Where does the time go?

This past Sunday we had a big party for Pumpy and Thunder Thighs. Pumpy turned 6 and Thunder Thighs turned 1.

I just can’t believe all these years have gone by, with this last year, in particular, really flying past. It seems to me that with each child time passes faster and faster. I find myself, on many occasions, watching the children do little things that could easily be overlooked or go unnoticed, like when Papaya is talking to her dolls, or Thunder Thighs’ chubby feet are padding around the wood floors, and I’m struck by the realization that these moments are so fleeting. It almost brings me to tears. I’m overwhelmed by the desire to somehow freeze time. It’s so difficult to imagine that these beautiful children will someday grow up, fully. 

But that is another post. 

Usually, when it comes to the kids’ birthdays, I bake special cakes for them…

like these two for Papaya’s 3rd birthday this past August…

Max's Disgusting Worm Cake and Ruby's Raspberry Fluff cake

and this one for Pumpy’s 5th birthday last year…

The Robot Cake!

 but this year I decided to leave all the baking and cooking to the wonderful people at Market District!

Pumpy chose a camouflage cake with a tank on top and for Thunder Thighs I went with a simple white round cake that I decorated myself with simple dots of icing in all the primary colors. I also ordered roasted chicken breast and a mozzarella and tomato penne pasta. The only things I cooked were roasted red skin potatoes, roasted asparagus with rosemary, and a big crock of Velveeta mac and cheese (for the kids and certain, picky in-laws :0)

From what I was told, everything was really good!

Sadly, the morning of the party I came down with the stomach flu. Papaya, too. I was well enough to enjoy the party, with the every-growing rumblings in my stomach, but I knew that eating wasn’t an option. Poor Papaya spent most of the day cuddled up in my sister’s lap, and in fact, my brother-in-law couldn’t even make the party because he had a stomach flu also.

Tis the season!

But the kids had a wonderful day and I captured most of it on film, including Thunder Thighs digging into his own little smash cake. It was precious.

I’m finally beginning to feel better and hopefully we didn’t infect any of our guests!

I hope you had a lovely weekend, too.

 

 

 

 

 

A New Beginning…

As of yesterday, I am no longer a homeschooling mama.

I’m not even sure I ever was, as our homeschooling efforts have been something of a spectacular disaster, not to mention short-lived, but regardless, it feels so good to know that it’s over! I really wanted to be the kind of mama who homeschools, but in the end, it’s just not me. And I’m so thankful that I’ve been able to accept this about myself and just move on.

Over the past couple of years, I’ve spent so much time reading blogs written by women who have a bunch of children and who homeschool them all. In fact, in my own extended family, many of my cousins were homeschooled. Somewhere along the way I internalized that the epitome of good mothering was to homeschool. And after all the attachment parenting we’ve done, it seemed like the natural progression of things.

But the reality of it was much different than I anticipated. There were all the usual problems of trying to teach an older child with much younger ones needing constant attention, but at the end of the day, I just didn’t enjoy it and neither did Pumpy. For me, it felt claustrophobic, spending every single day stuck in our house together with little variation. Although I had originally planned for us to do different things (like museums, etc), it’s so hard to for me to find the motivation to haul all three kids out of the house together for something like that! It was just too much, and mentally, I could feel myself getting worn down with each passing day.

Anyway, I stand in awe of all the homeschooling moms out there who can manage that. I am not able to, and I honestly don’t want to! On Monday, Pumpy will join the kindergarten class at a nearby Catholic school. Papaya will be joining the preschool class three days a week.

I feel like a gigantic burden has been lifted. I feel like I can breathe again. The kids are really excited, too. And now I have the added bonus of a bit of one-on-one time with Thunder Thighs.