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Birthday Traditions part 2

I love to celebrate birthdays with my girls. With each year passing for each child, I feel like it’s my birthday too. I made it around the sun another year with them. I was there the day it all started, the moment they were born. So crafting a special day for them is something I really do love. Perhaps it’s my way of celebrating another year of motherhood. This is how I show my love. By merry making and them waking up to a dinning room decorated in birthday surprises.

In August my baby girl turned 2. As I decided to post some pictures of the traditons we do at home to celebrate, I pulled up a post from my third daughter turning 2, It tells a few of of our Birthday Traditions and a photo of the year I sewed the same chair cover my baby girl used this birthday.  We’ve added to the rituals since then. But our chair covers have stuck around. Each girl using their own unique birthday cake stand on their birthday is still a favorite. And they still hear the story of the day they were born when I tuck them in on the night of their birthday. They really look forward to it. My oldest turned 13 this month. (I know, HELLO 13. There’s more to come on that later.) Even at 13, she was anxiously waiting her turn that night in bed for me to cuddle up and tell her about the moment I met her for the first time.

Things we’ve added to the mix include decorating the vintage photo frame that hangs in our dinning room: with photos, banners and cards. It was inspired from having extra photos laying around after making the girls Walk Around The Sun boards for school. It’s is a Montessori ritual where they walk around the sun for each year of their life while the parents share photos and memories of the child. My older two opt out of this now but they still enjoy doing a variation of it at home, sharing photo books and favorite memories of each individual child on their special day. I try to sew something new each year for them. We have a birthday bin in our storage area and when we get ready to decorate for a birthday most of the decorations come from past homemade items in the bin. Including the chair covers. A couple years ago I started a birthday ring for my then middle girl, aiming to have something different just for her since her birthday falls only one week after her oldest sister. But they all love the birthday ring. And since they look so great on the cake stands for longer than a cake, we now have that tradition too.

This second photo collage was for the girl who insisted she wake up at home, in her own bed, and sit in her own chair at her table, with her chair cover… for her birthday this year. We had two birthday’s straddling a week off for Fall Break. It was so hard for me not to fill it up with travel time. But this girl said no. And since I love birthdays at home….well, okay. We got home late the night before her birthday, with the all decor up still from my 13 year-old’s birthday, seven days before that. The bigs helped decorate after the littles were fast asleep while a sewed a chair cover because we were missing an 8. 

For 13 year this year, I tried to get a little more sophisticated. I’ll admit it was hard take this down. 

We had some fun birthday parties this year. Still semi simple but fun. More about that next up. Because I love a party too.

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Journey to a serger

For years I have gotten by without a serger. All the while I had one sitting in a plastic bag that my aunt found at a yard sale for me. But it intimidated me. I could still make things like this little fat quarter dress. But then it frays and I have to cut the frays after washing it. Which is okay but kind of a bummer.

This photo is when my toddler was a new 1 – a new toddler. I never shared this little dress here. It was the last dress I’ll make without a serger.
I love sewing small sweet things that are not overwhelming of my time. Like this little 1 I made on her first birthday. And many other birthday celebration items I make such as tablecloths and chair covers. 

Through all my dress and skirt making for the girls, I always knew it would be easier with a serger. But I just found other ways around it. I imagined getting the hang of a new machine would be too time consuming and cut into the limited time I have to sew as it is. I have many interests so I have to divide my time wisely.

This summer I finally the took the serger into get serviced and threaded so I could conquer my intimidations. This act came after re-organizing my sewing area, upgrading my machine and passing my old one down to the girls. Therefore we are set and ready to sew and craft and be merry makers going into the colder, winter season. So much of my crafting comes after bedtime. The sewing beer this time was fitting – Long Day Lager.

To get the hang of the serger I volunteered to make these adult bibs for a friend who cares for her elderly mother. It was a great starter project.

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Feeding all the eaters

What is it like feeding all these eaters? First of all they are picky. Multiply that times four and we have quite a bunch. After being a vegetarian for 2o years we now eat more of a paleo diet. We wanted to cut carbs, non-nutritious fillers and processed foods. There is still a lot of organic, processed “health food” readily available I am still trying to avoid.

