Tiny Humans

,

Update on the Middlest Child

,

G is my hardest child to get a read on. You have to be patient. If you go at him too strong, ask too many questions or try too hard, and he’ll shut down and literally run away. He’s private and doesn’t want to share too much of himself, even to his family.

It’s also hard to figure out what he likes, because one of his strongest personality traits is that he wants exactly what everyone else has. Ask him his favorite color and he’ll give you the favorite color of the nearest kid to him. What does he want for Christmas? Whatever everyone else is getting. He has such a strong sense of equality and fairness. It doesn’t matter if a sibling has an m&m and he has a whole bag of marshmallows - if he doesn’t also have an m&m, he’ll be upset.

,

Update on the Littlest Child

,

I haven’t done an update in so long, I don’t think I can fit all 3 kids in the same post. So we’ll start with the most recent addition to the family. F is coming up on her 2nd birthday at the end of the summer, and is full on toddler.

Independent and full of opinions, she’s quick to tantrum but also super sweet and cuddly. She loves to be carried around and to lie with her head flopped on your shoulder. She’s constantly studying the world around and figuring out what our processes are and where things go. If you leave a door open or forget to put something away, she’ll be the one following behind you putting clothes in the hamper.

I think she’s hopefully almost over her biting phase. I haven’t had to sign an incident report at daycare in weeks, although she did bite me while I was trying to get her in the car seat a few days ago. That’s become our recent struggle. I’ve been through it with the other two, so I know it will be temporary, but whoa does it give me a workout every day. That little minion is strong!

,

Getting Outside

,

Life has been crazy in a good way lately. It’s a welcome change.

Sure 3 children is still crazy, and we barely have a minute to sit down, but it’s been manageable and fun. We’ve been doing more things and sometimes I can’t believe how different it is from 6 months ago. Six months ago going to church or on a playdate might have been our only activity of a weekend, and now it’s not even our only activity of a day!

,

Birthday Party

,

I am not a fan of class parties. It’s so much easier to do a small friends and family party - less stress, cost, planning, less everything! But a certain kindergartener watched all the other children get big parties and was insistent that he wanted one too.

Our class hasn’t been very good at sharing contact information, so the only way to invite anyone is to invite the entire class by sending invites to school. It’s actually helpful that the teachers agree to distribute invites in the folders that go home every night, but it was a lot of control to give up for me. Even worse was when I set an RSVP deadline and had at least 6 kids RSVP after that time.

I had no idea what to expect - would we get 3 kids or 13? The party was out of town, so I wondered if that meant less people would come. Maybe I hoped it would mean less people would come? It was a funny line where I didn’t want no one to show up but I also didn’t want everyone.

, ,

SIX

, ,

It’s been a big year. E has almost finished Kindergarten and has grown so much over the past year. He has learned many new skills. We’ve seen him crush math worksheets, utilize new art skills which landed him a spot in the town wide art show, and enter the beginning stages of learning how to read. He comes home daily with new knowledge about things we’ve never discussed - it’s equally thrilling and scary to no longer be the only source of information in his life.

He regularly does 200-500 piece puzzles and non stop Lego kits that he takes apart and uses to build something else. He’s less into coloring, but loves making cards for people. He still loves crafts but dislikes painting. He loves running until his hair is wet and sweaty, but also loves to sit and cuddle with me - often waking up an hour before anyone else to find me in the house and get alone time with me.

,

Earth Day

,

I love a good theme.

I love crafting and creating, but coming up with ideas for things isn’t always the easiest. It takes time and energy and so when someone can give me a theme, I love it. I’ve been known to go a bit overboard, and this is maybe one of those times.

My sister said she was coming for a visit for Earth Day, and we could do some related activities with the kids. After picking on her for being very Vermont, I decided to go all in.

,

A Movie

,

I’m not sure how long I would have waited, if I hadn’t been forced into it. Possibly forever.

I really had no desire to go back to a movie theater. It wasn’t something I was missing, and since the pandemic, it really wasn’t something I felt like I needed to rush back to. Plus the thought of taking the kids somewhere they needed to be quiet for an extended period of time? Nope!

But then we realized that E has a field trip to the movies coming up, and I changed my mind. We could have kept him home, but it would mean a harder day for us, and him missing out on some fun with his friends. So even though it feels weird to let your kid go off somewhere without you or anyone you know (the theater is not close to home), we decided to let him go - with a bit of prep.

,

Easter

,

Sometimes I wonder what our Easter will look like ten years from now. What things will have stuck as traditions, and what things will look different? It equal parts fun and frustrating trying to decide how we celebrate our holidays each year. Is there special food that we eat? Places we visit?

This year we celebrated at home with the five of us. The kids had their matching PJs, eggs were hidden, and everyone ate a lot of candy. We did color coded eggs again, which worked pretty well for us. F was able to find all of her eggs, and she had so much fun putting them in her basket and carrying them around. E’s were the hardest to find, and took him the longest to find all of his eggs.

,

Don't Get too Smug

,

Recently we’ve been hitting our stride a bit. And I was feeling a bit confident. So I told Tom he should take a night away, and get a bit of rest. He had some vacation days he needed to use, and I was pretty sure I could survive getting the kids to and from daycare without him.

Sure it involved solo bedtime with all three, and getting them all off to school the next day, but it was feeling doable. So off Tom went.

,

Tiny Updates for Tiny Humans

,

It’s time for a bit of an update. Things that seem totally normal in our life right now, but I know if I don’t write them down, I’ll forget them. And some of these are things I don’t want to forget.

