Pinkalicious!

We bought a membership to the Rose Theatre this year because they have some great plays/ musicals coming up that I think the girls will really enjoy.

Our first play was last Saturday, we took the girls to "Pinkalicious." They thoroughly enjoyed it!!
I think every little girl in the audience had pink on!

Posing with "Pinkalicious" after she signed Megan's book.

Our next play is "Go Dog Go." This is one of Courtney's favorite books and at one time, she had it memorized! We are also looking forward to seeing "Peter Pan" and "The Nutcracker."

New Picture of Christian

He's doing great on his tummy! If you look close, you might be able to see his new tooth!

First Tooth Today

I looked in Christian's mouth this morning to check out his tooth and it was there!
I rubbed my finger over his gums and you can touch the top of his tooth- it came in overnight!

Write it down in the baby book!

I have one child losing her teeth and another child getting them in! Crazy!

A Tooth Already?

Because of Christian's excessive drooling lately, I decided to peek inside his mouth to see if I could spot any teeth coming in...sure enough, there is a little hole on his bottom gum. They're coming already!

This doesn't really surprise me. Megan had her first tooth a week before she turned 4 months and Courtney got hers at 5 months.

I have also learned that the earlier they get their teeth, the earlier they lose them. Megan lost tooth #7 the other day and she has friends that haven't lost any baby teeth yet , even though they are older than her!

I need to get the Tylenol ready!

My dog and thunderstorms...

Why is Dell more afraid of thunderstorms than my children?
My children, none of them, wake up to a thunderstorm, but then there's Dell...

She just can't seem to find the perfect place to hide!

Before Matt's office became Christian's room, she would go in there and hide out under his desk.
Now his desk is in the basement and the basement door is usually shut, so she comes upstairs looking for a safe spot.

I have found her in Christian's room beside his crib and behind his glider.
I have found her in the girls' bathroom on the rug.

One place I don't want her to go is my room!!!

Last night when I was up with Christian and it was storming out, I came back to bed and heard something. It was Dell. I do not want to sleep while Dell is panting in the corner,so I chased her out. A little bit later, I heard another noise, so I woke Matt up. It was Dell again, pacing our room.
I chased her out again. Go find someplace else to hide!

Matt told me to shut the door, but then I can't hear the kids. I thought about putting the baby gate in the doorway, but I was too tired to do it and she never came in again.

Where will I find her next time?

This never happens...

Just got back from doing a couple of errands and Courntey AND Christian fell asleep in the car...I brought them into the house and they are still sleeping.

Megan is due home from school in about a half an hour.

What is going on???

Yay, the bus came!!

I didn't have to take Megan to school today!!

Today they are celebrating River City Roundup, so they all had to dress up like cowboys.
Megan didn't get into it so much. She put on a pair of jeans and had a green cowboy hat.

She also lost a tooth before she went to school. She told me she couldn't brush her teeth because her tooth was really loose (I didn't think it was so loose). She said, "Mom, I'm going to get this tooth out before I leave." I said, "ok" and kind of laughed. Next thing I hear, "Mom, I got my tooth out." Really, so maybe it was looser than I though

We're on a roll..

Christian is back to sleeping through the night. After taking a two week break and making me get up in the middle of the night, he's back to sleeping roughly 9 to 7, not bad!

We'll see how long it lasts this time!

(I should add we're on our second night of this.)

It happened again!

We went out to the bus stop again this morning thinking that the bus would pick the kids up today.

NOPE! We saw the bus come around the corner, pick up some other kids, and instead of coming around the block and picking up our kids, he drove right off to school!

We didn't stand around and wait like we did yesterday, we just put all the kids in the car and went to school.

(Actually a neighbor took 8 kids in his SUV and I took Megan.)

I called the bus company AGAIN and said he missed us AGAIN and they said they were going to sit down with the driver and go over his route with a map.

Maybe tomorrow our kids will get picked up. But really, I didn't mind taking Megan to school.

Only one more day of this, our bus driver will be back on Monday.

Where is the bus??

Ok, so we get out to the bus stop this morning right on time and we hear the bus about 1/2 a block away. The kids even see it. The bus driver picked those kids up and then proceeded (what we thought) around the block to pick our kids up.

We waited and waited and waited...and no bus. Our kids even ran down the block to see if they could see it coming, but nope.

