The last week or two have been so busy with Bradys work, and with other things going on in our life, and the week ahead is the same story. I’m feeling some anxiety about it today, to be honest. Brady and I have talked frankly about it, and we’re basically just coming to terms with the fact that we might not see each other too much. While I love my husband, and he will always be my partner in life and the one I choose, I really really like him, also, and I like spending time with him. The idea that I’ll barely see him this week makes me sad. I don’t like feeling sad.

I’m hoping the crazy busy schedule will peter out after this week. Don’t get me wrong. I am THRILLED that Brady still has so much work. We certainly feel blessed and are SO grateful that the builder Brady works for is still moving full force. It is truly miraculous. But I miss my husband.

There are a few extra things up this week that are bigger than our usual stuff, and there is more pressure resting on them. Prayers are appreciated!

So this is our ONE restful day in these three weeks, and we’re spending it quietly, at home, putting up some Christmas lights 🙂 I know, I know. “But its before Remembrance Day!!!” I know. But I need some “happy,” and this is how we’re getting it.

Chicken wraps for supper! Everything has been chopped and ready since noon. Yay!

Brady is working today. He doesn’t often work Saturdays, but when he does, it just feels like a super duper long week. I felt like we need to do something that was less weekdayish, so we ducked out for round two of shopping. We got most everything done yesterday, but there were a few things that we needed from Walmart, so I took the four kidlets out for a quick shop this morning.

For all of you beautiful, complimentary people who commented on my picture yesterday, be assured it was tough getting out the door this morning! I often love the process of getting everyone out the door, because I love dressing them in their cute little clothes, and watching them struggle (lol!) with their shoes and jackets. But today, Solly wailed through it. I can handle a crying baby, no sweat, but add to that Dekker and Rowan running laps around us (literally) and Laela “not waaaaaanting” the clothes I picked for her, I felt in very far over my head. But we did make it out, albeit choppier than usual. As soon as we started driving, everyone was happy.

We had a short list for Walmart but it included pumpkins. We’ve never does jack o lanterns before, but we’re going to this year!! Have you ever tried to pull those big pumpkins out of the bottom of the bin while wear a baby?! It is HARD. I highly suggest that, if you see someone in this position, offer to help them out! Hahaha! We got it done, but not without my shirt getting covered in pumpkin goo and making my baby cry. But we all recovered quickly and began the rest of our shop.

It was a pretty seamless shopping trip. We snagged a couple of the things we couldn’t find at Superstore yesterday, some pumpkin carving tools, work socks for Brady, etc etc etc. The kids got lots of looks and greetings, and Rowan specifically is SO charming when people talk to him. He puts his chin down a little, looks at them through his hair, and smiles HUGE. Its super duper adorable.

I’ll admit that I felt pretty wiped out after Walmart, even though it was just one place, so I drove further into the city to the single drive-thru Starbucks so I didn’t have to get out of my van, hahaha! I got my enormous drink, because “go big and go home.” Thats how the saying goes, right?? 😉

We made it home, and I put Rowan down for a nap right away. He was so ready. Then I fed Solly and put him down. The kids requested a popcorn picnic, out of nowhere, so its a “popcorn and granola bars for lunch” kind of afternoon. Mom win or fail? I’m going with win, lol!

This evening, we’re going to my parents for supper to celebrate Bradys birthday. Its a little late, but we were in Winnipeg for his actual birthday, and we haven’t had a celebration here yet. Should be a really good evening to wrap up a nice day 🙂

 

** Unrelated to everything, you may or may not have seen on Facebook, but I’m on the hunt for your old, broken, throw away crayons! If you have a crayon graveyard you’d be willing to let me sift through and steal from, please get in touch!!

Solly finally found his way from his back to his tummy today! And he was SO impressed with himself! Probably because my mom and I were super enthusiastic about it…

He is SO CUTE! XD

He’s been working at it for a while now, but as anyone who has ever watched a baby try to roll over knows, he kept getting hung up on his arms. Well today he finally did it!

