Jan 8, 2012

So we do not forget...

I must write down the story of baby Z's entrance into this world, as I know I will soon forget all the intricate details due to mommy brain and the passing of time. 
The thought of a time when I will have look back on this story and read it to remind myself of its happening is sort of sad, in a way. 

I wish I could remember all the beautiful things that happen to me, the happy things, the sad things, the ugly things I learn from. 
I wish I could remember all the things my children say, the way they look, the way they sound and smell and feel.
I wish I could remember all of the things that my husband does, that I do both wrong and right. 
The things that we promise to do, or promise not to do.

 The things that I beg myself to not forget.

But alas, our humans minds are incapable.
As time moves on, our memories fade.

I remember when I had my second baby, my Little Girl, and I when I came home from the hospital I looked at my son who came first and realized he was all of the sudden bigger. He looked so much older and I knew he would never be little again. He would just keep growing and growing and in doing so he would change until he was no longer a baby. 
He would become a child, a boy, a teenager and too soon, a man. 

I then locked myself in the bathroom and cried. 

That was a really hard time for me. 
Now I look back on that memory with fondness, as it is one that will forever be ingrained in my mind, at least one moment I will never forget. The realization that all things change and nothing stays the same. No matter how hard we all try, we can't keep our babies as babies forever, we can't freeze time and we can't have a perfect recollection of all things. 
So we try to enjoy each and every moment we have, striving to memorizing them as time quickly fleets by until all we have are the bit and pieces of our lives that we strain to remember. 

Unless of course, we write down our stories. 
We write our stories to give us vivid, detailed recollections of all the times we have spent. 
To prove to ourselves that we were here, that it happened! 
We cried, we laughed, we loved, 
we lived.
We write them so we do not forget. 
************************

Tomorrow comes the birth story of my fourth child, my second son, my last baby.
So I do not forget.




Jan 6, 2012

Mother of four

Here I am. I'm still alive! Things have been crazy and super hectic the last few weeks. But what else did I expect?  A new baby can do that to you.

Speaking of baby, here are some pics! 




These technically are old..they were taking at 1 week. Z is 6 weeks already! I can't believe it. But he is still just as cute! (and a whole lot fatter...hee hee)

Becoming a mother of four sure has been a different experience than I thought it would be. 

Its not as hard as I thought: 
My two oldest are in school during the day, so that helps a lot when its just me, Z and baby girl at home. I can still catch a few winks during the day while Z naps and baby girl watches a movie. Also, since they two oldest are...well....older, they help me out a ton and I rely on them a lot. They LOVE, LOVE, LOVE their new baby brother and are constantly asking to hold him, so that gives me at least a few minutes to pick up something off the floor and put it away. ha ha!
He is such a good baby and hardly ever cries. He sleeps really good through the night and if I could just get myself to bed earlier, that would be a benefit to me!
I think he is going to be like his older bro and be a mellow yellow kind of a guy, which I gladly accept. 

Its waaaaay harder than I thought: 
I know, how can it be both? But it is. 
I think I was really spoiled in the fact that before I had Z, baby girl was 3 and VERY independent and my other two as well. I could do anything I wanted, leave when I wanted. The Man could stay home with the kids and I could go out with friends without anything needing my boobs two hours later. I could sit down at night and craft away, or blog, or whatever else with two hands instead of one...or none. I don't think I realized how much I enjoyed that freedom and independence. Its been a huge adjustment, one that has come with many tears and lots of anxiety. In fact, I just went out yesterday by myself with all FOUR of my babies to get some errands done. I tried soooo hard to be nice, and they tried soooo hard to be good. I still wanted to rip my hair out by the time we were done. It probably didn't help that I kept getting comments from total strangers on how many kids I had. "are they ALL yours!?" " you need to get your tv fixed!" (because we can't find anything better to do than make babies, obvi!) " Your sure do look like you've got your hands full!"   Yes, I do. Thank you and shut up.
(though, the tv comment was kind of funny when I really thought about it later!) :) 
I know in this time, having more than one or two is considered out of the norm, but I wouldn't change the decision we made to bring all of our babies into this world for anything. I have a very strong believe in the importance of families. 

Although its been easy and hard all at once, we are loving every single minute. I can't even really imagine my life now without little Z. He has brought so much joy and reminded me of why I love having babies. :)

Here are his stats from birth until now (birth story to follow this post...hopefully):
Birth: 
weight- 7lbs 1oz
Length: 19.25 inches

10 days:
weight-7lbs 8oz
length- 19.25 inches

1 month:
weight- 10lbs 11 oz
length- 20.25 inches



He is a chubby muffin! 






Nov 19, 2011

quiet

wow, I never realize how fast time goes by until I check this blog and discover I haven't posted in forever. Its doesn't feel like its been almost a month! Im so sorry. I think things have been quiet on here because my real life has been so crazy. We have been desperately trying to get things in order for this baby to get here. I feel so flustered and out of sorts, like Im forgetting everything I need and keep feeling like I don't know what I'm doing. Which is crazy, since I have done this three times before! :)  

This little guy will be here on Monday (did I mention we are inducing a week early due to The Man's school schedule!? I know...sue me) and I am feeling extremely nervous. I hope everything goes well and there are no complications. That would just be way too much for this busy mamma to handle. 