We are now a local meat and fresh veggies for dinner household. Except I get tired of meat pretty quickly and I could eat veggies for dinner for days.  I have one child who mostly chooses to be vegetarian until she gets so hungry she’ll go for a corn dog. Despite farm visits and growing up in a lifestyle where all her food is organic, local and delicious… She’d opt for Papa Johns cheese pizza every day of her life. She’s 13 now. I’m pretty sure I was the same way at her age.  I have one child choosing to be gluten free right now which makes the no grains on a paleo diet too limiting for her. Beans have to be in our realm of choice too. But we stick to dried beans. I have one girl who is at least more open to culinary adventures like curry and Thai food.  My toddler is living off bacon and kefir right now with many of sides of breastmilk. Thank goodness my husband will eat anything. He just eats a lot of everything. He’s super skinny and I have no idea where it all goes.

All my kids are eating larger amounts of food as they are getting bigger.  I’m learning feeding a teenager is not much different than a toddler. When they are hungry they get cranky. So it’s best to just keep them fed. The kitchen is open all the time. The dishwasher gets run twice a day. I feel like I’m wearing a hole in the floor by my cutting board.

To keep my self motivated I recently splurged and bought myself some new happy kitchen things, a new cook book and an apron. Plus I cleaned out some cabinets so I don’t curse while digging out all the pieces and parts to my food processor. Being organized and clean in the kitchen helps a lot.

Cooking daily homemade meals from scratch for a family of six takes a lot of my time. In my spare moments I find myself choosing between taking a shower or feeding myself. Or doing laundry or prepping something for dinner when it’s 10:00 in the morning. I’m a foodie and I like to eat good food. So I don’t mind the effort. I just wish my kids would share my excitement to eat black bean sweet potato chili fries.

I don’t follow recipes. I do from time to time take photos of a meal I make and post it on Instagram. I love being inspired by other people’s cooking so sometimes I play along too. But I don’t think I make anything so extraordinarily awesome I should write a recipe and tell everyone else on here they should make it too. Recipes are a dime a dozen on the internet now. My advice is to jump in and start with quality ingredeints and you can’t go wrong.

Two days a week we cook a family meal from Sun Basket. It helps me get two nights a week where I don’t have to meal plan and the food tastes great. It’s really helpful on the evenings we get home late from dance class.

Most days I still get out my CSA bin from Farmer Megan and cook. I chop, roast and sauté. Like so many moms my Instant Pot is my new best friend. Sundays are for meal prep and planning dinners for the week. I miss sewing all day on Sundays. But feeding all these people is a lot of work. So I sew less and chop more these days. 

For about a year I’ve been experimenting with gluten free flours wondering if I could get anyone to make the jump with me. I’ve learned I can make about anything gluten free. But it does taste different. Everything is more dry. Someone told me to whip the egg whites first and I think that does help. In the photo below, I made butternut squash cornbread, using fresh ground cornmeal and roasted sqaush from our CSA. I thought it was good! Leftovers were made into breadcrumbs for eggplant. The dish on the left was a crustless quiche loaded with veggies.

Good gracious while I’ve been not blogging about food the last nine months, and learning to use an Instant Pot and cook meat…I even started making bone broth. Yep it’s true! Tossing leftover veggies in broth makes for a super easy, yummy soup.

My toddler is hitting the age of wanting to help in the kitchen. She asks to crack eggs, mix things and all the adorable acts of “helping” that really just take forever to make anything. But she’s really cute so we are back to the days of making mini muffins. These were gluten free pumpkin muffins that got gobbled up in one afternoon by my kids, along with the neighborhood kids who can be found at my house daily. I do love being that kitchen where the warm muffins get snatched up in a dash.

In addition to the sweet potato chili fries we had Friday for dinner, I made stir fry beef, quinoa, a pot of plain dried black beans in the instant pot and a salad. Before dinner on the counter was a cutting board full of carrots, hummus, celery with peanut butter, mini bell peppers and block of cheese. Nearly all of it was devoured in the interim time of getting home from school and me getting dinner on the table. Feeding all these people is a lot of food. Period. I can not even imagine feeding boys.

