A Little Help

Our first full weekend of soccer is here. The kids were so excited that both older boys were dressed in their uniforms by around 7:30 this morning. DD's game was scheduled for a field near us at 11:00. DH is coaching her team, so they both had to be there at 10:30. DS#1 had a game at 11:30 on a field about 15 minutes away. He had to be there at 10:30. DS#2 had a game at the same field as his big brother, but his game was at 1:30. He had to be there by 1PM. So, that meant that I was taking the boys and DH was taking DD. When he finished her game, he would come watch whatever was left of DS#1's game and stay for the next game. Confusing? Yes. Does it get more confusing in the next few weeks? Yes again.

Of course, that schedule doesn't take DS#3 or lunch into account. I got DS#2 lunch when DS#1 was warming up. I got everyone else lunch when DS#3 was warming up. Luckily, my parents are here and they stayed at home with the baby. The temperature got up into the 90s and it was humid and sunny. I was so glad I wouldn't have to take the baby out in that. I didn't have any shade for the first game, but luckily, there were trees on the field DS#2 played on. All the parents were huddled by one of the goals, where the trees were. Those weren't the best seats with the best view, but they were a whole lot cooler.

Despite all the scheduling trouble and having to be outside in the hot sun, I think we all had fun. The kids were tired but so excited to be playing soccer. Even my parents had fun. DS#3 turned on his charm for them, I guess. ;)

Busy, Busy, Busy

I feel like I've been too busy to update my blog. I love to write about all of those mundane things that happen to me on a daily basis. ;-) Since school started, or more precisely, since soccer started, we've been busy, busy, busy. We now have six soccer practices per week, and although we don't have the final schedules for the boys yet, we expect to have at least three games this weekend, maybe even more.

So far, our weekdays are as follows:
Monday--Yay! Free day for us!
Tuesday--The older boys both have soccer practice at 6-7:30PM. DS#2 just recently added this *third* practice because it's goalie practice and he wants to be a goalie.
Wednesday--DD soccer practice at 6-7PM with DH coaching (meaning he has to be there), so I take DS#2 to his soccer practice at 6-7:30PM. Tonight, I had DS#1 and #3 with me, too.
Thursday--DD swim lesson at 4-4:30PM. DS#2 with Cub Scout Pack Meeting once a month (there's one tomorrow). DS#1 soccer practice at 6-7:30PM.
Friday--DS#2 soccer practice 6-7:30PM. He also has Cub Scout Den Meetings on some Fridays 7-8PM. We haven't figured out how to do these both. He may have to miss one, but of course, he's disappointed at having to do this.

Sometimes I long for the simpler times, like when DD was just learning how to walk (see above) or when the older ones were just learning about solid food. DS#3 tried some peas this weekend. He seemed intrigued by the peas, but he enjoyed spreading it around the high chair even more. We've actually been worried that he's not eating enough. That may be because the older boys always ate so well. DD, of course, did not, but she turned out okay, right? In any case, I weighed him on Monday, and at five months old (yes, he's five months old already!), he weighs 14 lbs. 12 oz. I need to go look up what percentile that is.

My mom and dad are coming for another visit this weekend. My mom has a few days off early next week and she said she misses the baby. :)

Making Memories

As many of you know, scrapbooking is my obsession. I am and forever will be behind in putting my thousands of photos in my scrapbooks. This weekend has been busy, as always, but I was reminded that at least I was out "making memories" with my family. The scrapbooks will have to wait until later. :)

Lazy Post

I'm too tired to say anything worth while, so I'm posting my pages using the new September Scrapaddict.com Kits. This first one uses old photos of DD from our Disney trip in 2004. The next three use recent photos, which I think I may have posted here on my blog.

