Mommy's day!

I love this day, the day to celebrate my lifes purpose. Being a mommy!! I've always known I was going to be a mom, I know its not for everyone, and everyone does it differently. I L O V E love it!! Some days are crazy hectic (well every day is really!) My kids are everything to me and I am so lucky to have them all 3 in my life :)

Trying to parent naturally

So I've always been interested in being eco-friendly and especially with the kids. It is so hard and sometimes I feel completely failed at this attempt as I clean with all purpose cleaner, and laundry detergent. But I keep trying and I usually remember to make my own all natural cleaners half the time... better than none of the time (right??). So in the past year I've come to realize the kids toys that are full of plastic and electronics may not be the best for them, learning wise or toxicity wise. Now this seems to be my biggest challenge because all natural toys are soo hard to come by! ToysRus has very little selection ... and dont even bother with Walmart, Target has introduced some more lately and I'm pretty excited about that. But I already LOVE Target!!! so I'm not surprised :) Well I managed to get rid of a ton of small plastic toys that have accumulated Since Chance was a baby, so that is progress. But I've recently discovered a ton of fun shops on Etsy that sell beautiful handmade toys! Now I just need to money to get them all! So I've started my collection with some handmade playsilks that I won in a contest with BeneathTheRowanTree!!!

 And I've found several others doing giveaways like this blog http://naturalsuburbia.blogspot.com. I hope I win some more of these fabulous toys for my babies!! As of right now I'll continue to purge the plastic and look for the more natural toys, but I am sure its all in balance since we still got Daniella a cute pink/purple keyboard for her birthday because she has gotten in to performing songs for us! We love this passion in her and will hopefully continue to find more things she will love! I'm going to continue to look for more natural ways of parenting and living too, and hopefully at some point the natural stuff will take over the chemical stuff but until then I will just keep trying!

Still trying homeschooling

I'm still plugging away at trying to homeschool  but she is definitely a challenge, I am having my own challenges of getting organized for it too, plus MIL has been here 5 weeks and totally thrown us off what little rythym we had, now D is watching way more TV than I'd like, and Isabella is not quite walking yet so its hard to handle her physically while trying to do stuff with Daniella so I'm kinda failing at it for now, I have 7 more weeks of MIL and I need to get something figured out soon. MIL has been great though, she does all our dishes and keeps the kitchen clean, so you'd think I have tons more time to do fun learning stuff with the girls, C has just started to get in to a good space neurologically so I think it will get better soon, hopefully before summer because all 3 littles home with me for 3 months we have to get more creative or I will lose my mind !! Last summer was great, although we were pretty much with out a vehicle I got through it. I think it will get better if we can move to a better neighborhood, and have a better living space for kids. We just ordered a subscription to a monthly kids craft box. So hopefully that will help jumpstart ideas! I am also hoping I start blogging more, I think this helps get my crazy thoughts more organized LOL ... I guess we will see!

My life is a Jason Mraz concert

This morning I've spent it listening to Jason Mraz. Love him! His music is so happy even when its not always about the greatest things in life. He has a way of lifting my spirit. My happy chaos life is every week some kind of roller coaster. Today is no exception. C had a seizure this morning then of course he was super crabby all morning (understandably so). After a nice bath he seems to be better. D has been off and on sick but she seems better I think its mostly the time change and weather changing. I'm still trying our homeschool preschool a little bit everyday. C is on spring break so its a little harder to fit it all in. Plus I am so excited my mother in law is coming over in 2 weeks to spend 3 months with us. She live in the UK currently so we havent seen her in years. It will be so nice to have the kids nana living with us. Plus she will be able to babysit which will help me and J get back to one on one time <3. So as you see, the day is full of fun and not so fun stuff. But overall I smile. Life is always good in some way.

 jasonmraz.com

Best Song & Video!!