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Fairy House Building

I get these Waldrof  inspired ideas in my head from time to time, as if we are living inside the page of a beautiful book featuring perfectly frolicking children in a sea of playsilks and fairy houses.  But the real life excitement for such things waxs and wains. We spend a lot time outside and my kids have very little screen time and devices. We still have an active backyard mud pie kitchen.

Even wirh aging children I aspire to fill our days wirh with natural play, inspiration and create permission for everyone to act whatever age they wish.

When I told everyone we were going to a fairy house building festival I wasn’t sure how it would go over with  everyone in my crowd.

In attempts to engage my whole clan, I filled baskets and bags full of creative fairy house making supplies that went beyond sticks and acorns. And I invited friends and included a bike ride to the Fairy House Festival that was being held at Ijams Nature Center. My 7-year old lived out my mom dream of riding a bike through the woods wearing fairy wings. Actually, I wore some too.

While crafting in the woods, we were right in our element. 

Here are the houses my girls made. 

Here are some the amazing creations designed by other fairy house builders.

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Aligning life through yoga

Alignment based yoga has been the foundation of my practice since I stepped into my first yoga studio in 2002. It was a full fledged Iyengar studio in Atlanta where all the teachers traveled to the Iyengar Yoga Institute in India to study with B.K.S Iyengar.

These days I post about doing yoga with my family, with my baby (now toddler) and offer glimpses of how my practice cascades into our family’s lifestyle. It’s fun to post photos of impressive looking poses in pretty places. Like this one my brother took of me doing yoga on a paddle board in the Aspen mountains. 

This is fun but it’s not how yoga most affects me in my daily life. Being in this SUP yoga video for the Travel Chanel was fun too. Really fun! But it’s not my everyday yoga life.

Through a slow and steady practice focused on breath work and stillness in poses, I personally benefit from the grounding affects mentally while my body reaps the benefits of gaining strength.  A strong body supports a strong mind.  And it can all begin with an easy standing pose, like Tadasana (mountain pose) with two feet on the ground.

Take Virabhadrasana I (warrior 1) as another example. Instructions for this standing pose can include lifting your pelvic floor, drawing your navel up and using your transverse abdominals to lift your diaphragm towards your ribcage while extending your arms towards the ceiling and softening your neck and shoulders. Staying there for five steady breaths brings a quiet opportunity for self awareness in the body and the mind.

Acute attention to the aligned body brings stillness, focus and slows down our central nervous system. It allows me to see things not from a different lens, but challenges me to be open to new insight. That’s the outcome I’m seeking when I get on my mat. It’s not always about how long I can hold a headstand. I know I’m not alone in this thinking. It’s ancient wisdom.

Then one day the beginner poses lead to the intermediate poses and a headstand feels as natural as a downward facing dog. But everyone has to start somewhere. And putting one foot inside one good yoga studio could be all it takes to embark on a new path.

I’m teaching a new class called Everyday Alignment at The Glowing Body Yoga Studio. The class description can be found here. My yoga bio can be found here.  If you are local come join me for class. It’s every Tuesdays from 10:45-11:45. $10.

If you are not local, I am guilty of joining in the Instagram fun of posting photos of me doing yoga poses. You can play along by following me if you want. I always hope my posts are helpful and inspiring, and not placed there for my own ego. I will forever be a student of yoga and have much to learn.

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Yoga play at home

As a Father’s Day gift we had photos taken for my husband that he can hang on his office walls. He has a constant request for more pictures in his office of his girls. It’s really sweet. It means he really loves us.

Megan from Break the Mold photo came to our house to do the secret shoot on a day my girls were off school and he was at work.

She had the brilliant idea to have us roll out some mats and do some yoga. How fun!! So I’m sharing…since I haven’t posted about yoga in a while. 

