Category Archives: motherhood

the little game we play

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I have so much to blog about – Christmas, the boys’ latest Valentines for school, beach trips in January … all very good stuff accompanied with many pictures. But I don’t have time to do all that. I will tomorrow, but today I wanted to document the little game Ray and I play.

On Friday night, Jeff and Christina came over to watch a movie with us. After Jeff put Emily down to sleep in the pack-n-play in my closet, he came downstairs and said, “Did you know that all your medicine is in your tub in your bathroom?” I nonchalantly answered, “yeah”.

Every day I need to shower (we’re using the words “every day” loosely here), and I usually have time to do it after Noah and Liam go to school. I’m so busy in the mornings making breakfast for everyone, making lunches for everyone, driving kids to school and trying to work out that I don’t have time to shower until it settles down, mid-morning. But by then, Ray is wide awake and not ready for his afternoon nap yet and I have no one to watch Ray. So I get in the shower anyway.

My shower is a glass stall, so I can see the bathroom around me just fine. I close the door to my room, bring in toys from Ray’s room and let Ray meander about my room (doing a drunken, stumble walk) while I shower. And we play this game where I pretend not to see him doing dangerous things – like playing with medicine. In my defense, I know that all of them have child safety caps on them, so that makes it better right?

For some reason, he never plays with the toys I bring in my room for him, no matter how interesting they are, nothing compares to a bottle of Advil, evidently. So, because I can see him, but not really get out of the shower, dripping wet and stop him from opening and closing, opening and closing and finally opening then playing with the contents of the medicine cabinet, I let him do it. It’s wrong and dangerous and I am a terrible mother, I know. He usually takes the medicine out, then dumps it in the tub next to the shower and I just watch. I used to yell from the shower, “Raaaaay, no. Stop! Ray, close the door. Close the door, Baby. Right now. Raaaaaay, close the door. yeah!!! Good!!!! Thank you …. no. wait, close it, stop. Put it back buddy. Noooooo, put it down. Down. Yes, now close the door” … you get the idea. I spent the entire shower coaxing a 20 month old to stay away from the medicine cabinet. Anyway, I finally went to Target and got the child locks and I will install them tomorrow, but for a little while, that just happened.

Noah is 8

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I just don’t know how this happened.

I have always been the kind of mommy that loves to see her boys grow up and get bigger and more capable and independent … until now. Somebody stop this please. It was great to see Noah learn to tie his shoes (he was the first one in his kindergarten class to learn and would help everyone else tie their’s), but now he’s talking to me like an adult, getting baptized and telling me about how teenagers make bad choices and try to impress girls – what?! I love him.

I still remember blogging about his first day in preschool. I was so nervous that the kids wouldn’t like him. He was so active and happy and I wanted them to have a little extra patience with my Noah. I wanted them to show him a little tenderness and answer his neverending questions. I wanted them to be nice to my little Noah and not crush his enthusiasm for life and everything around him. I remember exactly what he looked like running into his preschool class, so brave and without even looking back. He was ready and I was not. I feel that way again now. He is ready and smart and growing up and understanding the Gospel. He asks me thoughtful questions, talks to me about how he feels and what he likes and wants to do. He takes care of Liam. Sweet little, timid Liam needs his Noah. Noah teaches Liam his sight words and yesterday he took Liam in the backyard to show him “soccer moves”. He is in soccer now and soaring past everyone in his 2nd grade class in math! He has places to go and plans on the horizon and I am watching him grow up and walk away and not look back. That is my brave Noah.

This year is an important year for him. He decided to be baptized and we’re going to do that in northern CA surrounded by family. I can’t wait to see him grow in the Gospel. He has such a good mind. He sees things as right or wrong, very little gray area. He is honest and has a good heart. And he is happy.

This year, we had two parties for Noah. A small family one, just Forsyths, on the day of his birthday and then another on Saturday after his birthday where we invited cousins. The Saturday party was pretty low key (in comparison to other blow out parties I’ve thrown them). Noah took Liam and his cousins to play Lazer Tag and video games, then they came home and had lunch – specialty grilled cheese sandwiches, Noah’s favorite homemade balsamic dressing salad and pineapple (his favorite fruit). There were a few lego games to play here at the house and then cake and an ice cream sundae bar and presents.

