If I can be totally honest, today was a solid mix of good and bad. I love it when a day feels like its all good, and I really dislike when the whole day goes awry. So I guess today was a healthy, happy medium.

Rowan slept awesome but his last stretch of sleep, usually from 5-8:00am-ish, was really choppy. I didn’t get a whole lot of sleep in there really. Rowan did, but he slept so lightly that I lived in fear of rolling over. Not ideal. He also ate very little. Ok, well, I’m pretty sure he’s eating more than lots of babies his age, but he has been growing like a weed over the last week or two, and he ate considerably less overnight and in the morning. So the feedings were frustrating as well, adjusting to yet another new feeding schedule he’s working us into.

When it came time for the other kids to get up, they were really excited to get dressed and eat, with the promise of grandmas house soon to come. They all looked adorable and were behaving well. The drive was smooth and when grandma ran out into the driveway to meet us, the fun began.

We had a nice hour and a half before my mom had to head off for a massage appointment. I fed the kids lunch, and it was right around then that they started to go haywire on me. Now, I’m aware that I have a good sized brood of young children, so haywire is nothing new to me. I can rock that. But there was SO much screaming, and fighting, and tears, and I was finally at the end of my rope. So it was time for their naps. Maybe twenty minutes earlier than usual, so not a big deal, but a very necessary one.

Rowan was so ready, and just lay in his bundle quietly until he fell asleep. Laela was tucked away in a playpen in my moms room, and Dekker in his room downstairs. (I know that sounds cruel! But when we spend the night, we sleep down there, and Dekker actually asks to nap down there. His choice!) After tucking everyone in, I hear Dekker talking, so I scolded him through the vent and he was quiet after that. I went to Laela and lay her back down only once before she stayed quiet too.

Two. Hours. It was sooo nice! My mom came home, and we had some lunch and a lovely visit before it was time to get the kids. Well, the big kids anyway. Rowan had lulled and was now sleeping in my arms. My mom went to get Dekker from downstairs and I went for Laela.

And my goodness, had she ever pooped. It was on my moms bed, on the sheet in the playpen, and all over my hands. Thankfully, my mom came to help me out. Poor Laela was stripped bare and wiped down with cold baby wipes. Lucky for us, I think she had just pooped, so there was no scrubbing involved, and she didn’t wreak from sitting in it for too long. She was unimpressed, but compliant. Because her clothes weren’t stinky, we were able to get her back into her stuff and go about the evening as normal. But MAN! That was a ton of poop.

When my dad and Brady arrived, we all had a delicious supper of chicken in a golden mushroom sauce, mashed potatoes, and cooked carrots. I ate two helpings. Delish. Then we all played a bit more and cleaned up a bit before leaving. Success!

The drive home was rough. I won’t go into it, but I’m so thrilled that they’re in bed. So much good and so much bad. I want to focus on the good, I really do! But upon arriving home, I see tire tracks THROUGH my yard. No joke, someone actually drove through my yard. People haven’t used our yard as a place to back into and turn around before, and it left enormous ruts in our grass. Thankfully, its not so soft anymore because I would have been more angry than I am now if there were huge rows of my yard ripped up. Its just already hard to be happy here when we’d so much rather be somewhere else, but this really doesn’t help me feel thankful for my home.

All of that considered, I’m happy to be in my bed, writing this out, and soon I’ll be happy to have a soak, a snack, and watch That 70s Show with my husband, while our three children (hopefully) sleep soundly. My life is a good life.

Bradys parents headed home this evening. After a lovely morning filled with TONS of strawberries and bananas and breakfast at Cora’s restaurant, and an afternoon filled with naps and visiting, they are headed out on the road to get a few hours of their trip under their belts. We’re winding down, the two big kids are tucked in and Rowan is sipping away at his last bottle for the evening. I figured I’d round out the weekend with some photos with the kids and their grandparents 🙂 (Elvira, feel free to steal as many as you’d like!)     