I just finished some more pages using the new October 2007 kits, but y'all will have to wait until next month to see those. :)

Little Mama

I decided to take a shower this morning while DH was out running some errands. I put the baby in his exersaucer in the bathroom so he could "play". I even put my contact lenses on just so I could keep an eye on him and actually see him from inside the shower. The rest of the kids were outside playing. Of course, as luck would have it, he "threw" most of his toys off the exersaucer and started crying--at the top of his lungs. Actually, I think he was just bored anyway. After a few minutes of this, DD came in. She had come in from playing outside and heard her brother crying. Ever the little mother, she wanted to see if she could help. She gave him back his toys, but that he didn't stop crying. I spent some hurried moments trying to finish up in the shower and then get dressed. The baby stopped crying immediately when I picked him up, as usual. That kid sure likes to be carried!

I still needed to dry my hair, so I had DD sit with DS on her lap in my bedroom. He seemed quite content there, so I went back into the bathroom. When I finished drying my hair, I heard DD singing Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star to her baby brother. I listened to her, and when she finished, I told her what a nice song that was. She then started talking about when DS#3 asks her to read to him--that is, when he's four and he asks her to read to him, she'll say yes every time. That made me smile for two reasons. First, I realized that her big brothers must be treating her right and reading to her when she asked. Second, because I know her big brothers aren't always happy to take time from their own reading to read to her. Still, it was a sweet thought on her part. :)

I used to always think that I was going to have three children. It seems that God knew what he was doing, once again. I always knew that DD was different from her brothers, but seeing her with a younger sibling really has made me feel like we have a special bond. I feel like I'm training her to be a mother, too. I just hope I'm teaching her the right things!

(I just re-read my "Grouch" post. What a difference some sleep makes!)

Thank Yous

As promised, this is a photo of DD's face when I asked her to continue counting as part of her homework assignment earlier this week. Doesn't she look totally exhausted? She was much better today, although I didn't have to plug through homework with her today. I did, however, get her to sign some thank you cards, which she did willingly.

A friend of mine told me that she doesn't allow her kids to play with their birthday gifts until they finish their thank you notes. That would be too painful for DH and me right now, since we're still the ones that write DD's thank you notes, so we modified that rule. She just has to do a thank you note for each gift that she plays with, so we can do a few of the thank you notes at a time.

I actually sat down and made two dozen thank you cards this week. I'm crazy, I know, but it fulfilled my creative needs for the week. I was too tired to do anything else that required more thought. DD likes the cards, too, so she has fun "picking out" which thank you card to give to which friend.

Here's an update of DS#3 and solid food. He seems to be coming along with the solid food. He enjoys the oatmeal for the most part, but it does take quite a bit of time to feed him, and it seems to be causing some constipation. Instead of the frequent containment leaks, he just has one a day. Oh Joy!
This boy really needs to cut his tooth soon. He keeps biting on things and gets very cranky. He was looking longingly at the bread we were eating the other day, so we gave him a piece of it. He really went to town on that piece of bread. I know DH can't wait until DS can eat real food. It will be a lot easier and faster to feed him then.

This photo was taken today. He was in a much better mood today, probably because he slept later this morning. I hope he lets us sleep tomorrow, too. I need the extra energy to write more thank you notes! :)

Grouch

We found out last year, when DD started full-day PreK that she gets very exhausted at school and she turns into the biggest grouch as soon as we pick her up. She got adjusted to it somewhat as the year went on. This year is the same. On the first day of school, she even fell asleep in the car on the way home. She can get more sleep on the weekend sometimes, but with the excitement of her birthday party on Saturday, she got less sleep and got even more tired.

Yesterday, she argued over the simplest things. We were doing her homework worksheets. On one sheet she was supposed to write her first and last name five times. She completed that one first. Later on, she added "HAH" before each line with her name on it. I didn't know what that was for, although I wondered if it was supposed to stand for "Her Absolute Highness". ;-) She argued with me about keeping it there, but I made her erase them. On the other sheet there was a section where the instructions said to "Color more squares and then write the number down on the line below." When I read that to her, she actually told me that wasn't right. Come on--she can't read and she tries to tell me what the paper DOESN'T say! *insert rolling eyes here*

Today, she must have been mean in the car, because DH was already fed up with her when they got home from school. Then, we had to do her homework. The last part of her assignment required that she count as high as she could and then I was supposed to write down the last correct number. This is the girl who in the past has happily counted as she sat in the car during some random car trip. She started off by asking if she could stop at "21". Of course I said "No." She finally started counting and at each group of ten, she slowed down and had the saddest pout on her face, as if pleading to stop. The mean mom that I am made her keep going until she got to "109" when she flatly refused to even try to go further. I was sure that she knew what came next, but I decided to cut my losses.