You've got to be kidding me? The bus driver forgot to pick our kids up!!

(We've had a substitute driver all week, so they don't really know what they are doing!)

So, all of us parents gathered our kids up and took them to school.

I've done that 3 times now since Megan has started school. And two of them were on the first day of school!

Which is better?

...getting up at 4 to feed Christian and then being able to sleep until 7:15?

...not getting up to feed Christian in the middle of the night and then getting up at 6-6:30 to feed him, but then I'm up for the day?

These seem to be my two options lately with the little guy.

How about we just sleep until 7:15 or so and not get up to eat at 4 am? That would be ideal!!

MOPS

I just pulled up my blog and noticed I haven't posted for 4 days! Wow, that is unlike me!
We had quite a bit going on the end of the week, I must not have made time to blog about it.

Friday we started MOPS at Christ Community Church. I like doing MOPS for a variety of reasons. 1. Time away from my children. As much as I love them, I need a break. 2. Preschool time for Courtney. She is the only one out of her group of friends not in preschool this year. It is hard for me to justify when she has sunday school, AWANA, and MOPS. 3. Time to meet some new moms. I have some great friends, but it is always nice to meet some new people and get a new perspective on things. 4. Sit back and learn something new from the speakers.

Why at Christ Community? Even though I attend Brookside and they have a MOPS program, I was not so impressed with Brookside last year (sh, don't tell anyone!). I was in MOPS there right after Megan was born and it made me so frustrated that I didn't go back for 5 years! I joined up again last year because I didn't want to do Bible study again. It was better than it was 5 years ago, but still, there seemed to be a lot of wasted time, it was very expensive and I had to serve in the nursery and their polices made me mad, and it just didn't seem like the topics related to mothering. I made some great friends, but I was not overly impressed with the program.
It also bothered me that they did not talk about Jesus at all. You could be an aetheist and come to MOPS at Brookside and you would be fine. Not what I wanted.

So this year, I still wanted to do MOPS, but not necessarily at Brookside. They have MOPS on Thursdays and I want to keep Thursdays open to play with Courtney's friends from MOMS Club, so I really didn't want to do it then. Some of my friends attend MOPS at Christ Community and theirs meet on Friday. They said I should join their group, it seemed like it would work for our schedule, but I was still hesitant. I didn't know anybody AND I didn't know anybody who would be watching my children, especially my baby. My friends said it was an awesome program (one of them attended Brookside MOPS and said this was MUCH better). So last week, I called them up and signed up! If I didn't, I would never have any time away from my children (even though I love them dearly).

We started Friday and it was awesome! The moms were so friendly and encouraging, Courtney had a great time, and I even put Christian in the nursery for awhile and he did great! I am excited to go back in two weeks! (And if you are wondering, it cost less and they don't expect you to serve in the nursery as much!) I think it will work out for us!

Shopping for Christian?

Ok, another delimma.

We are getting Christian dedicated this weekend at church and I want to find him a cute, church outfit. Did I really think this would be hard? No, but it is.

When we had the girls dedicated, I just bought them a pretty dress and called it good. But not anymore!

I cannot find any nice, church-appropriate clothes for Christian. I bought a Carter's outfit, but it is long-sleeved with a sweater vest, which I think is adorable, but I think it's supposed to be hot on Sunday. Plus, it is a size 3-6 months. The onesie will barely fit him, but the pants will probably fit him perfectly (he has a long body and short legs).

Would it be ok for him to wear khaki shorts and a nice shirt for dedication? Should I put pants on him? I did find him khaki shorts and a pair of khanki pants and a nice blue shirt, but I'm not sure if it would be appropriate enough for church. I might not have a choice!

Moving Up!

ok, I just wanted to write this down.

Christian is 3 months old and is already wearing 6-9 month clothes and size 3 diapers.



I had bought him 6-9 month clothes for winter, I guess we'll be going through those and seeing which ones will work or not.

At this point, I think he will be in 12-18 month size for winter- too bad I bought him some 18 month summer clothes for next year!

This is why I tell people not to buy ahead, you never know how big/ small your baby will be!

Christian is not a little guy! I swear he grew overnight again!

Add one more item.

ok, tonight we went to leave for AWANA and Megan could not find her Sparks vest. Not anywhere.

Add one more thing to my big black hole.

Still can't find the baby brother shirt or crib sheets.