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End of the School Year

Tuesday was the last day of school for my big girls. My oldest graduated from Upper Elementary (4th, 5th and 6th grade) and will move on to the Adolescent Community (7th and 8th grade). There was a really nice graduation ceremony. The children gave heartfelt speeches saying goodbye to this age and stage of life. I didn’t expect something like this but it was really wonderful. The teachers collected comments, complements and jokes from all the students about each 6th grader and read them out loud. It was individualized, meaningful and so much more impactful than a certificate or award. The day before the ceremony my daughter brought home ALL her binders of work from three years in Upper Elementary. One day soon, we’ll sit down and read through them when we have some quality time to focus on these achievements and how much she has learned. At the celebration there was food afterwards for the students and parents. A lot of thought and effort went into the event by all the community. I felt blessed to have these amazing teachers help shape, support and teach my children. Sometimes they even teach me how to parent as I enter new challenges with each new phase of development. For our family this is the best way to do middle school. We absolutely made the right choice for our girls.

Twice a year the students do Expert Journals, write a report on a topic and present what they learned. This time my oldest daughter did hers on Broadway. She spent countless hours working on a Powerpoint presentation, to the point I really just wanted her to go to bed the night before but she wanted to get it perfect. She did this because she cared, she took pride in her work and since it was presented to her peers she wanted them to enjoy her presentation. This is the motivation that Montessori education implants in children without grades…. to learn because it’s important to them, and do a good job because it’s purposeful. My  older middle daughter did her report on U.S. Women’s Soccer. She worked really hard too and every bit of it payed off. 

The girls took ownership of teacher gifts for the last day of school. I’m not a Pinterest mom any more. Sadly I don’t have time for detailed crafts since becoming a mom of four. But they wanted to show their love and appreciation to their teachers. My oldest girl made goats milk soaps using supplies they received for Christmas. I bought gift cards from a new local coffee shop. But my older middle girl wanted to give something just from her. Without much time left since it was the night before, I came up with the idea to print some pictures of her doing work with or for each teacher, or an experience they shared together. Each girl put time and their own touch on things. I went into the evening thinking it would be quick and easy. But they all wanted something to present to each of the teachers. This is what we pulled off.  I’m including it here because they took the ideas, the supplies and made sure they had something they were proud to give their teachers. 

And for fun, here is the last day of school photos compared to the first day of school. Every year I feel like we barely make it about across the finish line of lunch packing, routines, driving to school, homework…. all that jazz. Somehow this year I feel like we did okay. Or maybe I’ve just lowered my standards. But I’m ready for summer!!! I love spending time with these girls and baby girl will love having them home even more.
Somehow the same shoes still fit (or maybe they don’t fit?) my middle little and she wore them the last day of school and the first day of school. I promise I do buy them new shoes. Sometimes. She always hates when I ask her to take a picture. I have lots of grumpy pictures from her lifetime to remind of this fact. Such is life I guess. They have minds of there own for good and for bad. Over the year my oldest girl graduated to riding in the front seat when things got too squished back there. I still don’t like it. Then again she is as tall as some grown women, wears the same size shoe as me and is heavy enough not to alert the air bag light to go off as if she were a sack of groceries sitting on the front seat. I’m rambling. Welcome summer! 

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Toddler tour of spaces

Recently I took some pictures of a typical morning at home after the bigs went to school. My inspiration came from an online discussion and question about how we play, versus how we just do lessons at home. Honestly this is how we play. By striving to do everyday things with purpose and joy. The photo tour of spaces was after baby girl got dressed and as I tidied up her room. It was her reading books, playing with babies and I had her closet open and available for her to play in as well. Most times it is closed, which is one simple way to go about toy rotation. Her toys and sleep space are all hand-me-downs from her sisters.

Next we moved into the kitchen so I could clean up from breakfast. She helped by washing out her yogurt bowl and placing it back on her table setting shelf. Then she choose two kitchen lessons – scooping lentils and cutting play dough. 

Then we made it to our living room and our official lesson shelf which now looks like this, very simplified and lots of room for yoga and movement. It was a nice porch morning so I moved my mat outside. It lasted a few minutes at least, before the blocks too over my mat. Which made a really cool photo. I treasure our quiet mornings, which are about to expire when school gets out for summer break. Baby girl will LOVE having more excitement with her sisters home. But for now I’m savoring all this. 

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The power of a lesson shelf

 

This is our current lesson shelf. This space is designated for lessons that my daughter must be invited to choose.

