are you nuts?

Happy Valentine's Day! Yes, that is G&W with their heart pancakes for breakfast on Valentine's Day! Ah yes, the commercial holiday that most everyone either dreads, embraces fully, or ignores based on their views. We hit all three depending on our moods and the year. Yes, we love each other every day in our family, but we did talk about how it is fun to have a special day to say and show it with G and did a few special things to celebrate! Now G LOVES holidays and goes nuts talking about them and playing pretend and wanting to do everything related to the holiday. We first experienced that last year with Halloween. And you can't ignore these holidays because they are everywhere! If not the stores and even PBS kids shows, they will hear about them from their friends at church! So we talk about how Halloween and Valentine's Day are SILLY holidays and we can have fun with them, but they are not important. Christmas and Easter are IMPORTANT holidays and we hit that importance hard with her. So last week we talked about silly Valentine's Day, and I showed G how to cut hearts out of paper. She had great fun doing that, and then I found a heart cookie cutter in my drawer and let her trace it and color hearts on paper. I did not mention that it was a cookie cutter to her, but when I was telling S about it when he got home that evening, I said cookie cutter. G heard that but didn't say anything. The next day at lunch she asks me about it. "Momma, you said that heart thing is a cookie cutter? Does it really CUT COOKIES? CAN WE DO THAT?!!!!" I don't know whether I was having a weak moment or whether the excitement and joy in her face got to me, but I said "Sure, honey!" Where the "Are you nuts?" comes in is that S had to work all day Saturday, so I was going to try to attempt this while being home with all 3 kids by myself. Luckily Baby C did a lot of sleeping that day, but it still took forever and the process was interrupted multiple times! But it was a lot of fun for the most part, and no major melt-downs happened. =)

mixing the batter - G was thrilled to spill flour on her new apron from Aahma B!

look at my big helpers!

G wiping the counter off getting ready to roll out the dough (done unprompted too!)

G cutting out hearts in the section of dough she rolled out

this was G's favorite part by far

There are no pictures of the cooked or frosted cookies because as the day wore on, so did my patience and G's mood and we also had more interruptions. But we had them all baked and enough frosted by bedtime for her to hand out to her Sunday school class and teacher the next day.

The other part of "Are you nuts?" which I heard from a number of people when I told them how we spent the day, was that I also got "Christmas" cards and Baby C's birth announcement pictures ready and printed. We did not do anything for Christmas cards or pictures because we were going to wait until Baby C joined us! And now that he is here and we are incredibly busy, you would think that I would tell myself that I have a good enough excuse to just skip it this year, but no! I had in my head a Valentine's day deadline, and being the good procrastinator that I am, I wrote a letter on Thursday, had auntie C come and take pics of the kids on Friday, (turned out awesome!) and tried to get them all ready and printed on Saturday so that we could put most of them in the church mailboxes on Sunday and get the rest ready to mail out Monday! Ok, the church mailboxes thing happened, but the rest of the letters and pics are still sitting here waiting to hopefully go out today or tomorrow. I could post what the "Christmas" card and announcement look like here, but I will wait and let you be surprised by snail mail! =)

So part of my adjustment to life with 3 kids and S back at work is figuring out a balance of what I can accomplish during the day. There have been a few days this week where I haven't done anything as I kept waiting for the next crisis or kid break-down to happen. There have been a few days when I have gotten a few things done and felt really good about it, and there have been a few days where I have wanted to get things done but didn't get anything accomplished due to dealing with kids all day. That is the nature of my job as a mom. =) I read a good piece of advice a couple months ago. When you stay at home with kids all day, the tendency is to just unload when your hubby comes home with all the bad things that happened that frustrated you! This article said to make sure you remember 5 things that made you laugh or smile to tell your hubby first before unloading the rest. With 3 little ones to take care of now and life being crazy, I really have been trying to remember this as it is easy for the frustrating things to overshadow the little good things. For example, G wanting a drink of milk while I was putting W down for a nap downstairs the other day and knowing that she can't pour it, she brought the cup and the milk carton all the way down the steps to me so I could do it! This wasn't a huge thing that I would write down in a baby book, but it was cute to see her lugging it my way and although it interrupted getting W down, I appreciated G's thought process and her not pouring it by herself all over the kitchen floor and needed to remember to tell S about it since he is not around to see all of those now. I love being a mom, but there are days when I feel like this too:

Just as long as there are not too many times during the day when all 4 of us are crying, I think we will make it. =)

Picasa photo update

We have updated our Picasa photo website with some new photo albums - check it out if you would like!

good things...

