State of the Family #11

Returning from vacay at Mahoney St. Park! So much to write about. . . fun, fun, fun!

Miss Thumb Sucker was not a huge fan of vacation for 3 main reasons. 1) She was stuck in the stroller the majority of the time, being rolled around from one activity she really couldn't participate in to the next, 2) She FINALLY cut that tooth, so she ran a fever and was not feeling great the whole time and 3) She couldn't get a comfortable, long nap in because we were always on the move. She was in decent spirits throughout the 3 days despite these things going against her. She totally hated the pool. She is not a fan of the cold water and clings to my chest and whimpers every time I try to put her in it. I don't think I got any pictures of her doing this though. I'll have to try next time we go to the pool. It will be a great scrapbook page! I did get a picture of her crying by the ball pit though. She wasn't a fan of that either!

Miss Firecracker did awesome! She was so entertained that she barely had time to throw a fit at all. The only problem we had with her was getting her to go to sleep at night! She had so much fun trying to keep up with her brother that you would have thought she would just crash at night. But she was so wired from the excitement that she had a hard time calming down. She tried so hard to keep up with him at the indoor playground and was right on his tail with everything he did at Cablea's (yes, we spent 3 hours in Cabela's on our vacation. . . daddy's choice). She isn't quite as fearless as him in the pool, however, but she was all over that froggy slide. She came home with a blotchy sunburn though since we evidently missed a few spots just around her swim suit. Thankfully it doesn't seem to be slowing her down. She was all over the zoo as well, always trying to keep up with her brother. I always think of a t-shirt I saw a while back: "Monkey see, Monkey do, Monkey get in trouble too!" Makes me laugh at how true it is!

Noisy Man had a blast. Everything we did was right up his alley. He loved running around Cabela's checking out the taxidermy and playing in the tents and hunting blinds. A nice employee even gave us some free tokens to play the hunting games they have there. We had a hard time keeping track of him in the indoor playground as he was going haywire up and down the entire structure. We spent some time fishing, but didn't really catch anything so he bored of that quickly. The pool was his domain though. This is where it is hardest trying to find him. He has NO FEAR in the water and is everywhere. Up and down the slides, over to the wave pool, floating around the water, shooting the guns. Geeesh! He is hard to keep up with and hard to catch. Being the terrible parents we are, we kind of forgot about him and his more olive skin and didn't re-apply sunscreen to him when we did his fair-skinned sisters. So, he came home with a pretty decent sunburn and I am about in tears every time I think about how preventable it is and how awful I was not to put more on him. On a brighter note, he totally loved watching Toy Story 3 in 3D and tried grabbing a few things as they "came out" of the screen at us. And we finished the vacay off at the zoo, another one of his faves!

Daddy was a little disappointed with the 3 hour Cabela's visit. Really? What did he expect when dragging 3 small children? He says he didn't really get to "look" at anything. I told him he'd have to go back with out us sometime. He wasn't too opposed to this idea. Seriously, what woman and 3 small children want to stand around fishing lures for 45 minutes? He had a hard time in the indoor playground being over 6 ft tall and all, but still had fun chasing the kids around. He bored quickly with the fishing as well and complained the whole time about his legs burning during the paddle boats and climbing the observation tower - he complains just to make sure I'm paying attention - he had a ball at both activities! He is always right at home in the pool like his son and fried even worse than he did too. His stomach is as bright as a tomato. I think his skin isn't as indestructible as it once was and he needs to up his SPF requirements. There might have been a tear spotted in the corner of his eye during Toy Story as well, but it is hard to tell with the 3D glasses (shhhh. . . don't tell him I said that). And he loves the zoo as much as the kids since he doesn't get to go with us most of the time. Mr. Schedule he is, though, had a hard time with "vacation time" and getting the kids to bed late most nights.

I am just trying to recover! I had a blast at everything and came home a little fried as well. My skin is probably about the same as Daddy's and needs a higher SPF than I used to require. I bawled at the end of Toy Story and loved watching everyone have so much fun. Now I just need some sleep since Miss Thumb Sucker hasn't slept more than 2 hrs at a time in 3 nights and was up every hour last night. My favorite is probably the indoor playground and I was able to get around significantly easier this time that last time we were there! Last time I was 7 months pregnant and had a hard time squeezing up some of the tubes! This time I could almost keep up with the kids! I totally recommend this place - so much fun!