Solly is about 4.5 months, and while I know lots and lots of babies roll earlier, ours never do. They’re always 5+ months by the time they find their way onto their tummies. Especially in Sollys case, our kids always bring him toys, including the one that hangs over him, so he never has a real need to go anywhere. But this excites me 🙂 Don’t bother with the “Now you’re in for it” comments, I’m more than familiar with what comes next. I personally LOVE the stage when they start moving! My single roadblock with that this time around is that our front stairs don’t really accommodate a baby gate, so we’ll have to figure something out in the next couple of months. But I’m not worried. I love milestones! Great work, Solly man!

 

*** As an aside, I really want to thank everyone that was excited with me about receiving the first round of books in the mail. I really wish you could actually hold them in your hands and feel the excitement too. They just feel so real, and so good! Eek!! Thanks for the support <3

I have been saving posts for quite some time now, and putting them into a book format on a site that is centred around printing books at a reasonable price for people who want to be authors and sell their works. I don’t specifically have that desire, but I do love an affordable option that I can make work for myself. I ordered the first four books back in September and have been waiting on pins and needles for their arrival.

And then they didn’t come! Customer service had reassured me halfway through when I learned my order couldn’t be tracked that they would arrived on or before October 13th. On October 18th, I finally emailed customer service. Within the hour, they had refunded our shipping costs, which was a lovely and welcomed surprise. The customer service representative wrote me an email and said to notify him if I haven’t received my books by November 1st. While I wasn’t thrilled about waiting another two weeks, I had read in the FAQs that, if the books just never showed up and got lost in the mail, they’d be reprinted free of charge. So I took a breath and decided I was fine to wait.

AND THEY CAME THE NEXT DAY!

I am TOTALLY smitten with these books! I don’t want to be super self involved or anything, but it feels incredible to have them in my hands 🙂 I know I don’t have “I wrote a book, or four” status, but years of work and memories went into these books, and now, having them tangible and in front of me, its all worth it. The quality isn’t half bad either!

This has definitely added to my motivation to keep saving posts. Not that I had stopped! I have another book completed and ready, and I’m partway through another. I’ve just been taking my sweet time. While taking my time is completely within my rights, I pretty much blitzed through these ones that I now have, and I’m very eager for the rest!

So YAY!!!!! You guys should seriously come see these. They’re just incredible. And they’re HUGE. The box of four weighed over 11 lbs!! Thank goodness we didn’t have to pay shipping, hahaha! Win!

It has been SO nice to have such large laundry machines in our new house! Our past set was fine, but this is WAY better. Obviously, we can fit more into each load, and with six people in one house, we go through a LOT of laundry. Today, I will give you my laundry list (see what I did there?) of first world problems pertaining to having humungous laundry machines.

To offer some perspective, I’ll tell you about a specific load I did today. I washed all of the kids clothes today, and it was a good full load. It included 26 shirts, 10 sweaters/hoodies, 15 pairs of pants, 29 pairs of jammies, 22 pairs of socks (and two that don’t match) and 8 pairs of underwear. That all fit in one load! Pretty impressive, am I right?

The washer takes forever! I probably put two heaping hampers worth of clothing into the machine, so I can’t really blame it, but it washes for over an hour. The dryer takes EVEN LONGER! Like a SOLID hour and half, often more. I think the dryer bugs me more than the washer does. Firstly, the digital timer thing will tell me there are ten minutes left to dry, and when I go to check it ten minutes later, it say there are thirty minutes left. It can’t make up its mind! I think part of that is that, with so much clothing, the lint trap fills up halfway through the dryer cycle, and it doesn’t dry as efficiently. Another pet peeve is that, my two hampers of laundry are all fluffed to perfection, and I cannot come even remotely close to fitting them back into those two hampers. This is a VERY small problem, but it annoys me, nonetheless. You know when you overfill the dryer and even when something is dry and freshly removed from the dryer, its still wrinkled? Ya, thats all of my kids pants. For some reason, they’re back for that. Sigh.

I know, I know. “Hailey, do smaller loads.” I think I shall.

So I’ve decided! I’m going to break up the kids laundry by rooms. A load for Rowan and Dekker, and a load for Laela and Solly. That should eliminate some annoyances. Don’t lump is all together just because I can.

What better way to celebrate getting home safe than getting up to date on vaccines??