She cheered up a bit later, but we still have two days to go this week! Tomorrow, I'll try to post the picture I took of her.

Party For Five

DD's birthday party was today. We waited two weeks after her birthday so we could invite her new classmates. About half of them were there in addition to a few extra friends that were in "the other" kindergarten class and their siblings. The party was at a place called Pump It Up which is basically a place where they have inflatable play structures that the kids (and some adults) can jump on, slide on, and generally just play on in the comfort of air conditioning. The kids all had a blast. Better yet, they were having so much fun that most of them left their parents alone so they could talk with one another. I got to meet several "new" parents and reconnect with some "old" ones, too.

We were a little short on pizza, however. We miscalculated how many siblings were going to be there plus the kids had played so hard that they were actually hungry. We were used to kids really not eating well at parties because they are usually too busy playing. This was not the case today. We had hoped to feed everyone until they were full. Of course, I only had one pizza and in the end, I really didn't need more than that. Luckily, I made extra goodie bags and I really only missed a few siblings.

DD got lots and lots of presents. We're starting a rule that she can't play with them until she writes thank-you notes. She was actually very willing, but of course, we don't have any for her to write on right now. I guess I'd better get busy either making some or getting to the store to buy some!

Learning and Growing

I changed my own flat tire today! I'm embarrassed to admit that I've never changed my own flat tire before. Usually we had some service do it or someone like DH or my Dad did it. I got my flat tire on the way to work. I was exiting the freeway when I heard the familiar sound coming from the back of my car. Luckily, this was close to the entrance gate for work because I really did not want to stop at the side of the road. It was still dark (before 6:30AM) and there were a lot of cars around that were going very fast. I decided to risk going all the way to the parking lot and parking. That way I could drop my stuff off and enlist someone to help me.

At first I was just going to ask one of the guys at work to do it for me. There was one willing volunteer. He was retired military working there as a civilian. I don't know why I felt like sharing that, but maybe it's because that would give you an insight to why he was so helpful. We were discussing how I could call my roadside service when I decided that I wanted to try to do it myself. He said he would help me.

We got out there a little before 8AM. It was already rather hot and steamy. My helper had the foresight to bring out a blanket for us to use to kneel on. He talked me through the process as well as giving me tips, like not jacking the car up too high and using my own weight to loosen the lug nuts. He even got on the bare ground to get my full size spare tire out from under my car. He actually got rather dirty and we were both sweating.

I probably don't need to be this descriptive, but when it was all finished I had a good feeling--a sense of accomplishment. When I called DH to describe to him the whole process, his only comment was--"So is it all done?" Oh well, if he doesn't want to hear about me describing my day, then I guess I'll just type it all out on the blog and he can read it later. :)

Like Father, Like Son

Isn't this the cutest picture? It was only 10PM when I went upstairs to go to bed last night. When I found this, I nearly laughed out loud. Luckily, I was able to leave the room, get the camera, and return without waking up these two. Heck, DH never even stopped snoring!

The End of Summer

Yes, we are very happy that Papa is home! He could tell that Lola and Lolo held DS#3 a whole lot when they were here because apparently, DS#3 didn't want to be put down today. :)

Actually, the picture of DS above was not from Papa being home. My Mom bought him this outfit which included that hat. I put it on him and he actually didn't try to get it off like the other kids did with their hats at this age. He even seemed to enjoy it, as you can see from the photo. Isn't he adorable? ;-)

I took this next photo of my Mom holding DS#3 while he slept. There was a lot of that going on. It looks like both of them are enjoying the bonding time. Isn't that the most beautiful sight?

