my daily happiness

There are moments throughout the day that I enjoy the most--it's the ones that make me laugh.
I have been blessed with two goofy kids who crack me up constantly.

It's to the simple moments that make me smile and make me love them just a little bit more than what I already do that I am so thankful for.
Their imaginations and their creativity grow every single day. 
Their sense of independence suddenly turns against me because they don't need my help.
 
I love Andrew's and Prim's bond now. He loves her and just wants to pet and hold her all the time.
Any time lunch comes around, I ask Jonah what he would like to eat and he says "sanwich" or cereal.

And as always, he always takes 2-3 bites and is done. 

And Andrew suddenly has a fascination with showing his masticated food.
Jonah learns quick. Like I've said before, he's a copycat. If a cat plays in its toy, then why shouldn't Jonah?

And recently, our family has grown. Now we are parents to two stray cats.
Prim, you already know, and introducing, Rue.
Who completely won my anti-cat husband's heart.
Prim & Rue. Lovingly called Primscicle and Rue-ster.
We had a bit of a problem when we first brought Rue home, but after a week, they now play like they're best friends and Prim's claws have suddenly retracted towards the kids a lot.

Oh I love my little family, I wouldn't trade it for the world.
Now this is good parenting folks--my kid thought he would help me by washing dishes and using half the bottle of dish soap. WINNING!
Fall festivals are abound this time of year and were happy to get invited to the Elementary where the cousins attend. Obviously they had a blast. I loved watching their hearts fill with happiness and hair get matted down with sweat.
And who doesn't LOVE silly string?!

Like I said, these kids crack me up. 
My serious, muscley Spiderman and my little gun & weapon builder steal my heart.

Seriously, it's all she does. Except at night. She runs wild with Rue.

Jonah, taking after big brother, loves to turn upside down.
And this dude who is ALMOST camera shy, always surprises me with the sweetest of smiles when I least expect it.
That's what it's all about. That happiness.

When I felt sad...

I don't talk about the hardships of being a mother. Or being a SAHM {stay-at-home-mom}. 
We all want out blogs to be fun! and lovely! and whimsy! and to seem perfect to outsiders' eyes. 
Nobody knows that I'm in my pajamas from last night, wearing hair that's been creased by a ponytail for two days. Nobody knows that by reading my blog posts. 
In SAHM-ing, some days can be fun. Some days are truly hard.
Some are s   l   o   w while others are fast. 
I don't have to explain to a single mother how hard life is when you're responsible for your mini-me versions to make sure they turn out alright in this world.
Sometimes that pressure is too much.
Most days, I can handle it. As my guy would say, 'what are you gonna do about it?'
Psh, like that comforts me? But he's right.
I need to put on my big girl panties and take frickin' toddlerhood by the horns.
but the other night was different.
I had been dealing with back pain due to a super stunt by little Jonah that caused me to jump over a couple of 6 ft. fences. You see, he locked us outside our house since locks to him are all the rage lately. 
I had no one to call. Well, I guess I called everybody-- but no one would be able to come and help. 
So these ninja fence-jumps I had to make, I had no idea that I could do it in the first place--secondly, I had no idea that my body couldn't take that kind of adrenaline rushed action. 
Hence the back pain. I couldn't bend over for more than 10 seconds.
And with two wild monkeys running wild in super hero underwear, bending over is required 200X a day!
To make this story short, it was one afternoon and I finally decided to detach myself.
I was tired of yelling at the kids. I was tired of my back hurting.
I was tired of not having my husband here.
I was sick with guilt.
From being a bad mother.
From wishing he was home so that he could deal with the kids when he's had a full days work and I know he just needs to relax. 
I was sick of guilt from feeling like I couldn't handle it.
Like I said, the pressure is just immense! 
What would the world think of me? How do I deal with myself after this? What will people say?
How will the kids ever forgive me for being so mean to them? 
After all, they're just kids and they do NOT deserve a bitchy mom.