A few things about Noah lately:

– he eats every dinner with chopsticks now. It’s hilarious. He talks a lot about Papa, who died but served his mission in Taiwan. Noah said he wants to go to China.
– He is seriously excelling in second grade. His school in MI was farther along than the one here in CA. Noah says, “this is one of those easy schools”.
– He helps Liam. With everything. Last week, they started a soccer fundamentals class. It was the first week of the class, so Noah and Liam were together on the field. We were a few minutes late and the coach already had the kids on the field, so Noah and Liam ran up and the coach told them to get a soccer ball. There weren’t enough balls. Noah grabbed one quick, but Liam just stood there and looked around. Liam looked so nervous, like he was about to cry as the realization that he was the only one on the field without a ball settled in and became obvious. As his little world looked like it was caving in, Noah saw what was happening and kicked his ball over to Liam and said, “here Liam, you can have this one”. Then Noah ran out to the coach and asked for another one. Noah is brave and kind and tender with Liam.
– He still loves everything that is Lego Star Wars. And Clone Wars
– He loves salad.
– He talks to me a lot about spiritual things and seems sure about his testimony already. Last night we had the missionaries over giving a lesson and they asked each of us to commit to reading the Book of Mormon and praying to know that is was true. They went around the room asking each person. When they got to Noah he simply said, “I already have”. Also, this year, he wanted to bring in a special treat for his second grade class and he said he wanted to bring them all Book of Mormons. I asked why and he said because he was listening to the talk in church on Sunday and they said to share the gospel. I told him to ask his teacher if he could bring in B of M’s and instead of shying away, Noah said he would. And then he did. He came home that day from school and I asked him about it and he told me, “No, she said we couldn’t. It’s the same as Hayes” (his elementary school in MI). Then he asked, “why do they call it religion? Doesn’t everybody believe?” I said people had different beliefs. He responded with, “But they all believe in God, right? If they do, then it’s all the same religion, right?” We talked a lot that afternoon about religion. It is so fun to have him be so interested in talking about spiritual matters.
– He likes to give people things to make them happy. The other day he said he was going to give Ben, his cousin, $50. I asked why and he said, “because I told him I would”. It wasn’t because he lost a bet or broke something. It sounded like he just told him he’d give him $50. Oh man, I love him.
– He is loving. I ask him to say goodbye to his cousins and most times, he gives them a hug … and a quick kiss. I worry that he might do that to some kid at school sometime. When we were at soccer practice he asked if he could stay after and play with his friend, Gideon. I said it was too close to dinnertime, so he said, “OK, well, do you at least want to meet him?” I said sure and walked over to the field. Noah called out to his friend several times, then walked over and told him he couldn’t stay and play, but then he pointed me out and said, “well, that’s my mom”. I waved, Gideon waved and then Noah gave Gideon a quick hug. I wonder if other second grade boys hug one another?

Well, naptime is all spent. I need to get in the shower and do some Christmas baking (I love that that’s what I need to rush off and do :) ). Here are the party pics … both parties.

Our family birthday party

Noah asked specifically for mini lemon cupcakes for his birthday. I asked why and he said, “because I don’t want to have too many sugary things”

The Lego Party with cousins on Saturday:

It’s really embarrassing how long that lego box took me. I felt like it was super big when I was building it … but in the end, it was pretty small. I almost went cross eyed looking for specific lego pieces to make it all fit perfectly. Then, of course, during the party, it only took about 45 minutes before it was smashed into a million pieces (literally a million. I think I used a million pieces). I also taxed my eyes and patience, putting together the Happy Birthday Noah sign. crazy.

We are lucky, this was a Lego car game that Gammie gave us.

These two actually posed this way. I did not catch them mid-bite. They did it again:

Chiara aka, The Duchess


Aria pulled the nastiest long hair and junk out of her mouth right at that moment. Had to be there, but it was hilarious.