My Mom did everything for me when she was here, but I'm glad DH is back so we can try to get back to normal. For the first time, DH had to get the kids ready for school this morning by himself while getting the baby ready to take with him. When the kids got out of school in May, there were really only about three days when he had to do that himself since I was on maternity leave almost to the end of school.

The kids and I went to the pool yesterday. This was actually the first time I've gone to our neighborhood pool this year, and it's the first time I've actually had to take all four of them without DH along. I didn't bother wearing a swimsuit since I knew I would be with the baby. He didn't stay asleep as I had hoped. He actually sat in his stroller for a bit, though, playing with his hands. He only fussed a little when he wanted to be carried. I dipped his feet in the water, and he seemed to like it this time. It has been warm and humid outside after the recent rain. Despite my usual dislike of being outside in this type of weather, it was nice and relaxing to watch the kids play so well together, and it was nice to play with the baby in the pool, too.

For some reason, this felt like the real end of summer, even though the kids have been in school for a week. I think it's because, now that DH is back in town, we'll be settling into our Fall Semester routine. That means five soccer practices a week and probably at least four to five games a week. Ah, I miss those lazy days of Summer already!

He's Home!

I haven't had much time at all to post here and even less time to put up pictures. The important thing is--

HE'S HOME!!! :)

All Tied Up

I just wanted to share a page (using an old kit from Scrapaddict.com) I did of DH teaching DS#1 how to tie a "real" tie. Luckily, DH left a pre-tied tie for him, because DS hasn't attempted to do it himself this week yet. I'm going to try to get a page done this week of DH teaching DD how to tie her shoes.

Things seem to be settling in somewhat. DD and DS#2 are showing signs of exhaustion when they get home from school as evidenced by their sometimes unpleasant behavior. DS#1 seems to be dealing with the new hours fine and he's been a big help as usual. I'm indebted to my Mom. She's taking care of everything for me so I can actually get some "me" time this week.

I've been thanking her profusely, and all she says is that she worked all the time when I was young and she felt like she missed a lot of things. I'm glad she's getting lots of bonding time with DS#3, but I have to admit that I wish DH's parents were able to get some bonding time, too. DS#3 is just growing up too fast! I'm thankful for some bonding time of my own with him this week, too.

First Day of School

Life has been rather chaotic here the past few days. I don't have too much time to post right now, so I'll keep it short. The kids all started school on Monday. As you can see from the photo, they were all very excited. I worked late that day, so I missed it all. I was also on call last night, so I felt like I was just learning about the goings on of their first day today.

DH left on a plane early this morning. This is the only time he ever leaves us for an extended period of time. My Mom and Dad are here to help me with the kids, for which I am so very thankful. DH gets back on Sunday. I hope I haven't lost my mind by then. ;-)

First Solids

We've been too busy to give the baby his first taste of solid food. Tonight was still busy with getting ready for the first day of school tomorrow, but we made the time. We used the bouncy chair on top of the dining room table instead of the high chair because the high chair just seemed to sit so straight up. I took some still photos while my sister took some video. DH did the honors of feeding DS#3 his first taste of rice cereal. He really seemed to enjoy it. Sure, some of the food ended up outside of his mouth, but most of it seemed to get in. The whole episode didn't take too long either--he was taking it in fairly quickly. It was hilarious seeing everyone gathered around, but it was nice that this was a "family" event. :)

Birthday Girl

Today is my DD's fifth birthday. I tried so hard to make this a special day for her. She requested banana pancakes for breakfast, so I made them for her. She wanted a certain Princess backpack from Target for school (which starts on Monday) so I got that for her. She loves ice cream, so my sisters (who are in town for the weekend) made her this rather cool no-bake "ice cream cake". She wanted to do crafts again at Lakeshore Learning, so we did that (see below for photo of the girls and their necklaces). Along the way, things turned ugly. You see, when the cousins come for a visit, DD doesn't sleep. She goes to bed later and wakes up earlier. Simply--she was exhausted today! If it hadn't been her birthday today, I would have sent her to bed to take a nap many, many times. *Sigh*--but I didn't. Yes, there were moments where she managed to have fun. There were moments where she was adorable. More often, however, she was a big, crabby, grouch!

