Sweet Jace

Jace gave me 5 full minutes of cooperation in front of the camera yesterday which is SOOOOO rare! He was being such a character- and I love that I can see his personalilty in these! Despite the craziness we have had with him lately, he really is a sweet kid! Such a funny personality and such a cute smile! These remind me of how much I love him!

Silly Ethan...

I bought this really cool blanket the other day and wanted to take it for a test drive! I am all about textured blankets in baby pictures lately! Well, Ethan was so cooperative and being so funny! But when he made this face, I seriously laughed out loud! I knew this would be a priceless shot! What do you think, should I put it on my website home page? Just kidding, a bit too goofy for that, but as a mom I LOVE it! It is so Ethan! There are lots more of these, if you want to check them out go to http://www.flickr.com/photos/91723324@N00/ (let me know if the link doesn't work)

Hope you enjoy these! Check back soon for a few fun shots a Jace and a family picture! Have a great weekend!

Mandy

Beautiful Sunrise

EARLY saturday morning me and Erica hauled all the kids out to Pleasant Grove to get some shots of the sunrise for a contest that I am going to enter. I don't think I will use these for the contest, but I loved these shots! It was so beautiful out there! I hardly ever get to see the sunrise out here (too many trees) so this was really fun for me. The pictures don't do it justice, but I thought they were cool! Isn't Virginia a beautiful place?

Brothers

I took these pictures of Jace and Ethan a few weeks ago, but wanted to post them up here for you all to see. I really want to get a 'perfect' picture of the two of them and get a 16X20 canvas made up, but these just aren't quite there. I might wait until Ethan is sitting up on his own and I can take them outside somewhere cool. But I actually really like these, especially the last one. Jace looks like he loves his little brother, which is nice to see right now! Gives me some hope!

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This last week has been very hard with Jace. He's had a rough time adjusting to having a new baby in the house, but this last week was especially difficult. He has this thing where he cannot talk to Ethan without getting right in his face and yelling and he seems to get louder and do it more often every day! It is really starting to freak me out quite a bit. The thing that worries me most of all is that I can just hear the anger and resentment in his voice and even see it in his body language (he tenses up whenever he is around Ethan). I know he gets especially frustrated because he has three adults nagging on him (yes, Erica does her fair share) so all of us are trying to ease up on him a bit. But it is getting so hard to be patient with him, which just perpetuates the cycle and makes him more angry and resentful! Ahhhhhhh! Can't you just feel my stress? I am honestly at a loss of what to do! I have been trying to spend a little time every day JUST with Jace, and his behaviour is much better during those times, but it doesn't last. And I can't just neglect Ethan- he has to be fed, changed, held, etc. and those are the times Jace gets the most out of control. So I am hoping he will realize that he can't have 100% of my attention 100% of the time and just grow out of this phase. But in the mean time, I have learned to rely on my Heavenly Father for help.

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I feel like up to this point, I haven't had any major trouble with parenting other than a minor frustration here or there. I've just been kind of floating along. And although I have always prayed for help to be a good parent, I don't feel like I have truly RELIED on Heavenly Father for help until recently. I now realize that I CANNOT do this by myself! I don't have all the answers, I am VERY far from perfect so I desperately need the Lord's help. And although this 'phase' is very hard, I am sure there are many more, even harder 'phases' to come (aye-yi-yi)! So as hard as this has been, I am so grateful that the Lord is there to guide me, strengthen me and mold me into the parent that He wants me to be. And what a blessing that is!

Lessons learned from Jace...

So you might be wondering why the heck I have a picture of stamps on my blog. Part of the reason is desperation- spring is here, I have been itching to take pictures but have no clients right now and my kids are tired of me so I have to resort to random object around the house to get my photography fix (I have even taken pictures of our bed stand!). But there is actually a little story behind this picture that I wanted to document (some of you may have heard it so I am sorry if I repeat myself; at least now you have a cool picture of stamps to go with the story!)

One morning a few weeks ago, I was doing my morning computer routine when Jace came running into the room. He was beaming with excitement, and then held out his hand and said to me "Mommy, look! Stickers!" In his hand was a compacted wad of stamps, and not just one or two! Tim had just gotten two books of stamps a few weeks before, and I think we had used one or two (the ones in the picture are the few that I was able to peel off the top of the stack). Without taking a moment to think about it, I freaked- "JACE! THOSE ARE NOT STICKERS! WE DO NOT PLAY WITH THOSE!!" I can still see the change in his countenance as I said that- his beaming face instantly melted down into a sad frown! Then he brought his hands up to his sad face, covered his eyes and with his head down cried out "I'm not feeling very good!" and ran crying into the bathroom and shut the door. He was so excited to show me the 'stickers' he had found and had NO CLUE why I was so mad at him! OUCH, dagger to the heart! I felt horribly guilty! As a parent, why is it so hard to think before you react (I hope I am not the only one that does this!) In retrospect, I realize that it wasn't a very big deal! They were only stamps and to any kid who doesn't know better they look exactly like stickers (they are stickers, just very expensive ones)! In the grand scheme of things, losing $13.65 in stamps is not worth damaging a child's self esteem and self worth. But dang it all, it was too late for that!

Well once I realized what I had done, I went in to apologize to him and explain myself. Luckily he is only 3 and quickly forgot this incident, but I have been thinking a lot about this and other faulty parenting incidents of mine lately (Tim and I have both had many of these with Jace lately!) I know that this one incident will probably not have any long-term effect on him, but I do know that if I consistently react this way then it will affect (or is it effect?) him in the long run. I really don't want Jace to grow up with low self-esteem, thinking that he can't do much of anything right, but if I constantly criticize him for every little thing he does that is exactly what will happen. I know that is a gloomy thought, and I am sorry if this blog post suddenly got depressing, but this has made me determined to try a little better. I realize that it will be impossible to react perfectly every time and there are going to be times when I lose it just because I am not perfect, but I had an idea to help this reacting problem of mine. Actually Tim brought this up the other day after talking to Kevin about our issues with Jace (so thanks Kevin and Amy for the advice!)

Here is the idea: in marriage therapy there is a rule that they call "the 5:1 ratio". I can't remember who came up with this rule, but basically it says that in a stable marriage, there must be 5 positives to every 1 negative. In a HAPPY marriage, that ratio should be 8 positives to every 1 negative. So, if this idea works in marriages, it probably would work in parenting too. I may not be able to completely get rid of the negative parenting moments with Jace, but I can try to outweigh them with more positive interactions. I know that right now my ratio with Jace is probably more like 5 negatives to 1 positive, so I need to change that. I know that the times when I do praise Jace or give him positive attention, he just loves it! I can tell by the look on his face that he feels loved. So I am trying very hard to do more of this; to shower him with positive comments, attention, etc. I think especially with having a new baby to share attention with, he really needs that.

Sorry for the long-winded post again! But I just wanted to share this with you all! Hopefully some of you can relate a bit!