Momma Me

Digesting and Preparing

I apologize for my extended silence. Our lives have taken a dramatic and sudden turn with news of my husband's deployment in less than 30 days. This is something that we did not expect and are grappling to find our way. Things will be changing in lives. Unfortunately, my blog will be on hiatus for a bit, a while. I don't know. I hope to return, though I don't know if my story will be the same. I doubt it will be. So we will see. 

For now, love those close to you and not so close to you in the spirit of the season.

Giving Thanks

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving. Ours was quiet, but oh so sweet and memorable. I love spending days and days of quiet time with my little boys and big one. It was hard to return to our normal schedule yesterday. The Inventor cried and I got a little choked up too. But once we got back into the swing of it, it wasn't so bad. He came home from school with a big smile on his face and lots of stories to tell. 

Using this random number generator, The Inventor helped me select the winner of our giveaway before he left with his Dad to go to school. The winner of our first giveaway is Gen! Thanks to everyone for participating. A big, big thanks to Natural Parenting Center for hosting this and for providing such a great product to families. Hopefully I can have another giveaway in the near future.

   

Our situation is still a little tenuous and stressful, but I am hoping we have it all behind us in the next week or so. I will then feel like myself and can get things back on track.

In the meantime, I am working on one of the biggest and most important projects I have ever worked on. I am assembling squares for afghans. The squares were knit by members of a pregnancy loss support group that I founded and moderate online. They were sent from all over the United States and even Australia and Hong Kong. The were knit with the most amazing love and I can actually feel it when I am working with them. We have squares for a blanket for baby and a blanket for mom. I have a lot of work before me, but I think I can get some help from our local LYS on SIt 'n Stitch nights on Thursday. I am going to try t put panels together first and then turn to them to help stitch those together and add the borders. Focusing on trying to put these together has been of great comfort to me, when I start to feel anxious. I think of all of the amazing people in the world, all of the strength that each of us has, and the bonds that connect us all. 

i love feeleez: (my first giveaway)

I have been wanting to write this post for days, but the past week has been chaotic to say the least. I've been under an undue amount of stress and seem to be racing against the clock constantly. There have been quite a few days, when I have felt like this:

 

Frazzled

Thank goodness I have the opportunity to workout regularly. I don't know what I'd do without my kickboxing classes. After those, I feel like this:

 

Strong and Empowered

My emotions are difficult to get a handle on these days. Imagine being a kid and just learning to deal with the plethora of emotions that we all possess. It's a challenge. The older The Inventor becomes, the more I realize I can't just give him a kiss and make everything better. Like all of us, he needs to learn to understand his emotions and cope with them in intelligent ways. So, when I saw the Feeleez game online, I had to get it for us. 

 

The concept is simple. The tin includes 25 pairs of feeling cards, plus ideas on how to use them. You can use them for a simple matching game for younger kids. It helps kids learn to identify different emotions that we or they might feel or encounter someone else feeling. Also included are instructions for using the cards with older kids. With The Inventor, who is six and a half, we use them to find cards that describe how he is currently feeling and how he wants to feel. Sometimes he and I have different impressions of how he is feeling and we will pull out different cards. This leads to great discussions and a learning experience for us both. We also use the cards to make up stories, which gives us the opportunity to create scenarios and talk about coping strategies. These simple cards have proven to be remarkable communication tool in our home. I cannot say enough good things about them.

 

I love Feeleez so much that I contacted the company to see if it would be okay with them, if I let my readers know about them. They agreed, something about which I am thrilled. They were also terrific enough to offer a FREE Feeleez game to the winner of a giveaway on my blog. All that you have to do to enter is leave a comment between today and Monday, November 26th at 8 PM. I will close the comments at that time and using a random number generator, select the winning post. I will notify and announce the winner. All you then need to do is email me your address and we will have a game shipped to you. Good luck!

Our Review: Pickin' Time (iPod/iPhone App)

The last few days have been a bit hectic for us. Perhaps it was the change in time or the time we lost while The Inventor was sick with strep. Whatever the case may be, it seems that we've been playing catch-up for about a week now. 

During the week though, we've been fortunate enough to spoil ourselves a bit. Everyone deserves to be spoiled from time to time. Right? We have a bit of fun stuff to share -- things we've bought, created and tried, but we'll do it one at a time.

Last week we were asked to try out a new iPod/iPhone application called Pickin' Time, a new family-friendly game/application by Iconfactory.com. The timing was perfect because being flopped out on the sofa gave us plenty of time to try it out. The Inventor has agreed to help me review this neat little application.

 

Here is the Inventor's review (with a little help from Mom):

The game is called Pickin' Time and the object of game is to pick vegetables and fruits as fast as you can. In single player, when the game starts it tells you which fruit or vegetable to pick. Then it shows you a bunch of them and you have to choose yours as fast as you can. It's tricky because sometimes you pick the wrong one. You try to beat the high score if you can. 

 

In multiplayer, you can play with other people on one iPod/iPhone or multiple iPods/iPhones. Mom and I tried it both ways. When you play multiplayer, you have to choose "Together" or "Separate." If you choose "Together," then each person picks an avatar (fruit or vegetable). Then the round starts. If yours comes on the screen, you pick it as fast as you can. The fastest player wins the round. Usually The Inventor wins when we play this way.

 

When you choose "Separate," the game is played on multiple iPods/iPhones. We tried this and it was tons of fun. We each chose our own avatars and then played on our own iPods. We have iPod touches. (Yes, The Inventor has his own. It's a long story involving a six and half hour plane ride to Dublin in June. More later.) This is Mommy's favorite way to play and mine too. 

 

From Mommy: The game has beautiful graphics and fun music. It's a simple game, but it's surprising fun. I was afraid it might be too simple to hold The Inventor's interest. He loves computer games with more complex rules. But he loves this little game. I find it to be entertaining too. It's an easy way to pass a few minutes, if ever you should have any. 

The price is right too; it's only $1.99 at the Apple App Store. 

We'd like to thank The Iconfactory for giving us the opportunity to try this great new game!

a wonderful love

I honestly think there is something unique and special about the love between these two boys, who are nearly identical to one another, except that one is 6 1/2 and the other 1 1/2. Each and every day I am asked, "Mom, aren't we lucky to have Gigglyface," or something along those lines. Their connection is so much stronger than I expected it to be considering the age difference, the love so much deeper. I can remember back to the time before Gigglyface, when it was just The Inventor. He told me that our house needed more children and that we needed more kids in our minivan. When we told him I was pregnant, he said he didn't care whether it was a brother or sister, that he'd love the baby either way and teach it all the things it needed to know to "be a kid." When he came to the hospital room after my delivery, he lay on the bed and curled his body around the tinier boy. It seemed as if he'd been waiting his entire life to do that.

Sure, there are times when Giggleyface disassembles a Lego sculpture that took hours to build and he hears all about it. But even then after a brotherly scolding, the big guy exhibits great patience and sighs a bit while reassembling his spaceship or robot.  There are other times when he spends time building towers and buildings and Gigglyface waits patiently by his side because the good part is about to come. Then the announcement, "Okay, where is the big giant who destroys the city?" And then he is allowed to knock over the buildings and towers with wild abandon and the laughter is loud and raucous. 

It is a wild and wonderful brother love. 

How lucky a mother I am to bear witness.