You are not a newborn anymore...

Christian was up at 1 and 4 last night, these are the same times we were up when he was a newborn. But he's not a newborn anymore!

About 2 weeks ago, we slept through the night for 5 nights in a row.

Now we are up progressively up more and earlier than the night before

The first night we were up at 5, then 4, then 3, then 2, and last night we were up at 1 and 4.
(and mind you, he eats every time he gets up, so he's really messing with my milk supply!)

Chistian- Just tell me if you are growing or something and I'll forgive you, otherwise, let's get back to sleeping through the night! You can do it!

Got it Organized!!

Courtney and I worked this afternoon on the playroom and it is finally organized!!

From the doorway, the same spot I took the picture two days ago (see a previous post)

Christian is practicing his rolling over skills!

The closet and Courtney's toy box:

I put both tables in the playroom.

The bookshelf from Megan's room. (I wonder how many books are on there!)
I am going to put all the art supplies from my sitting room in that open area on the wall.

This is tomorrow afternoon's project. The sitting room!!
All this stuff needs to be cleaned up and moved into the playroom. Of course, my stuff will stay!

Now, instead of messing up three rooms (sitting room, Courtney's room and Megan's room), everything has been moved into the playroom. Hopefully this will help!

He's actually sleeping...

I don't get it.

I fed Christian at 11:30 at the library and it is 1:00 and he is still sleeping. I got him into the car and home without waking him up. I put his carseat in his room and haven't heard anything out of him. Very odd.

Yesterday, I couldn't get him to nap to save the world. Now today, it's been over an hour.

What happened to my kid?

I guess I should be happy about it instead of nervous. I want to go in and make sure he is still breathing, but I don't want to wake him up.

We'll see how long this will last...

A Little Rearranging...

So, we got home from church today and Matt gave the girls orders to clean up their bedrooms...again! Of course they both whined and complained. Megan was in tears, "But dad, Courtney made the mess in my room!" And she does. Is it fair to make Megan clean up Courtney's mess in her room?

I was feeding Christian at the time and I don't really think it is fair either. Whenever a room is clean, Courtney will come through and destroy it. For example, we keep all the girls' art supplies in my sitting room off my master bedroom. Courtney and Megan cleaned it up last Monday and by Tuesday, the floor was covered again.

I called Matt in to where I was and suggested that we put ALL the toys in Courtney's room and move both beds and all the dressers into Megan's room. We have talked about putting the girls together for awhile, but there was really no reason to do it. Now there is. Courtney is always going into Megan's room to play but doesn't clean up her mess, then Megan gets mad. If we put everything in one room, then Megan won't get mad!

So off we went. The girls helped and we cleaned up Megan's room and took all the toys from her room into Courtney's. Then I helped as we moved Courtney's bed and dressers into Megan's room. We moved Megan's dresser into Courtney's room. It was quite the ordeal! In the end, we only got Megan's room put back together, it may take awhile to get the toy room organized. I hope this will help matters around our house now!

The new toy room, maybe tomorrow I will get in there and organize everything.
I am also going to put all their art supplies in there.

Megan's room with both beds and Courtney's tall dresser.

Courtney's other dresser. There are no toys in this room, not even dress-up dresses!

Now to get them to stop giggling and go to sleep!

One thing found!

Courtney's pink dress has been found!

It was in the bottom drawer of her dresser.

One down, Christian's shirt and crib sheets to go!

I might have to tear my house apart this weekend to find the t-shirt!

Missing...

Has anybody seen Christian's Baby Brother shirt?



I don't really remember the last time I saw it, I know we had it in the hospital when we had him and I am pretty sure we brought it home, but now I can't find it.

I want to take pictures this weekend and since Christian is growing so fast, I want all my kids to wear their t-shirts before they outgrow them.



If somebody knows where that is, could they please tell me where Courtney's pink plaid dress is and where our yellow and flowered crib sheets are?

I swear, there is a big black hole in my house eating my stuff!

Solution Needed

This is the 2nd day in a row that Megan almost missed the bus. Ok, we weren't as close as yesterday, we were at least at the bus stop today when the bus came down the street.

Should I threaten to not take her to school if she misses the bus?
Should I send her out with shoes and socks on? Should I set a timer for her to get dressed by? If it goes off, then what? How can I get her to get dressed faster?

