Brady and I experienced something for the first time today, and it was SO STRANGE! We spent the majority of the day home, together, without the kids.😯 That never happens. But it was a nice day for it to happen, and for Brady and I to be able to just be together for the day.

I was very discouraged upon waking up. The three older kids are all sick. 😞 It is SUCH a bummer. They’re all fevered, tired, and no one is hungry. I just can’t even believe this is all back so soon. But I thank my gracious parents for being willing to take them in for the day, regardless of their level of health.

We’ve had a nice, relaxed, unproductive day. Hopefully tomorrow will be slightly more productive, but will definitely still be an at home cozy day.

Once again, supper is making its way from someone else’s home to ours, which is a complete blessing. Our loved ones are just showering us with concert and support, and we continue to be humbled by it all.

Brady just headed out to go retrieve the kids from my parents house, so we can spend the evening with them. It feels a tad eerie being home all alone. This NEVER happens. Sure, sometimes I’m home and its this quiet, but only if the kids are still asleep. I literally don’t ever remember being in this house when its been empty.

Through all of these struggles and difficult times, I can honestly say I am thrilled with our choice to move to our town, with our friends and family close by, and into this house. Its all just bang on. We couldn’t feel more at home here.

Thank you to everyone who has been playing a role in our lives in the recent past. You are not forgotten. You are greatly appreciated. I know I’ve said it a lot, but it’ll never be said enough.

My mom and Willa came by this morning so I could duck away kid-free for a couple of hours, which was once again very helpful and appreciated. When I returned home, the kids were up and fed, dishes were done, and moods were happy. It was refreshing.

I will add that Dekker is sick, once again :/ I’m pretty disappointed with that. He’s in good shape but his bowels are angry and he’s pretty warm to the touch. But his spirits are up, which I can be very thankful for. There is definitely some good stirred in there with the bad.

Willa stayed for only a short while after I came back home, (you could’ve stayed all day 😉) but my mom stayed into the afternoon. It was so nice to have her around, to visit with, and to play with the kids, and to just be in my house. I’ve appreciated every single sacrifice that has been made on our behalf. These times will not be forgotten.

My mom had to duck out to prepare for her evening plans, but Brady was lucky to have a shorter work day, and is on his way home. He’ll run an errand or two on his way home, but then we are home together for the weekend! It should be a pretty big weekend, so please continue to hold us up in prayer.

When Dekker began fevering again on Tuesday night, I just wept. I was SO frustrated. I can’t imagine yet another round of sickness entering our household at a time like this. But I was so relieved when Dekker woke up this morning, feeling upbeat and cool to the touch. He said he was feeling great, and ready for school. Woot!!

In our current big picture, this is a pretty small concern, but I am SO THANKFUL to have him back in good health, at the very least for today,

On top of Dekker being able to go to school today, my Jerilee came over for the morning. She just flew home VERY early this morning, slept a few hours, and made her way to my house, bearing coffee and pastry, before heading to work for the afternoon. I cannot say enough just how cared for and loved I feel these days. Our fridge is overflowing with amazing leftovers that will likely last us a good few days, and at this rate, I’ll never have to bake again. Ever.

I kept such a specific list after Solly was born, and through all of our moves last year, of all of the people I NEEDED to remember to thank specifically. I feel like I should be keeping a new list now, with people going out of their way constantly to help us. This morning, Jerilee gave up her small chance to sleep in to be with me, and tomorrow, people are waking up early and cancelling plans and making sacrifices for me again. I don’t want to be a proud person, and I HAPPILY accept all of the love and help that we are being showered in, but I assure you all, I don’t always hope to be in such need. But it would appear this is just the season for us. A really, really hard season. Or chapter. And stage of life. Whatever you want to call it. I’m going to stop holding my breath, LIVING for a reprieve. It will come when the time is right. Thank you to everyone who consistently loves on us. Thank you for not moving on and getting bored. Thank you for following what God is asking of you, and loving your neighbours. We are truly humbled and grateful.

I am so happy Brady had today off. It conveniently happened in his work schedule, and it was much needed. My mom and Willa offered to watch our kids for a couple of hours over lunch so we could head out and do a couple of things together, kid-free. It was nice to be able to hold hands when we walked. Simple things that change once you have kids 😉 I love holding their hands, but I really love holding hands with my husband.