About 30 minutes before I knew my guy would rescue me, I left the TV on. The kids eyes immediately glued themselves to that screen. I, then, marched stiffly up the stairs and locked myself in the bathroom.
Sometimes, crying your eyeballs out is required.
Other, more stressful times, need a good song to let you shake loose and scream at the top of your lungs.
Sometimes, you just need a good wall to punch {I really like this option the best, but hurt back, remember?}
But that night, all I could do was take a nice warm bath to escape it all.
I didn't answer the  boys when they realized I had disappeared and came knocking at the door {how is that they ALWAYS find you?} I had that pit feeling in my stomach that something horrible would happen to one of them because I wasn't downstairs watching them. I was overcome with guilt.  And fear.  And defeat.
After a few moments, I heard that front door open and a sense of relief came over me.
The boys would be watched now and I could finally sulk in the warm water without any fear.
I was still full of guilt though.
After he tried talking to me through the locked door without an answer, he knew I was in there and didn't wanna talk--so he let me be. 
And all of a sudden a frickin' lightbulb went off in my head.
I need to draw. 
I need to distract my mind. I need to relax.
And what better way to do that than with some Crayola bathtub markers? 
 I don't really draw when I'm sad. I only draw when I'm inspired {I say that with an imaginary stuck up artists way of saying it, you know, use your hands and tilt your head a little...} 
But this time it was different.
It was like it was the only thing I could do. That I needed to do.
Maybe it was logical. 
There's a marker there. I am an artist...Put one and one together, you get a bathtub masterpiece. 
 But it was different. It felt like it was what I needed to do to get myself out of that pathetic funk I was in. 
To get me over that stupid feeling of being a failure when I know I am no such thing.
 I felt peace when I was drawing this. 
I felt joy and sadness at the same time. I don't really know how to explain it. 
Perhaps it's a new technique I need to look into to reach a potential, if any at all. 
I mean, it's a bathtub doodle. 
A washable, completely NOT permanent, "plant" drawing as Andrew called it during its short lived life.
These pictures are all that remain of it. 
How funny that something so temporary can change me, possibly from now on?
I took phone pics of it because I wanted to remember that feeling I got in my gut when I grabbed that chunky red marker. How, instantly, I felt a little better.
All I know is that for the first time, my emotions got manhandled by my art.
And I liked it.
Often, I regret the course I've chosen for my life. All those bad decisions. 
But then I slap myself and think that there wasn't anything else I was supposed to be doing with my life than being a Mom. 
 
PS. If you are wondering what kind of markers I used, here's some on Amazon.

There's been hardcore halloween decoration going on....

I never used to decorate before I had kids. 
I think I brought home my Mom's old Christmas tree once, when we lived in a tiny apartment before we got married. And that felt weird. And so Christmas has been the only holiday I really put anything up as far as decorations. But things change. Now I have two monkeys that can hold a pencil and paintbrush correctly and sorta know what the heck they're doing. 
Except for Jonah, he's just a monkey mess all around. 

Not to mention that the creative-mom title is SO competitive out there. 
These crafts are so simple, they hardly need a tutorial. I'll spare you with pictures for each step {mainly because I didn't take any} BUT in case you wanna make your own, they're easy to figure out. 
So I've made this post jam-packed with all crafts we've been doing at the Witty household.
6 of them, to be exact. I hope you'll stick with me 'til the end.
  
1. The Hanging Pumpkin
During art time, we busted out some creative supplies and got busy painting <--Did I sound Texan there?
Andrew always in his superhero underwear in case an emergency arises....
...proved to me how much he is my son by acting the perfectionist and filling in every white spot with orange paint.
1. Paint the paper plate orange
2. Cut out eyes, a nose, and a silly mouth out of black paper. You can be creative here.
3. Paste the darn things onto the paper plate.
4. Hang the plate. 
In my case, I stuck both of them together so that when they rotate from the winds, you get a two-headed, very happy and cute pumpkin. 