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

 Its been a lovely weekend. Monday looms…

We had a really nice day today, based around yummy food and relaxed play. We were hoping to surface at some point and maybe go to the zoo, or at least for a walk, but it was below ten degrees and very very windy. So we rather took our time during our meals and filled the rest of our time with lots of stories, and singing. Oh, and Dekker did laps. Everyone had a nice afternoon nap and we were all fresh for supper. We had chicken breasts and my delicious cheesy potatoes, which I’m going to be bold and say were completely delicious. I could eat the whole pan of them, no question. After dishes, the kids played HARD and ended up going to bed with sweat-soaked hair. That should smell yummy by morning, right?

So yes, it was a fairly uneventful day, but it was cozy and relaxed and warm inside. Since Rowan missed being on the blog yesterday, here he is today!

He’s so cute it hurts.

Tomorrow holds a morning in the city!!

So after being completely intimidated for several days, Brady and I cracked into our new camera this morning. We went through a ton of the settings and got it all arranged how we wanted. We figured out how to connect to wifi, and played with a couple of different effects. The kids loved being able to see themselves in the big flip screen, and that paired with the 20.2 megapixels, we got some pretty awesome pictures. We couldn’t be happier with this thing!!!

Obviously Rowan slept through this particular photo shoot, but we got some more of him later into the evening. However, our wifi blows at the moment and loading pictures is taking forever, so I’m going to be done for the moment. But there will surely be home! Bradys parents are out for the weekend so there will be many opportunities to take pictures 🙂 Much, MUCH higher quality pictures than before!

Brady finished work early today, thanks to working himself to the bone basically, so instead of meeting him in the city, he came home, got dressed, and we all went together. We finally dropped off Jerilee’s gift that we “paid” her with for watching the babes while we were off having Rowan. After that, we whipped through Walmart, in and out in a half hour, and then made it to Dr. Mikes a few minutes early. We didn’t expect everything to have started off quite so smoothly, but it did!

Brady and I both needed treatments, and while we were really happy to be there, Dekker was pretty clear on the drive over that he did not want to go to Dr. Mikes. However, upon arrival, a nice woman in the waiting room passed him a book about tractors and he was immediately happier. Dr. Mike asked him some questions and even teased him and tickled his ears, and Dekker just giggled and squirmed and totally let it happen! Big wins all around. He asked where we were headed for the evening, and we made a joke about our exciting lives and our anticipated Superstore and Costco shops. He looked at us like we were crazy and laughed, saying we had sure picked two big things to do in one day with all three kids. I laughed back at him and said we had already hit Walmart, so we were already a third of the way done. He just shook his head and smiled. Its true, we might be crazy. But living so far from the city, we sort of need to get lots done in one day, rather than being able to duck in for a thing or two each and every day. It makes sense to us anyway.

Once Brady and I were all tuned up, we went for supper. Our kids are SO cute today! They ate amazingly well, as in TONS, and very happily. Dekker was eager to get to the next place, anyway. He LOVES the free cookies as Superstore.

It was worth the wait. Dekker was such a good helper, remembering what we needed to get from each section. My favorite part was buying the kids hats from the clothing section. I’ve never been a “hat in summer” kind of person, and I didn’t think I’d make my kids wear them much, but since the older two have done blond and pale like me (so far, anyway) its necessary. I slipped one on Dekker’s head and there it sat for probably two hours until he was home and in bed. He loves that thing. And his cookie, of course.

We did Costco last, and by that time, it was quite late, and Costco was about to close, so I ran in to grab the few things we needed and Brady stayed in the van with the kids. I did a very quick run through and was actually out the door before the entrance had closed, so I felt less guilty about coming so late. Then a quick stop for coffee for Brady and I, and we were off.

Deks and Laela giggled at each other the whole way home. Its so funny, because when they get in their moods, they can just stare at each other, and it sends them into uncontrollable laughter. Over nothing at all! Except the other ones face, I suppose. It was so nice to have the van filled with happy sounds rather than overtired ones. These kids were just SO cute today!

Twas a good day. Time for a donut and a bath. I love our evening routine around here.