We came back home and spent some time at my parents house, visiting with mom and Willa and making some plans for the rest of the week. It was nice and quiet, and good to be among friends and family. We headed home a while later because Rowan was more than ready for a nap.

Once we were home and the little boys were down, I was informed by a loving friend that, once again, supper is being taken care of for us tonight. I’m consistently humbled by the love that our friends and family bestow on us. I feel like our family is just constantly in crisis mode, and that can get BORING, for us and those around us, I have no doubt. But we have an epic support system that never falters. God is so very good.

On top of everything, Dekker started to fever last night. I could just cry. We’ve had a solid week and a half of no sickness, and its already back. I’m so overwhelmed with our life right now. Please pray that Dekker’s fever does its job and fights off whatever is on the horizon for him FAST. Fast enough that we never even see it.

I lost quite a bit of sleep last night. Luckily, I was asleep by 9:00pm so even with all of the wakefulness in the middle, I still got some good hours. After I dropped Dekker off at school, my mom hung around and visited with me until shortly after 10:00, which was lovely and much needed. Not long after she left, Brady informed me that his day was done, and he was on his way home.

As I mentioned a while back, our phones were part of a recall, and our appointment to have them looked at was this afternoon, so we took the kids into the city, and I sat in the van with them while Brady brought our phones to our favorite Apple dealer in the city. Both of our phones did in fact qualify for the program, so now they’ll order us new batteries and we’ll have them installed as early as mid next week. Though our next week is already looking fairly full and I’m not sure we’ll get there. We’ll see. Once we were done at the phone appointment, we grabbed some late lunch for the kids and drove home.

Not twenty minutes after arriving home, I drove to Dekker’s school to pick him up. The warm weather is such a nice change from yesterday, and Dekker was really happy to have been able to play outside for recess finally.

Now, everyone is home, and I’m taking a load off upstairs. In going through my pictures, I have a couple of hilarious ones of Solly to share with you 🙂

These just crack me right up! Solly’s latest face is anything with his tongue hanging out of his mouth. Its endearing and funny and spitty and he’s just always soaked, but SO very sweet.

Also this!

He’s been trying to crawl for a while now! He hasn’t been entirely successful yet, but he’s not giving up. Brady told me he actually saw Solly get his chest up once too! So its coming! Which is brutally uncool, dude. You’re too little. Just be a baby, already!

Trying to see some positives today, and sure enough, they are taking shape. Brady has tomorrow off, which is a big positive all on its own! Very thankful for my husband.

Today started as a bit of an off day with the kids, but it managed to pick up a bit in the late morning. However, the afternoon turned very heavy, and it has become an incredibly difficult day. I’m not going to get into it. Maybe down the road. I feel like I usually end up posting just about everything on here eventually. But not today. Today was filled with lots of tears and sadness and emotion. I’m so thankful to have the support of my friends and family around me. I have needed that more in the last few months than ever before, and there has never been a shortage.

So thank you for the love, those of you who have been in touch. Feel free to pray, anyone who feels so led. Prayer will go a long way right now, so even if you just throw a quick prayer up right now, and forget from here on out, it would still really help.

I’ll try to do better on this whole blogging thing tomorrow, I promise!

And the year before that, and the year before that…..

Facebook memories brought up a few super cute things today that I couldn’t resist sharing with you guys. I know you’re fully capable of looking back over the years if you so desired, and I’m not trying to cheat and just to a recap post of previous posts. BUT! The kids have changed SO much! And, my goodness, each picture brings back sweet memories for me!

I’m only going to talk about three pictures today, but that’ll take us back three years ago. We’ll start there.

Three years ago I posted this picture.

