Never Enough Time

For the three days I was hoping to post about...

the really cool symphony I took Craig to on Valentine's Day

Jordan, the goalie of his soccer team, scored a game saving goal

Clara saying I love my family ...I said I love you too and she said
"mom, I meant the family that means everyone, not just you!"

heading to New Orleans with my devoted partner in crime Colleen
we're leaving in 3 hours!!!

How Jordan was asked to accompany his school choir on the piano in the music
festival and did an amazing job!

The fact I didn't get homemade cinnamon buns and cookies put in the freezer for Craig and how that will meant he family will head to Denny's a few times while I'm gone...oh well.

A Little Lesson:
There is never enough time to do everything, so you better pick wisely what you spend your time on!

Almost Earth Shattering

My girls like to play dress up. It's usually called "house" or "family". Someone is the mommy and someone is the child and sometimes there is a baby, whether of the plastic doll or Benjamin persuasion. It never really entered reality land when my girls were completely not interested in changing, feeding, bathing or doing any of the real "looking after baby" stuff. Sure they liked to watch, but when I would say hey do you want to feed the baby, they would look at the jar of green mush and say "Ewww." As for changing the little turkey, not a chance. The other night, Emily came to me and said "Mom, can I put Benjamin to bed and do everything?" I looked at her puzzled "Everything?" She smiled "YEP!" Emily skirted off and got her little brother completely ready for bed. She changed his diaper, got his jammies on, read him a story, made him a bottle, fed him a bottle, said prayers and put him in his crib, turned off the light and shut the door. She came back downstairs and reported.

A Little Lesson:
Sometimes I can hear a concourse of angel choirs quietly singing in the near distance, and then it is like a burst of sunshine breaking through a cloudy sky and the volume of the symphony reaches it's climax as they break into Beethoven's Ode to Joy...kind of like THIS.
I know...a little dramatic, but it really felt like an earth shattering moment in the day to day goings on of our little family. Now I'm waiting for Jordan to suddenly request if he could clean the toilets or do several loads of laundry.

Get the Bucket!

I've got three little turkeys with a bug inside their tummies screamin to get out. It started with Benjamin at 3:30am, Clara joined him at 7:30am and finally Emily at exactly 4:25pm. It starts with "my tummy really hurts..." and then you've got about 2 1/2 minutes to get a bowl or you better get out the disinfectant and the paper towel. I'm scoring at about 50% right now and not feeling so good about how many rolls of paper towels I've gone through. At one point of my day, trying to remember whose bowl was who, frantically washing my hands between clean ups (I CAN'T GET SICK!) and convincing even the tiniest of persons that they will feel better soon became almost comical. It was a symphony of that shaky "mom" call from the four corners of our house just before stomach launch. Finally I told everyone involved they were not to move or walk anywhere without their bucket in their hands. Benjamin looked at me with his "good luck with that one mom" eyes. For the time being, Jordan and Craig have managed to dodge this bullet that seems to be spreading across Vancouver at wild fire speeds. I was ready to seek some sympathy from my buddy Nikki when I saw her name on my caller display, when she promptly announced she had three home with the same condition! Yikes, I hope this is one of the 24 hour gigs!

A Little Lesson:
The gears shift when you have little guys down for the count, it's not easier nor harder...just different. There are less toys to pick up, as everyone is in the horizontal position on the couch. There is less food to prepare because no one is hungry. There are less dishes to wash because no one is eating. To make up for this reprieve in a mothers typical day, there is about triple the amount of toxic laundry needing immediate attention, and quadruple amount of cuddles and hugs needed, so it all works out to just another day of getting about 4 out of 10 things done on my to do list.

Finally

After many many nights of returning home from work, a little dinner, a little play with the kids, Craig would head to his den and hunker down night after night building his wife a website. Today, we are finally up and running. The website will start off with educational children's songs especially for the upcoming Montessori Conference I will be speaking at in New Orleans in two weeks. Then, in a few weeks/months the website will branch into Sacred/Christmas/Piano mp3's and sheet music. Have a look...

shelleymurley.com

(The peace songs I have been working on for the past
few weeks will be loaded up on Wednesday evening.)

