End of February

It seems not much picture worthy is happening lately which makes blogging hard.  I have to actually think of things to say.  It's been either snowing or freezing with terrible windchill for the past few weeks and so we haven't gotten out of the house much.  I hate to drive on the hills when the roads are bad, and when it's windy and cold it's just so miserable buckling everyone into the car 100 times!  Plus the news makes it seem like the temperatures are going to be end of the world terrible or the snow is going to be feet deep and it gets in my head, makes me scared, and gets me to forget I'm a Montana girl and can handle this stuff easily. 
      A couple of weeks ago Quinn was tromping around in her rainboots and tried to climb up the stairs after me.  She fell.  She limped around for a day or two and was fine, then she fell again.  Then I was giving her a piggy back ride down the stairs like I always do and we "fell" together!  Really we slid down the stairs like we were sledding on my bum while I tried to stop us- feet forward, and she was grabbing my neck sking on her tummy- feet back.  Alex and Heidi were walking down the steps at the same time and when we all reached the bottom they were frantically asking for the phone so they could call 911.  Everyone is fine, I let the girls play nurse on my sore body and ended up having a dr. apt the next day anyway for the baby.  All is well, except now Quinn refuses to go up or down the stairs by herself- and I've sworn off carrying anyone up or down that death trap!  It's terrible.  I really can't carry her up the stairs anyway as my hips have turned to jello already and I feel like I'm already doing the 9 months pregnant waddle.
    We have taken it upon ourselves to be the neighborhood snow crew.  Since the days are warmer when it snows and the girls love playing in the growing mounds we go out and shovel for the neighbors until my body aches or Quinn's fingers have gone numb from pulling her gloves off.  She usually does this so she can reach in the bag and throw salt all over our dry porch while I'm preoccupied.  We've been borrowing the neighbors snow shovel because I wouldn't let Tyler buy one we wouldn't use when we were going to probably move this summer. Last year it barely snowed at all but was FREEZING, I'm now finding out that was an odd year and I may not have to brace for the terrible terrible cold like I've been doing.
     Last year we started Alex and Heidi on Brady Academy home school in June just directly after Alex finished all her Kindergarten course work.  I figured our 5 months of travel would mess things up plenty and we needed the extra work in summer to stay on schedule for 1st grade.  Well we did better than I thought and I was surprised to see that we only have 2 weeks left in the math curriculum, and a few more days left in our literature/phonics program!  I suppose we are nearing our 9 months of school mark and should be finishing up, but I was mentally in the Aug- June school track still.  I'm excited for the freedom this is going to give us, I feel like I've "done my duty" and made sure Alex completed the set, accredited 1st grade curriculum.  She has learned everything "they" want you to know if 1st grade and now I can spend the next few months trying out a few of my own things and letter her do a bit more exploring on what kinds of things she wants to learn.  For some reason she loves doing those colorful workbooks you can find and so I'm sure we will pick up a few to keep her practicing math etc.  I'd be tempted to jump into second grade subjects and get ahead once more,  and I'm sure we will venture that direction in our learning,  but we are still so unsure where we are going to be this fall or what we will be doing, and depending on where we go sending Alex and Heidi off is a possibility.  I do anticipate homeschooling again, and I look forward to it- but I also know my attention will have to be split even more as Heidi will need more academic attention as she solidifies her reading and math, plus I will have a newborn attached to my hip- I'm just unsure I can do so unless the conditions are right! 
    Tyler and I have been rolling all the situations and places we could move around in our heads now that we have the luxury of time together.  His new rotation has been heavenly- I get to eat breakfast with him in the morning and a lot of the time is he home for the day by 3 or 4!  We've had family dinner, family scripture study, and family prayer daily plus weekly FHE and Saturday family time together!  He even has time to study for his big end of school test, do a few things around the house and read to the kids everyday.  For the first time in nearly a year I feel like we are once again together as a happy family with a survivable amount of stress!  I'm trying not to get used to the luxury of Tyler, knowing that in 2 weeks with the next rotation everything is going to change, but knowing that spring is near and he only has 2 rotations left makes my heart sing! 
       March is nearly here and we are bracing for birthday month/s.  We try to make birthdays centered on family fun instead of gifts and we may even have Tyler's parents here for Alex's day so we really do have something to look forward to! Alex lost her 3rd tooth last week and it was one of the big front ones.  I was so excited for her but sort of sad to see that little girl smile disappear forever.  She is going to be 7 in a month and she really does seem like she is all grown up!  Alex is pretty particular about what she wears.  Comfort is HUGE for her and so things like jeans, or lose pants or tight pants, cut too high or low, and shirts with the seam in the wrong place or of the wrong material are a no go.  It's nearly impossible to dress her in anything but the few pairs of stretch pants that fit just right and a handful of shirts plus maxi skirts.  She would live in maxi skirts if I would let her leave the house in them.  I'm thinking of taking her to target for her birthday and letting her have a "shopping spree"  where for the first time in her life she gets to choose what her clothes are.  What a huge step!
       Heidi is excited that she will no longer have the "last" birthday.  Her's is in May and baby boy is due in June so this is very exciting.  She has also decided to grow out her bangs- right as Alex's are finally long enough to tuck behind her ear from growing them out.  Groan, here we go again!  She has also reached a new level of stubborn where she feels she is ALWAYS right and will calmly fight you to the death about a subject if she feels she is correct.  It's half hilarious and half obnoxious.   Her top bunk has become a room unto itself- completely full all of the time with books, toys, puzzles, papers and any other treasures she sees fit.  If something is lost, check Heidi's bed.  She claimed all the stationary as her own because she said "I need it, I'm an artist."
      Quinn is slightly less bull headed but not really, maybe I'm just letting her get away with more?  Tyler thinks so.  She is the center of attention and entertainment during every meal and gets her sisters (and father) laughing uncontrollably everyday at dinner.  Tyler calls her his 'Minion' because she often acts just like the Minions from Despicable Me.  She is usually very demanding and we have been pretty insistent on teaching her please.  Yesterday I noticed that the demanding part hadn't stopped but instead of saying "No, No, NO" she now says "PLEASE. please. PLEASE" as she runs off or hits you to get what she wants.  She has become obsessed with Elmo, but every time she sees an electronic device she points and excitedly asks for "bee dooo" in reference to all the Minion clips that Tyler has shown her.  Last week she went to the toy room on her own during school while I was teaching Alex and Heidi, it was amazing, I was so happy that she was playing quietly instead of ripping up worksheets or pulling hair .  Then she walked down the hall saying "gross" with a handful of poop.  She had been exploring in her diaper and left a nice surprise in the toy room as well.  All things considered this hardly phased me, although it did remind me of when Alex pulled a similar stunt at her age and I caught her cooking in the toy kitchen during nap time with the contents of her diaper.
       In general life seems to be getting happier the more uncomfortably I'm feeling physically.  I'm just not sure if this is correlation or causation. 
    

