If you’re a mom of three under four, getting ready to go on vacation, you should plan to start packing two weeks ahead.

Because the week you leave, you’ll need to allow for. . .

• the pipes under your kitchen sink to burst (while you’re making dinner for company)
• your basement to flood (from the thunderstorms this week)
• your husband to strain his back working on the basement, and
• 2/3 of your children to come down with some respiratory bug that keeps even the most angelic of babies awake at night.

Oh, and there won’t be time for blogging that week either.

The memory verse CD was playing “First Timothy 4:12.”

Reaching out to hold my hand, my two-year-old son was calling, “Mama! Dentz! Mama! Dentz!”

He wanted me to come dance with him. Someday I will have to explain how he dances–that’s another story–but for now, I’ll just say: we danced.

And as we “danced” (in the way that only my 2-year-old son dances), I sang to him: “Let no one despise you for your youth, but set the believers an example. In speech, in conduct, and in love, in faith and purity.”

It was a prayer from my heart.

There will be a day when he doesn’t ask Mommy to dance any more. And when that day comes, I pray that the truth of this verse will live on in his life. That he will be an example to the believers in his speech, in his conduct, his love, his faith, and (in a day in which this is so rare) in his purity.

Every single time, this particular song comes on, Micah calls, “Mama! Dentz!”

It’s our song.

So this morning, right after her breakfast (but before I could finish eating), Mara informed me that her tummy hurt. She didn’t make it to the potty in time. . . No big deal, right? Get new underwear, wash out dirty ones. . . She says her tummy still hurts, so I say, stay close to the potty, in case you have to go again!

Micah said he needed to go potty. I never know these days how to know whether he does or doesn’t, so I sat him there for awhile, but he never went.

We had some “sharing toys” issues to deal with, and I decided to get out the guitar for some special fun. I had to deal with Micah for some misbehavior, and Mara broke one of the guitar strings. I’m not sure how that’s even possible, unless it was strung too tightly. But in any case, I went to repair the guitar string, and while I was doing that I suddenly heard Mara shouting, “Micah has the orange one!”

At that point, I didn’t care what “orange one”–I knew that was not a positive comment–and found my son crawling under the easel with an open dry erase marker in his hand. Of course, he had marked up his shorts. So I deal with that one: google “dry erase marker stains” and start applying Murphy’s Oil Soap to his shorts. . . With a LOT of scrubbing, it worked! The dry erase marker came out! for which I was very thankful since those were his best khaki shorts!. . . I began to wonder if Murphy’s Oil Soap would work on Sharpie stains too? But I didn’t have a chance to experiment, because I heard Carissa fussing upstairs in her cradle, ready to be nursed again.

On the way, I rescued some slobbery chapstick from my son.  (Okay, it is booktime!)

Daniel and I IM’d. I told him a little about my morning (it was only about 10AM). He said, “Sounds pretty simple.  Should you leave plenty of time for pleasure reading too.” And I used to wonder what moms did with all that time!!!!!!

With the older two reading books in their beds, I got to sit and nurse my sweet Carissa and enjoy her smiles! And by the way, she turns four months old today! Happy four-month-birthday, little Carissa!

I have a three-year-old and a two-year-old who are primarily feeding themselves, which is awesome since it seems the baby is always nursing during meals.

However, my two-year-old still needs his food cut up into tiny pieces–and not because he can’t bite or chew it himself, but because he would stuff half a PB&J sandwich into his mouth as one “bite” if I didn’t cut it into tiny squares.

Enter the Versatile Pizza Cutter!

Hardly a day goes by that I’m not using mine! It really Works for Me! I use it to cut . . .

• Pizza (of course)
• Waffles/pancakes/french toast
• PB&J sandwiches, cheese sandwiches, deli meat sandwiches
• Baked potatoes (cut in half first)
• Burritos (they’re pretty messy though, once they’re cut into little squares!)
• Pierogies
• Even chicken nuggets

It doesn’t work so well cutting hot dogs or bananas. (Yes, I’ve tried!)

Maybe you don’t have a toddler, but I’ll bet you use the pizza cutter for something besides pizza too!

Leave a comment. I’d love to hear how you use it!