Solomon had his four month shots this morning, and then a regular check up to follow. I was anticipating the appointments for a few reasons. I love knowing his stats. I love not being super far behind on vaccinations. (We are still catching Rowan up) And I love the reassurance that he’s doing great. I also wanted to talk to Dr. Guselle about the appointment I had a couple months back, where I came in for reflux medication and came out feeling foolish and minimized. I obviously was not looking forward to the pain that comes from needles, but the rest, I was chomping at the bit for.

Solly is still a big little boy! He weighs 18 lbs 2 oz, in the 85%. He is 2′ 2.5″ tall, right on the 97%, and I didn’t catch his actual head circumference, but it was off the charts. I’m not surprised by any of that, honestly. He is doing all of the things he’s supposed to be doing – smiling, babbling, reaching and batting, grabbing, etc. He doesn’t roll yet but he sure tries! Plus, I haven’t really been thinking about it, and he lays on the floor and plays with hanging toys a lot, so he has no need to roll! Now that I’ve figured that out, he’ll be rolling in no time, I’m sure. He took his shots well. Cried, and was comforted nice and quickly. Laela and Rowan were very well behaved the whole time, and each got to pick a new toothbrush.

There was a longer time between shots and his appointment with his doctor than we expected, so Brady took Laela and Rowan out to the van, and I waited with Solly. He was getting a bit loud, so I walked him around a bit and he cashed out. I lay him down in his seat and we waited quietly together.

We got called in eventually, and they opted to weigh and measure him again. Cue my eye roll. I had all of the numbers in my head, but she didn’t want to convert pounds to kilos, so I had to undress Solly, wake him up, and lay him on a hard scale, which he did NOT appreciate. It was too bad. But the nurse was quite smitten with him, and he was nice and smiley back to her, so he perked up. Once everything had been done, he just lay out on the bed in the exam room and kicked and played while we waited for Dr. Guselle.

It was refreshing to see her on her own today. Solly stood on my lap and flapped and drooled while we visited. She commented on how much he looks like Dekker, which I LOVED. I know she sees a lot of people, but when it already would have been nice to hear that he looks like the crew, she knows that he looks MUCH more like Dekker did at this age! Really, really nice.

She asked lots of questions, and checked him all out. He didn’t fuss or fight with any of it. He even smiled when she had to check his throat, which almost never ever happens, but is so much better than using a tongue depressor and having him end up gagging.

When his reflux came up in conversation, she seemed really disappointed to hear that the appointment had gone so badly. She looked up who I had spoken to and was really surprised. But when I told her all that had been said, she said “You must have felt belittled, and discounted,” which are both words I used to describe it all when it had happened! She clearly understood how I felt, and said she would speak to the resident about it, and just remind her that the way she speaks can really send the wrong message. All is smoothed over, and I’m glad I got to speak to her about it. No weird feelings. After all, Solly is on the medication I knew he needed, and he is more than thriving.

Now, we’re all home. Well, except Brady at work and Dekker at school. Solly and Rowan are napping, and Laela is taking some downtime watching tv. And I’m doing this. I ordered my first four blog books a really long time ago and they are still not here 🙁 So I’m doing some research and trying to figure out some tracking info that is eluding me. Wish me luck!

I don’t know about you guys but we always end up getting home later than we originally planned. But today, somehow, we made it home in great time!! We got a really early start, for us anyway, and just clipped along. We stopped only for short spans of time, only as absolutely needed, and since our kids travel surprisingly well, the stops were few and far between!

I was nervous about the weather. It was beautiful in Winnipeg, and we had left a town filled with snow and ice and wind behind. We knew we were coming back to it. But surprise, surprise! Most of the snow seems to have melted off! The temperature was above zero, and the roads were clear. Praise the Lord for the weather clearing up in time for our arrival. I know winter is still upon us, but this was a nice, gentle “Welcome home, Born family!”

Thanks to our quick drive home, we were able to feed the kids some leftovers and keep the evening relaxed. And thanks to daylight savings, our children are an hour more tired, so we were able to put them down a little bit earlier! This is actually a life saver, because we have a bit of a fuller day tomorrow. Dekker heads to school nice and early, as usual, and then I need to head into the city with the other kids for some appointments for them. Everyone is going to be adequately exhausted, myself included, hahaha!