I was doing laundry today, and I caught myself thinking “I have a sickness that is jammies.” Sooo many jammies!

And then I realized that this is actually just five days worth of jammies. Five days, fifteen pairs of jammies.

It was then that I inwardly almost rolled my eyes as I thought of all the things people say about having kids. Specifically, the negative things they say. More laundry, more dishes, broken sleep. Pee, poop, barf, drool. Tears, communication blocks, tantrums, stages. The list goes on.

I hope its not a surprise to you guys that my list is entirely different. I mean, lets be fair. That first list is incredibly accurate. Kids bring all of those things. With my three kids, in five days, we go through fifteen pairs of jammies, ten sets of dishes, maybe 35-40 bottles, and I’d say roughly 75 diapers. I break up a good handful of spats in a day and everyone cries at some point, or at many points.

BUT! Someone falls asleep on me every day. I get more three times kisses than the average person does in a day. Same story with hugs and cuddles. Every diaper change gives me an opportunity to tickle toes or blow raspberries on a soft little tummy. I can observe my children learning to play together in between their spats.

I had Rowan on my lap today and I was giving him kisses, and he was so wonderful! You know that stinky baby breath that babies get? Its stronger with my formula fed babies 🙂 I LOVE that smell. To me, thats the delicious baby smell that people talk about. Kissing Roro’s lips gives me all the opportunity in the world to smell him. His lips are some of the softest ones in the world, and my nose inevitably pokes his adorable, also super soft little cheeks in the process. In the process, I usually tease his lips with my nose and he does this hilarious head twitch, thinking its a bottle. But if I bug him enough, I can get him to smile. Smiling lips are good for kissing, as are drooly ones, milky ones, and one that are blowing bubbles.

My kids just seem to fill my senses some days. While today has been a busy day of laundry and crowd control, I can easily see why I signed up for this road that we’re on around here. Its the very best road I could have chosen, hands down, no contest.

The kids were so cute this afternoon! Rowan needed to sleep around noon, which I was initially bummed about. With that timing, the other kids go down around 1:30, making it very likely that Rowan would be up as soon as the others were down. But there was no keeping that boy awake. Well, maybe awake, but not happy. I gave in and brought him up to his bed, and he didn’t make a sound after I put him down.

It was nice to pay some closer attention to Dekker and Laela with my arms empty. They were very sweet together. I heard Dekker occasionally suggesting Laela to come with him rather that doing the thing she was going for that was going to get her in trouble. At one point, Laela had broken a rule and couldn’t have what she wanted, and was making a big show of it. Dekker walked up beside her and asked “Laela, you want to play catch with me?” She lit right up and chased after him, and all was well again. They’re fabulous, plain and simple.

When it was time for them to have their nap, Rowan was still out and I wanted to keep it that way, so I made it a game to walk as quiet as possible. Dekker didn’t buy it at first but I made sure I looked as idiotic as possible doing it, and he was mirroring me soon after. I’ve never seen that boy walk so slowly 🙂 Laela, on the other hand, walks like an elephant no matter what. So I carried her. But they went down beautifully and didn’t make a sound. I figured Rowan would be up anytime so I made a bottle and climbed into bed. Ro sleeps in a cradle next to our bed, so I figured this way, I could rest and still be available right when he woke.

An hour went by and he finally started to stir. I went go grab him right away. I don’t usually rush to get my kids the second they make a peep, but if I let him get too loud he would wake his siblings, and when they go down quite that smoothly, its because they really really needed to. So I grabbed Rowan and climbed back into bed with him in my arms. I went to grab his bottle to give him some milk since he hadn’t eaten in a few hours, but he was wearing his sleepy eyes again! After 2.5 hours of solid sleep, I didn’t expect any more! I patted his back and easily lulled him back to sleep.

AN HOUR LATER he officially woke up. He drank his whole bottle right away without any doddling or dribbling. He was well rested, had a dry diaper on, and a full tummy, and he was SO alert and happy!