Adventures in homeschooling and balance

Wow, I havent posted in awhile, but my lil sprite fairy D, decided it would be a fun experiment to spill milk out of her mouth on to my laptop keyboard! So I had to wait a while before we could buy another. I have started to explore homeschooling, and we are trying to focus on a homeschool program based on learning the nature and the natural rhythms of the home. I really really like the program but I'm struggling to find the balance in using nature to learn and our need of electronics in our home. We are very mindful of the TV the kids do watch, but at the same time I feel guilty for them watching. I think my struggle comes from the fact that we have C with his complex physical needs I cant always be fully engaged with D all day long, in fact I cant always be in the same room with her and she is still at that age where her curiousity over comes her and all sense of 'this might not be a good idea' goes out the window. So I'm working on balance, making sure when I have the opportunity the TV is OFF the majority of the day and her and I are side by side engaged and mindful of everything we do. I do also struggle with the fact that C needs the cause and effect toys and videos to get his playing done, he cannot handle the sensory effects of paper, crayons, sand, grass, flowers, dirt, etc. So I have to find alternatives things he can put in his mouth or be engaged in visually but not hands on. We are so lucky to have the ipad and the many wonderful apps that can accompany us moving in to a more nature based, mindful lifestyle. It's not perfect, I find some days our lives revolve around staying inside and I'm busy with things the kids cant participate in, we will get there, I have several role models to help.

I've also chosen to homeschool because I've been learning how kids best learn, and how the schools seem to be very counter intuitive to this process. Hours of homework in Kindergarten and Elementary school, Expecting preschoolers and kinder kids to learn to read and do math; which I KNOW I didnt have to learn to do math until first grade, the only math I learned in kinder was to count to 100. I really cant see how putting so much pressure on young children is a good thing. I know if our homeschooling doesnt work out, I will be trying my hardest to get the girls in to a montessori program, I wish there was a waldorf school in town too but I know the montessori school program would suit Daniella really well. For now I will try my hardest at home to nuture a love of nature and the miracles of mother earth <3

Mondays

I normally like mondays, it's when my oldest goes to school and i just have the two girls during the day. But today I am dragging so much, the coffee's not working, my toddler was up until 1am which felt like 2 because of the time change, mr. C got sick in the middle of the night so I had to clean him up and his bed luckily he went back to sleep and woke up fine for school. Baby is still teething which feels like has been going on 10 yrs! And today I still need to clean up Mr. C's bedroom, the playroom, make some appts, and sweep the floor in between keeping the girls out of trouble and hopefully keeping them from screaming their heads off all day over various things. So this monday is in no way a good day, but I am now playing catch with Ms. D whether I like it or not as I just got a soccerball to my head while she was yelling  'CATCH' her new favorite word!!

Playtime and meditation in Fall

So it's fall and in Texas that means it's outside weather! We are not living in a gigantic oven anymore, there is coolness to the air and the ever present sun is still shining everyday. I love it. This is why I moved here 5.5 yrs ago. Now we can talk walks outside with out heat exhaustion! I've been feeling kind of weird through this transistion of season, very disconnected but yearning to be grounded again. It all and always comes down to the distractions we have. We have so many computers and gadgets and tv's it's so easy for us to be doing 10 things at once. Dont get me wrong, I love my Facebook. It keeps me connected to all the other families out there with a child with Angelman Syndrome. They are my support group and my family. But I need to keep perspective and I dont need to be checking every second of the day if they have posted updates. This time of year I start to feel the desire to be more connected to our earth, maybe since I was born in October. so now instead of watching TV when the girls are napping, I will meditate, listen to wind in the trees, the cars going down the street, the creak of our house settling in for the cold weather.

Being a mother up to this time has been fantastic and continues to be. D is almost potty trained, I is learning to crawl, sit up and eat baby food, and C is his happy crazy self as always. I am constantly challenged by them to do better and learn more. It's so weird how this life that I've had continues to be so hard yet so fulfilling at the same time.

Life gets so crazy for us sometimes. Hubby has been self-employed since I met him. This kind of employment is not easy and not for everyone. You have to be resourceful. Money does not always come in regular intervals like for employees of a business. You have to wait for money, or you gets tons of it in one big bunch but then you dont always know when the next bunch is coming. This lifestyle has made me resourceful to say the least, I know how to stretch a dollar, and we know how to budget to big bunches to make it last until the next. It has also taught me what's really important. Some people seem to think it's better for a family to have steady money coming in and more money than you may need. Although it does make life easier to have more money, I dont think it makes it better. Life should be great with or with out lots of money. I definitely appreciate having money and lots of stuff to buy. In fact I love shopping, going to store and buying fun stuff to bring home. But I know for sure my families happiness has nothing to do with whether we can buy stuff or not. I actually really love this. I hope my kids see how we are living our dreams and always make the best of whatever our situation is. I hope they never see us stress over money, and they see us work hard for everything we have. I know they will never see my husband and I fight over money. I know we do get stressed from it here and there but there is never a doubt we will be ok. And I hope my kids grow up knowing if they follow their dreams they can make any situation happy.