It is more than time for Brady and I to get a soak in the tub and go to bed early. Goodnight, everyone!

These visits to Winnipeg are always SO lovely, but they are always FAR TOO SHORT! I feel like we need to make our way out here for a week or something along those lines, so we can actually fit in seeing all of the many people we dearly love who live around here. This visit, however, revolved around us catching up with my sister and her husband, and as per usual, it was a lovely time together! They are some of the most loving people we know, and they are fabulous hosts. We are always so comfortable in their home.

We spent today at home, playing and eating and visiting and just being together. In the afternoon, we all came outside and walked around the yard a little bit. It started to rain a little bit, so we decided to go with our earlier plan to make a fire. We hauled branches and grass clippings and some boxes and all kinds of “fuel” to start a good, hot, whistly fire. Dekker worked tirelessly to rake up some more grass or to drag branches over to the fire to help. He was very concerned that animals would come and be hurt by the fire. I love how he thinks of all of that. He’s so very sweet. It didn’t take too terribly long for the wind to get the better of us, though. Caity and Stef are tougher than we are, but Brady and I hauled ourselves and our kids inside a bit earlier. Dekker asked for jammies but we couldn’t talk Laela or Rowan isn’t changing into anything warm or dry. Solly just slept in the ergo for a little while until I sat down (of course), when he woke up ready to play.

Everyone was nice and tired after being outside, and we skipped Rowan’s nap, so he was especially tired. But not in a disaster kind of way. Just a snuggly, zoned, tipsy kind of way. He fell down a lot, haha! But he also learned how to say “Chuggington,” which I’d say is an accomplishment, especially on a tired day.

We had mashed potatoes and barbecued chicken for supper, and some sugar cookies for dessert. We let the kids stay up a bit later, and when bedtime came, they were nice and ready for it.

The rest of us played video games for a couple of hours, and ate far too many snacks. It was awesome. And now, we’re tucking in and calling it a day. We drive home tomorrow! Real life begins again on Tuesday, with Brady back at work, Dekker at school, and Solly getting shots and his four month check up. Busy busy!

My sister and I went shopping this afternoon while the boys watched the kids. Thanks, boys! While shopping was a TOTAL blast, and I brought a few nice purchases, I’ll leave the pictures of the boys and kids here 🙂 They went to play outside and made a little fire while Rowan and Solly napped, and then went back out for round two once they woke up.

Have a great night!

Today is Brady’s 28th birthday! I had a super choppy night and felt really sick throughout it, so I’ll be the first to admit that I wasn’t the most fun partier this morning, when we woke up at 6:50am. I think I choked out a “happy birthday” a couple of hours into the day, when I remembered. Luckily, Brady had also forgotten it was his birthday. Oy. Not our best kick off.

However, on another level, it was an exceptional kick off, because we road tripped our way to Winnipeg today! The kids had been requesting to come visit Auntie Caity and Uncle Stefan all summer, but timing jut hadn’t worked out for either of us. We made a plan for this one small break in Brady’s schedule, and we’ve been anticipating it for a while. So this morning, we fed Solly, dressed the big kids, and headed for Winnipeg! We grabbed some Tims breakfast on the way out, turned on the music, and enjoyed the drive.

I can honestly say that the kids did awesome! We haven’t driven to Winnipeg since Rowan was itty bitty, so we weren’t completely sure what to expect. Plus, with Ro right at the stage of wanting badly to communicate, but not having too much language just yet, he screams SO MUCH. As fun as it sounds, being locked in a van with that for nine-ish hours isn’t exactly relaxing. But the littles surprised me by keeping the bickering to a very reasonable minimum, having positive attitudes, taking a short nap all at the same time, and not requesting too many impossible things.

The last hour of the drive, Solly cried. But thats often how the end of our trips play out, Brady reminded me. The kids hit the point of eight or so hours in a vehicle, and then they’re finished. We can’t blame them.

Once we got to Caity and Stefs, the kids dug into their toys instantly and we visited for a little while before putting the finishing touches on supper and having something yummy to eat. We had birthday ice cream cake after the littles went down 😉 The kids then went to bed (but talked forever) and we’re only going to bed ourselves now! Thus begins our weekend away 🙂 I’m so happy we made the trip, and am so anticipating the days to come <3