I'll add pics later!

State of the Family #10

Into the double digits of SOF's! (yeah I think I am cool enough to use just the initials for the title of my (try to be) weekly blog entry). I missed last week again due to the craziness of a garage sale. . . more on that to come in the mommy section.

Miss Thumbsucker continuously has me at the edge of my bed, yep, bed, not seat. I never know how she is going to sleep for me in the past two weeks and it is quite gruelling. Sometimes she'll sleep great, I only have to get up once to feed her or she even slept from 11-6 the other night! Other nights (which are, sadly, more frequent) she'll be up as many as 5 times. So, I realize that most of Miss Thumbsucker's posts are about her sleeping habits lately. . . it is the main thing in her life currently. On another note, she made her first trip to the Omaha Zoo yesterday and seemed to enjoy it. She loved the train ride, but wasn't so thrilled about being stuck in the stroller all day. She also loved the aquarium and watching the fish and penguins.

Miss Firecracker has been surprisingly good the last couple of weeks. God knows I can only handle so much at a time. She has been quite the jabberbox lately though. We were in Target the other day and, of course, had to make a potty run. Mostly because she thinks checking out various bathrooms wherever we are is fun, but also cuz she really had to go. So, we are in the stall and she is just chatting away. "Whose potty is this Mommy?" "Who put that up there?" "Did you put that up there?" "Did Daddy put that up there?" "I'm all done. You wipe me now ." "I flush mommy." and on and on and on. Yes, there were snickers coming from occupants of the other stalls and then when we emerge from ours, they get a glimpse of the question box and her hair and just melt. Mostly cuz she IS adorable and jabbers a mile a minute, but also because they don't know the ornery, fit throwing side and think she is just a cute innocent 2-yr-old! One lady at the sink even thanked her for the entertainment! She drives me nuts sometimes but she can also always make me laugh.

Noisy Man had a hard time with the garage sale and his pack-rat tendencies. We were finding things we just HAD to keep left and right and throwing fits equal to Miss Firecracker's. Finally, daddy had a brilliant idea and let him pick ONE thing he wanted to keep. That item then, went on the banister (which is where daddy puts everything!) just in sight of Noisy Man for a reminder. The deal was that he could keep this item as long as he didn't complain or throw a fit about anything else that was getting sold. Thus, the fits and grabbing things off the tables ended quite quickly. It also ended many other problems for the next two days, as all we had to do was remind him of the toy on the banister and how quickly it could be gone if he decided not to behave. It was great! Perhaps a little cruel, but wonderful nonetheless.

The gift dilemma with daddy continues. . . We got him his fishing pole and reel and he is thrilled with them, even got them early for his fishing day last Sunday. They must work great cuz he caught a Master Angler large mouth bass on it the 2nd fish he caught that day and caught 2 more fish just 2 inches short of Master Angler status as well. Perhaps the fishing pole is enough and the specialness will come with the memories? Still, I would like him to have something from his kids ON Father's Day and his b-day. . . Maybe it is just his fault he couldn't wait to use his fishing pole.

The garage sale is done! (I can hear the Hallelujah Chorus all around me, surely you can too!?!) It was a lot of work and I will seriously have to think twice about doing it again. Of course the money we made makes it a little bit more worth wile and we are probably only $300 short of completely paying for the skiing trip we want to take next winter. So, ask me after the ski trip and I would probably do it again in a heart beat. But for now, my house is still a disaster from being neglected for a week while preparing for the garage sale, and I am still a little sun burned from sitting out in the heat all day Friday. I do, however, have 9 empty totes in my storage room and only 3 returned with items in them. We took 3 full totes to Once Upon a Child to try and sell the remaining children's clothes and came home with 1 full tote from there. We also took 5 big garbage bags of my and Jeff's old clothes and a few baby items to Good Will. It feels good to have things cleaned up and a little cash in my pocket waiting to be used on a kid-free vacation!!

