Costa Rica

How to sum up an amazing vacation?  2 gallons of sunblock.  That's how.  Just kidding.  I'll give it a shot.

1) Monkeys - The highlight of the trip.  We rented a house in the middle of the jungle and were regularly visited by monkeys.  We even had a resident sloth in the tress in our backyard.

Looking inside to see what was going on.

Seriously, how cute is this?

 

2) Jungle night hike, zip lining and a mangrove tour.

Pretty cool to see what wakes up after dark.  I wasn't even squeamish.  Chase even spotted a enormous banana spider.

The tour guide did a great job, pointing out all sorts of wildlife in the mangrove forests.

We all loved the ziplining! 10 lines spread throughout the forest.  We went from treetop to treetop.

3) Really good food

We found the best food at the local cafes.  Arroz con pollo and casados were the favorites.

4) Water & Relaxing - The pool was refreshing and the beach water was sooo warm. Even I could go in it, and that's saying something.

Notice the size of the book he is "reading"

4) Bugs - Before we arrived I had my suspicions that Costa Rica was going to be really buggy.  I mean, really bad.  I was actually quite surprised that it wasn't. Yes, there were bugs, but not nearly as many as I thought there would be.  However, the scorpion in the kitchen, the frog in the family room, the geckos on the ceilings and the GIGANTIC dead spider I found in the bathroom were enough for me....  :)

5) And guess what?  No broken arm, no hospital, no surgery, so all in all a great trip!

They stay the same

Lately I've been working on a project that has me going through old blog posts and photographs.  I've been working through 2007-2009.  It was a stressful time for us.  Chasey was born and shortly thereafter we started building our house.

4 kiddos, 1 being a newborn while building a house = chaos.

I came across picture after picture of Owen and his naughtiness.  Those memories, combined with a child rearing book that I have read recently really brought something together for me.

It is this.  Our children are born with certain personalities or natures.  As parents, it's our job to nurture and enjoy their uniqueness and individualness and not try to change who they are.  I know this because my children are very different from each other and have been since they were little. Their natures have not changed.

How many times though, have I become frustrated and upset because they do or say things that I wouldn't do?   A lot.  Sadly, a lot.

Instead I should recognize who they are (different from me and my ways) and work to encourage them to grow and develop in their own unique way.

Here is my example.  Owen.  And I use Owen because I have a lot of pix of this that work well for a blog post.  However, I can say this with any of my kids and their unique natures.

Owen has always been a very busy child.  He loves to be active (physically and mentally).  He is not happy if he is not actively engaged in something.  If I do not provide enough stimulation for him, he will go out and find it on his own.  And there is a pretty good chance I won't be happy about it. Scott and I often say that Owen doesn't settle well.  He's always on the move.  If he doesn't have a specific thing in mind to do, he will start casting about looking for the next thing, whatever that is.

For example.  In this 2007-8 time period this is a tiny glimpse of him.

Drawing  on everything he could find and I mean everything! No surface in the house was left alone.

Cutting his own hair

Getting into everything and dumping it out including my cocoa powder.  I can't tell you how many messes I cleaned up.

Squeezing every product imaginable onto the carpet.  Our house was a mess.

I remember being so frustrated with him, thinking many times.   "Why is he acting like this?  His older brothers were not like this.  I don't understand him.  He needs to stop.  He needs to calm down."

If I had known then what I know now,  I hope I would have reacted differently.  "Owen has a lot of forward motion and he needs stimulation."  I need to give him the stimulation he needs so we are both happy."

That's what I should have done.  I should have put him in time-out less and provided more appropriate outlets for his energy.  We would have both been so much happier.  Looking back at that period in my life with a newborn and trying to build a house, what I really should have done was hired some YW in the Ward to come in and play with him.

Instead,  I tried to force him to change who he was.  To stop him from being so active.  And that made everyone unhappy.

Some more examples:

Very particular about what he wears.  He wore this Batman costume all the time!

Guess what?  Still the same.  Although this pix is a few years old, Owen still has very strong preferences on his clothes.  When he came up wearing this outfit, I just about told him to go change because that is something I would not pick out for him to wear.  But instead I just let him wear it.  1 point for me!

Is friendly with the ladies in 2007.  Still the same today.

And some more recent pictures.

Digging a 3' hole for the fun of it.  No other reason.  I would never do that and neither would any of my other boys.

Whittling in my laundry room, wearing 2 differently colored soccer socks, paying no attention to the garbage can. He is focused on the activity at hand.

