Is it possible my house has been ransacked and we just didn't notice because of the mess?

My house is a disaster.

The entire thing. I spend way too much time on the Internet lately reading debates about whether there are actually pros to moms staying home with their children instead of going to work and "making a difference in society."

I recognized the irony of my situation today. I am a stay at home mom and a strong advocate of it. How can you better influence society then to raise children that will be good members of it? However, lately (and maybe it is partly due to being pregnant and not just laziness) I have been home with my kids but not interacting with them. While this has helped their creativity, I certainly don't feel like I am doing my part (although I still greatly appreciate Jared's gratefulness for keeping our home running. I laughed because it has been a disaster for a while but his point was that we all end up dressed and fed to our various responsibilities, we have clean clothes, albeit ones you have to look for, and food to eat.)

I have also noticed the messier my house gets, the more uncreative and comatose I would like my kids to be. Grace has grandiose ideas and is recently figuring out how to implement them in our house. It's great for her to be creative but it is just increasing the clutter in our house, I know it's hard to believe it could actually get worse. I feel bad for telling her "No, you can't keep the extra sink you made for the bathroom. I know you want to have two in it but that bowl of water is just going to get spilled and I am going to have to clean it up." It's the same with her wanting to make fruit salad cups for the whole family by herself. I don't want them to do anything that is going to make more of a mess then I already have to clean up.

What I really want is for the kids to just spend all of their time outside playing with just nature. I don't have to clean up after that. Yesterday they did spend time outside but it still made a mess because we had to get out all of the snow stuff again, and of course it all ended up on the floor by the front door after they came in.

Stupid weather.

I wish I could keep them home forever and they would be happy with just their sisters for friends

I've been looking at home schooling helps forever now, when Scout was a preschooler, Grace and now I am thinking about it with Abi also. Nothing I find is quite what I want, except one which is what I want but way too elaborate for me to pull off when I am pregnant and not very fun for preschoolers but would be awesome with say a 2nd grader, but that's not going to happen for a variety of reasons, the primary one being there are younger ones at home to "get in the way."

It has made me think about what it is I really want to teach my children while I have them in my home. My kids will go to public school, at least until they start having problems, so what do I want them to know before they are sent off to an institution that I have no control over their environment or how they interact with people, or how people interact with them? It's changed what my goals are with with my "home school."

Socially and Emotionally- This is the one I most worry about. Scout is so shy in groups and struggles making good friends. Grace over compensates for her lack of friends by being really loud and overly interactive with people she wants to make friends with. Abi is afraid of one and two year old boys. Personally, I stink at making friends and talking to people, even people I know. How can I teach my kids to be open, inviting, friendly and accepting of others when I am not able to be an example? Maybe this is why we are encouraged to do service in the church, since it forces you to interact with others in a positive way. I think it's very possible that is the best way to each your kids social skills, but I lack the experience in service to verify that hypothesis.

On a slightly different note, how do I teach my kids that they deserve to be treated with respect and thus have a responsibility to treat others that way too? How do you prepare your child for the possibility that they will have nobody to hang out with at lunch and recess, or that the kid they want to be friends with might not want to be friends with them, and how do you teach them not to take it personally? How do I convince them that is what they are doing to the neighbor when they just want to watch tv instead of play with her?

Scout has recently made a "best friend." I'm glad, and hope next year they will be in the same class since this year they aren't. We had her over to play this week and it's great to hear that they are real friends, they don't fight or quarrel like I did with my best friend at that age.

Something About Me

I love having a two year old. Everything they do makes me smile, even if its not something I want her to do. It has been this way with all three of my girls. It is also the reason I know I am not done having kids; I'm not ready to spend the rest of my life without having my very own two year old. The hardest part is looking back. I love Abi in this age and want to remember everything she does, but I know I won't. I remember very little of Scout at this age and practically nothing of Grace, like she jumped over it without me. Thank goodness for flip cameras, right? Abi loves playing with it and I have a hard time getting rid of any of the video she has "filmed."

In hopes of remembering my little two year old, here are some things my girls have done at two that I love and that I realize I really don't like my older girls to do.

• climb all over my lap
• climb from one chair to another to get on my lap
• ignore me because she has rediscovered a toy
• unique dressing styles (Scout, Abi's choice of clothes to run through the sprinklers with)

• keep her face 2 inches from mine for extended periods of time to get as many kisses in as possible (Grace)
• constantly hug and cuddle me
• ask to sing the same song 10 times in a row while driving
• talk incessantly
• drawing all over herself (Scout, Abi who drew on herself with the bath crayons)
• crack nuts and leave the shells all over her lap, the table, the floor, etc
• use her hand to "lick" the second 1/2 of the frosting out of the container
• find her eating the powdered sugar or brown sugar in the food storage closet (this is Scout, but my other two have done it also)
• stay up till 11pm with me
• being to stubborn to let me show her how to do something (Grace trying to make the hanger be an ear ring)
  
• "sharing" food with the dog (Scout sharing milk with Jack)