And this is the cake. In case you can’t tell, it is Mos Eisely’s Cantina. Noah asked for this specifically. Of course.


I think the best part of the cake was seeing how much joy it brought Noah and Liam to make sure the correct Lego people were on the cake.

The inside was lego colored – red, blue, yellow and green.

Let it begin

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Here we go. I am now officially the mommy of a toddler …. again. I have dreaded this moment and kept telling myself and others, “he’s still my little baby”, but that is all past now. I think I need to accept this and move forward. Ray is in the terrible twos. How do I know, you might ask? There are quite a few tell-tale signs:

1. He’s moody. That’s putting it lightly. Some people have bad days, but Ray has bad hours or minutes, which rapidly turn into hysterically happy ones with a crazy grin, giggles and him saying, “uh yights?” That is his word for everything these days “yights”. I don’t know what it means. I thought he was saying “lights” at first because he was noticing all the lights on the tree and outside, but now he’ll say it when he hears a train, opens a door, sees Noah … pretty much anytime.

2. He’s very needy. He gets this way everyday from about 3 pm until he goes to bed … sometimes earlier in the day, like 1 pm on, but at least by 3 pm it hits. And I always check to see if it’s something he actually needs – like a diaper change, or maybe he’s thirsty or hungry. nope. He just wants me to sit and hold him. It doesn’t suffice that I am within 12 inches of him, I must be doing nothing but holding him in my arms, so that I cannot do anything else.

3. If for some terrible reason I am not doing what he wants (which seems to happen quite a lot), he does what I have dubbed the “Velociraptor scream”. It’s a developmental milestone with my boys. They all did it and now so does Ray. They scream in a high pitched tone that cuts immediately to the inner ear. It’s very disturbing … to everyone within a 1000 ft radius.

4. He is not capable, anymore, of playing appropriately or with appropriate items. For instance, he has a small play kitchen in our actual kitchen. He never plays with it anymore. Instead of opening and closing the doors on his play kitchen where there are loads of fun and constantly rotating toddler toys inside, he walks right past his kitchen and opens up the cupboards directly in front of me, slamming the cupboard doors into my knees or sometimes his face, if I step back out of the way.

Inside of the play kitchen, there is a clear plastic tub. It is supposed to hold the plastic food for his play kitchen, but it never does. Ray takes it out of the play kitchen sometimes (and I usually gasp with excitement at the sight of him really playing with his toys) and he instantly dumps the plastic food out and crams himself inside the bin. Sometimes he crams himself inside the play kitchen cupboard too. It’s funny to watch, but this is all inappropriate play.

He has the most delightful nursery, filled, brimming even, with age appropriate and wonderful, colorful toys. He never goes in there. Instead, he is drawn to inappropriate objects like – pencils, pens and crayons, small legos to stuff in his mouth, the vacuum cleaner, and light switches. He is constantly crying, if not from a mood swing, then from hurting himself while playing inappropriately with inappropriate things.

5. He is mean. He hits me in the face when I ask for kisses and kicks me in the thighs when I change his diaper. He dumps every sippy cup of water out. But how could he dump a sippy cup of water out? Aren’t they spill proof? Welllllll, he takes them, turns them upside down, then bangs them repeatedly until water or milk comes out. He does this not only at the highchair, but whenever he has a sippy cup. Sometimes he will have a sippy cup in his carseat, where there is no surface to bang them on. That doesn’t stop him. No, he just bangs the upside down sippy cup on his legs until his pants and/or shirt are soaked. Then he cries.

6. He cries. All. the. time.

7. He throws everything. He’s broken so many things. oh so many things.

And so because we’ve reached this threshold of the terrible twos, I am nuts. I feel like I’m living in crazy town. I put something down, turn away, turn back and it’s gone. I feel like I must have misplaced it. But really, I just have a mean little midget drunkenly sauntering around behind and around me destroying everything I do! I have lost keys, shoes, cell phone …. and today in Target, that little, mean midget lost my dark blue scarf. I loved that scarf. I got it while on a trip with Daniel to Holland, MI – a non-kids trip. And it’s gone. I saw him trying to chuck it out of the cart several times and stopped him, but he got to me and did it while I wasn’t paying attention to him. Heaven forbid I ever actually look at the things I’m trying to buy instead of Ray. Mean midget. ahhhhhhh, well. I guess the terrible twos teach me and reteach me that material things are not important.