We're having her party in two weeks. I hope she's much more congenial then!

Four Month Weigh-In

DS#3 had his four-month checkup today. He weighs 14 lbs. 1 oz. and is 25 1/2 inches long. Apparently he is around 50% for both length and weight. He's definitely smaller than his siblings at this age, but it's good to know that he is still growing. Poor baby had three shots today and he's been cranky since. Of course, his two containment leaks, including one in his carseat haven't helped his mood...or his Papa's.

Another Catch Up

It's been another busy few days. On Saturday, I took DD and DS#2 to Lakeshore Learning to do crafts. Their craft was making crowns. Not surprising, DD was all about the bling, especially the heart bling. DS also chose lots of bling but in more understated colors and shapes. DD chose some shimmery paint as well while DS kept his crown paintless.

Yesterday, the older boys went to the pediatrician for their school physicals. DS#1 is officially 62 1/2 inches tall and 100 pounds (although he was 62 inches according to them a few months ago, but he was still a little bit shorter than me at the time). DS#2 was 54 inches and 72 pounds. Both were around 95% for height and 50% for weight. Both are growing boys, that's for sure. DD will have her appointment later in the month.

DS#3 will have his four-month checkup on Thursday. He has been trying to sit up, despite being placed in a reclining state. He still drools a lot and still loves to stick out his tongue. He slept through the night another three times this last week. So close and yet so far... I got this photo of him today during DD's swimming lesson. I just love that I can see his dimples!



We had some kid friends over at our house plus I got to scrap with my friend Jen today. I actually got some pages done over the last couple of days. Here's a page using an awesome August kit from
Scrapaddict.com. These photos were taken five years ago when DH and DS#1 first signed up for karate. I don't have too many great photos of them taking karate at that time, so these are very precious to me. It's been a great couple of days. I'm back to work tomorrow.

New Trick

This week, DS#3 has started pulling in his lower lip and sucking on it. We've been joking about how he's been so desperate to suck on something that he found his own lower lip the most convenient. He looks so adorable like this because he puffs his cheeks up and you can see his dimples better. He has also found his thumb. He often sucks on just his thumb as opposed to his whole hand. Both create lots of drool. We still think he has to be teething because of the crankiness and the drooling. Luckily, he hasn't been biting me. We can't see any swollen gums, though, so we're afraid that we still have a long way to go. He has also been playing with his feet more and more. It's just a matter of time before he puts those in his mouth.

He slept through the night the past couple of nights. I'm working tomorrow, though, so that usually means that he gets me up at least once!

The Object of Her Affections

DD can't help herself. She is constantly touching her baby brother. She loves to kiss him, hug him, and just be around him. She sometimes calls him "cutie baby" and often says, "He's SO CUTE!!!". She often gets underfoot of whoever is carrying him because invariably she'll be holding on to his foot and we just aren't able to see her there when she does that.

Her big thing the last few days is that she wants to "carry" him. This means that we put him on her lap while she is sitting on the sofa. That's all she is allowed to do because the other day she tried to help him "stand" and she lost her balance. He ended up tummy down on the edge of the sofa, but he easily could have ended up on the floor. He wasn't hurt or even startled, and I was right there next to her on the sofa, thank goodness.

Yesterday, I took a quick shower while DS#2 and DD entertained DS#3. When I got out of the shower, I heard DS#3 making whirring sounds over and over, and I heard DD "singing" (or rather, making high-pitched noises). It was hilarious listening to that. Today, DD was playing Peek-a-Boo with him and he was laughing and laughing. I wish I could have taken a video, but that would have involved putting him down.

We often try to tone down DD's affections, because she can get a bit annoying, but I hope that she always feels this loving towards her baby brother--especially when he starts trying to grab her toys.... :)