A Frozen Halloween

Like thousands of other little girls (though not so many as last year, I imagine!) our kids wanted to dress as their favorite Scandinavian sisters for Halloween: Anna and Elsa, naturally.

Kate and Claire both got Elsa dress-up dresses and shoes for Christmas last year, so for a while, both were planning to be Elsa for Halloween, which I was planning to roll with, but I'm glad Claire decided she wanted to be Anna instead. So, with Mommy, Daddy, and a new sibling arriving mere weeks before Halloween, we planned our Frozen family ensemble.

 

Daddy was Kristoff, Mommy was Sven, and Jonah was Olaf. Our costumes were pretty simple: Matt with black pants, shirt, toboggan, and fleece vest from his own closet, plus a scarf from mine around his waist. I just wore brown and added $5 reindeer antlers I bought on Amazon. For Jonah, I bought a secondhand white fleece sleeper on ebay and sewed black felt on for buttons, and bought the crocheted Olaf hat on Etsy. Jonah actually won first prize in the costume contest at our neighborhood Halloween party. (It's hard to compete with an 8-day-old newborn, though!)



 

My personal favorite was Claire's costume, though. I made her cape and cap out of fuchsia fleece and it just made the ensemble. I couldn't get enough of her little braids sticking out from under her bonnet!

Halloween night itself was rainy and a bit chilly after dark, but between the neighborhood party, church trunk-or-treat, and braving the rain for at least a few streets on the 31st, our candy bowl is full and our Frozen fever sated for the time being!

Updates

I've been thinking a lot lately about why I blog. Or rather, why I feel like I should blog, since I don't very often! I'm long past the notion of trying to build readership and earn money off of affiliate links or anything. When I have something a little deeper I want to share about parenting philosophies or foster care, it's nice to have this space in which to write it.

But mainly, I just like to share parties I throw and crafts I make and cute things my kids are doing. (Someone hold me accountable for sharing Kate's My Little Pony birthday party and the girls' shared sister room, please!) Some people like to pin those ideas, and that always feels good, but what's the point, really?

Then I think about the blogs I still enjoy reading. I read some of the big thinkers and writers in contemporary Christianity, people whose work is relevant to my work, but to be honest, I don't do that for fun. And I've grown quite tired of the lifestyle bloggers who share so many money-making sponsored posts. The blogs I enjoy most, the ones I hope to see when I pull up Feedly, are the moms and foster moms just sharing their lives. Whether I know them in real life or just feel like I do, I like seeing what they and their kids are up to, what their homes look like, how they spend their time. "Human interest" in its purest form.

And I suspect that's why anyone reads this blog. So in that spirit, here are some updates on each member of Team Kelley.

Matt:

Superdad!!

His big news of late is a new "appointment." That's what, in the United Methodist Church, they call a new pastoral assignment. (In the UMC, bishops assign pastors to churches within a certain geographic area; churches do not do their own search or calling of pastors.) So, in June, we'll be leaving Arlington UMC, where Matt was baptized 34 years ago and where we have served for the last four years, and heading to the Associate Pastor position Christ UMC of Franklin, where Matt was confirmed about 22 years ago! Having these prior personal connections to churches is not really something the bishop is concerned with, but they are nice coincidences that we enjoy. Since Matt grew up at Christ UMC and has so many family friends there, visiting there (as I have occasionally over the past ten years) has often felt like visiting my home church in Louisville—a church home away from home, if you will. Matt also just finished the first year of his Doctor of Ministry program!!

Kate:

Kindergarten is almost over, and it has been a great year. She enjoys school, and loves the independence of riding the school bus and getting up to her own alarm clock (sometimes). She's learned a lot and almost always loves doing her homework. They get the whole week's packet of "home fun" on Monday, with small assignments for each night, and she usually does the whole thing within twenty minutes of getting home on Monday. I wrote a year or more ago about Kate's perfectionism, and how she is sometimes reluctant to try things she may not do perfectly right away. This has been the case with reading out loud. She reads well, but obviously doesn't know every word in most books, so we have to beg and plead and bribe to get her to try. She doesn't have such anxiety when it comes to math, and eagerly asks us to quiz her on addition, subtraction, and lately even multiplication! (They aren't covering that in school yet, but somehow she got the idea in her head, and she gets the concept well enough to calculate products up to 25 or so!)