Well, it’s 5 pm now and we’re right in the middle of Ray’s bad mood part of the day (3-7:30pm) and he’s in full swing. Sometimes I give up and put him in his crib with his favorite blanket to stay away from me for a bit while I type furiously away on my blog about my dumb scarf. It doesn’t matter, but it’s only the tip of the iceberg. The terrible twos are here. Wish us luck.

“you’re doing it wrong”

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Please tell me you’ve seen “Mr. Mom”. In this movie, Michael Keaton is staying at home while his wife works and as he tries to learn the ropes of being a mom, he drops off his kids at school. He enters the wrong way and people keep yelling at him (including his kid) “you’re doing it wrong!”. That’s how I felt today. I must be doing something wrong. It shouldn’t be this hard.

It’s Veteran’s Day and so nobody had school today. I woke up with a plan. I was going to make this a very productive and wonderful day, not one of those laze-about-do-nothing-wastes-of-a-day. But within the first 45 minutes of the day I should’ve realized that I needed to simply put on a movie for the boys and crawl back into bed and hide. Just getting my boys to do their normal everyday stuff was awful! Getting dressed, making their beds …. it was painful! All I heard myself saying was, “stop, no! Are you dressed yet? What are you doing? Why would you hurt him like that? You go on time out. You clean up. Don’t touch the baby. Stop. Switch, you go on time out and you get dressed. Do I have to do it like this? Can’t you get dressed without me?” …. awful. For 45 full minutes. No let up.

Daniel sweetly texted me this morning that he missed me and I texted back that I was losing my mind and it was only 8:30 am. He said I should forget about clean rooms and just go on a bike ride. So I took his advice. The boys had already finished cleaning their room, so we hopped in the car and ran some errands, then came home and I asked if they wanted to go for a bike ride. Yes! Yipee! Noah was in and Liam sounded mildly happy about it too, so we got home and I gathered some waters, pumped up tires, found helmets for everyone and we were off! … except for Liam.

Liam started saying that he didn’t know how to ride and his steering wheel always got all wiggly. I kept reassuring him that it would be great! So we started on our way. It took 10 minutes and some serious coaxing and positivity from Noah and me to get Liam around the first corner. By the time we got down the street and to the train tracks (we live right next to the train tracks), Liam was in tears.

I used a myriad of tactics with Liam to get him on his bike and going. I started with positivity and encouragement, “Wow, look at how far you got that time? Good job!”. Didn’t seem to help. So I tried sounding confident, “you can do this, just get on and let’s go! Come on, you can do it!”. But that proved fruitless. So I said, “Well, Noah and I are going to go on this bike ride and you can either choose to come or walk your bike the whole way. You’re choice.” He chose to cry very loudly and walk/trip next to his bike, then scream, “Stop! You’re going too fast! I can’t keep up”, to which, I responded, “that’s because you’re not actually riding your bike, get on and ride!” Seriously, it was not going well.

I’m sorry to say it ended in many tears from Liam and me losing it and yelling/threatening him that if he didn’t be quiet, get on his bike, and ride I’d punish him. Yes, it deteriorated quickly from a “fun break on a holiday” to “the worst bike ride ever”. But after the negative encouragement, Liam got on and did it. Then we got back to our block and I made him ride around the block twice and he didn’t fall once. He turned, slowed down and sped up and he did great. But he was just not confident that he could do it. Oh man, learning that lesson, that way, was terrible. I must be doing this wrong, right? Happy little bike ride? … fail.

Then we got home and had some downtime of just reading. During that time, I fed Ray and put him down for a nap. I was picking up my room when they were done with reading. I told them they could watch cartoons. I was still stressed out from the morning. It’s funny to see what I did to release pressure … I cleaned my bathroom. What??! I know. I don’t know why. That’s just what I found myself doing. Then I put on Jillian and worked out like a maniac.