A Little Lesson:
I'm not sure how one celebrates the grand opening of a website. We have some flat peach and mango Martenellis left over from Valentine's...I guess that will do.

A New Chapter

This, is better than Disneyland!

Benjamin putting the entire bowl of corn pops in his mouth during snack time.
Daddy digging them out.

Benjamin has headed into a new chapter of his little life...today he entered nursery. In the church, mothers hold, chase, feed, distract, rock and carry their little ones around during Sunday school and Relief Society until they turn that magical age of eighteen months when they are handed over to loving and dedicated nursery leaders who gently teach our children to sit quietly, play nicely, love the Lord and choose the right.

A Little Lesson:
I know if Benjamin could speak in full sentences he would say to me,

"Mom, I know this is hard for you. You want me to stay your little boy forever and never grow up. But this is a big day, for you and me. I finally get to go in that room with all the toys and you will no longer get to chat with your friends in the hallway while I run around, instead you will have to go to Sunday School and study the scriptures. This is a good move for all of us. Don't be sad. And one more thing, I need a haircut, I've got friends now, I'm hanging with the cool kids, common I look ridiculous!"

Valentine's Cereal

I make waffles, pancakes, milkshakes, muffins, oatmeal and homemade cinnamon buns every weekday morning. I mix it up each day...keeping it fresh and exciting. On the weekends...out comes the beloved box of cereal. The kids rush from their beds and race down stairs to the food storage room to pick which box they will get. Artificial ingredients and artificial colouring pulls them from their warm sleeping beds and my made-from-scratch with a little love added to each recipe brings out the "this again?". Okay, sometimes I hide nutritious ingredients in those tasty homemade items so that my kids will receive the odd vitamin, mineral some omega 3 here and there...but I do it with stealth-like skills hidden so deep not even a top secret double agent could discover it.

Today is a celebration - it's "Almost Valentine's Day"...why so early? It feels like Valentines because they will celebrate it at school. I will do a little red decor fun, bake some scrumptious red velvet homemade cupcakes with pink lemonade and of course it is a special holiday so out comes the cereal. What will they say when they come down the stairs for breakfast this morning? "Hey cool, we're having cereal...on a weekday!" I don't know what it is about high fructose corn syrup and food colouring that brings out the squeals in my apparently deprived children...go figure.

A Little Lesson:
Looking beyond my children's unappreciation for homemade cooking, this particular holiday is one that makes us all smile around here. Clara is over the moon. Emily gets really excited. Jordan has moved out of really excited, visited "that's only for little kids", and has moved into hey cool I got all my friends Dora valentines cards..they'll love it. I, on the other hand am counting the minutes until the fancy surprise date I'm takin my man on tomorrow night...

Stable

For weeks we've been coming to the beach on music lesson days where Benjamin spends most of the time face planting in the sand. He has been walking for over 6 months now, it's just the beach terrain seems to throw off his jive. It doesn't help that the trek to the water is on an a hill and he just gets going and going until he's eating a mouthful of sand. Today was different. He was completely stable. No faceplants. Just pure exploration at its finest.

A Little Lesson:
The sand for Benjamin is so much like the weaknesses we endure. We spend days, months, and even years trying to find stability and manouvre around them, through them and sometimes face down on top of them. Only after we find our footing and build our strength do we no longer faceplant but rather rise above them and walk in the sunshine. We are even promised that those weaknesses we endure will one day become strengths we enjoy.

Chosen!

Big News! My mom, who spends some of her spare time down in False Creek training with the "Grand Dragons" Dragon Boat team, has just found out that her team has been chosen to carry the Olympic torch on it's relay across Canada leading up to the games. The Grand Dragons are a team of crazy grandmas and grandpas (you have to be at least 55 years old to be on her team) who are fiercely in shape and as competitive as my mom and have won gold medals all over the world. My mom's favourite part is when she is lined up for a race with other boats from big companies like Telus and IBM, who enter an unpracticed team of cocky men dripping with muscles rippling through their arms and legs looking on at the gray-haired boat next to them thinking they'll be easy to beat. Within a few strokes her boat sails past them effortlessly to beat them by two or three boat lengths. To be good at dragon boating it takes skill and technique not just muscles and youthful presumption!