Kate is doing soccer this spring at the YMCA, and as much as my competitive girl likes scoring goals in practice, she is clearly a natural-born defender. Like most soccer teams this age, the kids tend to run around in a pack, kicking the ball in any old direction, but if the other team gets too close to her goal (i.e. on her half of the field), Kate will break away from the pack to run back and protect her goal. I was a back in field hockey, so it's cool to see Kate enjoying defense too. I made sure to praise her a lot when a goal scored by her teammate would not have happened without her kick further back on the field. She's still doing gymnastics as well, loves to roller skate, and is excited for a variety of camps we have her signed up for this summer: gymnastics, drama, and "invention" camp.

Claire:

Claire is still Mommy's little barnacle, so attached to me that she won't even let Matt pour her a cup of milk if I am in the vicinity. Still a combo of sweet, snuggly, serious, and silly, she can also throw fits with the best of them. The "terrible twos" are supposedly really the worst between 2.5 and 3.5, and Claire turned 3.5 a couple weeks ago. So those irrational fits over the type of cup I gave her or the order in which her shoes were put on will magically come to an end, right? Right.

She likes to color and play dress up, dollhouse, and pretend. She can write her name (preferring to spell it CLARIE, though). She even wrote it upside down once, such that it was readable from where I was standing, which I thought was pretty impressive. She's doing gymnastics now too, and has the cutest dance moves. She sings a lot too, whether it's a song from Frozen acted out with the girls' Anna and Elsa dolls, or just her running soundtrack of humming and nonsense lyrics while she's doing other stuff. (I'm so excited for the children's choirs at our new church!)

Selfie with Mommy at gymnastics

Both girls like to watch videos on Netflix a lot more than I would like, but it's fun to see all these '80s characters revived: My Little Pony, Care Bears, and Strawberry Shortcake. They were in a Magic School Bus phase too for a while (not a revival/recreation, but the actual old episodes, which explains why Kate vehemently insists Pluto—or Bluto, as she says it—is indeed a planet). They also just discovered "Okay Google" on our phones, and like to verbally search for things. It always thinks Claire says "Okay Doodle," though, and Kate doesn't quite get why searching for "family photos" doesn't just bring up pics of our own family. Searching for "Shake It Off" is most successful, and they love to watch that Taylor Swift video.

BGC:

Yes, she's still with us. As my college psych professor used to say, "Things always take longer than they do." Her future adoptive parents (who, if you see me on Facebook, tag us in their posts about "CLS"—Certain Little Someone—that's BGC) have been taking their classes and doing their home study and all that, so their approval as pre-adoptive foster parents will come through soon. (By next week, in fact--I've been sitting on this half-written post for quite a while.) They've been keeping her on the weekends and when we go out of town, so the official transition should be very easy. She's over 2 1/2 now, having been with us 21 out of her 31 months of life. Permanency won't happen for her before her third birthday (since she needs to be with her pre-adoptive parents six months before adoption can take place) but hopefully not too long after that. Would this calendar year be wishful thinking? You never can tell, the way the state moves. After about four months MIA, we finally got some news/had contact with her parents. These absences are close to the official definition of legal abandonment, but not quite, but termination of parental rights is pretty much a foregone conclusion. While sad, this will make her adoption a smoother process.

As usual, we are astounded by her development. She got her cochlear implants a month or two ago, and seems to enjoy hearing what's going on around her! She's learning more sounds now, and getting serious about speech therapy. And, after months (and months--even before the spica cast) of being able to stand but hating it, she's pulling up to a stand all by herself and even cruising around the coffee table! She'll walk while pushing our ottoman (more stability and resistance than a walker toy) or while holding someone's hands. She just might take her first independent steps before leaving us—I wouldn't be surprised!

