Easter Best

For me, the month of April did not exist this year.  Only a vague memory of a terrible sinus infection the week after the Pollen Blizzard in March, something about running around in circles at full speed for a good period of time, and losing my keys for half an hour before realizing I had forgotten to turn the car off.  Then l can recall being really tired from working and studying and chasing an energetic toddler around, falling asleep and waking up on May 1^st…RANDOM – I wonder if the Easter Bunny even came?

I love Easter – always have.  The bright colors it brings to give the grays of winter that final boot, the thrilling feeling of searching for buried treasure during Easter egg hunts, the egg dying, the message of the Easter story, the chocolate bunnies, Peeps, flowers, jelly beans – I think I’ve made my point. 

This year though, Easter was comically brutal.  

We started our Easter festivities early and celebrated the return of warm sunny afternoons by sharpening our egg finding skills with impromptu egg hunts.  At first, James didn’t get it…but then we turned Easter egg hunting into a game of “pick-up” and when we started singing the “clean-up song” everything clicked.  James would run from egg to egg picking up as many as he could carry, losing only a few, before dumping them into his bucket…SCORE—James was going to dominate the egg hunts this year.

Getcha Game Face On!!

That’s not how it happened…

I think the pressure got to him...

He figured why search for eggs with candy and toys inside when I've got a perfectly good kitchen play set here?

James picked up TWO eggs.   

I'm pretty sure I made Eddie throw this one back onto the ground so that I could get a picture of James picking up at least one egg...so James decided to make sure I got more of his butt in the picture than of him and the egg.

And that was after a lot of coaxing, plenty of pointing and, honestly, a bit of begging.

"Mom, don't worry all these other kids are 'cleaning up' the eggs.  They don't need our help."

P-Lease lady, I'm too cool for this.

 The Easter Bunny sighting went as expected…

Okay...that's NOT cool.

Then James gracefully fell off of a tricycle and scraped his face…

You should have seen the trike...

I found myself completely exhausted Saturday night after staying up a little too late dying eggs with James and “MoMa” (Eddie’s mom) while still nursing myself back to health after the sinus infection from hell.  I had plans to clean the house and throw up some Easter decorations and magically transform this place into a Easter wonderland fit for a photo shoot in a Pottery Barn Children’s Magazine…but I accidently closed my eyes instead…No decorations, no eggs, and on Easter morning my house resembled an animal barn more than Pottery Barn.   The only decorations (with the exception of the blocks and puzzle pieces scattered on the floor) was the balloon we bought on Valentine’s Day and an Easter Lilly Eddie had picked up at the grocery store. Thankfully, I had managed to convince Eddie to help me with the Easter basket the night before and we made an attempt to Easter-fy the morning with some bunny-shaped pancakes and an unrehearsed performance of “Here Comes Peter Cottontail”.  

Eddie did a great job with Easter breakfast!

After searching high and low for the perfect Easter outfit for James, I was still left empty handed Easter morning and ended up hodge-podge-ing together his only pair of khakis without of stain, a button-up shirt and a size 6-12 month dress coat (James is in a size 18-24 month but I made it work like all good moms do on Easter). 

 

If you haven’t noticed, I stress about silly things, like Will James sit quietly in church long enough to make it to the children’s sermon?  NOPE? He likes music so, instead he cheered after every song the choir sang and every hymn the organist played...I’m pretty sure he was also sending up a special request to God when he yelled “MOMMY” during a prayer.  And boy did I need it.  If I had only known then how our Easter afternoon would go I may have also called out to God because James chose to scream instead of sleep through his naptime – and his naptime happened to be during Easter lunch with Eddie’s family.  If you’ve ever tried to eat a nice meal with a persistent 18 month old upstairs wailing, you know that trying to pretend like you don’t hear chaos ensuing from above is like trying to pretend like you don’t hear that annoying person behind you that talks through an entire movie.  

Yep, we let our kid have M&Ms  for breakfast...

 The rest of the day was a blur.  We played outside, we saw family, and we battled through the emotional roller coaster with James.  But, my vision of Easter 2012 with all of its pastels and Easter eggs and new Sunday suits and flowers was no more.  

We settled into pajamas early that night and looked out of the window to find the moon like we always do – Finally, perfect contentment in the simplest of simple everyday things.  It reminded me once again that so many of the goals and expectations of motherhood are more for me than for my kid.  Still, I stress about getting things just right – making things extra-special.  There’s this idea of perfection moms strive for with every holiday, every vacation, every afternoon outing, every family photograph.  Even as mothers-to-be, complaints about not getting a good profile or face shot during an ultrasound or grumblings about an unplanned c-section roll off our tongues so fast that we forget the true miracle of a healthy child – perfection in the simplest of simple things.  

 

 

Not all memories and traditions originate from grandiosity and perfection, in fact, most don’t.  Easter 2012 certainly did not. It’s the plain and simple that sustains us.  They come by the basket-full and they are just as special. 

Tips for Tuesday: What Goes In Must Come Out

So, about 3 weeks ago during one of my sprint-to-the-finish cleanup sessions I discovered the most beautiful deep purple crayon had been abandoned on the white semi-shag carpet in James’ playroom…in front of a window...through which beautiful sunshine streams…all day. 

 SUNSHINE MELTS CRAYONS!!

