Ramblings

I took Baby Boy to his 4 mo check up (yes, he is almost 5 months old...whatever).  He is 19 lbs, 25 inches.  Huge baby!  :)  I love his little rolls though.  All our babies (Cowboy included) got so super chubby and I could just eat them up!  He is doing really great though.  He is sitting up, rolling over, and heaven help us - he is scooting forward with his feet.  Thankfully his arms haven't caught on yet, or he'd take off like a shot!

I took the other 3 into the ENT today.  We were referred by the dentist because he refuses to work on a cavity on Brother Bear until he got a go-ahead from an ENT for his huge tonsils.  So we figured we may as well get all 3 kids looked at while we were there.  *sigh*  And the verdict?  Princess is getting out her HUGE tonsils, possibly adenoids, and a tube put into her ear (to drain fluid that has been there for years and is now the consistency of rubber cement).  Cowboy's adenoids are massive and need to come out and while they are in there they are going to take out his tonsils as well.  Brother Bear is also having adenoids and tonsils out.  I figured we may as well get the misery over with all together so I scheduled them all for the same day.  Lucky for me, my mom is flying out to UT with my grandma on the 11th, so instead of flying back home on the 12th, she is going to come up here so she can help me out with the kids on the 13th.  Yay for mommies!  :)  She is a life saver.  Now we just need some extra prayers that the kids are all healthy enough for their surgeries.  Princess is scared, but I remember when I got mine out - the summer after kindergarten and told her how it went for me.  I think she'll be okay.

We also said goodbye to our husband/daddy today.  He must be wearing off on me.  I cried all the way home after dropping him off for the airport shuttle (all 10 minutes) and when I got home, wiped off my tears and thought, "we'll be fine.  No sense crying about it."  hahaha!  Oh Zane, how you have changed me.  He will be greatly missed.  Luckily we have school starting again to get our minds busy.  It's hard to believe my babies are halfway done with 1st grade and preschool!  I say it all the time, but time is just FLYING!  I want it to slow down, but it just makes me more determined to take those small moments with my babies and treasure them.  Time enough to do dishes and laundry - that's one of my new resolutions: relax about the cleaning, and get on the floor and play.  I will only get my babies' childhoods once.

Just some updated pics of the kids.  You can't really see the extent of the rolls on Baby Boy, but he is definitely our little butterball!  :)  Christmas was fantastic for all of us.  Zane's parents surprised us for a quick visit and we had one of his brother and family over.  So much fun!  We've definitely enjoyed having Zane home for the holidays and it is going to be SO hard to say goodbye again for another 4 1/2 months.  The kids are doing great - learning and growing like weeds.  Princess and I have been reading a Junie B book she got for Christmas, Brother Bear can now count to 10 by himself, Cowboy is in a stage of only wanting to play with whatever another person is playing with (but he's pretty cute about it - "I love you so much, and I love for you to play with this and I'd love for me to play with that!  Okay?  Because I love you so much").  :)  hahaha.  Baby Boy is rolling all over and is now sitting up really well for long periods of time.  He has also moved into the stage of realizing when Mom walks away from him and therefore starts bursting into heartbreaking tears.  We'll see how this next stage goes when Mom is on her own.  :)  Hope everyone is having a wonderful end to their year.  I'm looking forward to all the changes and challenges of 2011!  I have a goal of actually sitting down and highlighting our past year...we'll see if it happens before the 1st. 

Time: flying and dragging

Is it possible for time to fly and drag at the same time?  There are ten more days until Christmas, I feel like I never get finished with what I need to in the day before it's time to crash, and I look at my kids and think: where has the time gone?  Meanwhile I am thinking, has Zane really only been gone just under 3 weeks??  It feels like FOREVER!  When is he coming HOME???  :)  Pathetic?  You bet!

Princess is doing so well in school and piano.  She just finished up her basketball season and really enjoyed it.  She was disappointed she didn't score a basket, but she was a great defender!  She is also involved with Girl Scouts and that has been a lot of fun.  She has mixed feelings about piano.  She doesn't like to learn how to sight read, and I'd love it if we could get her a Suzuki teacher to do the hear/play method (which she does really well when she allows me to show her how to play a song), but we have an awesome lady in our ward who is so great with her as a teacher and it's what we can do for now.  She is reading the Junie B books at school and I am really looking forward to her being home for a couple of weeks during Christmas!  Last night I was able to covertly record her reading one of our favorite books to the boys before bedtime.  It was a priceless and precious moment! 

Cowboy loves preschool!  I love the songs he learns and sings all the time at home.  Our favorite for Thanksgiving was "Gobble gobble, fat turkeys fat turkeys, Gobble gobble fat turkeys are we.  We're not made for living, we're made for Thanksgiving.  Gobble gobble fat turkeys are we!" (sung to Here We are Together).  Tonight he was singing, "I'm a little a snow man short and fat, here is my broomstick, here is my hat.  When the sun comes up see me melt, Oh no - now I'm a puddle."  (I'm a little teapot).  hahaha.  He is still quick to smile and hug (But NO kisses Mom!) and is still my little sugar hound.  His imagination is as rampant as ever, and he really likes to build with his Legos.

Brother Bear's vocabulary has expanded exponentially and it's almost sad to say goodbye to the baby era.  The other day he was playing with the train set and he said, "What uh heck?  Thas amazing!"  :)  His favorite thing to say right now is, "Mom - 'mere. Want to show you someping."  He loves to help with his baby brother and is such a little snuggle bug.  He can count almost to 10 by himself and loves to play or build "nose man!" (he says snow man for any playing in the snow).  He was sad when the snow melted and wants it to come back already.  :)  He still loves to help me make dinner and is my go-to guy for getting everyone drinks as he loves to play in the water.