Me and Baby 3:

We go together, you know, for another 20 weeks! (Halfway point is today!) Per usual with my pregnancies, I am still frequently sick, especially when in motion. So, working from home is a good thing, but travel and even the short drive up to Kate's school are precarious. When traveling to Chicago and NYC in the last couple months, I've gotten sick on planes, trains (well, the subway platform), busses, and automobiles. Something different about this pregnancy, which has made us think it could be a boy, is a total food aversion that I'm just now coming out of. Previously, I'd maybe feel averse to a very specific thing, for a period of time, but never so completely as in this pregnancy. For 2-3 months, I was avoiding coffee and most meat, but it went so far beyond specific foods to a total apathy and anxiety about food. Nothing sounded good, and then I'd feel so anxious leading up to meal times that I'd throw up, just because meals don't sound good or I don't know how I'll feel about the particular meal. As with my other pregnancies, fruit is most universally appealing and craveable. Nachos/burrito bowls (vegetarian) have kind of been a thing this time around. I had one awesome grocery trip at about 8 weeks, when my philosophy was "anything that looks appealing to Jessica goes in the cart." At that point, it was crab cakes and egg rolls and corn dogs and other random things. Now, the grocery list is "just the facts, ma'am, and don't even look at the meat section, or pretty much any food not pre-approved."

16 weeks or so? We need to do another one!

Nonetheless, I still always love being pregnant, mainly because it makes me feel so good about my body! Our "big" ultrasound is next Wednesday, and since Kate will be out of school by then, we're taking the girls to see Baby on the screen! Pretty much everybody (except me and Granna) is rooting for a boy, and I'm more or less cool either way. We aren't dead set on any names yet, but we'll figure it out soon, once we know Baby's sex.


And since I've been so bad about posting lately, here are a few more photos of what we've been up to:

Family fun at a carnival--both girls seen bouncing behind us

Matt and I went to NYC for respective work stuff.
We worked in some fun, like a stop at the "Big Gay Ice Cream" shop in Greenwich Village.

Before my author meetings one morning, I worked at the coffee shop across from Studio1A,
so I could see the Today Show filming!

The girlies on Easter

Family pic on Easter

Lots of play tea parties with their "sweet treats"

Backyard water play now that it's warm
(and now that the neighborhood pool opened, it's cool again!)

So that's what we've been up to. Next week will be a big one, with a meeting scheduled for BGC's official transition, and then our ultrasound the next day, which happens to be Kate's last (half) day of kindergarten, so let the summer begin!

DIY Gift Idea: Family Memory Game

I managed to knock a couple big crafty to-dos off my list this past weekend, one of which was a gift for Claire's upcoming third birthday. I made the same thing for our nephew, who turned three a few months ago, and wanted to share a little tutorial for this super-cute, personal gift that will be treasured for years to come.

Family Memory Game
This is a basic matching game, like the versions you can buy in stores with animals or cartoon characters or whatever on it. Kids from age 2 or 2 1/2 can learn to pick up two face-down cards, see if it's a match, and if not, remember where they are to try to get a match on subsequent turns. This DIY game uses photos of family members, keeping the faces of far-flung relatives fresh for kids and helping them learn to read the names of loved ones.

I made mine with 12 family members, for a 24-piece game. You could do more or less, depending on the number of relatives (and pets, close friends, etc.) you want to include.

Supplies:
Photos of family members (cropped to 3x4, two on a 4x6 photo)
3 1/2 x 4 1/2 cards (wood or chipboard)
scrapbook paper with a small, regular pattern
acrylic paint and brush
Mod Podge and sponge brush
corner rounder (optional)

Step 1: Editing the Photos
Find a good picture of each family member that can be cropped fairly close around his or her face and not have other people in the frame. Crop each to 3 x 4, two on a 4 x 6 photo for easy and cheap printing. Including the person's name is nice, I think, since the names of family members are often among the first words kids learn to spell, read, and write. Once you have the template set up, editing each person's photo goes pretty quickly.

Step 2: Prepping the Cards
I had planned on using cardstock and laminating them, but decided such a thin card would be hard for tiny hands to pick up. Chipboard would have worked well, but I ended up finding these 3 1/2 x 4 1/2 wood cards at Michael's that are the perfect size, with nicely rounded corners. They come in packs of four for $3.99 each, making the project a little more expensive than I intended (around $30 total) but they are nice and substantial.

I painted the sides that would form the background for the photos white, for a nice consistent background.

 

While that side is drying, cut the scrapbook paper to 3 1/2 x 4 1/2 pieces. I used a corner rounder on them at this point, since the wood cards were rounded.  When the painted side is dry, Mod Podge the scrapbook paper to the other side.