 I’m not sure which of my boys are to blame.  The evidence is circumstantial and I had seen both Eddie and James drawing with the purple crayon just a few days prior.  So I let the lecture about why it’s important to clean up behind yourself go – mainly because I knew that lecturing Eddie about the importance of cleaning would be like lecturing Lindsay Lohan about the benefits of staying sober but also because James is 18 months old so by default he was excused?

 

So instead I turned my attention to how in the heck I was going to get chunks of melted dark purple crayon out of my carpet.  Because I had absolutely no idea how to start, I did what all good moms do when faced with a dilemma as challenging as this – I posed the question through social media.  Yep, I updated my Facebook status, challenging anyone reading my status to respond with an appropriate solution for the crayon mishap.  If I were playing majority rules, then I would have chosen to blend the stain by dyeing the rest of the carpet purple.  But, through some sort of divine intervention, a better option was presented.

And how DO you get melted crayon out of carpet?

“Jamie, mother gets candle wax out of the carpet at church. She dampens a dish towel then puts damp dish towel over melted wax. She uses her iron on the steam setting and holds iron on towel on top of wax. The wax melts and the towelv absorbs it. She says it is important to have iron very hot. Not sure, but maybe this will help.”

Followed with

“Hair spray will get the residue out....has to be a spray can. Spray and blot, spray and blot...”

So yesterday, I finally got around to attempting “Operation What Goes In Must Come Out.”  Why did it take me so long to take on this challenge?  

Because I found that it blends in well with messes like this…

And while failure to remove the stain was NOT an option, simply ignoring it or waiting for the magic fairy-maid to take care of it WAS.  But after 3 weeks of walking by the stain and reminding myself that there was a project to work on, I decided it was time to tackle the waxy mess.

I dampened a towel and cranked up the iron, placed the towel on the stain and held my breath while I silently prayed I wouldn’t find burned carpet when I lifted the iron.   

Fortunately ( for Eddie ), I discovered a secret all moms should know …so I decided to share.

The "Chunks" begin to disappear!

More Steam

Less Crayon!

 

 

So the iron did its magic...but there's still a little residue left.

So I moved on to the hairspray...

Voila!

Using the steam from a hot iron and a damp towel...

Followed by a spritz of haispray and some blotting...

No more stain!

 

Digging up Buried Treasures

Friday, I packed up most of the clothes James has outgrown (too quickly in my opinion).  

The N.C. State jersey we bought him when he finally revealed his boy parts to us on the ultra sound…

his first pair of “walking shoes”…

 

 

the Christmas JonJon he wore in the infamous Santa Photo Opp Gone Wrong…

and the sun hats and swim trunks we wore on the beach last summer.  

All too small, too short, too tight.  I piled socks smelling of the baby laundry detergent, baby-food-stained onesies, and “My First ______” bibs into a plastic Rubbermaid container, snapped the lid closed, and rolled it under the bed with the others – Newborn to 3 months, 3 to 6 months, and 6 to 9 months.  But what had started out as a simple task to complete in order to make room for the newer, bigger, spring wardrobe ended up as a weepy goodbye to everything infant.  

This blog tells the story.  James isn’t a baby anymore.  

3 weeks old

18 months old

I still have ALL  of James’ things.  I’m a self-proclaimed hoarder.  My tendencies are not nearly as severe as A&E’s version but I cling to anything and everything with sentimental value – the lei I received on a family trip to Hawaii in ’04, the airline ticket from our Honeymoon in Belize, every one of my friends’ wedding invitations.  But when it comes to James I stockpile every memory like little buried treasures – tucked away in keepsake boxes on the shelf, photo-books on the coffee table, plastic containers under the bed, memory sticks in the desk drawer.  

 The thing is I actually don’t pull them back out that often.  Yeah, maybe on occasion when I’m putting up or taking down Christmas decorations, packing up clothes that no longer fit, or trying to find room for more stuff to feed my hoarding obsessions.  But I never just sit down on the couch after a long day at work or on a lazy Sunday afternoon, pull out all these things I consider so valuable and admire them or reminisce about that day.   So this weekend I started thinking and then I kept thinking about how I was going to change the way I buried treasures and rarely dug them up.  With a little help from pinterest and a little inspiration from a senior gift a friend received for graduation years ago, I decided to take some of James’ most memorable clothes and create a James Original.

pinterest version of my idea

Love the idea of using old clothes to spell out "James" (just in case another quilt is ever needed)

There’s no doubt about it.  I can’t make time stand still.  The world will never stop spinning, waiting for me to savor each time James curls up in my lap before bedtime smelling like baby shampoo.  I can’t relish in all the afternoons at the park, always truly listen to every “Row row row…row row roooow” (James’ version of row your boat), or commit to memory each and every melt-your heart laugh and smirk-y smile.  James is going to keep growing.  He’ll eventually lose the baby-talk and the baby-fat and maybe acquire an obsession with soccer and football.  There are going to be plenty of more days filled with impromptu plans ending with stained shirts that serve as friendly reminders of that awesome hotdog at the ballgame or how wonderful the grass felt on the first day of spring.  And I look forward to those days with just as much excitement as the ones I’m now looking back on because the old treasures will be a part of the new memories.   

Whether we’re using the quilt as a roof for our fort, 

Another Idea from pinterest

or to keep us warm during early morning football tailgates

 It will never be shelved or closeted or buried under the bed.  And someday far far away from now (I hope) when James is out with friends or off at college and the house is quiet I’ll curl up on the couch to watch a movie with Eddie, wrapped up in the comfort of all the little treasures that I didn’t simply bury.