I will also be keeping this blog up until May 2012. I’ll  post links to my new posts for a while, hoping to keep most of the readers of Inspire Mama. I have also transfered all of my Inspire Mama posts over to the new blog. Thank you for reading, leaving comments and sticking with me when I’m a blogging slacker! : ) Lots of Love, Jen

P.S. I apologize to those of you who receive Inspire Mama through email or blog readers. I haven’t figured out how to add email subcriptions yet to the new blog. I will try to get that up soon.

Sadly, I am not exaggerating.

The strange thing that I realized was that I tend to do better when the day is going atrociously bad as opposed to a day with minor stresses. My theory is that when things reach a certain threshold of stress that I am much better at giving up expectations and letting things just be.

Another thing that really helped me turn the day around was playing certain songs. These are the songs that turned our day around. If you click on them, it will take you to the youtube video.

Oh What a Beautiful Morning! from the play Oklahoma

Say Hey (I Love You) by Michael Franti & Spearhead

Walking on Sunshine

What I am by Sesame Street and Will I Am

Somewhere Over the Rainbow by Israel “IZ” Kamakawiwo’ole

I Like to Move It from the film Madagascar

These songs have the power to change a bad mood and energize us. What songs do this for you? I’m always looking for new songs to add to our repertoire.

Valentine’s day is pretty BIG around here. It’s probably more accurate to call it Valentine’s month because we start thinking about and creating our valentines as soon as we put away our Christmas decorations.

Today we did some printing with some heart shaped cookie cutters. To make things a little easier I let them choose one color each.

I love how any time we bring out the paint, Isaiah always ends up painting his hands and arms. This time Kai decided to give it a try. He pushed through his discomfort of the mess and had a good time!

The boys started a little game of reaching out to each other and holds hands. The different paint colors would transfer hands and they loved it. I loved watching their smiles and feeling the joy of being a mother to these boys.

The beans and all the other little things in the tub are supposed to stay inside the tub. Learn from my mistake, sensory tub play should be carefully supervised.

Also, it is very important that the child puts everything back into the tub. I will help if he asks.

I am amazed how much he still loves playing with this thing. It reminds me that I really want to make one for Valentine’s Day with hearts and died rice, pink or red. I’ve been looking everywhere for a set of tongs for little hands.

Another post brought to you by my iPhone! I hope to start writing “real” blog posts soon.

This is part of my goal of writing more often but shorter posts about daily life.

I feel so blessed to have this smiling, beautiful baby looking at me every morning.

With the new year,  I find myself debating the whole blogging thing… a lot. I enjoy writing and documenting our family life but I do not like feeling like I have to do it and feeling guilty if I don’t.

These are my little issues with blogging, which may not be issues for other bloggers but they are my personal cons…

• Sometimes I feel guilty when I don’t I write posts.
• Sometimes I feel bad when I don’t keep up with blog friends’ posts and write comments.
• Sometimes I worry about people taking my words the wrong way.
• I tend to get perfectionistic about the posts and don’t publish a lot of posts until they are “just right”.
• I don’t like when I start thinking about blog posts when I’m with the children as opposed to just being in the moment with them.

These are the things I love about blogging; my  pros…

• I love having an outlet to express myself.
• I love documenting our family life. I just got 2010 blog posts printed as a book through blog2print.
• I love having a place that my family and friends can go to find updates on our day to day life I(when I’m actually posting).
• I love connecting with other bloggers.
• I love when something that I’ve experienced and written about helps someone else.
• I love reading comments on my posts. It’s definitely a treat.
• The wisdom that readers have left in the comments has been priceless and has definitely helped me be a better mama.

Clearly in my mind, the pros outweigh the cons. So I feel like I need to address the cons and work on solutions.

I’ve decided to move the blog and rename it. I’ll be moving it to the free version of wordpress. I think this will help me feel like it’s more like a hobby and something I don’t have to do. I’ve actually already set it up and moved all of the posts. I’ll post the new address when I get it just the way I want.

I also want to change the name. I’ve never been totally comfortable with it when people think that  “inspire mama”  means I’m inspiring you. I’m completely thankful to those of you who have expressed that but I feel like a phony because I’m the one that does this to become inspired. It wasn’t my intent that I’m inspiring you.

I still want inspire to be in the name because my intention is to find inspiration every day and I love the other meaning of the word, to breathe. It’s kind of my mantra, breathe…..breathe…. take a deep breath and just breathe.

Another thought that I have is to try posting more often but with the posts very short and maybe just with photos occasionally. I know as Zoe gets older and starts sleeping through the night that I’ll be able to put more effort into blogging but for now I just have to enjoy spending my nights with her.

