It’s been a month since I left my office job to be a full-time parent, and it’s been a big adjustment for the whole family. Zane (18 months), loves being with me all day, so he’s been pretty easy.

Zane would rather eat the marker than draw with it.

Seven, who is 3 1/2, tells me he likes being home with mommy better than daycare, but it’s hard to keep him busy and out of trouble. Most days he does fine if I give him lots of one-on-one attention and plenty of different activities.

Seven wrote his whole alphabet for the first time!

It’s not always possible to give Seven the attention he wants when I’m doing housework, or trying to make dinner so Tony can come home to a nice meal, or helping Zane, or planning the grocery shopping list, or actually leaving the house to run errands! Making things even more difficult, we’ll be moving to a new house at the end of July so I’m busy trying to pack everything and get the house ready to show. Seven and I have butted heads (figuratively of course) quite a bit, and he has the same attention & focus issues I had as a child, so I’m struggling with that. I’m still trying to figure out a daily routine that’s not overly strict but still takes care of everything that needs to be done, and a discipline method that will work for Seven. I try to give him lots of positive reenforcement and praise when he follows the rules, or even when he stops breaking the rules if told to, but there are days where I feel like there aren’t any positive behaviors to praise him for!

This is the kind of thing he does when I leave the room for 5 minutes. If I couldn't laugh about it I'd be sobbing in a corner by now!

It helped me a little to write down a list of house rules while Seven was watching, and draw a picture underneath so he can understand it. Then he helped me tape it up on the living room wall at his eye level. Now, instead of saying, “stop teasing your brother”, I can tell him, “it’s a house rule that we play nice with each other. If you can’t, then you can go take a time-out in your room until you’re ready to follow the rules.” Sometimes it works, but mostly I have to carry him to his room and sit with him until he calms down and apologizes. Sometimes I have to put myself in time-out!

Even with all the challenges and frustrations, I love what I’m doing now so much more than being stuck in a cubicle all day, missing my kids and feeling like a bad mommy. I think once we move into our new place and get a routine settled, things will get a lot easier. I’m so thankful to be spending this time with them while they’re still little, because they’ll grow up way faster than I’m ready for. The next time I want to tear my hair out because Zane won’t stop screaming (he thinks it’s funny) or I want to toss all of Seven’s toys in the trash because he keeps throwing them at the ceiling fan, I just need to remind myself how lucky we are to have each other!

Last weekend I showed Seven how to play Peggle on the Xbox 360. He’s always loved watching me play it (lots of pretty colors, flashing lights, and fun sounds), and I figured he’s old enough to handle the two buttons the game uses. He picked it up really quickly and played quietly for almost an hour! I didn’t get to play videogames until I was 12 and saved up my allowance for a Game Boy, so Seven’s a lucky kid. I’m really looking forward to playing multi-player games with him – I’m sure he’ll be kicking my butt by the time he’s in gradeschool!

Here’s a few funny thing’s Seven’s said over the last couple weeks.

Tony calls his beer “nectar of the gods” whenever Seven asks if it’s juice. Now Seven’s calling it “neck of the dog!”

About a week ago, Seven said his first and last name when I asked him what his name was. I was surprised because I hadn’t taught him his last name and wondered who had. A couple nights ago, on our way home from daycare, I asked him again:
Me: What’s your name?
Seven: Seven!
Me: No, your full name, first and last.
Seven: Seven…eleven!

The following conversation I’m going to quote in full because the whole thing was humorous to me. We were in the car driving home from daycare (different day than above exchange):
Seven: Look at that moon!
Me: (thinking he’s talking about the sun in front of us as we drive west) That’s not the moon, buddy, that’s the sun.
Seven: No, mommy, that’s my moon!
I look and see he really is pointing at the moon.
Me: Oh, what kind of moon is that?
Seven: Crescent moon. (pause) I go up there to my moon, Mommy!
Me: Oh yeah? You’re gonna go to the moon?
Seven: Yeah!
Me: If you go up to the moon that would make you an astronaut.
Seven: as-tro-naut.
Me: Do you want to be an astronaut when you grow up?
Seven: Yeah, astronaut…..rock star!

Seven was full of humorous quotes today!

We were talking about all the sounds made by different animals and he got most of them right until he said “duckie goes crap crap!”

He was asking for some juice and said “pretty please with squinkles on top?”

And just now Tony said he was going to get a Philly cheese steak and Seven said “belly cheese neck!”

My favorite is the squinkles on top…

Here’s some photos of Seven and Zane from June. I used pixelpipe.com to upload to my facebook, flickr, and my blog all at once!

Messy kiddo

Seven playing outside

Sprinkler ball

Seven loves this thing!

Our lawn’s not bad considering we live in the desert!

Seven wearing his Nana’s hat

“hang loose”

“rock on!”

“peace”

“I love you”

My smiling son

Sleepy Zane

He’s 6 months old now!

Zane loves grandpa!

Seven coloring

My colorful son

My super-cool son

Riding the lion!

Just now as I was making dinner for Seven, he came over and saw the vegetables I was putting on his plate:

Seven (pointing to the carrots): Carrots?
Me: Yes, carrots.
Seven (pointing to the broccoli): Sparkly?

And this movie is from earlier today. His Aunt Sandy gave him a Buzz Lightyear space gun toy and for some reason Seven calls it a “gum” – I kinda prefer that since I didn’t want him playing with guns anyway! So he can call it a gum if he wants!

I managed to catch the first time Zane crawled on camera. It’s a crappy cellphone video (taken with my Android G1) but still, it was very exciting! This happened on June 14th when Zane was 5 1/2 months old.

Some cute quotes for you today:

Dinner last night, according to Seven, was “snackaroni and cheese!” It’s so cute I think that’s what I’ll call it from now on.

Me (pointing to a picture of Nemo on his swimmy diaper): Who’s this, Seven?
Seven: It’s EMO!!!

Then after he’d been playing in the sprinkler for half an hour, and he was cold and wet, he came over to me and said “I’m emo, Mommy!” …he did look kinda emo, too!