We try to get ready on time, we really do!

I think one solution is to have her pick out her clothes the night before, including underwear!! And if I had all the clothes washed and put away, it wouldn't be such a big deal. Today we were in the laundry room getting clothes because they were folded and in a basket, just not put away!

Then she wanted her hair in a bun and I wasn't doing it quite right and I had to redo it and in the meantime, Christian is screaming at me. I still don't think she liked her hair when she left, but she didn't have a choice!

But still, she went off with a smile! I hope she has a good day!

Reminders for my Family

Here are some reminders for my family, from just this morning:

Matt- Please remember to put the milk back in the fridge after you have breakfast. I know you eat about 6:30, but we don't eat until about 7:45, I don't like warm milk on my cereal! And if the cereal is gone, please throw the packaging away.

Megan- Please pick out your clothes the night before if it is going to take you so long in the morning. Next time, I am going to let you miss your bus!

Christian- Please, night time is for sleeping. Being up at 3 and 6 doesn't make your mama very happy. Especially when you think you have to eat to go back to sleep.

Courtney- You've done good this morning! I usually have to remind you over and over to eat breakfast, but today you ate it right up. Great job! And yes, I keep telling you I will play with you and I will!

5 am?

Christian,

We were doing so good. You slept through the night for 5 nights straight. Sleeping from 9-6:30 counts as sleeping through the night for me! Ahh. I've been waiting for this day!

I can get up at 6:30 with you, I am fine with that, but 5 am. Why?? And then you look at me with your big blue eyes and smile..very funny. Don't you understand that we had a big weekend and your mom is tired? very tired?

And what you also think is funny is that you don't have to go back to sleep until 6:30...an hour and a half? Please Christian, let's get back into our new habit of sleeping ALL night...please?

Thoughts from the Weekend

We just got back a couple of hours ago from camping the weekend in Fremont and here are a few of my thoughts.

1. I hate packing to leave and I hate unpacking when we get home. But I enjoy the time in-between!

2. I really missed my rocking chair. There is really no comfortable place to nurse Christian in the camper. AND, I always had to cover up because I never knew who would be popping thier head in or what little kids would be playing in our camper at feeding time.

3. Next time, we need to take fire wood.

4. I need to be more creative in my meals. Cold sandwiches for lunch and hot dogs/ hamburgers for supper for 3 days. Yikes! My kids don't care, I don't care, it's easy, but we're camping, we should cook something over the fire! And yes, we have before. We made a roast once on the fire and pancakes for breakfast, but since we didn't take fire wood, it wasn't possible this time.

5. I am out of practice. This is only our 2nd time camping this year and I am not quite in the swing of things.

6. If I "think" we have enough of something in the camper, I better bring spare along just in case. We "thought" we had enough bottled water and dog food in the camper, so we didn't take any. When we got there, we realized we didn't and had to make a special trip into town. Also, if I "think" that 1/2 gallon of milk will last us 3 days, I am wrong too!

7. Is it bad that I need to know where my kids are at all times? Sometimes I feel bad because I don't let my kids run wherever they want, whenever they want. Really, should I feel bad about this or should I be responsible for them?

8. Megan is doing a great job riding her bike, but I almost can't watch her! I am afraid that she is going to fall and hurt herself. Her and Matt rode their bikes all over the campground and she didn't have a bit of problem. She did hit a "stop" sign here at home the other day and that didn't help my anxiety any about this at all!

9. Expectations- I don't like it when they are placed on me and I don't like it when I place them on others. Matt always says, "Expectations always lead to disapointment" and he's right.

10. Some day we will need a bigger camper. Adding a third person to our family has really made the camper feel smaller. It's amazing what stuff you need to take with a baby and how much room it takes up. I feel we are constantly stepping on one another.

11. I enjoy taking the girls swimming and watching them jetski, but sometimes I wish I could just get in and enjoy the water with them. With having a baby, I am stuck on the beach watching them and watching everybody else have a good time. And yes, this is temporary and it is the stage of life we are in right now, but I do sometimes wish I could get in and have fun. If somebody watches Christian, I get a little break from the beach, but it usually doesn't last that long.

