and go outside for awhile and stop Eliana from going into the street 857 times, or b) make them miss out on playing with their friends so I can make dinner and try to fold some laundry.
5:00 If I chose to be nice, I now make a quick dinner. If I made them miss out, we play or put on music or read and I work on school stuff with Diego. I try to do another quick clean up so the house isn’t trashed when Marcelo gets home.
6:00 Marcelo comes home and we eat.
6:30 clean up dinner and try to clean up other random messes while Marcelo plays with the kids and gets them ready for bed.
7:00 read books and do our bedtime routine.
7:30 kids are asleep, I want to be too, but instead I go sit at the computer and continue to work on stuff. On Wed and Thurs I watch tv with Marcelo for awhile before working some more. I never go to bed before 11, but most nights lately it’s more like 1am.

Add in soccer practice, Wed night mutual (church activities), and weeknight photoshoots, and projects I throw on myself like making my daughter a tutu. And whatever else I’m missing.

WHEW. It’s ca-razy. But it’s temporary!! 6 more weeks! I can do it!  I would also like to add that in the evenings when the kids are in bed and I’m working again, my wonderful husband who I love so much helps out with all the stuff I couldn’t get to. The man folds laundry, mops the floor, puts away the dishes, etc, and does all he can to relieve my stress and make things easier. He is amazing. I know he’s just as tired as I am, but the only way I’ve been able to make it through these crazy months is with him cheering me on, writing me texts through out the day saying, “Keep up the good work. You’ll pull through! Only a few more months of the craziness. You’re doing a great job.” I love him. Haha, he just saw me writing this and was tsk tsking that I’m wasting time blogging instead of culling my latest shoot. (Sorting through 1000s of pics and choosing the best.)

Also a big thanks to my awesome friends who also cheer me on, let me cry when I need to, and help me more than they know.  

So without further ado, here is the digital scrapbooking kit I’ve been working on all month. I’m slow at it, so it takes me forever. I worked so hard on this, so I wanted to share it here. It’ll be available sometime in the next few weeks at digitalexpressclub.com.
 

Papers:

Embellishments:

I’m sooooo glad to be done with it. I spent one night working until almost 2am trying to figure out how to make those dang animals. Definitely bit off more than I could chew when I agreed to make them a farm themed kit!

Okay. Back to editing. Aiming to be in bed by 11 tonight!

BRAIDS!

Eliana has been sick for the past few days, which means she has been extra calm and cuddly. While she was sitting in my lap I thought, her hair has got to be long enough for braids. I shall try it. And she sat still and let me do it!! I tried again today and she started to get over it during the second braid, but I distracted her with a book and she let me finish. Hooray!!! It’s cuteness overload, but at the same time it makes me want to cry because she looks so old.

I’m way behind on blogging, so maybe if I type out a ‘to blog” list I will make time to sit and blog it:

-Our last trip to the pool of the season.
-Our trip to Green Meadow Farms.
-Our 4pm problem. The problem is knocking on my door as I type this. Every. Stinking. Day.
-Diego’s soccer games.
-Celo’s scary health issues.
-Eliana wearing fall clothes. One word: BOOTS.

Lest I Forget…

The boys are happily playing, Eliana is asleep, and Marcelo is off getting a haircut. The laundry folding can wait a little while longer while I record a few memories before I forget them.

In no particular order:

--Celo came home from school one day so excited to open his backpack. He pulled out a ziplock bag and said, “Look what I got for you at school today!” It was a tiny flower that he picked from the playground. I thought it was so cute that 1) he picked a flower and wanted to save it for me, and 2) his teacher took the time to put it in a ziplock bag for him for safe keeping. Usually Celo keeps to himself and only thinks about playing, eating sweets, and playing some more. But every once in awhile, he does something so sweet and melts my heart!

--Diego is doing really well in school and absolutely loves it. He gets so sad if he’s sick and has to miss a day. There is a color based behavior chart a school (I feel like I already wrote this…did I?) so everyday I ask him what color he was on. All the kids start the day on green. If they do something extra good, they get on blue. If they’re extra EXTRA good, they go up to purple. If they have to be told something more than once or don’t listen or make a bad choice, they go on yellow. If they still don’t correct the behavior after that, they go on red and get a note sent home. So far, Diego has been on green, blue, and purple. It took Celo about 2 weeks to figure out that as soon as Diego gets into the car each day, I ask him what color he was on. In that second week, he started asking Diego what color he was on before I could ask. Their conversation went like this:

Celo: What color were you on today, Diego?