I know, he’s not smiling in this picture. We’re just starting to be able to coax him to smile, so its still not an easy thing to capture on film, but he was very animated at this point in the day 🙂

It was so refreshing having so many nice, squishy encounters with my kids! They made today easy peasy.

This morning started off so well! Dekker and Laela slept quite a bit later than normal, which is always a treat and bodes well for good attitude and lots of fun. Rowan woke up quite a bit earlier and couldn’t seem to be consoled, which brought about really good snuggles while we lay in bed together and started a movie. When we did finally all get up, breakfast was a success. The day started off so well.

Just a few hours later, I am so tired. Everyone is down for their naps much earlier than I bargained for, considering how long Dekker and Laela slept in. The time between breakfast and now has been filled with reprimands, throwing toys, hitting, attitude, and sooo much screaming!

So now, three out of three kids are safely tucked away in their comfy bed, wailing their freaking heads off. I might join the crowd…

It was a pretty great Sunday, I’ve got to say. I am constantly blown away by how my kids are developing and changing before my very eyes. Sunday is always a hard day for them, though, with the difference of schedule and change of routine. This morning, we were in town for church a bit earlier than we bargained for, so we decided to drive around a little bit and, once again, take note of which lots are still for sale and how the new construction area looked. As we veered off from our common direction, Dekker asked if we could go to church. I was surprised, since church has not always been his favorite place, what with having to sit still and be in a large group of new people, so I asked him to repeat himself. “Can we go to church? I want to go to church.” was his reply. Win! I told have that it was awesome that he wanted to go to church, and we’d go right after our little drive around town. We saw that the lot we’re hoping for is still for sale, so thats good! From there, we headed off to church. We were a little bit early still, so the kids could get out of their coats and to a bench before everyone was out of Sunday school and in the foyer.

The service was a change of pace with a guest speaker, but he did well, and the kids were SO well behaved! Laela was a bit loud, but it was all her adorable little chatting, so the people around us thought it was super cute rather than obnoxious and disruptive. Dekker played really well and quietly. He only got a bit upset once when he spotted a spider on the floor. I killed it, and life kept moving. And Rowan was wide awake and silent the entire service. So that was a win!

Seven weeks old and he already didn’t want to be held. Independent kids I have!

As if my parents got a chance to listen once.

We went to my parents house almost right after church and got lunch ready. While we prepared and waited for the guests to arrive at 1:30, we talked to my mom about our camera quandary the day before. We showed her the specs and got all excited about the fancier camera again. Good thing the company arrived and we could take a break from thinking about it all! We had a birthday lunch celebration with Willa and some of her family in the early afternoon, where we devoured way too many tacos and fruit salad. I made my weird cherry cream cheese dessert for the “cake.” If I can be so bold, it was both messy and delicious. Dekker and Laela went down for their naps after lunch, while the rest of us visited in the living room for a bit before their family headed home for the day. It was really nice to see them, as we tend to only see everyone over Christmas. While we weren’t ALL together, 75% of the family will do 🙂

Once they left, Brady and I officially buckled. Yup. We ran into the city with Rowan and bought a camera. Our camera. THE camera. Its a Canon PowerShot G7 X, and its beeeaaauuutiful! I’ll hopefully start posting higher quality pictures soon, but for now, we have to learn about it. Once we actually know how to use it and aren’t in completely over our heads with it, we’ll play with it, and hopefully even make more videos. We were so excited to bring it home and play with it, but as it usually works out, the battery had just a tiny bit of charge left on it, and then it needed to be completely charged all the way up. So we don’t actually get to play with it yet. Maybe tomorrow. Except Bradys gone all day and I’m gone in the evening. Maybe Tuesday. Same story. Or Wednesday. Same story. Drat. Someday! Either way, I’m pretty happy we finally have a quality camera in our family. Now is the time to have it, when the kids are tiny and hilarious and begging to be documented.