Then I felt like an hour of TV time was plenty and we needed to get back on track for the day – we still had plans. The bike ride was a disaster, but we could come back from this. I decided we would try khanacademy.org. It’s a learning site. So I set up Noah and Liam on different computers and felt good about this. Here we go – learning! I would only say this was successful in the fact that we did it. Was it pleasant? no. Did the boys learn something new? I don’t think so. Did I go crazy running from the front room to the family room trying to help them navigate the site? yes. Did both of them complain? yes, differently though – Noah said he was bored and Liam said it was too hard. Yet I had them working at different levels … sigh. I must’ve been doing it wrong. Learning moment? … fail.

At this point, I kind of gave up and let them play games on the computer while I showered. Now it’s 4 pm and I have no more plans. Motherhood always seems to kick my trash and I don’t know why. I must be doing it wrong.

But right now, the house is quiet, the boys are upstairs playing and Ray is crawling around and coming up to me and smiling. Maybe I should leave well enough alone and make a bunting for our thankful tree. hmmm.

dancing with total abandon

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Is there anyone you can do this with? Dance around with total abandon? I can’t do it with Daniel because he doesn’t dance with me, so I’m always conscious of how I’m dancing because he’s usually just watching … with a huge grin across his face. And with friends, I always wonder if they think I’m weird, or if I’m doing cool enough moves, ya know? The only people I can really let loose and dance with are my sisters.

Well, Aria drove the 30 minutes out here to my house and Christina, Aria and I hung out at my house this morning. The big boys were at school so we let the little boys have a play date (totally unsupervised). We watched the babies, then set the babies up to play and worked out with Jillian. We decided, while hanging with the babies, that we should squeeze in a trip to Michaels for Halloween costume/party supplies and use our 50% off coupons that were expiring tomorrow. While on the way to Michaels, each in our separate vehicles, but caravanning in a row, something happened.

Have you heard that new Katy Perry song? Eye of the Tiger? It’s so fun. It came on the radio and as soon as it did, I called Christina in the car ahead of me and told her to switch her radio station, then I called Aria in the car behind me (twice) and got her to switch to the same station. Then all three of us, while sitting at a couple red lights, danced our hearts out in our cars, waving our arms around and punching the air with the rhythm. I haven’t danced that way in I think … years? And I was smiling so big that my face felt stretched out afterwards. It was so awesome.

Part Two – Christina had left to go home and I was just getting into my car. A few cars over, Aria was sitting in her van nursing Chiara before her 30 minute trek back home. I turned on my car and it was still on the same radio station as Aria’s, and you’ll never believe it … that same Katy Perry song came on again. It was hilarious. I looked over at Aria, through the 2 empty car windows between us and we couldn’t help ourselves. We were wildly dancing again, shaking and punching to the beat … I think I closed my eyes a few times and got some serious moves going. But every time I looked over at Aria, she’d be doing the same thing – just lettin’ loose. I realized at one point, that she was nursing and had a baby attached to the front of her and it made me laugh out loud because I don’t know how she was groovin’ so crazy-like with Chiara nursing! It all kind of ended abruptly when some chick drove up in the empty parking space next to me and Aria and I could no longer stare at each other dancing through blank car windows. ahhhhhh, nothin’ like a good ol’ jam session with sisters.

We used to do this as little girls. And when I say “little girls”, I use that term loosely … we were teenagers doing this. I really remember the best jam sessions happening at the Concord house. But sometimes, when mom and dad were gone and we were all alone at the house, we’d turn on the radio and really blast it, then totally let loose and dance wildly around the family room. Sometimes there was leaping off the furniture and sometimes we were trying to gyrate in the same fashion as Mina. Mina was really the best dancer. She had some pretty cool moves – I think she just had better control of her body in motion. I remember specifically doing a few jam sessions before my first church dance. I wanted to know how to dance there, in front of my peers. So one time, Bethany blasted the music and we figured it out. So fun.

Still jamming after all these years.