  
Step 3: Prepping the Photos
While the Mod Podge is drying, separate the two matches of each person. Round the corners, if that suits the shape of your cards.

Adhere photos to the painted side. You could use glue/Mod Podge, but I ran them through the Xyron sticker-maker to add permanent adhesive, then Mod Podged over it for a nice sheen. (I skipped that last bit with Claire's, and they still look lovely :)

 

Step 4: The Packaging
Find a nice box that will hold all the cards. Scan a couple of the cards so the "cover" of the box can show some real game pieces. Type up the title and directions, and use some of the leftover scrapbook paper from the opposite side of the cards for a coordinating box.  

I know our nephew and his parents are enjoying their game, and I can't wait for Claire to open hers in a month or so, so we can play our own game of "Family Memory" too.

Ten on Tuesday

Blogging has not been a priority lately (clearly), but I think I can handle ten quick items to share what's up with Team Kelley these days.

1. Kate transitioned to school wonderfully. She likes her teacher, her class, the library, going to P.E., art, and music class. She slept like crazy one afternoon during the first week, but other than that, hasn't seemed abnormally tired or anything. She and Claire are still live wires at bedtime, though Kate does conk out before Claire, these days.

 

2. Kate especially loves riding the bus. I had planned to take her in the morning (to allow us 20-30 extra minutes at home) and let her ride home, but she was totally eager to ride the bus both ways. The bus stop is around the corner from us (or just across a couple yards, if the grass isn't too wet) and Claire insists on coming too in the mornings. Kate feels independent, and has made some of her best school friends so far on the bus—another kindergartener (different class) and her first or second grade sister—who live across a couple yards in a different direction. They draw and do hair on the bus rides and have a great time.

 

3. Claire and Kate are super-into My Little Pony these days. It's so funny how kid-obsessions emerge so quickly and then disappear as quickly as they came. But they love to watch the cartoon on netflix, play with the couple of pony toys they have (my mom is wishing she had kept mine from the '80s!), and call themselves the different ponies, depending on what color they are wearing that day. My favorite is Twilight Sparkle, and I have the Pony theme song in my head all the time. That and the theme from Orange is the New Black.

4. Claire is pretty well potty trained these days, partially thanks to some My Little Pony panties I bribed her with to go #2 on the potty. (I have an aversion to clothing with branded characters on it, but sometimes a mom's gotta do what a mom's gotta do.)

5. BGC is doing better than we expected with her spica cast. Not near so whiny about it as we thought. She likes to be held a lot, since the cast gets hot and uncomfortable, but she's a trooper. And besides the bean bag chair, we've found ways to get her strapped in to her high chair, stroller, and the grocery cart, which I really didn't think would be possible! She gets this one off next week and another one put on for another six weeks. Hopefully that will be it, but there might be another cast or brace after that. Ugh.

6. Summer is essentially (if not officially) over. The pool is closed, we did one last item on our summer to-do list (a movie at the zoo last Friday night, or a "zoovie"), and I broke out the boxes of fall/winter clothing. Claire was excited to see all the "new" clothes appear in her drawers, and the fact that they were Kate's just makes it better! Poor thing—she'll get tired of hand-me-downs eventually, I'm sure.

7. It's consignment sale season! Of course, I don't really need much this year, since Kate wears uniform clothes to school and the littles get all the hand-me-downs. But Kate will need some cool-weather stuff for weekends and breaks, and BGC needs more long-sleeved dresses, since tops and pants don't work with her cast!

8. We're also quickly coming on birthday season in the Kelley house. My kids, husband, parents, and Jesus all have birthdays between October and January, so it's one family holiday after another scattered throughout all the secular holidays. BGC and Claire's parties are just two weeks apart in October, so I am planning, planning, planning! I even bought a little notebook to sketch my party ideas in . . . and of course had to retroactively chronicle the kids' parties from the last five years before digging in to this year's shindigs! (of course)

9. Totally random one before closing this list. Kate's P.E. teacher is named Ms. Aydelott. It's pronounced "ate-a-lot," and when Kate came home telling me this her first week, I didn't believe her. Then I concluded it must have been a mnemonic device for some similar-sounding name and Kate just got confused. Then I saw it in print and thought, wow. Of course the woman had to become a health and fitness fanatic, with a name like that! 

