old country house blog

Refrigerator House

     I got a sweet email from my cousin today. She was complimenting my blog and highlighting that with 3 kids under 6, her blog reading time is limited… and limited to after 11 pm. I hear ya Amy!

     I have a distinct memory of my kids being 1, 3 and 5 and having the stomach flu. My husband had to come home from work and I was in my room all day, taking trips to the bathroom. But in between “sessions”, I seized the opportunity to read “The Lovely Bones”, a book that I had been given months before for my Birthday. Finally I  had time to read. I read the whole day but I had about 30 pages left. So, finally a few days later, when I could stand,and hubby went back to work and life went on, I took the kids to the Gym, stuck them in the  nursery, and sat outside on the sofa and finished the book!
I get it!

Pictures are so quiet…

    

      I was often teased in the baby days about my obsession with taking pictures of my kids. But without those photos I would have lost whole hunks of their babyhood in my overcrowded  Mommy brain and Mommy life. And I honestly, like so many of you , DO MAKE an effort to slow down, we did not rush the kids into too many activities, etc, but I am convinced that it is just a Very busy time, whether you pack it all in or lay low, kids keep you busy. Period. So for me anyway, capturing the little moments on film (digital did not come along until baby #3)  was an excellent way to freeze life when I barely had time to shower, for me to look back on later. And my favorites are not the baseball games or the ballet recitals but the moment caught on film in the kitchen or the backyard, making a house out of a refrigerator box, or high jacking all the sugar in the house in the kitchen…

This is my favorite picture if my kids, of all time. Caught on the act of a sugar binge. 
See Phoebe’s blanket, to the right of her right foot, it went EVERYWHERE with her. her arm tattoo, 
and of course, Tate who hates to get messy delicately eating marshmallow, 
and then there is baby brother picking up the scraps…
this may sound morbid, but I want to be buried with this picture.

There have been times where I have taken out a random photo album from the baby days and whole days have come back to me, days previously escorted to “I’ll get back to you when I break a leg or have some time” section of my brain. And I thank GOD that I was obsessive about recording all the moments that fly by so fast, when the kids change whole faces in a week, or had a 3 day obsession with being a cat and had to dress like one morning noon and night, or when Cooper wore a tutu to the grocery store…the list goes on of those normal little days, days I might otherwise forget, for unlike the days of parental nightmares like 105 fevers and broken arms and near misses by cars and angry dogs, those days simply are happy and boring and do not make a big dent in my otherwise over saturated brain.

so blogging for me NOW is like verbal photography. These days are precious, and if I get to throw a bit in there about beauty and decorating…bonus! There is beauty is all of it, the good the bad and the sticky.

and there is nothing better than a Refrigerator Box House
its all good…