We have had a lot of fun things happen the past month, school functions, family outings etc. that need to be blogged about but seem to be getting pushed further down the to do list. School for me has piled up and stressed me out beyond my max. I really just want to be done. I don't feel like I can handle it all anymore. But, thats not an option right now..so I trudge through it.  The upside is that The Man is home for thanksgiving break and we get to see him lots and lots (almost too much maybe...ha ha) and thats always a happy thing.

So, for now I leave with great intentions of coming back soon. Hopefully with some cute newborn baby boy pictures and a great birth story to tell. 

The Boy


Little Girl


Baby Girl


Oct 31, 2011

Pumpkins and heat don't mix!

My last post was too long anyway, so I guess its good that I totally forgot to post about our pumpkin carving debacle! ha ha.  
I'll just post it now. 

The Man has been super busy studying for school, so usually its just me and the kids when we go to do anything. 

Pumpkin carving this year was no different. 

I was slightly stressing about it, since I knew I would be the one doing most of the gutting and carving. However, while the kids and I were looking for a pumpkin carving kit at walmart, we stumbled across a pumpkin gutting tool. I grabbed it up, hoping it would work as well as it was supposed to. Its basically a thick metal wisk looking thing that you stick into your drill and it digs out the guts for you and thins down the sides down for easier carving. 

Now I am not very familiar with power tools....
at all. 

I normally just use a screw driver and thats usually only to replace the batteries in something. 
So when we got this bad boy home and I went to put it into The Mans power drill...
I was totally lost. 

I had no idea how to get the current drill bit out and put this huge metal bit in! 
It was hilarious, all the kids surrounding me with their input on how not to kill myself. 
I eventually looked it up on google. ha ha! 

Once we got it put together, we all sat around the table anxiously waiting to see what would happen. I cut off the top of one of our pumpkins, stuck the huge metal tool in there and pushed the go button. 
It worked like a charm! Spinning and gutting and thinning..it was so awesome and took half the time it would have (if not more!) than if we had just used spoons! 
We just dumped it all out of the pumpkin straight into the trash.
Beautiful!

(Oh yeah, thats sexy...)



We got all of the guts out and each child picked their pattern. The Boy pretty much carved his own..which was a huge help to me, and I carved the other two for the girls. 
We were so excited to stick them out on the porch with our cool black candles we had purchased for inside.










The next morning I went outside to get the paper and noticed something horrible... 
our pumpkins had totally dried up and shriveled! 
They were ruined! 
I couldn't believe it.
 Of course, the temp here was still a scorching 100 degrees, so it makes sense. 
I didn't even think about that! 
In Idaho its cold in October and keeps them refrigerated. ha ha. 
The kids were pretty bummed, but we had fun anyway. 
A good lesson learned for next year. Carve your pumpkins the day of halloween! 

halloween festivities-2011 style

We have had bunch of activities to go to this year. Its amazing actually, since normally halloween for our family is pretty low key. We usually just go to the trunk-or-treat at our church and call it good. 

I don't even decorate. 
I know, lame. 

I don't know why. 
Maybe I'm just not all that into scary stuff accumulating around my house. Plus, I discovered that baby girl is almost deathly afraid of all things halloween related. I took her into one of those Spirit costume stores and there was a display of a loudly moaning fake man who was half eaten by a huge rubber rat. It was pretty gross, and it freaked baby girl out...ever since then, she can't even look at a ghost without wanting to run away!

So any who, our first outing for halloween was the Boo Bash put on by the dental school. I kind of dreaded going, as it takes about 45 minutes to drive into where it was and I knew there would be some questionable costume choices and drinking. However, they had a bunch of stuff for the kids to do, lots of candy and we even got to dance. It was a pretty fun night and I was actually impressed with a lot of the clever costume ideas that people came up with. 

here are a few pics of us...can you guess what we are? :)



(wheres Waldo!? ha ha)


The kids loved the big bounce house and all the candy and pop floating around. (of course)

bowling... (my kids are the witch, the storm trooper and a bat ballerina!)  :)





The loot


Baternina



The boy took most of our pictures for us. He loves our little digital camera. I talked him into going around and taking pics of his favorite costumes, this is what he came up with:




He loved this one! She is the house from Up and you can barely see Mr. Fredricksen on the left. The Boy said he just wanted a picture of her. :)








We had a great time, but I sure was tired when we got home!

The next night we had our trunk or treat. I didn't get any pics of us there. :( but here are the pics I took of the kids in their costumes before hand. Some of their faces are so hilarious. And The boy totally takes the whole storm trooper thing so seriously. 















We had fun, but right as soon as we got home and put the kids to bed...I got slapped by the worst cold/flu I have ever experienced! 
ugh, I feel like a bus ran me over. 
Plus, The Man, the boy and baby girl all have colds as well. 
So we are pretty miserable to say the least. 
We are hoping to have somewhat recovered by tonight to go trick or treating around the neighborhood, something we haven't been able to do for a really long time. 
Though, I think Im more excited about it that the kids are!