Parenting in Congo

A Cup of Jo has been doing a series on expat Americans and the surprising things of motherhood.  On Monday she had two women living in Congo and raising their children there.  Scooch on over here to read  "13 Surprising Things About Parenting In Congo."

I have to admit it made me smile and cry as I thought about my own two Congolese Cuties.  One of those moments where I thought about how blessed I am to have them but how much I want them to have part of their country in their life.  I am still figuring it out.


I love these pictures from her post.

   

Snakes

Don't know if I ever shared but I love snakes.  We decided to get a snake shortly after we were married, but then we got pregnant, and snake went to the wayside.  Now it would just push us past a level of crazy.  So no snake.

But this, this I can do.

Here at Furbish

Totally gorgeous, and totally a DIY if you don't have the money, although the prints are reasonably priced at $35 a piece.

Disgruntled

This is Truitt last night at supper, who could not be prevailed upon to finish up his meal, not even for a fresh chocolate chip cookie.  See how his mouth is goofy?  That's because he was storing up food in those cheeks of his for winter.  Just like a squirrel.  

So we sent him to bed early.  (Partly too because he is getting over being sick.)  Guess who was still wide awake 2 hours later?

I think the word for him is incorrigible.  (I totally had to google that to find the meaning.  I saw it on another blog describing something and I just really wanted to use it!)

Also, he has the best hair ever.  I have hair envy of my two year old.  My plan is to never, ever cut it.  Until someone tells me that he looks like a girl, and then maybe I will realize that I took it a little too far.  Like Rachel Zoe's kid.

PS: Today is basement renovation start day!  Finally!

Do to the Vay

While I continue on my no buying summer, I have been spending a lot of time online looking at things for the house.

I will be shortly painting my bedroom white, (I hopefully have enough paint already that I won't have to buy more or wait until september to finish to avoid buying anything not necessary).  And my duvet cover is white and I really, really want to notch it up a bit in color.  And since duvets are nothing but straight lines, I can easily sew one up.  And then I will cheat and sew in velcro and not buttonholes to close it because I am lazy and impatient and don't want to take the time to learn how to do them.

So I headed over to fabric.com to peruse their endless possibilities, and I came across these three.  Two of them are the same fabric just a different color scheme.

here

here

here

I love, love the quirkiness of them.  The only problem is I can't figure out which one I really want.  Probably I will just order all three since fabric.com has an awesome return policy- you can return for free, no questions asked.  Then I can lay them out on my bed and play with ideas.  Or maybe I'll get all crazy and do one pattern on one side and then a different one on another....

What do you think?

Monsters University Birthday Party

I decided on Thursday night that I wanted to up the ante a little bit when it came to the littles' party.  I was feeling mom guilt since we didn't throw them a party the year before and all that.  So I hopped on Pinterest to find some inspiration.  Pinterest is like google, if you aren't careful you should probably just stay away.

Here's a few ideas I found.

           

                    Here                                                         Here

               

                  Here                                                              Here

There's a ton more, so give it a lookie.  I was a little overwhelmed since I had only 1 day to get stuff for the party, and also since all the pictures everything looks amazing and well, fairly professional, which correlates with expensive.  I mean look at that fun polka dot fabric in the first picture.  But I didn't have the budget for that.

So I give you the cheap mom's version of a Monsters Party.

Everyone likes balloons and streamers.  And if you look really hard you can see on the back wall there are some cut outs.  I found this free printable and printed off a bunch on cardstock, cut them out and plastered them over pretty much every wall in the house.  It's also what I used to top the cake with.  If I had all the money in the world, I would have bought a ton of helium balloons and filled the ceiling with them, the 6 I got looked so awesome just hanging out.

I cannot wait for my new bathroom!  

Monster Jigglers.  The mold is one dollar in the Jello aisle at Walmart.

Monster plates from Walmart, Monster pencils and balls from the dollar section right now in Target.  

I couldn't find a link to it, but I also went into the party section at Walmart and bought the Monsters decorating kit for $6.50 that had a ton of hanging items, and three large posters.  You can see two of the three in the picture below.

I used this from Pinterest and cut out the circles and taped to cups.

                                                                        

And then I went to this website and printed off a ton of free coloring printables so all of the 11 children could go to town.

And because I am a glutton for punishment, I topped it all of with sugar infused green and purple juice.   And green twizzlers cut in half in little tin pails that we had from Easter.   It was a lot of fun, and when the kids came out Saturday morning after I decorated the night before, all three of them told me "it's so beautiful!".

It took quite a long time to decorate, so we probably will leave everything up for at least a week!  Now Owen says he wants a Monsters party too!

Birthday Pics

On Saturday we had a party for the 3 littles turning 3, 3, and 2.  The weather was finally cooler, so we were outside.  Which was fantastic since our house is tiny, our basement is ripped up and we had 20 people.

Let the pictures come forth.

If you squint really hard you can see it's a Monsters University cake- the theme for the party.

He pretty much hasn't let go of this since Saturday.

 

Who knew goggles would be so awesome?  Except for Truitt, he would not put them on,

In front of the loot.  We now need to majorly go through and get rid of toys.  I am inspired by this post over at House Tweaking.

A family shot with the neighbors house for a background.  

Tomorrow I will post pictures of what the inside of the house looked like for a Monster's University theme party, as well as free printables and awesome ideas if you want to do the same.  It was a huge hit as all my kids are obsessed with Monsters.

"Controversial" Cheerios Ad, and Kids' Reaction

Probably you have all seen this Cheerios add that apparently pissed people off.  People I really want to punch in the face.  (I won't, that wouldn't be very nice, but I still want to.)

This weekend I came across the video below on kids reacting to the commercial.  America, stand up and listen to these kids.  Their answers made me smile, and shed a few tears.  We love to think that racism is a thing of the past in the US, and yes, I agree we have come a long way.  But when Moyz went up behind a little old lady and gave her a hug, and she turned around and told him that he better not do that when he's older or he'll get arrested and thrown in jail (after she saw Moyz hug her friend), that shows me we have so much further to go.

Please, teach your kids that God created all people equal.  That racism does exist and that we need to fight it because it.is.wrong.  Because if we don't teach our kids and correct all the crap that our country has in its past, there is not way we can move forward.

For a long time, I was so focused on the fact that there wasn't that many black people in our community.  But I have come to the realization that our kids are the black people, and we can change peoples perceptions.  And that is a big responsibility.  But you know what?  When someone tells me that they watched Hotel Rwanda and grieved in a way they never thought they would because they were thinking about my kids, that made me refocus, and smile and cry for happiness.

Racism is a long and hard fight but when my friend told me her reaction to the movie, I knew that there was one more blow to racism pushing it further from our country.  And for that I am glad.