And Happy New Year!!!! I just KNOW 2012 is going to be transformative and wonderful!

Let me introduce you to our special friend, Snowie Cleofis. He is our magical friend, who has come to catch all the wonderful things we do and every night he reports back to Santa Claus. He promises to return every morning and we have already discovered he is a playful trickster.

Yesterday, the elf arrived in the mail along with a book to explain the Elf on the Shelf tradition. The boys decided to call him Snowie.  Kai came up with the name because the elf comes from the North pole, where it’s snowy all the time. Elijah was determined to name him Cleofis, so we let him have it as his middle name. It’s kind of a nice coincidence that his initials are the same as Santa Claus.

This morning, Kai came into our bedroom excited to hunt for Snowie. He was also the first one to spot Snowie in the bathroom. The funny little elf had taped red crepe paper all over the entrance!

I am trying to use positive discipline with the children and the Elf of the Shelf premise kind of goes against the philosophy in the way that it may focus the children on doing good behaviors because of getting gifts from Santa. I also don’t like to say that children or people are good or bad. I like to say that we are all good but sometimes we make bad choices.

But it’s just so much fun (we laughed so much last night just thinking about how the boys would react to Snowie’s trick) and I think if we emphasize the Elf is looking for the good things they do that it’s okay. Just today, Kai said, “I wonder if Snowie will tell Santa that I folded my shirts.” This let me discuss how he felt proud of himself for learning this skill. As I am writing this, I heard Isaiah talking to Snowie about how mad he was when Kai hit him.

Here’s a video from this morning when the boys discovered Snowie’s trick. By the way, it happened to snow last night so it would appear that Snowie brought back snow from the North pole!

Snowie Strikes!

I think one of his favorites phrases came about because, before he was talking,  he would start whining or crying with his arms up, I would say to him, “Do you want me to hold you?” It’s one of those things that I don’t think I’ll ever forget but then from experience I know that if I don’t write it down I probably will.

I even captured a little bit of this on video so if you’re interested what it looks like in action here’s the link. This is his mellow side but it will give you a good picture. Oh yeah, you might also notice that he’s not wearing socks and pants in November in Maine. I promise you that it’s not due to a lack of effort from me trying to keep socks and pants on him.

Hold You!

Me and Elijah were terrified of how Isaiah would react to the new baby. We were nearly shocked by his intense love for his sister. But just as intense as his love is for her, the difficulty in his emotional adjustment seems exponentially greater. His need for attention has truly overwhelmed me the past couple of months. And he seems to have become an expert at pushing our buttons and I’m ashamed to admit to the times when I have lost my patience and yelled at him, especially the words, “leave her alone!”

Me and Elijah have made it a point to show him extra love and attention whenever we can. We make a conscious effort to “light up” when he walks into the room. We’ve tried so many things. For example, we brought him to soccer lessons and we all went to cheer him on. This week I took him grocery shopping with me so that he could be my special helper. I also just bought and have nearly finished reading the book, Positive Discipine by Jane Nelson, Ed.D. It’s a wonderful book that I hope to write more about.

It feels like all of our efforts are starting to pay off. Today I was reading a book to Isaiah and he said, “Mama, you’re my best friend.” Melt….how could I love this child any more?

Kai found the letter z in our fence!

Kai chose ‘z’ to be the letter of the week and I’m pretty sure it’s because of Zoe. These brothers are so in love with their little sister. I really couldn’t have imagined the intensity of their adoration for Zoe.

We did this letter a few weeks ago now and I’m already starting to forget what we did but here’s what I remember…

Alphabet Tree- The tree is really looking good! Kai and Isaiah colored their letter and added it to the tree. We started playing a game with all the letters by saying, “Where is the letter x (or whatever)?” They love pointing it out.

Isaiah reaching for the gluestick, of course!

Zebra Craft- This craft is made from a toilet paper roll and a template that you can find here. They seemed to have a good time and these zebras are still hanging around our house.

Reading-  We found a couple of books with the letter z. The first was Two at the Zoo by  Danna Smith. Underwear  by Mary Elise Monsell was a book that Kai picked out at our library. The first page was a letter “z” bonanza! The first sentence is, “Zachary Zebra did not like buttons or snaps or sleeves or slippers or zillions of zippers.”

Kai has also been pointing out letters everywhere we go. Not suprisingly, Isaiah tries to follow his brother by pointing out letters as well.

Movement- A great activity that we didn’t get to, was practice moving in a zigzag way. I would have liked to tape a zigzag on the floor and have them practice staying on the tape. A fine motor skill that we did practice was using a zipper.

Zucchini Fritters- We didn’t get around to this but I’d like to try them soon.