It's one of those good phases

We had an excellent weekend. It feels like we've hit one of those good phases in child rearing. This of course means that something huge will come up like next week, but for now, today, this weekend, it feels a lot more smooth.

Spencer and Genevieve are so fun these days. I had a girl's night Friday night and decided to take Genevieve along. She charmed everyone there and when we tried on all the clothes (it was a Lularoe party), she tried on her own little dresses and twirled in them and just had a delightful time. She even got to bring one home, so that was cool. Afterward she was so happy and told me, "Mommy, that was a really fun party." Just having my little girl be old enough to express that kind of thought to me makes me so happy. I foresee lots more awesome girl's nights out with her when we leave the boys to their devices. :) She is really great to have one-on-one. So well behaved, such a lover of life, interested in everything around her. It's awesome.

Spencer is also amazing one-on-one. He's in preschool now and completely flourishing. He skips his way out every day to tell me what a great time he had. He loves his teachers and he tells me about his friends, and about what he did at his stations and how they do all these cool things. I'm so, so glad we decided to put him in preschool. I knew he would love it, but seeing it play out makes it that much better.

And then we've got Aaron. I don't think I can ever even do justice to what a perfect addition he has always been to our family. He is the sunniest little guy. He is walking everywhere, exploring like crazy. He could spend all day puttering around the yard and be happy as can be. He eats like a champ. Literally, at dinner tonight we had pork chops and a cauliflower mash thing like mashed potatoes. Amazing, btw, but Aaron just dug in and ate an entire pork chop on his own. He's 14 months old. This kind of blows me away. It is so easy to make him laugh. We hardly have to do anything to get him to giggle at us and he definitely inherited Bill's ability to do something funny at just the right instant to make everyone laugh. He's already got that perfect sense of comedic timing.

We went to Stumphouse Tunnel yesterday, which is an unfinished train tunnel turned outdoor monument. All the kids, Aaron included, were so excited to walk all the way to the end of the tunnel. It is amazing to have three independent kids able to walk wherever they want. We've spent so many years carrying babies, and I'm sure we'll do more of that, but for now our three are at a perfect point and I just love it.

When a need becomes a hobby and then more

Back in the day when Bill and I were early on married and we had no furniture and were moving to an unfurnished apartment and I had time and a bit of extra money on my hands and decided to learn to build furniture because it filled the need, yeah, back then I had no idea where that would go. It became a hobby. Then it became a way of life. Now it's almost an art form and a creative outlet. I can't imagine going to a furniture store to buy anything. I might go for inspiration. I'll look around and think, I could build that and it would cost a fraction of what they're charging.

I learned how to build furniture. I learned about different kinds of screws and what works for what. I learned how to pick wood that isn't bowed or corkscrewed. I learned about saws and drills and sanders and how to finish a piece and what the best stain is, or maybe that it doesn't matter so much to me as that I like the color. I learned about finishes. I tried a bunch of different kinds and liked some and not so much others. I learned to refinish furniture. I accumulated a bunch of tools over the years.

I learned over time that some of the methods of joining furniture I had use early on didn't really last that many years. So I did more research and am still researching and it turns out there are better methods that don't even use screws or nails and are stronger. Turns out they require more tools, which is both fun, annoying when I don't have money right now to get them, and exciting because for instance, I always wanted a table saw and now I have a genuine reason to save for one. The other day I learned the difference between a planer and a jointer. Did you know you want to run wood through a jointer before a planer? Yeah, me neither, but I do now and maybe someday I'll own those tools and do something about it.

Nowadays my home is full of things I've built. There isn't a room in the house that doesn't include my work. It's really cool to see the process of learning played out in my home. It's satisfying. Some pieces are higher quality than others. All were built to fill a need, and they've all done that. Nowadays I look around and wonder what I'll build next. Right now it's a new bunk bed for the kids. Why? Because I feel like it and what I'm building will fit the need better than the current one. Plus, I like it. I like building. I like seeing it come together. I'm using different methods to join the pieces together this time and I can't wait to see how they work out. Genevieve picked the color for her bed and it's going to be hot pink and how awesome is that?! lol.