Pleading

Sleep. . . must get sleep. . . Really. I'm not even in the least bit joking. I sit here at my computer while my youngest one (the main reason for the sleeplessness) cries in her crib and my older two play with their TAG readers. She cries in her crib because I can't deal with her right now and I only sit here at my computer because I am sick of tagging garage sale stuff and I don't have enough energy to do anything else. I have not gotten more than 3 hours of sleep at a time in over 6 weeks. . . do I have a newborn or a 7-month-old? I don't think she even slept this bad when she was a newborn. And what makes it even worse is the fact that I know she CAN sleep through the night because she did it for 2 weeks. Is there a way to get her to go back? Can I teach her how to sleep?
I also sit here at my computer because I am a bit sore. I started my 2nd session of Boot Camp yesterday at the Y. I must say, day 1 of session 2 was not near as bad as day 1 of session 1, but I am still sore nontheless. Why do we do this to ourselves? Is it really that important?
Anyway, I have ranted enough and let my baby girl cry long enough that I must go get her and try and convince her that sleep really is a good thing and she needs to try it out.

State of the Family #9

Let the summer really begin!!

Miss Thumb Sucker has the sniffles. She seems to be dealing with it pretty well but it is harder for her to breathe. Which of course equals even less sleep for mommy. I am still waiting for those teeth to come through too. She has been getting up about an average of 3 times a night lately. This is 2 times regularly and then she has about 2-3 bad nights a week where she is up anywhere from 4 to 6 times. Last night was a 5 timer. If it weren't for her bad sleeping habits, she would be a perfect baby. I don't know how many people told me this weekend at the wedding what a good baby she was, and she is. She is also now sitting up on her own! This is great for me cuz it makes it easier to sit her down places not having to worry about a soft place for her to lay.

Miss Firecracker had another potty incident the other day, and I must take partial blame (I hate it when I have to admit that). The kids had just gotten up when I was getting in the shower. So I hurried and got them their morning milk and jumped in. Well, about 2 min. later Miss Firecracker runs in screaming she has to go potty. So, I tell her to get on the potty and when she is done I'd step out and help her clean up. :) Well, she decided that she couldn't get on the potty by herself that morning, so the fit began. Screaming and flailing and running around, she refused to get on the potty and I refused to get out of the shower and chase her down. So I let it happen. When I got out about 3 min after the fit began there was potty all over my carpet and bathroom floor and she was finally sitting on the potty. There was not a good ending to this story as I lost my cool and got beyond upset with her, ending in me making her climb up and down off of the potty 5 times by herself to prove to her that she could do it by herself. Then she spent the next 15 min. in her room because I needed to calm down, clean up, get dressed and not see her for about that long. This girl is going to send me to my grave rather early. I must take partial blame, however, cuz I should have known to take her to the bathroom before I got in the shower since she had just gotten up from a full nights sleep. But of course this rational didn't hit me until I was done yelling at her for peeing all over my floor and throwing a royal fit.

Noisy Man had his first Bible School this week. He really enjoyed it and I loved watching him (when he didn't know I was watching) interact with his teachers, friends and singing the songs. He is so inquisitive about the Bible stories, I just love it. The theme for Bible School was obedience (I so totally just sang the obedience song in my head to spell that right!). So they did the story of Jonah and the big fish (non-obedience) and Daniel and the lion's den (obedience). However, he is very confused about why Daniel would be put in the lion's den if he was being obedient. He can't quite separate the King's rules from God's rules and it really confuses him. It is cute to see him try to rationalize it in his little head. I was so proud of him though, he was a champ with his Bible verses. They gave these guys 6 verses to work on in 2 days. (OK, so they didn't really expect the Pre-K kids to get them all, but just be comfortable enough with them to repeat them back. But all be darned if he didn't completely memorize 2 of them himself. One (John 3:16) was a bit of a review as we had worked on this one with him when we first started teaching him Bible verses, but he hadn't done it in quite a while.