• seeing baby C become more alert in watching the world around him (mainly us!)
• s.i.l. C taking baby C and me out for a wonderful supper and dessert at Truffles and Tortes and then coming along to hold baby C while I got a haircut
• dads who were willing to feed and watch all the other kids so we could do that!
• enjoying S's last week at home
• surviving S's first week back at work
• baby carriers: the maya wrap and mei tai being favorites right now for our newborn
  
• G & W playing so well together
• shrieks of joy from them at simple things like chasing each other
• not dealing with hours of screaming from W every night anymore (only minutes =)
• chocolate and ice cream
  
• G "reading" W books
• W learning how to and loving coloring on paper
• C being such a good baby
• sleeping baby C snuggles, soft baby skin, baby C stretches and squirms and the resulting squeaks and groans, soft fuzz on baby C's head
• the feel of baby C's hand wrapped around my finger
• hearing G & W talk to baby C and hearing the love!
• what a good dad S is
• baby C's baptism last Sunday - a sign and seal of God's covenant with us and knowing that God's promises are true for baby C, God's covenant child

worth a thousand words...

"Hurray!"

leaking money like a sieve!

After our good friend and realtor C K sold us our house (which is our first), he told us with a smile, "Now that you are official homeowners, let me tell you, you will leak money like a sieve!" We all laughed then, but little did we know how true that would be. It especially seems true lately as Mom B joked in an email to us about all the things we have run into lately. A lot of things we knew we would be getting, but of course we ran into a bunch of unplanned things too (for which we are happy that S's job has not been affected by the economy and we had some extra built up in savings - that is what savings is for too, right?!). We looked at the past 3 months and came up with the following:

new vaccuum - unplanned
fix stove - unplanned
new car - planned (and for good reason =)
new computer - unplanned
baby - planned
new couch - unplanned expense (but great reason =)
shelves and lamps for front room - planned
new furnace - unplanned

Having a warm happy home with 3 beautiful children...PRICELESS!

happy thoughts...

OK. I know lots of times we focus on the negative and the things that are going wrong (why is that by the way?), but I thought I'd look at some of the wonderful things that are happening for us right now. (I'm slightly "over-analytical" so I'll list things by persons)

S - I'm able to be home for 5 wks AND get paid for it! That's right 5 weeks! It has been a wonderful benefit to help out during the adjustment periods for C and the kids along with getting a greater appreciation for the life of a stay at home mom (yikes - full time job PLUS some.) And I get some great time with the kids and get to have fun with them all day, every day for a while and not have to hurry out the door to get to work etc...

C - has been able to get back on her feet and back into "super mom" mode rather quickly. I am amazed how she is able to balance everything and keep track of things going on with the kids so well (not that things are perfect - but her batting percentage is much higher than mine would be!)

G - she has fully embraced the "biggest sister" role wonderfully. She constantly is checking on baby C and wants to hold/kiss/talk to/sing/help/play with/watch him. Plus, she has been able to play with W so much more lately. And most of the time that is a good thing. We have often found them reading books together, playing hide -n- seek, running / chasing after each other.

W - he has a amazing vocabulary for an 18 month old. He seems sooo much older and bigger when he says "sit doun, read ook peese dada" (requesting a book to be read to him). And then he will proceed to tell you / recite some books to you. He can be the happiest and silliest boy when he wants to. He has the mischievous smirk down to a "t."

baby C - Sleeps and poops like a champ. What more can you ask for at this age? He has his nights and days straight and a couple nights ago slept almost 6 hours before waking up and eating.

So, that is a snapshot of the good life in our household . . . (accompanied by an actual snapshot!)

sleep, sweet sleep...

...is what all of us are in need of right now. Anyone who knows our kids knows that they are notoriously bad sleepers and they deal with nightmares and night terrors and cannot calm themselves. All parents deal with some issue with their kids (at least all the parents that we know!), and ours happens to be sleep. Combine that with everyone adjusting to a newborn in the house and we are having some really rough nights. W's been having the worst time at night, but it has affected G too.