We got home just a bit past the littles’ bedtime so two out of three are in bed but no one is sleeping yet. Hopefully soon. Then a bath and a snack for Brady and I before reality hits and we’re into another work week. Its a good day 🙂

I have successfully baked with my kids. I swear. But today I was reminded that kids are, in fact, distracting. I was planning to bake a dessert that had a few different layers. I made the first part but, instead of separating it into two parts like I was supposed to, I lay it all down into the pan. But before I noticed that, I lay down another layer. I realized right then that I hadn’t separated the first layer out, and was pretty bummed out. I was ready to throw it out and start fresh when Brady talked me off my ledge and I figured I could salvage it after all. That is, until I discovered that Brady had misread me the last instruction and we had skipped the most important layer to the dessert. Sigh. So we did in fact give up on that dish and start fresh. I neglected the crew for the next thirty-ish minutes and put it all together in order. Thankfully, the second attempt came out beautifully. We still baked the first one, and if it has any yummy factor, we’ll freeze it and eat it, but if its just gone, I’m pretty over it.

The two older kids went down for their nap as usual, and Rowan, who had slept most of the day already, napped as well. While the house was quiet, we talked about an idea thats been budding for a while. A camera. We really want a camera. We’ve so regularly used our phone camera, but the quality isn’t awesome and there is so little space on our phones. We bought a really nice camera before we got married, and while the pictures still turn out fairly nice, the video quality sucks. It has a couple of vertical lines running down, and the sound quality is no good. We weren’t sure if just the screen and speakers on the camera weren’t great, so we imported a video onto our laptop and it was still just as bad. The static was impossible to ignore. So, just for fun, we decided to venture into the city in the evening and see what we could find. Our ideal camera is way too expensive, so we went out to see if there was anything comparable to it. And of course, we wanted to hold and play with the camera that was completely out of our reach, because it was so nice!

The kids woke up a bit earlier than usual, which confirmed the city trip, and we made it in to Costco a half hour before closing. We stood by those stupid camera, pondering and hoping to ask questions for a solid 15-20 minutes while two employees stood maybe 20 ft away talking. In the end, it was irrelevant because they didn’t have our fancy pants camera and that was sort of where we wanted to start. Oh well. We bought milk and left.Then on to Best Buy. To be honest, I’ve yet to have a good experience at Best Buy, but we just wanted to look anyway. If anyone would have this camera, it would be Best Buy right? Nope. Once again, the service was kind of terrible, and they had nothing. We finally asked someone and he literally just went on their website and told us what the website said, that there was one in stock online. Awesome, thanks guys. So we left without any information, yet again, with our kids who were looking for entertainment and not finding any. We tried Walmart next, because we try Walmart for everything. They had some decent cameras actually, but nothing we hadn’t seen anywhere else. Nothing we really felt like spending time on. Our last ditch effort was London Drugs where we FINALLY got to handle the camera we’d been looking for all evening. We shouldn’t have done it. We just about bought that thing on the spot. And guys, we do NOT need to be spending so much money on a camera on a whim. It would have been incredibly impulsive. Fun, but not smart, likely. We discussed it more on the way home, and have come up with a game plan to work towards that beautiful camera, and meanwhile, buy something nice but much cheaper.

We got home after the kids bedtime, as it tends to happen, but hopefully everyone will be asleep soon. Though Rowans awake for pretty much the first time all day so I’m not sure his timing could be worse. We’ll see what happens. As a side note and a thank you, I want to inform those of you who don’t know that Brady and I finally put up an ad for our house today! We went back and forth on whether or not to use a realtor for quite some time, and we may get there, but we are opting to list privately for maybe a month-ish, and see if we can end up selling locally on our own. I want to thank all of the lovely people on Facebook who have shared our ad on their pages!! It makes our family feel supported and rooted for 🙂 Please keep sharing, if you feel so inclined. We received our second call today, from someone asking for more information. It feels a bit surreal, but I just hope it turns into something! Thanks again, guys!

Time for a bath and some Tims. Roll Up did bad things to us this season. We drink more coffee while Roll Up is on, and now I want coffee waaay more than I used to! Shame on us.