We choose lessons in the morning, when my older daughters are at school. We have adapted it as our “morning work time” after we have breakfast and get ready for the day. And without much effort or teaching…she just knows to only take things off the shelf after I ask her if she would like to choose lessons.

My daughter will be 20 months-old next week. I have been offering her toys in small shelves and areas, switching them out in small baskets since birth. That is how toys are made available to her.

Around 18 months-old I decided it was time we start introducing official lessons to her, in the true manner of “showing her a lesson.” In a Montessori classroom students must be formally introduced to a lesson before they can choose it. When introduced to new work by a teacher, they are shown the proper way to take a lesson off the shelf, do the lesson and then restore the work.

I began introducing the work mat to my daughter two months ago. My first post on our lesson shelves was here. Since then I have simplified the choices and added new age appropriate lessons.

It sounds too good to be true. But I recently added four new lessons and she did not take them off the shelves until each one had been introduced to her. This really surprised me because children love things with drawers, and coins and slots and shapes to hold in their tiny little hands. It’s all the fun stuff!

Since we’ve been teaching her in this manner since birth, she doesn’t know about the world where children take baskets of things off a shelf and dump them on the ground. She has never been overwhelmed with a pile of toys or a messy playroom. What she learns here is that everything has a place, when to choose this work, how to put it back, and eventually to work independently with these materials presented on this shelf. It’s teaching her a sense of order. The lessons are geared towards the fine motor skills she is learning at this age.

All these lessons are available on Amazon and easy to order. This shelf is by Kid Kraft and is just the right size for her.

My lesson here to readers is there is an important philosophy to shelves of cute little activities that all pop up on Pinterest when you search Montessori activities for toddlers. The ideas are awesome. I love Pinterest for that! But teaching young children how to do the lessons is a huge part of implementing Montessori philosophies at home.

The idea is to set the young child up for success, from start to finish. The beauty in this and the power of a lesson shelf is when it works! And right now this is really working for us.

 

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Four Kids Will Travel

We were long overdue for an airplane trip. Let’s face it. It’s expensive to fly with a family of six. We will be squeaking in one more trip before baby girl turns two and we have to officially buy six seats. But still, buying five seats is a lot. My husband I always said we would travel with our children. We spent two summers in France, Belgium and traveling around Europe when we were in college and newlyweds. We always knew we would travel with our family. We just had no idea that would mean buying six plane tickets. But we are here. It’s been four years since we went anywhere oversees like our Norway trip.

It was time. Twice I bailed on planning a trip to Costa Rica, then Puerto Rica. Because traveling and renting cars and going off the beaten path the way we prefer, is WAY different with four kids in tow. Finding hotel rooms and cars to fit all of us takes advanced planning and I’m a spur of the moment gal. We all renewed our passports last year for a spur of the moment trip to anywhere…somewhere…for Spring Break. And then the two vans on the island I wanted to go to were long booked by people who plan better than me. I had missed the boat. Literally.

This time around I happened to meet a travel agent at my daughter’s dance studio (you can find her here). I told her my budget, my problem, my talent in poor planning, my travel style and said I’m open to different destinations. I told her I want to stay a week and I don’t want it to cost as much as a European vacation. I just want to go to the beach, somewhere warm, and use our passports.

We landed in the Dominican Republic. We stayed in an all-inclusive resort (this is the one) that was very international with guests from many places speaking many languages. Our travel agent found us a family room that comfortably slept all of us, in a family friendly place that gave us an equal balance of big kid stuff, and beach time for me with a baby. We flew out of Atlanta on a Monday, which saved $1500, plus got us on a direct flight. 

Long ago my husband and I were the kind of travelers who backpacked around Europe with a Euro rail pass, guidebooks, and decided where we wanted to go when we looked at the train schedule standing in the train station. When we reached our destination we exchanged our currency (this was before the Euro) and found a pay phone (this was before cell phones) to start calling places to sleep that night – from the numbers provided in our guidebook we had in our backpack. We did this in Budapest. We did it everywhere, through nine different countries. So we are really NOT the all inclusive crowd. But for us today, it seemed like the most economical way to go somewhere and still find sometime to relax on our vacation. Because vacation with four kids, honestly is hardly a vacation. But it’s a trip. And it’s my goal to show my children very different places in the world.