The other night, for example, it took us until 10 to get G&W down, then another 1/2 hour for changing and nursing Baby C and getting him to sleep. S & I then sat down with bowls of ice cream ready to relax for an hour before going to bed ourselves, praying for a peaceful night. At 11, W woke up crying and restless and it took us almost 45 minutes to get him calmed down and back to sleep. We then started to get ready for bed ourselves and G woke up crying really hard and couldn't stop - like for another hour! We finally got her calmed down and were in bed (with G too), when W woke up again screaming-he was very mad this time and didn't want to be picked up (sign of night terror), but kept flailing into the side of his crib. We kept switching off with him for the next hour and didn't think anything would calm him down including TV, when it popped in my head to try listening to different music. I asked W if he wanted to listen to Uncle M's CD, and then there was quiet - wonderful quiet - and W says tearily "yeah." So now W was quiet and listening to Uncle M, but we are still not sleeping, and W is so upset that he is clinging to us and we can't get him to lay back down in his bed - so after another half hour we pulled him in bed with us too. (we are starting to regret only buying a queen, not a king!) It is now 1:30, and cue Baby C to wake up to eat! I nurse in bed so now we have EVERYONE in bed with us. I thought that maybe everyone would sleep now all snuggly, but no. Both G&W were up 2 more times (being all in the same room/bed had no matter because only one would wake up at a time - even with screaming going on!) as well as Baby C's normal "feed me" wakings every 3 hours. Plus all kids decided to be done and up for the day at 6:30. S and I got no more than 3-4 hours of sleep and our nerves were pretty shot. Not every night is like this, this was by far the worst, but we are dealing with some form of it each night yet.

Thankfully, the kids have been doing well (for the most part) during the day. They love Baby C, have been playing well with each other, only have mild breakdowns here and there, and W has been taking a good nap during the day and G has been going down for quiet time well so S & I are able to allow each other to take a good nap. Unfortunately, that leaves very little time to get anything else done, especially with us feeling as fried as we do too. We keep hoping that the kids will adjust soon, and I am sure that they will, but S was hoping to accomplish more than just a nap in the 5 weeks that he has off (paid!!) from work.

We may complain about no sleep, but we love our little blessings, no matter how sleep deprived we are, and are thrilled with the joy that all three bring to our lives. It is amazing how we already can't imagine life without Baby C!

which one of these is not like the other....

And now, what you have all been waiting for.....we got our "new" computer!!!! Oh, I guess that is mostly what we've been waiting for. =) More on that later. What most of you have been waiting for is the answers and points for our little guessing game! Drumroll from Justin please......

....(he's good so I will let him go for a while =)

#1 is Baby C
#2 is G
#3 is W

Yay! Thanks to all who guessed and played along!

1 million points to those who guessed correctly!!! A measly 17 points for those who got 1 out of 3. And a required trip to the B household to study the subjects up close (and let mom and dad sneak a nap!) for those who where completely fooled by the ridiculously similar characteristics of our beautiful wonderful children.

Just kidding - you all may visit anytime (we might be needing naps for a while!) Maybe not all at once =)

guess who's who!

We gave baby C his first bath at home last week and obviously took a bunch of pictures that we can't upload quite yet (but we will be able to soon!!!! =), but I was able to get one off the camera onto the computer and we noticed how similar it was to pictures of G&W after their first baths at home! So after finding those (yay for search function on gmail and never having to delete emails!), we thought we would see if you can guess which picture belongs to who! And now, in no particular order;

#1
#2

#3
Points will be given for all correct answers (for those who care to keep track =)! Have fun!

"tanning"

When we left the hospital with Baby C (we often asked ourselves, did we really need to even go to the hospital?! =), he had borderline bilirubin numbers for being jaundice. This was something we dealt with G & W as well so we knew the routine - get sun exposure, nurse them like crazy and pray they poop a bunch! G was born premature so she had to be under photo-therapy lights at the hospital for a number of days, but with W we were able to get rid of his without the lights, so we were hoping the same for Baby C (wow, that is weird calling him Baby C rather than baby B!! =). We had an appointment on Monday to check him out, and we knew it wasn't getting better by his color. They drew his levels and he was at 17.9, which is high. So we had to get a photo-therapy bed delivered and start the process of keeping him on that as much as possible and also going in everyday to our pediatrician (oh why do we like our pediatrician so when she is 30 minutes away!) to check his weight and draw blood for bilirubin levels. Baby C did remarkably well having to be on this light bed although it was hard for momma and dadda not to hold him so much! Thankfully we found out that his bilirubin level is now at 11.7, a much more acceptable number, although still not in the clear, but we are able to stop photo-therapy now and as long as he keeps eating and pooping and gaining weight, we don't have to go in until next week to do a final check! Thanks for all the prayers - God is truly blessing us and watching over us!

Here are a few pictures - sorry for the poor quality, computer is still kaput and although I figured out a way to get this pictures from the camera, I couldn't preview which ones looked ok or edit anything either!

G keeping baby C company as he spends time on his light bed. We commented that we would have to send Nanna K this picture as she probably never had such a contraption in this bassinet when she used it for my mom and her siblings!

Baby C "tanning" - we were teasing him that Auntie C has just started tanning for their upcoming tropical vacations, maybe he could go with!!! =)