scott and jesus have a few things in common... just so you know

i have been a wee bit hard on the hubs as of late.  in fact, the dude has been single dad'in it for the past two weekends while i have been off celebrating my sister's wedding and participating in a women's retreat.  he's a good man.  but he needs a shout out...  and so here you have it, a long overdue hip hip for the hubs...

and now for the story.

last june scott and i were sitting at the kitchen table chatting, sipping some joe and just hanging on a saturday morning.  i was also catching up on pinterest.  not familiar?  i promise, you are better off.  moving on...

i was looking at pins and came across this beautiful image of a backyard playhouse.  i loved everything about it.  i swear, it looked like the photo in the pin had been taken in my very own backyard.  i showed the pin to scott and said, "isn't this adorbs?"  

his immediate reply, "i could make that."

me:  "really?"

him:  "sure"

me:  "what makes you think so?

him:  "because i can?"

me:  "we've been married for almost ten years, babe.  i never knew.  are you sure?"

him:  "i'm sure"

me:  "how do you know?"

and it went on like this for a bit.  i had no idea that my husband was a carpenter.  i mean, he loves jesus and all...  but skills?  i wasn't so sure.

me:  "were you looking at the right picture?  this one?  right here?"  (i didn't really say that.  just adding it in to embellish)

me:  "the girls would love that!"

him:  "i'm on it."

and so for the next two weekends, scott donned his carpenter belt (he doesn't really have one...  but maybe he should).  really...  he went to work building a platform, and then walls, and then a roof.  he built stairs and then porch railings.

and about 14 days post my, "really?", he produced the most adorable playhouse for our three little girlies.

you may recall that this momma is fearful of the play dough, resistant to get out the smock and brushes, has a slight aversion to mess of all sorts...  but this playhouse has liberated me (that and the warm climate we now live in).

girl:  "momma, can we play with play dough?"

me:  "yes!"

girl:  "momma, can we paint?"

me:  "yes!"

girl:  "momma, do we have glitter?"

me:  "it's in the play house!  glitter away.  create.  craft.  dough.  paint.  i can't wait to see what you make...  outside...  far away from the inside...  where i don't have to clean it...  and it doesn't scatter all over our home...  yes!"

and so for almost a year now...  we have been in playhouse heaven.  the guy down the street said that scott was making the dad's of the world look back.  i say, he's making this mom happy.

did i mention that i married the best dad ever???

pixie hollow

for the better part of the last six months my girls have been obsessed with one thing when they play outside.  my girls are obsessed with fairies.  i don't really know why.  it just sort of happened in the late fall, was embraced when grandma visited in december, and has continued well into the spring.  

it was getting out of control.  the kids were making traps all over the back yard.  i would look out the kitchen window and see piles of sticks under the walnut tree, rock stacks next to a basket (stairs so that the fairy could make it into the bed) in the middle of the lawn.  leaf collections...  what have you.  and it was getting a little bit out of control.  and we wanted to beautify the back yard a little.  and fairy houses nature piles just don't quite work with my gardening layout.  

and so in an effort to prepare the yard for the makeover that it was about to receive, we had the girls clean up the fairy houses.  they were good sports about it and understood that in order to lay sod we would need the basket collection to be relocated.  we designated a spot for where they could continue to set their traps and then went about the business of beautifying.  it was a lot of work, but a few weekends later, we had reached the desired goal- an inexpensive partial backyard makeover to at least cover the pile of dirt that it was when we bought the house.  

during this process of planting, i found myself at a local nursery looking at plants.  on our way out of the nursery, the girls and i discovered a collection of fairy gardens.  the gardener at the nursery had taken some broken pots, added some vegetation to them, furniture, cute little signs (like "fairies welcome" and "please come in tinkerbell") and turned them into fairy houses.

adorable.

i stopped dead in my tracks and we gushed over them for a few moments.  i had never seen anything like it and was found them to be lovely.

after a few minutes of taking them in, we hoped in the car.  on the ride home i asked the girls what they might enjoy doing over spring break (which was the following week).  all three of them yelled out in unison, "we want to make fairy houses!".

and so we did.  we are waiting for a cute little fairy swing, willow framed bed and table to arrive from a garden store in ohio, but aside from that, they are done.  each girl designed their own and they now sit awaiting fairies beneath our apple tree.  

and while this was certainly not the motivation, i haven't seen traces of stone stacks or stick piles anywhere.  

i'll also let you in on a little secret if you promise not to tell.  according to e, she has caught a fairy and he is living in the pot with the freesia.  

rock the potty

i have three children.  e and d potty trained themselves.  i am not kidding.  e's older cousin (by a few months visited right after he mastered the potty).  e was totally jelly and followed suit right after he left. it was three days max.  

you may remember that d wanted to rock the potty about a week before her second birthday...  while her daddy-o was preparing for the california bar exam.  i held her off until he was back among the living and she was good to go...  something like 2 and three months.  

and then there is the popster.  she loved her some cloth diapers.  loved 'em so much she had no desire to  move on.  why bother? 

at two and a half, this momma laid down the law and put my sweet p in momma potty training camp.  it was brutal.  eventually, she succumbed to the idea of letting her number one flush down the drain.  i was happy.  she was happy.  

but number two was a whole different story for kid number three.  she just didn't want to do it.  it was a quandary for me in the motherhood department.  should i keep diapering or should i just put her in panties and move on.  eventually she would get it.  right?

and so from february of last year to november of this year, my gal would let her number two loose in her big girl drawers.  gross.  but that is just how it went.  she is stubborn and i was tired.  you win some.  you lose some.

when she approached 2 1/2, i became less tolerant of the fact that this little monkey would not rock the potty.

in november, my babysitter gave me a call one night when scott and i were out.  the pops had rocked the potty!  the babysitter, having been with us for years, knew this was a huge deal.  she sang a song.  she did a dance.  she made this success be as huge as it was.  pops called to tell us the news.  we were elated.  overjoyed.  proud.

and then she relapsed.  i can't tell you why.  it is just what she did- in true poppy form, she was not quite ready to jump full hog into the number two.

am i really writing about this?  yup.  yes i am.

anyways.  in december we celebrated hanukkah with another baby-sitter/friend of ours.  we do this every year.  we celebrate her winter holiday and we play dreidle.  it is fun had by all.  the popster loves her some chocolate and she seemed to be the one that was most into this game this year.

when she left, we had a substantial amount of hanukkah gelt left-over.  i had a thought.  what if this special chocolate was just for p?  what if we channeled this love affair for gelt into a love affair for doing number 2 on the golden throne?   and so i gathered all of the gelt and put it into a mason jar.  i placed said jar on a shelf above the potty.  i had a meeting with kid three.

"pops, you rock the potty with your poo, you get a gelt.  are you down with that?"

she agreed.  and from the day the jar took residence in the bathroom, my little pops really rocked the potty completely.

this worked from december through march.  and then i noticed that the gelt was getting low.  oh no!

i had another meeting with pops.

"pops, the gelt is about to run out.  when it does, it is gone.  you are going to keep doing what you have been doing.  are we clear?"

"yup."

and so we have run out of gelt.  and a few weeks post reward, my pops is still rocking the potty.

mission accomplished.  we freecycled the training potty in february.  amen.

peace to the potty.