In this moment, walking through the international terminal in Atlanta I said to myself…hell yes…four kids will travel. We are doing this!

I was determined not to be your average “fly and flop” American going to an all-inclusive resort who never leaves the resort. I was going to get out of the reservation and show my children life with real locals in the Dominican Republic. But booking excursions with our children ranging in ages required some creativity, and trust in traveling a little off the beaten path. I found a private glass bottom boat tour for just the six of us. This is so important so we could go at our own speed, and meet the wide needs of our four children. It was on Viator.com. From home I got the owner of the company on the phone, talked to him about our situation and felt comfortable booking it. He assured me he could provide a car seat for our transportation since I didn’t bring one from home. When it was time to hop on the boat the tour guide said everything was ready but they were still trying to locate a car seat for the boat. Thom the owner was trying to soooooooo hard to please us. In the Dominican Republic they drive with babies on motorcycles. They do not understand our American need for car seats. That’s another story but there are too many tales to tell them all. Getting out and trusting some locals and learning about the area brought us our best experiences.

The guide of this boat took us to an area only accessible by foot and by boat. I told him we wanted to go away from all the Spring Break tour boats and find a quiet spot. We succeeded. And the driver even scaled a coconut tree to crack it open and let the girls eat from a fresh coconut. I did not get photos of that. My camera was in the boat at the time. But it will be something my girls always remember.

The girls snorkeled in some deep choppy water, which was really impressive. Especially for my seven year old! And we stopped at a tourist chamber, dock thing, where you could swim with stingrays and nurse sharks. That was a Dominican Republic specialty because such a thing would never fly in the US with animal rights laws. But we did it. I drew the line with swimming with the dolphins.
This is my, I have trumped traveling with four children moment. And yes I just nursed a toddler in a stingray tank. Because that is how you meet everyone’s needs traveling with a one-year-old and a 12-year-old.

The owner of the company boat tour asked us if there was anything else we wanted to do that he could help us arrange. We brainstormed about the traditional options…safaris, dune buggies and zip lining.. all of which had elements we nixed off the list because of traveling with a toddler and some children who are not that daring. We told him we wanted to go surfing and take some lessons. This super nice man Thom offered to line it all up for us and drive us to the closest surfing spot about 30 minutes away. He picked us up in his SUV. The night before the trip I called him to double check that he found a car seat for us to use and that we could fit us all in his SUV. We had already seen his vehicle the day we took out boat tour and knew it was very nice, especially for Dominican Republic standards. While he was on the phone with me he was counting seat belts in the car to make sure we could all fit. He spoke very good English. The idea of doing this with four children felt a little far-fetched me.  But I put my brain in travel mode and I thought of all the things to make sure we were safe and sound for this adventure. This is Thom’s business and he was very professional. While talking with him in the car we learned a lot about their culture, the jobs, and how the tourism industry is changing the country.

It was an awesome adventure!!! I’m so thankful we did it. Thom took us to Macao Beach. The two surfing instructors he lined up were from The King of Board Kitesurf School. Both of them were fabulous working with the girls and teaching them to surf. The owner was from Italy and has two children who surf.  My two middle girls got up on their first tries! My oldest daughter lasted a long time out there and really enjoyed it. The middles called it a day after their first wipeouts. 

Baby girl hung out with me and enjoyed my beach hammock I brought all the way from Tennessee. She was unsure of the ocean this trip more than she has ever been before, in all our weeks spent on the beach in Florida. I did not surf. Paddle boarding is more my speed. But I like to live the beach life, for sure.

This was our spread for lunch. The “menu” was a selection of fresh caught fish. There was no paper menu. And women cooked the food over fire, using large cast iron pots under a tent. The food was amazing and far better than anything at the resort.
There were all kinds of locals on the beach selling their goods to tourists even though it was not a very touristy area.  We bought a fresh coconut and drank the water from the inside. And we had a little fun with a man wearing a US Postal uniform shirt, putting an iguana on people heads.

These are the awesome amazing experiences our children need to have traveling. So yes by golly…. Four kids will travel. Four kids will surf. And four kids will swim with stingrays. It’s how we roll.

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