I always like personal improvement, and it turns out there is lots of room for improvement in this craft. I find myself unsatisfied with the status quo of what I've done before and looking to try new things. Back when I was in school I always enjoyed the challenge of learning new things. Turns out that process still provides me a lot of satisfaction. So onward and upward. I've got plans, dreams, future things I want to do. And who knows, maybe there will be a little bit of a business in this too. Turns out I kind of liked that the last few months as I built some pieces for others. That's it's own type of fun.

My happy moment of the day

I'm pretty sure that it takes a year to recover from moving to a new house. At least that's what it has felt like each time we moved in the last few years, and since that has been a lot of times, it feels like a good reference point.

I've been working a bit more the last month than I had the previous six, so the funds are flowing a bit more. Today I shrunk my grocery list of non food items, whatever you call that, I call it my Everything Else list, to less than ten items. It made it up into the 40s and maybe even 50 at one point when we first moved to this house in January. It might take a bit longer to knock off those last nine items, but it's surprisingly pleasing to get all those things. It's kind of funny because they're things like sheets and mattress covers and a firesafe box and canning jars and a diffuser, so by no means all that interesting of stuff, but there you have it, the things that make me happy in any given day.

Also, I think I've finally gotten to a place where I like how my working hours go. It's only taken nearly seven years to figure it out, but hey, I'm trying not to count. I used to work only in the mornings, but the kids kept getting up earlier and earlier and I just didn't get the time I needed before they were up and making it take twice as long if not longer, so now I work from 9-10PM during the week, and focus on only work so I get the maximum amount done. Then I wake up at 5:30AM and work from then until I'm done, which with that quality hour the night before means that I'm often done by 7-8AM. It had gotten to where I was taking all morning to get done and that was just unacceptable, so this is a fantastic change. Here's to the goal of someday not working at all, or at least not my current employment, but for now during these grad school years, it is a huge blessing in our lives that I have a flexible job that allows us to be more financially independent. It makes being on a grad school income not seem like such a sacrifice when we aren't piling up loans semester upon semester. And the tradeoff in stress with that is very worth it.

Three

Genevieve turned three on Friday and boy howdy, is she excited about it. We had a low key day mostly involving eating copious amounts of foods she loves. We had our classic german pancakes for breakfast. That was a hit, as always, which is why we have it for every birthday. Lunch we had Costco muffins. The kids picked chocolate and vanilla chocolate chip, so needless to say, it was not hard to get them to eat. Then for dinner Bill made homemade pizza. That worked so well and the kids didn't complain about that either. It was awesome.

I asked Genevieve what kind of cake she wanted and she was all about strawberry, but Spencer kept popping into the conversations and advocating for chocolate, so Genevieve, being the sweet girl she is, decided she wanted chocolate cake with strawberry frosting. It turned out great. She loved it. We have been snacking on it for two days.

We went to the Botanical Garden in the evening and went on a little hike. That went over well. The kids have really started to love hiking, which makes my heart happy. Aaron, our new little walker, walked half the hike. That kid is impressive. Genevieve and Spencer buzzed all over the place, loving it. They brought their scooters and used them for part of it, but Bill ended up being the pack camel for them later on. Ah well. That's not uncommon.

We're so happy to finally have our three year-old. It has felt like Genevieve is three for months. She is a smart little girl and so very sassy. She's also very sweet. She doesn't appreciate when Spencer grabs stuff from her, but if he asks nicely, she'll give him anything. She's so generous in her sharing.

Today I asked her to keep her smoothie in the kitchen while she ate it so it didn't make a mess anywhere else. This is how she dealt with that request. Basically I just shook my head and wondered what she'll be like as a teenager. Lol. She's a thinker. She always comes up with a twist on what we ask to suit her fancy. I have hope that will be a good trait as she gets older. She's definitely creative.

This girl of mine knows how to enjoy life. I've been making this quilt for her all summer. She has been so excited about it. I finished the binding last night and she discovered it this morning. She usually wakes up about 6:30AM, much before her siblings most of the time. So she gets up, finds the quilt, spreads it out on the living room floor and curls up happy as can be on it. She's in heaven.

So there you have it. Happy birthday, my little princess.