Daddy's birthday is coming up (actually the same day as father's day) and I am struggling with what to do for him. I totally stinks that he has to have these holiday's on the same day so he doesn't get to celebrate them separately and have 2 fun daddy days so I want to make it super fun. I know what he wants for gifts (he makes it easy with his year-long running Christmas list. Yes, he keeps a list at the back of one of his steno pads,and whenever he thinks of something he might want, but doesn't want to spend the money to go get it or it is just something that he wants but doesn't need, he writes it on the gift list.) So, now I just need to think of something fun or thoughtful to go with the off-the-list gift. Any ideas?

I am ready for some down time. We survived May, which was absolutely, crazy busy and included no weekends with nothing to do. So, now I am ready for June, which really doesn't have too much on the calendar but a 10K this Saturday morning, my garage sale, Father's Day/Daddy's b-day and our vacation to Mahoney St. Park. OK, so that sounds like a lot, but it is so much less than May it really sounds relaxing. The garage sale with be the only stressful thing since I am still not near ready and it is only a week away. My sister's wedding last weekend marked the last in our crazy busy schedule list. It was a fabulous weekend and everything went smashingly. My sis was absolutely gorgeous, us bridesmaids came in a distant 2nd, and my kids and nieces and nephew did wonderful at their assigned tasks. It was a lot of fun and I am kinda sad it is over. But now I am ready for some down time. I run at 730 am on Saturday and have NOTHING else planned for the whole weekend. It will be FABULOUS!!!

Here are a few pics from the wedding:

State of the Family #8

So I missed a week. . . life has been crazy. It is the first time I have missed, but I am certain it won't be the last. Lets see if my exhausted brain can remember what we have all done in the last week and a half.
Miss Thumb Sucker finally decided it was OK to exert some energy and roll over from her back to her tummy, but only if she really wants a toy that is just out of her reach. She did this last Wednesday just after having her toes painted for the first time and has done it a handful of times since. I am also REALLY hoping that some teeth will be popping through very soon as she has been sleeping beyond terribly. She was up 5 times Sat. night, 6 times (in a 2 hour time period) Sun. night and 3 times last night. I don't know how much of that I can take. All I can say is, how close are we to nap time?
Miss Firecracker is loving this warm weather. This means she (according to her) doesn't have to wear shoes at all. She will put them on to appease me just to walk out the door to play, but after about 2 minutes they have been abandoned. I guess I can't complain about this too much, she does probably get this from me. She also has them off in the car before we can get fully out of the driveway. This also means that it is a constant search for her shoes. . . where in the world did she take them off this time?
Noisy Man has finished his first year of preschool and is now ready for the summer. Shorts, sandals and lots of dirt are on his list of to-do's this summer. That, and he keeps asking to go to the water park. He is a water boy with no fear. He will jump in anywhere, dunk himself under the water and slide down anything. I am not sure I will be able to handle all 3 of them at the pool by myself this summer. We might have to wait and go in the evening after daddy gets home.
Daddy is in project mode. He loves being outside getting things done. He has finally (after 2 years of having the tube) finished the bagger for our lawn mower. Yes, folks, he built it himself because he refused to pay $350 for it. I refuse to mow the lawn now because our lawn mower looks ghetto and redneck all at the same time with this wonderful bagging system on the back. I guess he is resourceful if nothing else! He also spent all last Saturday power washing the red stain off our deck because some spots were peeling up and he thought it looked terrible. Well, it didn't all come off with the power washer so now it looks awful! He got as much off as he could and now he is going to have to tear the deck apart to belt-sand off the rest. A fun project for him in the future.
I am still gearing up for the garage sale, with maybe about half of my stuff marked. Thankfully I was able to get most of the spit stains out of the baby clothes with the help of great suggestions from my FaceBook friends! I also got the family vacation planned and booked. So excited we were still able to get a cabin at Mahoney. This weekend is also my baby sister's wedding! The last one in my family. I am totally looking forward to it! It will be a blast. One of the best parts of it will be tomorrow when we get to go to Lincoln for girl time and get pedicures, go out for supper and get spray on tans, because tanning beds are TERRIBLE! Hopefully I won't turn orange. Since our dresses are brown, this wouldn't be a good combo. It will also be great to get such a formal family picture. Daddy is an usher, I am a bridesmaid, Noisy Man is a ring bearer, Firecracker is a Flower girl and Thumb Sucker has a very pretty dress as well. I'll post pictures ASAP!
Well, here is to a crazy busy week - no rest until Sunday for this family, some sleep and a fabulous wedding!