10. The BGC update: her parents have disappeared. So while we were so hopeful for their reunification with her (more hopeful and supportive than the social workers ever were!) that is now a presumed impossibility, and adoption is on the table. Matt and I did not go into foster care looking to adopt, but told ourselves we'd be open to it if the situation presented itself. So, we're in a time of major discernment on that. Lots of factors to consider, factors too personal to blog about. But that's what's up.

What's up with you?

Vacation-Staycation

This post has sat as a half-finished draft for over a month. I'm just not that into blogging this year. But, given that summer is nearly over (yes, school starts in less than a month!) let me finish telling you about our pseudo-summer vacation. . . . .

We'd thought about going to the beach this year, but after various large expenses this spring, we decided to downsize our plans with a short, close trip strategically timed for max relaxation: the Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday following Memorial Day, so we had a three day weekend before going out of town and after we returned. We made sure to fill those six days at home with fun stuff, making those nine days our "vacation-staycation" of 2014!

We spent most of Memorial Day weekend at the pool. Kate is swimming a little more independently, especially if she has a vest on, so she's moved beyond the "catch me!" game that Claire plays over and over, running a constant cycle of jumping in to Mommy (with an adorable "get ready, get set, JUMP" recitation each time), kicking as I escort her to the steps, then running around to jump again). We went over to Matt's parents' house for dinner on Memorial Day. Opa taught the girls to play golf and Granna showed them her new "secret garden."

Tuesday, we took off for Wilderness at the Smokies, a water park resort in the Smoky Mountains, near Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge, Tenn. There are indoor and outdoor water parks there, with slides, wave pools, a lazy river, and other water fun. And kids eat free! So, it was a good place for a mini-vacation with kiddos!

It would be most ideal for families with elementary age kids, since most slides required kids to be at least 42-48 inches tall. Kate went on every slide she was tall enough for a million times. Many required a parent to go with her, so Matt and I spent a lot of our time sitting with Claire while the other parent went with Kate on a slide. Then we'd switch off.

 

She went on these racing slides at least twenty times. You go down them head-first on a little foam mat, but she was fearless. As she told me when I commented on her bravery:

"I'm not scared of anything. . . Except things that I'm scared of."

Claire was not so into it. There were a couple areas designed for small kids, with small slides she could go on, but she wasn't having any of it. She liked a bouncy-swing thing that let them dip in and out of the water, but refused the slides. It didn't really cramp our style, because she didn't throw a fit about it or refuse to go in the water at all. We took her in the wave pool and on the lazy river, and she just sat there on my lap, stone-faced as we floated around. Our serious little girl.

 FYI, if you go: don't bother packing a pool bag with your own towels, floatation vest, etc. They provide towels and vests and all that, included, so you can go to the water parks without carrying anything (except your room key, which of course fell out of Matt's pocket our first time out).

We'll have to come back when the girls are a little older, so Kate can do more things by herself and Claire might be a little braver! (She's always been more cautious. At bouncy places, Kate was climbing up the huge slides and sliding down at 18 months, but even at 2 1/2, Claire just stands in one place and jumps, if she gets in the inflatable apparatus at all.)

 

The rooms at Wilderness are fun, with the feel of a mountain lodge. We got a room with a bunk bed separated from a queen bed by a partial wall. The queen bed was on the side near the balcony, so Matt and I could have some privacy from the kids after bedtime, without spending more on a suite with multiple bedrooms. 

 

We took a little afternoon siesta in our room the first day. Claire wanted to read a magazine, just like Mommy. Fitting that she read an old copy of "Working Mother" with the cover story "Take Back Family Time." :0)

 

Returning from our mini-vacation meant three more days of staycation in Nashville. We went to a baseball game and spent more time at the pool.  There were fireworks after the ball game, and the kids were invited to run the bases, as I recall doing as a child in Louisville. Kate ran faster than Claire, of course, but after turning third base, Kate stopped and went back to meet Claire, so they would cross home plate hand-in-hand. So sweet!

Hopefully next year we'll make it to the beach, but for this year, our "vacay-staycay" was a great kick-off to the summer.