This also goes for bike-riding. Matt was constantly taking the girls on bike rides this weekend. He said he rode over 10 miles with them! As for me, I asked my brother once to keep an eye on my three kids once so I could go for a short ride. Christian was sleeping when I left and I guess he woke up right away after we left and fussed until I got back. If I wanted to go along, I had to take Christian and push him in the stroller and watch everybody else ride thier bike. Again, this is our stage of life right now, it will be better next summer.

12. Maybe going from Friday to Monday without baths for the children is too long...we would've given them a bath on Sunday, but we were just going to get into the dirty lake later that afternoon. Why bathe them? And Monday we were going home. We just waited, but they were filthy. Even little Christian needed a bath.

I do admit though, we had to wash Megan's hair this morning. I couldn't get through the tangles, so I just put her head over the side of the tub and I washed it. We'll wash the rest of her tonight before she goes to bed.

13. Even though camping is supposed to be relaxing, it's not. Especially when you are by a busy road and the kids are riding scooters and bikes by the busy road or you are trying to keep track of two older children as they run between two campers, the swing set, and monkey bars. Ah, I am almost glad to be home. The girls can run free all they want inside of the house, I don't have to worry about them anymore!

14. Next time we got camping beside my brother, I need to make sure my girls are using our bathroom. They didn't want to go potty in our bathroom because there were too many flies in there, so they thought it was fun to use his bathroom all weekend! Well, he ran out of water by the 2nd day! 50 gallons! Yikes, Sorry!! (and it wasn't just our girls in there using all the water, but they contributed it to it for sure!)

15. Ok, now that my thoughts are done, I should go unpack or make something besides hamburgers for supper!

Packing Fairy?

Does anybody know of a packing fairy who will come to my house and pack everything we need to go camping this weekend?

Just thought I would ask...

2 nights in a row!

We have slept through the night two nights in a row- this may be the start of something good! Roughly 8-6:30. It is wonderful!!

I don't know what happened, but we've had a much happier baby lately. And a much happier mom!

Then and Now...

I noticed in my last post that I had a picture of Megan holding Christian. I went back through my pictures and wanted to find one of her holding him right after he was born and then one that I took a couple of days ago.

I think Christian is going to be too big for Megan to hold pretty soon!

Night and Day Difference

I haven't had a chance to blog in a couple of days. Partly because of little Christian and partly because my hands still hurt from my pinched nerve in my back. I've been going to a chiropractor and it's getting better, but we're not 100% better yet! I'm feeling really good right now and Christian is sleeping, so we'll try to do this quick!

I was thinking today about how smooth the day was going. Christian has been happy, he has ate good, and has taken good naps in his BED! When he's been awake, he's been content to lay on the floor or in his swing. Therefore, I am much happier! I have energy today and even got some housework done. After Megan got home from school, they helped clean too. Ahh, I love it!

Megan and Christian also had some time to bond after school.

I think Courtney put the rabbit ears on his head, but both girls thought it was hilarious!
Poor Christian, I think he's saying, "What did those sisters do to me now??"

This is so much better when compared to last Monday! Christian was a trainwreck! He woke up at his usual time and by 10 am, he was down for a morning nap. I thought we were doing good! (I'm figuring out that instead of putting him back down for a nap an hour after he got up, that I really should feed him again and keep him up a little bit longer). He woke up at 11, so I thought he would be happy. I was WRONG!! I fed him and tried until 1:30 to get him back down for another nap. Obviously nothing ws working and the poor boy was just getting crankier (somebody was tired)!

I tried to put him down in his swing, in his swing swinging, in his swing swinging with music on, in his bouncy seat, and in his crib. Nothing worked. I would always rock him to sleep and five minutes after I put him down, he was back up crying. I was so frustrated! I was trying to get lunch in the middle of all this too and Courtney was contstantly asking me to play with her. I feel terrible when I have to say, "Not now Courtney, I'm working with your brother."

About 1:45, I was ready to pull my hair out and I said, "Fine, I'll hold you then!" So I sat down in the recliner and for the next hour and a half, I held him while he slept. In the meantime, Courtney had come downstairs and asked if we could watch her new movie, Snow White. I thought, if I'm going to sit here and hold this child, I might as well watch a movie too!

The movie was over about 3:30 and I decided to put him back in his swing so I could be ready when Megan got home. He went into his swing great and then slept for another hour. After a 2 1/2 hour nap, he was happy again! AHHH.

Like I said, today has been completely different than Monday! Whatever it is, I hope it lasts!