Sorting

So, I am having a garage sale this summer. Which means sorting through all of the gazillion totes I have in my storage rooms. Yikes! Started today with my baby boy clothes. . . talk about a trip down memory lane. I don't even remember him being that little. The 0-3 month little sleepers and onsies about broke my heart. Why don't they stay that little? I can say that about him too, cuz he slept through the night at 3 months old so I didn't even miss sleep for that long. My girls are another story. It is crazy too, how things that weren't dirty when you put them away have developed wonderful little spots. Bring on the Biz so I can get them all out and get them all sold. I am excited to have empty totes! I am always having to go buy the darn things. And, not a single thing that goes in the garage for the sale will be coming back in my house. All to the Salvation Army will the unsold stuff go!

And just for reminiscing sake. Here is my baby Noisy Man 4 years ago. tear. . .

State of the Family #7

Thankfully, it has been a pretty uneventful week at our house. . . I needed that.

Miss Thumb Sucker had her 6 month Dr. appt this week. She is in the 95% range for her height and 45% for her weight. . . tall and skinny. Lucky girl. She has also started a little thing with her tongue. It hangs out of her mouth all of the time. I should call her baby KISS. You know she is really happy when the smile grows then out pops the tongue. I don't see how she doesn't get a chapped bottom lip. It is quite funny.

Miss Firecracker is my one child who knows how to sleep. She got this from me. :) She will take 3 hour naps if things are calm enough around the house, and she doesn't have to wake up to go potty. She will also sleep in in the morning until at least 7:30 if allowed. I wish all of my children would do this. If he had his druthers, Noisy Man would be up, and would wake everyone in the house up with him, at 6 am every morning. He used to wake Miss Firecracker up with him, but without her sleep, Miss Firecracker is like her mommy, crabby! That mixed in with her father's temper (which he has learned to control well over the years, but she hasn't mastered this yet), it is NOT a good combination. So, we all just let her sleep as long as she wants!

Noisy Man turned 4 this last Saturday and I just don't know where the time went. He had a construction birthday party at the park and had a blast. He was spoiled with gifts from all our family and friends and absolutely soaked it all up. The one part he didn't like about turning 4 were the shots, 5 of them. Our pediatrician does shots at 4 instead of 5 because they want their Kindergarten visit to be fun. So they just ruin the 4 yr one. Oh goodness how he screamed and yelled. . . and of course his legs didn't work for the next two days. Funniest thing was, while he was screaming I shoved a book in front of his face so he couldn't watch the nurse actually give him the shots. I was asking him questions about the pictures and he would still answer me while he was screaming. It was quite amusing. Miss Thumb Sucker dealt with her shots 10 times better.

Daddy is itching to get out to the water. With our busy schedule and the hit and miss weather, he has not really been out at all yet this spring. He is an outdoors man with a desk job. . . sometimes it isn't a good combo. He is also a numbers man, which is why he is so good at his job and enjoys it as well. . . but he has to get his outside time or he gets antsy. Thankfully, we don't have to be anywhere this Saturday until the late afternoon so he will get his fishing fix that morning. Of course this means mommy is once again at home alone with the kids, but if it keeps daddy happy, it is all good.

Mommy has been having fun with some new recipes. This always makes daddy nervous. A friend got me hooked on some food blogs so I have been searching for things I think daddy might eat. So far, I have passed with flying colors, except for some peanut butter filled chocolate cookies that I thought were a shoe in and he didn't like them. The kids loved them though, so I was ok. Everything else, like honey and lemon marinated chicken, tender apple and onion pork chops with roasted garlic smashed potatoes, and last night's honey glazed chicken (which I was really nervous about since it is somewhat of a Chinese food type dish), he has really liked. I love being able to do new things, cuz most of the time I am stuck with the same ol' burgers, steaks and all that boring stuff. Daddy has grown leaps and bounds since we first met 10 years ago!