A Little Lesson:
Congratulations mom we'll be there to watch you with bells on!

Who's teaching Who?

Yesterday Clara and I were dipping strawberries for the Family Home Evening treat. I explained to her as I dried each freshly washed strawberry with a paper towel, "they have to be nice and dry because chocolate doesn't like water, they don't get along." "Mom," with all the ' I know what I'm talking about' voice, "these are not animals, they're just food..." and then she sighs.

A Little Lesson:
What I wished I captured was her face when she impatiently took her wet strawberry and dipped it into the chocolate and made a gooey mess (it's the one in the upper left corner) It was like she said with her eyes...oh, you do know of what you speak. Ahhhh, a sweet moment for sure.

Almost There...

We are about four days away from launching

my website
a montessori music blog
a united nations peace project blog

maybe five.

A Little Lesson:
I spent Saturday morning wearing four or five different outfits, sitting and standing in different positions, holding different musical instruments, clapping and singing with different children on my lap as my talented photographers Jay and Trevor shot hundreds of photographs for those three or four pictures needed for my website. Not that anyone is asking....I will never go into modeling. Ever.

I Worked it Out

As I have been trying to weave composing, businessblogbuilding, packing presentation paraphernalia into pancake flipping, diaper changing and bedtime story reading in order to get ready for my trip to New Orleans I started to think...if it's possible to keep a healthy balance between being a devoted mom/wife and projects I love to do. I decided to worked it out on the calculator. If I wanted to get an A on my parenting report card, and the last time I checked an A was 86% (I'm not shooting for a high A, common), and the theme of almost all Mormon commercial say...It's About Time. I wake up around 5am and go to bed around 10pm it works out to be that I have approximately 2.26 hours per day for project Me:

composing, reading a book, blogging, running my tiny little business,
composing, sudoku, learning the cello, and composing!

and 14.74 hours per day on project Devoted Mom/Wife:

hugging, kissing, tickling, cleaning, laundry, scheduling, dishes, reading, diapering,
ironing (just kidding), mopping, folding, lunch packing, chauffeuring, practicing, scolding,
dusting, sweeping, gaming, listening, advising, playdate arranging, cooking, dating, baking,
tidying, wiping, dressing, laughing, searching, watching, scrubbing, and lots and lots of loving!

A Little Lesson:

It can be done.

Jail

These days when my kids are in jail, (time-out on the stairs) life's not so bad when you have a two foot visitor who squeals with glee every time he comes around the corner to see you. He doesn't know how to tell time so he thinks visiting hours are whenever he likes. He knows there's something special when a sibling sits on those hard wooden stairs. They don't go play with their friends. They don't go do big people things. They just sit there and give him tons of attention. Bring on the the time-outs says Benjamin James! He can't figure out why they don't get up...but they just don't get up. Sometimes he'll even run illegal errands for the fugitives like getting something from the kitchen or their rooms. Such a young age to start a life of crime.

A Little Lesson:
When I was a little girl my grandma used to tell me when her kids (my dad) were naughty while driving in the car she used to say "if you kids don't stop it we'll drop you off and leave you with the Indians!!!" I remember thinking how terrible it would be to actually be left on the side of the road on the Indian reserves! I have a feeling my kids, the "time-out" generation, are not going to be spending too much time telling their kids how scary their punishments were. Such a soft society we've come to live in.

Date Night

This is my fiddle playing buddy Diana, who
came to watch the ones left behind.

This is daddy's date.
She is cute, funny and full of beans!


This is mommy's date.
He is tall, handsome and full of smarts!

This is the little girl, who was too sick to go on a date
and the little boy who was too young to go on a date.

A Little Lesson:
Of course we all love our kids. Sometimes I try to imagine my children as regular people that live down the street or who are in my science class. I'm convinced I would be desperate to be their friends. I really like who they are. Of course, I am biased.

Fur

"Dad, why do you have fur on your neck?"
"That's hair honey."
"I think I know how that happened."
"Oh?"
"The hair from your head fell onto your face and became your beard then it fell on your neck."
"Really?"
"Yep"

A Little Lesson:
She's got a point, the hair on Craig's head is starting to thin.