First, let’s talk F and her sleep. SHE SLEEPS! The sleep consultant was completely worth it, and I’ve been recommending everyone I know who has kids to immediately get one. At bedtime we’re back to just laying her in her crib and walking away. That’s it. Some days she’ll happily sing to us over the baby monitor, and others she’ll just go straight to sleep. She’s sleeping 11.5 hours a night, which is slightly less than her siblings probably slept at this age, but I’ll take it. We’re not getting up in the night anymore, and she’s not waking at 4am. Naps seem to be fixed too. I’m sure that’s where a lot of my optimism has come from lately, because everything seems easier when we’re not all tired.

,

Running in Circles

,

Some days are still really hard. That’s not new. But occasionally.. some days are less hard? We find our self getting brave and leaving the house more and more. This past weekend we went on 3 separate outings as a family of 5. Most were less than an hour, but even a month ago we weren’t even averaging one.

Pickups have been hard for me since F started walking. There were days when all three of them would be running in circles in the gym and there was nothing I could do. I love that this daycare has a gym, but it definitely makes my day harder, since you have to walk through the gym to exit the building. I can’t catch all of them at the same time. I can catch one, and then the minute I try and catch a second, the first one is gone again. They know they outnumber me and they just laugh. I really can’t do much but wait it out.

,

18 Months

,

I can’t decide if the past 6 months have gone quickly or not. Sometimes it felt like a never ending slog that we were sleepwalking through, but on the other hand I swear we just celebrated F’s first birthday. Either way, we have an official 18 month old on our hands. And thanks to a sleep consultant, we are back on track with sleep and everyone is feeling more like themselves lately. F is back to sleeping and happily chatting in her crib, and it feels like at least one layer of stress has evaporated.

F remains the happiest Spearson, excited to be a part of things, and loves it when we go somewhere. She mostly gets mad when we try to remind her she’s a baby and can’t always do the same things that the older two can. Oh how quickly she’s going to demand equal treatment though. Already she fights back if someone tries to push her away.

, ,

Valentine's Day

, ,

When the end of January came around, I went looking for the bin of Valentine’s decorations. I was surprised to realize we only had 3 wooden hearts, a table cloth, and two things that hung from the ceiling. I was sure we’d decorated in past years, but couldn’t figure out why we didn’t have more. Which is why I love this blog, because it reminded me that last year we decorated with homemade Elmo and Abby Cadabby decorations, because that was what the kids wanted. And the year before I think we taped paper hearts to the wall.

So this year I was determined to find some more permanent decorations. The kids made it clear they were not happy with what we had, and honestly neither was I. There’s nothing like a nice distraction when life feels too heavy. So throw ourselves into Valentine’s day we did. We ended up with banners and hearts on the walls and a fully decorated house.

, ,

A Small Light of Optimism

, ,

I don’t think it’s a secret that life has been hard for us lately. Really hard.

It’s not that we didn’t expect life with 3 small children to be difficult, but I think in my mind it was going to get easier when the youngest hit 18 months (which granted she’s not quite yet), and in early January we realized it felt like NOTHING was even getting close to better. In fact the past 6 months have felt the hardest we’ve ever had as parents, which is saying a lot.

I think we did okay the first year of having 3, but then everything started to change and it all chipped away at our equilibrium bit by bit. Work called us both back into the office, which directly took away time from our day to do things like laundry, or clean, or cook meals. And then sleep got worse. Our wonderful sleepers suddenly weren’t sleeping like they used to. Sickness hit over and over again, too. We went from having children in one school to two. The baby started walking and got older and her siblings saw her solely as a person who messes up their toys. Winter hit and we couldn’t go outside as much.

, ,

A tale of Two Christmases

, ,

What do you focus on when it comes to Christmas? Do you walk away with rosy glasses on, remembering all the best moments and declaring it the best Christmas ever? Or do you focus on what went wrong, the disappointments and tears? Honestly, I kind of want to remember both. So here you have it, a tale of two Christmases:

The Good:

On Christmas Eve we exchanged sibling gifts, which gave them something to play with, but also caused them to get more excited about the random things they picked for each other (although they both ended up getting each other a paw patrol playset). We’d also had them pick out Christmas cards to give each other and Tom and I, which was a nice easy introduction into gifting presents to other people. It was pretty cute to see what cards they’d picked out thinking we’d like. We also spent a lot of time watching Christmas movies and cuddling on the couch.

,

Parents of the Tiny Humans are Tired

,

First there was a pandemic which closed schools and daycares, and forced parents to be fulltime caregivers while also working full time with no breaks. And if you happened to get sick, you still had to take care of those children while you maybe couldn’t get out of bed yourself.

Then the country reopened almost a year before there were vaccines for little kids to keep them safer.

Then because everyone was sick of precautions and had weakened immune systems from the pandemic, there is a tri-demic of Covid and Flu and RSV going around, all of which is particularly terrifying for small children.

, ,

Merry Christmas

, ,

Merry Christmas!

We did it.

We’ve finished all of the lists. The magic has been created, we’ve attended events, seen Santa, decorated the whole house and yard, made the treats, ate the treats, bought and wrapped presents, and we’re here. The main event. It certainly feels like a marathon, but it’s all worth it.

,

Four

,

Somehow here we are, and you’re four. You are growing and changing at an alarming rate lately. Suddenly you are writing letters and drawing people and your face looks older, and I’m just wondering where my little G went. You are still super sweet and loving. You’ll appear and offer a toy to F when she’s crying, or will tell me you love me when you see me having a hard day. You love to cuddle and wake up slow in the mornings, and almost always have something soft to rub on your face.

, ,

A Train Party

, ,

We have an almost 4 year old in our house, which means it was time for a party! G is someone who doesn’t require much to make him happy, which is great, but it also means it’s hard to do something like plan a party. If I ask him what he likes or if he has any toys he’d like, he has a hard time answering. Anything and everything can make him happy, but he’s also happy without.