Baby Boy is growing like a weed - a rather wide and chubby one.  :)  He is a roly poly oly and I LOVE his fat rolls.  We've had a hard time with his breathing for a while, so he is now a permanent part of my room (I moved all the furniture around and just put the crib in my room) although most of the time he ends up spending all night in bed with me.  He's been rolling from his back to his front, but just recently he figured out that he can roll over and over to get where he wants to go.  Oh dear for me!  Gone are the days of laying him down somewhere and having him stay.  He doesn't like sitting a whole lot, so I think he'll be happy to get his exersaucer for Christmas so he can stand and jump on his own.  He really is a well-tempered baby and I have been VERY blessed with such a sweet and calm boy.

As for me?  I am hanging in there.  We have been so blessed by good friends and neighbors, so it seems as though life is very easy, but there are definitely times I want to pull my hair out.  Thank goodness for a sweet mama who is willing to talk to me on the phone for a few minutes several times each day!  :)  I'm tired a lot - but what mom isn't?  And truly, for every bad or stressful occurrence, the Lord is right there to pour out a blessing immediately.  I'm so grateful.  Someone has adopted our family and is doing the 12 days of Christmas for us and that has been so fun!  The kids look forward to the doorbell ringing every night and wonder what is going to be waiting for us each day.  So to my anonymous benefactor, if you read my blog, thank you for making the holidays an even more special time for me and my children.  It has been so fun and precious - I am inspired to pay it forward to someone next year!

Hope everyone is enjoying all their festivities this year, and always remembering WHO is the reason for all the JOY.

Blessed

I have had possibly one of the worst days.  It started last night when I was up with either the baby or Brother Bear, or both every 20 minutes until about 3 am.  Both of the older boys had fevers all night and this morning Cowboy got diarrhea while changing his clothes and got it on his bedroom floor.  I tried to make an appt with the doctor for all 3 boys, but they would only let me schedule the two worst.  It was snowing all morning making the drive to the doctor take twice as long and twice as scary on the unplowed roads.  I forgot my wallet and had to turn around to get it since we have a different insurance now.  Both of the older boys got prescriptions for antibiotics.  Poor Brother Bear has both a bacterial and viral infection.  SO, knowing I was going to have to wait at a pharmacy I drove by a fast food place to pick them up some lunch while Baby Boy was screaming hysterically because he was soo hungry.  On the way to get the food, Brother Bear threw up all over himself and the car seat.  The roads were horrible so I couldn't really do anything but throw him some napkins and baby wipes and blindly pat him.  So we got to Walmart (they have a drive thru pharmacy and are close to our home and already have our insurance info).  They say they just got it and it will be 20 minutes.  Okay, I figured as much so we go sit in the parking lot where I strip Brother Bear out of his soaking coat and shirt and nurse Baby Boy.  In the meantime Cowboy has to go to the bathroom, but I can't take Brother Bear in without a shirt or coat, so I tell him to hang on for just a few more minutes.  We waited almost 30 minutes and then drove up to get our prescription.  A different lady told me that they had just gotten the prescription and it would be 20 minutes.  I said I had already heard that 30 minutes ago from someone else.  To which she said well, it's still processing so it will be another 20 minutes okay?  Annoyed and agitated, but determined to not lose it and be nice I said Fine and drove away desperately trying to control my anger so I wouldn't drive recklessly on the nasty roads.  My controlling my increasing fury at having to go home and then come back later when I didn't want to be on the roads any more than I had to came to a head and I slammed my hand down hard.  What happened next you ask?  I dislocated my ring finger.  Seriously made the top of it crooked.  We got home to a snow covered driveway (that I had JUST scraped of all the ice yesterday) and I got the kids inside, changed Brother Bear and went into the bathroom calling my mom and just lost it.  I sobbed and bawled and sobbed some more.  I didn't want to go to the doctor because I knew I didn't need a cast,  I just had to push it back into place, so that was a joy to do and all the while I just kept thinking, "really?"  I wanted my husband here to go pick up the medicine so I didn't have to go out again.  I wanted him to take care of the kids so I could take a nap.  The day ended with having to change Brother Bear's pillow and shirt 6 times because he coughed so hard he threw up every 5-10 minutes while I was trying to nurse poor Baby Boy.  Oh, and Cowboy's had 5 bloody noses today.

It was a pretty rotten day.  But, here's what also happened.  The doctor offered to look at Baby Boy's ears and listen to his chest while we were there just to make sure so I didn't have to bring him back in tomorrow.  And he is just fine, only super stuffy.  I slid through two intersections, had my brakes lock up and still didn't get into any wrecks.  My sweet neighbors continue to take my daughter to school each morning and another friend brought her home for me today.  I was able to have all three boys down at the same time for a nap today and had the energy I needed to catch up on the dishes and pick up the house a bit.  I was also able to spend some alone time with my wonderful daughter who makes me laugh.  My visiting teacher brought me dinner yesterday and there was enough for leftovers.  But I made dinner tonight (as well as cookies) without making too much of a mess in my kitchen and now I have two more meals that I don't have to cook this week.  Some of the boys from church came over after their activity tonight and shoveled my driveway which I was dreading doing because of my finger.  And I've been able to keep my cool with the kids and not completely collapsed from exhaustion.

My point?  I am so blessed.  Truly.  I can literally feel the hand of the Lord and the strength of prayers from those who are praying for us.  People are offering help just when I need it and I am SO grateful.
Speaking of grateful, my boy just threw up again, so I need to go.  :)