First Soccer Game

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Prayer for my children

I have heard about people praying through the words of the Bible. This morning during my morning devotional time, I was reading Phillippians 1 and it struck me as a perfect passage to pray over my children. In the passage, Paul was writing to the church in Phillipi, but if I substitute my children's names for the word "you" in the passage, it becomes a parent's plea to God about their child.

Dear Lord,

I am so blessed to be called "Mommy" by these three precious souls. In all I do and say, help me to live in such a way that they would be drawn closer to You. As it says in Phillippians,

"I thank my God every time I remember you. In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus...And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God."

In Jesus Name, Amen

First Soccer Practice

Here are some pictures from the boys' first soccer practice. I won the "Not-the-Mom-of-the-Year" award because I brought the boys to practice wearing their cleats, socks, and shin guards, but did not know each child was supposed to bring a soccer ball and their own water. Therefore, there were not enough balls for every child to have a ball. Ugh! I'll learn for next time...

Fall Festival 2009

I took the boys to Northland's Fall Festival on Thursday afternoon. They had a few big blow up water slides and they had a ball climbing up and sliding down. The slides were on the grass, so it quickly became a muddy mess. They were hesitant to get dirty at first, glancing at me as if surprised that it was ok, because usually I am telling them not to jump in the puddles. After a few minutes, they were happily jumping around, splashing in the muddy grass, and overall having a great time.

#1 and #2 got their faces painted, and we ate hot dogs, cotton candy, cookies, and lots of candy.

By the time we left, they were a muddy mess, but it was what I call good clean fun!

Cousin R

One of the boys' cousins is their age, and boy, when they get together, they have a ball! Here are a few pictures from our vacation to New Braunfels from this summer that I thought were cute.

Note: These pictures were taken with my old camera so the action shots are blurry, but I thought cute anyway. You can imagine the wresling matches that were going on!

The penny system

We have had trouble getting #3 to stay in bed. He pops up time after time after time, wanting to go potty, get a drink, one more kiss, his finger hurts, or whatever crazy excuse he can come up with. Based on a friend's suggestion, I decided to implement the penny system. The purpose of the system is to motivate them to stay in bed while teaching them money management and saving skills.

Every night, the boys each receive 5 pennies at bed time. Each time they get out of bed, for any reason, they have to give me 1 penny. If they stay in bed, they get to keep their pennies. At the end of the week, they can save up their pennies and buy something.

Last night was the first night to try it. So far it has not been working too well, especially with #3. I collected a penny from him each time he got out of bed, but he was not sad to give it to me. He soon ran out of pennies so the subsequent times out of bed he got a swat.

It worked a little too well for #2, who was so happy to receive his pennies that he clutched them in his hand and fell asleep with them. However, twice during the middle of the night he woke up, and, unable to find his pennies, cried for 15 minutes because he wanted his pennies.

Now we are on the second night, and once again #3 has exhausted his penny supply. He is hiding out in the hallway as I type this, so as soon as I finish I will take him to bed again.

Does anyone have any other ideas for 3 and 4 year old little boys to stay in bed? I sort of miss the crib days when they could not climb out, and although they may cry for a while, they were in there for the night and would eventually fall asleep. Now that they are mobile, they will run themselves ragged trying to avoid going to sleep, even to the point of being overly tired that they get hyper.

The accident

When we were headed out of town to visit Matt's parents, we saw a tire blow on a white SUV, causing the car to spin around several times and crash into the median of the freeway facing the wrong direction. We pulled over on the side of the road and Matt jumped out to see if they were hurt or needed help.

When he got out, #3 asked me, "Where's Daddy going?" I explained to him that the car's tire had popped and they had an accident.

"They had an accident?" he asked, and I nodded.

"They pee-peed in their underwear!!!" he proclaimed.

I couldn't help but laugh and say, "Well, they might have..."

Thankfully, no one was hurt, but I got a kick out of #3's innocent response.

One of these days I'll look back and laugh...right???

Hope you all enjoyed your Labor Day holiday. Here's a quick recap of what happened at the Meekins house:

1. A glass jar shattered on the floor, dropped by #1 who was trying to help me cook by stacking up the cans and jars on top of one another.

2. Flooded bathrooms (not once, not twice, not three times, but FOUR times!!!). Two were the result of mysterious objects being flushed down the toilet by certain munchkins, causing the toilet to overflow with materials I wish not to discuss. The other two times were compliments of #1 and #2, who on separate occasions found a cup and proceeded to fill it up and pour out on the floor. I wielded the plunger and sopped up floors and carpets WAY too much this weekend.

3. A brand new box of Frosted Mini-Wheats poured out all over the carpet and stomped on.

4. #1 getting a bloody nose from being hit in the nose with a shoe by #2.

5. The entire drawer from #2's room was pulled out and the clothes disbursed all over the floor.

6. The two piggy banks on the top shelf of #3's room were broken and the coins were scattered all over the floor. These were not small piggy banks, mind you, they are about the size of a basketball.

7. #3 discovered my makeup bag and proceeded to paint his face with my mascara.

Despite all of these things, we still had a great weekend. We played with Tinker Toys and Go Fish, met my friend S and her kids at the park for a picnic, cleaned the house, watered the flowers, wrestled, played baseball, visited Mimi and Big D, went swimming, jumped on the trampoline, and enjoyed being together.

It's official...

I'm a soccer mom.

Step one - where do you buy cleats, shin guards, socks, etc. for 3 and 4 year olds? I looked at Target last night and all they had were for bigger kids.

I'm torn

My husband wants me to sign the boys up for soccer, but I feel torn about it. Here's why:

The Boys -
I know #2 and #3 would probably have a great time, but I'm not sure if #1 is ready for it yet (socially or emotionally). Also, I am concerned that they will not get enough sleep. #1 and #2 take gymnastics during nap time on Fridays, so they do not sleep on those days. On most Friday nights in the fall, we are at Matt's football game and don't get home until after 11pm. They love to run on the field after the game is over and pass out in the car on the way home. Fridays are fun, but are very long days for them. To expect them to play in a game early Saturday morning is something I don't know if they are ready for after being up late the night before. All of them are cranky if they don't get enough rest, but lack of sleep affects #1 much more severely than the others. It affects almost every aspect when he does not get enough sleep. He doesn't sleep in school, has many more meltdowns, tantrums, regressions in his development, etc.

Me -
Saturday mornings are usually my time to pick up the house, do laundry, dishes, etc. while they play. We go to the park almost every Saturday around 11 or so and have a picnic. If they play on a soccer team, then it would squash the picnic-in-the-park days, and I don't know when I would be able to get the cleaning and laundry done. If they play on different teams, we would have two different practices and two different game schedules to attend, and during football season I will have to coordinate all of this because Matt works 7 days a week until Christmas.

I know it would be a great experience for them, but I'm torn as to whether I should do it now or wait until the spring when football season is over. What do you think?

#1 First week of school

Shutterfly | Shared Picture Detail

#1's teacher sent out a link with pictures of the first week of school, and I loved this one of #1 peeking out from behind the puppet theater. Love those eyes!

Cole is really growing up and starting to act more mature every day. He loves his teacher at school and thinks it is so cool that his music teacher is Aunt Tamara. He is learning so much at school and is really starting to progress in his reading skills.

From the beginning when I first found out I was having more than one baby, he always measured smaller and the heartbeat was slower. After they were born 93 days premature, he was the most fragile and battled to breathe for months, even to the point of having his lung collapse once in the NICU. Now, he is the one who is more developmentally advanced and is more physically coordinated. He is a fighter and I know God has some wonderful plans for his life.