And last but not least, daily swim practice this past summer!  It was an awesome appropriate outlet for his energy!  He has asked me to sign him up again this year, which I will happily do.

So there you have it.  A little example.  So I continue to think and observe my children.  And when I get frustrated with their behaviors I'm trying really hard to try and understand their nature and personality and work with them instead of against them. 

IKEA with my baby

For the past month, our Saturday's have been filled with skiing.  I signed up Bennett for an all day ski school, and Scott has been taking up the other boys as well to ski with him.

I have been the lucky one to stay home with Chasey.  He has not taken up skiing yet.  One Saturday when it was just him and me, I told him we could go out to lunch together.  He insisted on IKEA so he could eat their meatballs.

So, up we went, stood in line and got our meatballs.  Once we found a table, I went over to get our drinks.  When I got back, Chase had claimed the adult plate of meatballs and I got the child size.  He must love the meatballs because he ate almost all of them!

Braces #2

Now it's Bennett's turn to get braces.  Luckily his teeth are not nearly as crowded and in need of straightening as Taylor's!  I took him out for lunch right after he got them put on and right before they started to hurt. He's been a good sport!

Reay to be done

Our dog has had pins and external rods sticking out of her leg now for about 8 weeks.  Up until about 3 weeks ago, she had left her leg and bandages alone.  Not anymore.  She has become quite good at tearing everything off and leaving bits of gauze all over the room when we are not looking.

Here you can see her destruction.  She won't even look at me because she knows she's in trouble. I can't blame her though.  I'm sure having metal hardware coming out of your leg is extremely uncomfortable and itchy.

We thought we had outsmarted her by putting on one of Scott's old socks on top of all the gauze and wrappings.  Nope.  She figured out how to take that off too.  We still have no idea how she manages to pull off a sock without it getting stuck on pins and rods.  But she does.  Now we have added duct tape on top of the sock to try and keep it on.  We are about ready to re-introduce her to the cone of shame.

Since the vets office is in Payson,  I have had to drive all the way down there every two weeks to get her leg checked and receive strict instructions on what to watch for at home.  Last time I took her, they sedated her to do some work on her leg.  45 minutes later, I ended up driving home a semi-sedated dog that couldn't walk in a straight line and that managed to pee all over my van.  I really am done with this ordeal.

Luckily this is almost over.  Next Wednesday she gets it all taken out and replaced with a splint.  I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Bennett

When Bennett sets his mind to cleaning something, he can do a really good job.  The other day I sent all the boys down to clean their rooms.  Bennett came up awhile later and asked me to come down and see his room.  That is always a good sign. 

I went down and this is what I saw.  Deodorant all lined up on his nightstand.  I didn't know he had that many.  Stuffed animals all laid out just the way he likes them.  His WWII book that he got for Christmas at the head.

And best of all his blue blankets lovingly arranged at the foot.  He loved and still loves the remains of his baby blanket. (Don't tell him I told you that.)  It reminds me of these.

See the little blue triangle piece on the top?  Funny story about that.  A couple years ago, Scott decided to clean out the filter on our washing machine.  It hadn't been cleaned out since we moved to this house.  It was full of a lot of scary stuff.  That little triangle was one of the things we found.  Except it didn't look that blue when he pulled it out.  It was disgusting.  After years of water and dirt getting drained through it, it hardly looked liked a piece of fabric at all.  But I knew that Bennett would love it again if I cleaned it up.  And so I did.  I scrubbed that little triangle with a scrub brush until it was clean.  And he does love it and I believe, though I can't be for certain and I will never ask, that he will oftentimes stick that little piece in his pocket.

Owen and Tape

Owen loves tape.  Loves it.  Scotch, packing, painting, duct.  It doesn't matter what kind, he will use it to fix, play or otherwise entertain himself.   He particularly likes to fix things with it.  If anything is broken or has a hole in it, tape is always the solution.  A few months ago I noticed that he had  covered a hole in his sock with tape.  Not surprisingly, it rarely is a permanent fix.

Several weeks ago, Scott went down into our play room and found that Owen had taped all over the walls.  And he hadn't cleaned it up.  The real kicker.  This was one of many incidents of him using a ton and us finding it all over the house.   So, we ended up banning him from using tape without our permission. 

It was no surprise to me to find this glove the other day outside on our back porch.  It is one of my old pairs with a hole in it.  I didn't even have to think twice about who decided to patch the hole with a band-aide instead of tape.  Owen.  If he is anything, he is creative.