This was back in the patching stage of the game for Dekker. I’m sure you’ve seen this picture before. More than once, likely. That was a really really hard time for me. For us. Every morning, I pinned that kid down and covered up his good eye. Already being a cautious kid, he turned fearful. He had to wear that stinking thing every waking moment of his day for two whole months. It rocked his world. After his follow up eye appointment, our ophthalmologist said it had made zero improvement, so we were to keep doing it but considerable less aggressively. It went down to one (or two, I can’t remember) hours per day. It was still hard in the morning, but it got WAY easier once he knew it was temporary. I look at him in these pictures, and he was about Rowan’s current age when this all began. It reminds me of how confusing it was for him at the time, and how he couldn’t comprehend it being “good for him,” and how mean I felt. I can now look back at this picture with SO much affection and nostalgia. Not for the time, and not for the difficulty, but for my tough little guy and how he handled such a hard thing like a champ. He would cry and cry and struggle and cry some more, but once that thing was on, it was on, and he left it alone. Many months after the patching stage was over, he found a leftover patch in his room, and told me he remembered wearing them. I asked him what he remembered, and he said “They were ok.” And that was that. My heart is warm. And this will forever be my absolute favorite picture of Dekker with his eye patched. FOREVER. (insert “Sandlot” character here)

Two years ago, I took this picture.

This picture reminds me of a lot of things. Laela is just over one year of age here. She’d been walking for only a couple of months. She wasn’t saying much either, yet she was definitely our earliest talker so far, with very clear “yes” and “no,” and the other basic ones. Here, she is wearing the boots that Solly wears often now. Do you see my sad attempt at a ponytail? She had so little hair at one year, it drove me bonkers. How I wanted to put her hair into something cutesy!! But when I did, this was the best we got, and then the car seat took care of the rest of it. She was SO tiny! Look at her height compared to the cereal box she’s standing beside! Compared to the countertop that she could smoke her head on (and did) at any given moment! She was my one baby who started really big and then almost right away decided to be petite instead. She had great style tho. Still got it!

One year ago, I took this picture. (This is sure a Dekker and Laela post, hey?)

So I’m lying a little bit. This was a video. But I had it on Instagram (and shared onto Facebook) and I couldn’t figure out how to take it from there and put it on here. I didn’t care enough to dig back onto an old hard drive for it, so this picture counts. Both of these kids look SO YOUNG!!! In this picture, we were at our first rental in the whole mess of moving four times last year. House #1. We basically lived on this loveseat. I don’t know why. But I would stretch out across it, and both kids would come running. Dekker would stick his butt between my body and the backrest, and dangle his legs over me, and Laela would sit underneath my legs. It was comfy. Rowan would either be napping, or hanging out in the jumper nearby. He was still quite little when we lived there. In this video, Dekker was helping Laela learn to count to ten. This is a screenshot of their faces when they reached ten, and both looked at me super proud of themselves. Now, Laela is teaching Rowan to count to ten. She’s doing pretty great, actually, and he’s basically got up to five! But in this picture, I see their younger selves, and their positivity. Look at their soft little faces, that have changed so much. Look at Laela’s hair! Its so much longer now! I feel like they just are SO different here, and it was only one year ago. But we’ve done a lot since that picture was taken, and we’ve all aged a good solid year, haha!

Of course I realize, now that the kids are all in bed, that I really should have taken a picture to wrap up this post, aaaaand I didn’t. If I wasn’t a daily blogger, I’d definitely just save this draft and finish it off tomorrow so it would be all put together, but you’re not so lucky, and neither am I. So this is what you get! Just a small handful of memories I would like to reminisce about with you folks. I hope you enjoyed the look back with me!

Solly was up every two hours last night. It was pretty exhausting for Brady and I. However, he did drink milk like a maniac, which was awesome. On top of being sick and losing quite a bit of weight recently, he’s also dealing with some pretty wicked constipation these days. Drinking lots and lots should only help with both of those things. Factor in the likelihood of a growth spurt, a bout of teething, and whatever else, the kids allowed to have an off night.

Needless to say, we were pretty tired this morning, but upon getting the kids up the day, they were in great shape! We decided to embrace that and head into Saskatoon and do some running around. After looking at our lists, all we really could do today was Costco. Even that, the kids were excited about. They love grocery shopping, I don’t know what to tell you. They just love it. So we got everyone dressed, and I even got myself put together before we headed out.

Costco didn’t take too terribly long, but we took our time. It was Costco on a Saturday, so one can only move so quickly. Solly sat up with Rowan in the cart, which was good until about five minutes before we were leaving, when he decided he’d had enough. Someone thought Laela’s name was Tequila! But otherwise it was quite seamless.