Diego: I was on green. What color were you on?

Celo: Um, I was on orange.

Diego: Is orange good?

Celo: Yeah, it’s really good.

At first I thought, oh…I guess Celo’s school has a color chart, too. But on another day when Celo’s response was, “I was on the yellow triangle” I realized that the “color” he’s talking about is what color shape he sits on during circle time on the shape mat. It was hilarious to hear him report, “Today I was on the green circle,” and then Diego would ask, “Is that good?” And Celo would say, “Yup! That one’s really good.” They don’t have this conversation daily anymore, but it’s still pretty often and makes me smile every time.

--Celo is completely in love with construction vehicles. He knows so much about them. He knows their names, what they’re used for….he can’t get enough. He watches Mighty Machines almost everyday, and recently checked out 6 construction books from the library. And not the ones that are cutesy cartoony. No. He wanted the ones from the reference section that explain what each one does. Graders, excavators, bobcats, front end loaders, backhoe loaders, cement mixers, skid steers, cherry pickers, rollers….he knows and loves them all. There’s construction going on on the way to Diego’s school and Celo loves to drive by there and see them all working. One day, Celo asked when he’d be done with school and we explained that it wouldn’t be for a long time and that he wouldn’t be done until he went to college. He asked what that was and the way we explained it was that it was a school you go to when you’re big and you get to choose what you want to learn about so you can become whatever you want to become, like a doctor, or an engineer, or a fireman, or anything you want. He said, “I’m going to be a construction worker so I’m going to go learn about construction.” A few weeks later, as we were putting him to bed, he asked, “Mommy, what’s the name of that school where I’m going to learn about construction?” I said, “College?” He got a big happy smile on his face and said, “Yeah! College. I’m going to go there to learn how to drive construction vehicles.” Then last night at the dinner table he talked for about 10 minutes straight telling us all about what he’s going to do when he grows up. He’s going to build things with construction vehicles. He’s going to build a mommy store that’s just for mommies and he’s going to build a big Target that connects to our local Target, and he’s going to build a big mall and inside this mall he’s going to have a Chick-fil-a and a mommy store, and a table that has flowers and food on it and a flower store and a toy store. He’s got big dreams.

--Eliana has become a hitter. A bully. An angry little dress wearing monster who slaps whoever is in sight and rips the hair straight out of her friends’ heads. She’s aggressive. She-e’s aggressive. Neither one of my boys were hitters so this is new to me and I don’t know how to teach a 16 month old not to hit. Whenever she smacks me in the face or hits her brothers, I grab her hand and say, “No! We don’t hit. Be soft.” And then show her how to be soft. Most of the time she strokes my cheek softly when I do that. Other times she smacks me again. But the best is when she leans in a kisses me right where she smacked me and then smiles sweetly like nothing ever happened. And then I forgive her immediately telling myself, “She only hit me because I provoked her. I deserved it. I know she loves me.” But the abuse must stop!! Someone help me.

--Eliana says lots of words and is pretty good at communicating what she wants. Most of the time. Lately, I’ve been trying to work on teaching her eyes, nose, mouth, hands, feet. When we’re looking at books and I try to point that stuff out, she gets really annoyed and closes the book. When I try to play with her and make her point out her body parts, she usually lasts for one round of “Where’s your _____?” before she walks away. So the other day after I dropped Celo off at school, I strapped Eliana into her carseat and thought, “Hey…she can’t get away from me right now, so I’m going to try the ‘where’s your ____ game.” I asked her where her nose was and she pointed at it. I asked her where her feet were and she just ignored me, so I pointed at her feet. I asked her where her eyes were and she just looked at me and started waving and said, “Byyyyyeeee.” As if to say, “You can go away now. Go get in your seat. I’m done talking to you. Why don’t you put a lid on it?”

Speaking of putting a lid on it, this is her subtle way of telling me to put my camera away.