Life with 4

So life with four is fun, exhausting, busy, silly, constant, and fulfilling. Going from three to four has been the biggest adjustment for us. I have time for very little other than being Mommy. This has been hard, but good for me. Before Miss Ivy I could be Mommy, clean the house, run errands, cook dinner and hang out with Jonathan at night. Now I am just Mommy and that is okay. Some days are heaven because I play with the kids and hold Ivy and all is happy. Some moments are disastrous with tears, sad faces, snotty noses, a frustrated toddler, crying baby, and a tense mommy. These are just moments! The girls have been extrememly patient, helpful and forgiving, and luckily Harrison and Ivy will never remember these moments.

One thing that has helped me have less of these moments has been getting back to being intentional in my parenting. I have recently come across a blog that I love called 1+1+1=1. It has given me great ideas of educational play and so far the kids love them. Just today I started trying to really teach Harrison his colors. Our first color is Blue! This morning I collected all of our blue toys and blue crafts like pompom, crayons, paint and play dough. As we played with all of our blue things I talked a lot about blue. The girls had fun with this too. He had fun even though when Jonathan came home I tried to get him to show daddy what he learned and he just stared. He had been saying "bue" all day. Oh well.
Claire and I worked on her letter recognition and she enjoyed some of the activities I pulled from this site. When she was done she was DONE and wanted to play. Tomorrow we are going to do a letter scavenger hunt through a magazine. When I tried this today her attention span was over, but Payton enjoyed it so Claire and I will try it tomorrow. Payton and I worked on reading Hop on Pop. She did better than I hoped and was eager to read it to Jonathan when he got home. It feels good to have our day a little more structured with purposeful play.
So all in all life with 4 is good! No matter what the day has been like, we are reminded of our gift each night as we go check on them one more time. Then we go to bed talking about how much we love each one of them and the sweet things they did that day. I love it!