2. The Halloween Garland
This one is too simple, it is ridiculous. 
I found these cute labels online by ways of a simple halloween search into Google.
I printed them onto orange paper, cut them out, punched holes and fed some black yarn through them.

Ta-da!!! It looks cute, simple and festive. 

3. The Handprint Spider and its Spiderweb
This one is somewhat harder. 
Not really knowing how I was about to begin this, I sat the boys with colored construction paper and BLACK paint in front of them. Knowing how messy Jonah is, I totally supervised him. 
Knowing how picky Andrew is about dirty hands, I had to have something for him to wipe his hands on immediately.
Luckily, nothing was painted black, the hand prints came out stellar and they enjoyed gluing a ton of googly eyes on the spiders. They thought it was quite silly. 

After making spiders, I luckily came across this oldie, but amazing tutorial for making a spider web out of a simple frame at Dana Made It and made one myself! Now our spider has a home!

4. Hanging Halloween Ghouls & Bats
Listen, I have a confession to make. I'm one of those creative junkie moms that has started a collection.
A toilet paper roll collection. 
You cannot even imagine the things you can make out of these possibly-poop-infected rolls, such as these adorable bats.

For the bats: 
1. Paint them black.
2. Glue eyes
3. Cut out wings, stick 'em on!
4. Make his ears by pushing the top down
5. String 'em up. 
You have a bat!

And for those oh so cute ghouls all you need is a paper plate, black construction paper and white paper stringy stuff {I don't know what it's called}
Every time we drive up, I play along that they're gonna get me and make the "boooooOOOoooo" sound and the kids giggle and laugh and make sure I'm okay--that they didn't get me.

5. Mini Decorated Pumpkins
And thanks to Daddy one afternoon, we were surprised with 2 mini pumpkins because Andrew had been begging for some since pumpkins started appearing everywhere. 
So we decorated them and made them into a two-headed-pumpkin-skeleton-door-guard
Ultimately the thing will have 1 pumpkin decorated by both kids, but I'm not promising it'll happen this Halloween. 

6. Fall Garland
I know what you're thinking, and yes, we're almost done. 
Just wanted to show you this little fall garland.  
This also became a pattern learning experience for Andrew, which wasn't too successful, but at least we made an effort at a learning experience...
1. Print out leaf pattern pdf on colored paper.
2. Cut them out and
3. String 'em up!
Now our home is all Halloween-y and decorated. And what's best about it, is that the kids and I both worked on each simple project. I love decorating with them!

There, I'm done. 
I hope none were too complicated and I hope someone got inspired to do their own holiday decorating.

Sources:

tea time at the witty's

I wish my computer was fixed so I could pay more attention my photos. It's been almost 3 months since I've used my beloved computer. That's not counting the months it was acting all quirky. 
And while the iPad is handy, it's a pain to transfer photos to. 
And while my laptop is easier to transfer photos to, it is really crappy slow. 
Subject switch to important, memorable and funny things...NOW. 
Every day, we await the arrival of Daddy. When he gets home, the kids just swarm to him and finally I have a moments peace. No more tugging on my leg. No more Mom LOOK AT THIS! Mom I'm talking to you cry cry hit punch rrppprr Mom I tooted! Mom I'm thirsty.
For those first moments when hubby enters he door, most nights I'm in the kitchen being a good wifey, my heart is full of joy because I hope {and deeply know} that our sons are making Daddy proud. 
That his heart is full of joy when they show him all they've done all day. 
And then they ask him to have some tea....
 In order for my sons to seem a little more manly, I rightly corrected the pictures to Black & White.
Otherwise, your screen would be blasted with pink, purple and turquoise plate-ware and utensils right now.
It's a pretty fancy time
The boys enjoyed their cheese and crackers and water.
I tried to show Andrew how to raise his pinky when drinking tea water, but he couldn't handle it. 
Get it? Handle it? :D