peelosophy

Many changes are on the Fall horizon for the Peel family….

• JJ will be in school all day- man I miss him.

• Henry will be going to preschool- JJ never went so preschool is all new to us.

• Emma will be joining George at Kids Day Out once a week.

• My sister Katie and her family moved back home- not only to STL but into our neighborhood!!! AND Tootie, my niece, will be going to Hudson with JJ.

• Kara, whom I have babysat 2 days a week since she was 9 weeks, is starting Kindergarten and won’t be a part of our Mondays and Fridays anymore. Totally bittersweet.

• I started watching my niece, Rosie and it is going so great! Her and Emma are BFFs..check out the picture.

Wow, I didn’t think it was a lot, but writing it out it is ALOT!  My current mental status is Monday -Friday I’m fine, it’s the transition to our weekends I have a hard time with lately.   Weekends we try to balance getting things done with relaxing and I’m not good at the latter.

What do you do on the weekends?  Do you find it hard to balance?

In junior high I transferred from a private all-girl school to a public co-ed school. That is a heck of a transition for a junior high girl!

By God’ grace, I became instant friends with a group of girls, of which most of them also had transferred from all girl schools. We were called The 6-Pack because their were 6 of us and we were inseparable. I don’t know if this name was given to us or if self-proclaimed, but it was junior high – if you had a place or a name where you fit in – it was half the battle.

I’ve been thinking of my junior high 6-pack lately, especially when I stop and realize that we are now a family of 6. Even writing that,  it is crazy to me. Don’t get me wrong, we wanted a big family and I’m from a family of 6 — this should not be that crazy to me!

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Conversation between me and Kim…

Kim was talking about how she was going to homeschool Tyler for preschool.

Me: “Oh, I could never homeschool, I’d go crazy , I’m not organized enough, etc”

Kim: “Jill, you DO home school your boys.”

Me: “Oh, I guess I do.”

I never think of it as homeschooling.

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We get so much of “all your boys look so much alike” – I never see it.

I have never had their pictures taken professionally.  The main reasons are because I don’t  want to go to Sears or the like, the photographers that I would want to take their pictures are more than I want to spend – especially because I would want them photographed once a year at least.  So I’m not doing it for now, but we do take a ton of pictures at home, and those are the ones that I love from my albums growing up – just the simple snapshots.

One of the consistent pictures I have taken off all of them is each in the duck robe at 3 months old.  Can you guess who’s who…scroll over the picture with your mouse to get the answer.

Riley came over and we built a fairy house in the backyard.  Although she told me there were no such thing as fairies- I convinced her otherwise.  This is so unlike me – I don’t even know how to talk about Santa Claus b/c I never grew up believing in Santa Claus, Easter Bunny or other magical creatures.  But once I got going describing fairies to her – I couldn’t stop!!! Part of me was ashamed that I was lying to a 5-year-old, but the other part of me was thrilled that I was instilling in her a sense of wonder about “another world.” There is something important about kids going up with this wonder of an outside world.  I don’t know what it is exactly, maybe just for the fact that they do grow up so fast and the harshness of the  real world leaves no room for fairies.

Anyways – here’s a picture of our fairy house.  It was built mainly out of sticks, landscaped with white rock, the roof was covered in moss and decorated with sweet pea flowers.  And although you can’t see it from the picture there is a locust shell protecting intruders on the roof (the boys idea of course). What’s crazy about this photo is that I could not get a clear picture of it – it kept turning out kinda foggy…I’d like to think it had something to do with the fairies.

I love finding great gifts for the little people in our life. Eventually I want to get a list together of my favorite gifts for different ages, but for now I’ll just post them here and there.

First of all, my definition for a “favorite gift” for a little person usually includes these parameters:

• Around $10: Unless its a niece, I try to stick to a $10-$15 budget.  You can find lots of great gifts for this amount and it keeps me from going overboard.
• Preferably something consumable.  Kids usually have a lot of toy “clutter” to begin with and I don’t want to add to the clutter.
• Some ideas of consumable gifts: Crayons, Passes to The Magic House, Movie Tickets, Craft Kits, etc.

My friend Greta gives a ColorWonder Coloring Book with markers – I love this idea b/c it’s consumable, it’s not something I would buy for ourselves and its usually unisex so you can stock up if there is a sale.

So back to the purpose of this post, my fave gift to give lil’ girls right now is a crayon apron.  It’s great for girls from 2-5 (although the safety says 3yo), it’s easy to take on and off, you can get it monogrammed across the band if you want.  Amazon has them for $16.99; so yes it totally negates my gift parameters – BUT I’ve tested it and its totally worth it and they will get several years of mileage from it.

You can check it out here: http://tinyurl.com/5bt3n3