I think the whole gang, myself included, was kind of bummed that we only had one place to go to, but we just did the other places two days ago. There just was no reason to wander further into the city. Also, Brady and I had a quick talk and decided that, just because the kids were doing well didn’t mean we needed to push our luck. So we went home and put the little boys to bed. Rested is always better than overtired. Always.

Now that everyone is tucked away, the two older kids are playing Lego, groceries are put away, and Brady and I had lunch, we have a quiet house. Brady is currently sleeping on the couch beside me, and I’m curled up on the recliner, blogging (obviously) and resting my brain. This feels like such a nice Saturday. No, we’re not out and about and busy in the beautiful weather, or being super productive. But we’re home and relaxed, and no one is doubled over in sickness. Its a really really nice way to spend a weekend!!

I hope the rest of you are enjoying your Saturday as well 🙂

I’m not going to lie. Creative juices are just not flowing today. Luckily, productivity is. I got lots done this morning and am now taking time to sit. But as I sit here, I have nothing to write about! So instead, I’ll just leave you with pictures of the kids from yesterday’s grocery shop.

Needless to say, it was a very cute grocery shop. Though we’re approaching a new stage. Solly was really wiggly in the ergo. Also, he sucks on it like mad, which is SO gross! But he would have rather been free, for sure. Just sit the kid in the cart, right? I know. The belts are tight enough that he’s done ok in there before. But Superstore carts only have one spot to sit in. Rowan is capable of walking around in public places, but not for the length of a full grocery shop, not at any reasonable to quick pace, and he would be MUCH more likely to just wander aimlessly. He’s just too young, in my opinion. Sooooo I’m at a bit of a loss. I guess I could wear Solly on my back. He’d probably like being able to see out a bit better. Or I could haul him along in the  umbrella stroller. I’m just always trying to make it work in a way that I can easily bring them all out myself, and we’re right in that tricky stage of the game. Should be interesting! But even if its interesting, its still fun 🙂 I love grocery shopping with these kids! Truly! They’re so good, and helpful, and I’m just so smitten with them.

Love you guys!!

A few days ago, I wrote on Facebook that Rowan wasn’t eating at all. He wasn’t wanting anything, and would just scream and tantrum when I’d offer him food. VERY off his game, being that he is historically a very very good eater. After being sick for so long, I was not liking that he was suddenly boycotting food. My formerly chunky little man has thinned out quite a bit.

I’ve been checking him over, top to bottom, trying to locate pain spots or sickness or something to explain whats upsetting him so badly, to no avail. But many of you said he would overcome it and to just keep pushing fluids. You were all right. I did that and within a day or two, he was back to eating a bit more. It was a relief, for sure.

Since this has sort of been the case with him the last couple of months, I start very small with meals. Lunch is always more of a snack around here, but especially with Rowan now, I’ve been offering him tiny amounts of things I know he likes, and just working to get anything into him. Today, I started small, and it burned me, hahaha! Because today, finally!!, he was HUNGRY!

I started feeding him a bit earlier than usual, because I wanted him to get a good long nap in before we have to leave for Dr. Mike this afternoon. But he ate solidly for over a half hour! I gave him a small handful of ritz bits, which are a new things around here and are VERY popular with the kids. He wailed at first, and then tasted one and asked for more. He ate the entire bag of them. (to clarify, it was like a single serving bag, not like the bag in the box of crackers.) Then he ate a banana. Then a granola bar. Then a fruit source bar. “More please! More please!” It just kept going!” I kept finding little things to offer him, but had I known he was going to be this hungry, I would have given the kid a sandwich and an apple to begin with! But at this point, he wouldn’t have eaten that much after already eating so much. I found him a few more things but finally offered him a nap, which he squealed “YA!” to, and down he went.

So what changed. A tooth. I have been checking his gums every few days for the last several weeks and I’ve never felt/seen a bump even! But not, we have a two year molar poking through!! And those suckers take a while to surface all the way. I’m truly really relieved to have found it, though. To know for sure why he’s struggling, and that there are ways I can actually help! I didn’t want him to just be in a stage of fighting with me about his high chair, or getting picky with his food, but now that I know he’s been in pain, and not just testing our new behaviours, we can keep on moving 🙂

YAY, ROWAN, FOR POPPING A TOOTH!!!! Congrats on almost being two! I can’t believe thats actually coming up, my goodness…