Early February thoughts and an update

One night as we were getting ready for bed I was pitching my idea to Tyler for how we would FINALLY get our lives in control.  I do this every 6 weeks or so, come up with some radical idea that I hope will teach the children gratitude/ teach the house to clean itself etc etc.  This term's idea consisted of stripping the toy room and bedrooms of basically everything not required for life, thereby showing the kids that most of the things they "need" are not needs at all and making them earn these things back one at a time through good behavior.  Tyler talked me down from the ledge and we started discussing the behaviors that we were trying to get rid of, this led us to the realization that it was time Alex got her own room.  Tyler had been suggesting this for months actually but our spare "office" is the room we affectionately call the deep freeze in the winter and I had deemed it uninhabitable for human life.  But bedtime was getting that bad.
      I took a day and dejunked the office.  It was nice throwing things away and finding things and organizing our lives a little more.  Everything had to be moved to either our overflowing room/Tyler's office or the dungeon and this meant a LOT of trips up and down stairs.  So far things are grand.  Alex LOVES having her own tiny room and bookshelf.  Every night she sits on her bed (mattress on the floor) with her bathrobe on to keep out the cold and reads books to herself until she gets sleepy.  She has started reading simple chapter books and loves Amelia Bedelia so in the mornings I usually find her sitting in bed finishing a book she started the night before.  We go to the library a lot now.  She is good at keeping her own space clean and the contention that we are avoiding by keeping the "pickys" and "slobbys" apart is amazing!
       Heidi is absolutely thriving in her own space.  She is pretty good at tuning just about everything out all the time, so most of the time I don't think she really notices that Quinn is even in the room now that she has the top bunk, unless Heidi is bored and wants to keep Quinn awake that is.  When Heidi was on the bottom she had a space between her bed and the dresser that was about 3 inches wide and 12 inches long that she called "the treasury."  She would keep all her tiny treasures there and Quinn knew just where to go to make Heidi mad.  For now at least Heidi can keep all her treasures and books and animals and even herself up out of Quinn's reach and she feels like a Queen.  I anticipate Heidi and Quinn being roommates for quite awhile as they both seem to need constant social interaction, whereas Alex needs time to herself daily.
      Quinn doesn't seem to care about the change except the introduction of a big girl bed for herself.  She taunts us from time to time by getting in and laying under the covers at bed time, but that child isn't going to sleep-train to a big girl bed easily,  I'm not up to the task, and our house is a death trap for night waking Quinn.  I love how effortlessly clean the room looks now that we have moved out a dresser and plenty of stuffed animals and blankets.  I would never have thought we could pull off 3 kids in a room for as long as we did!

      Tyler's truck is having transmission problems and so for the past week we have found ourselves once again a one car family.  It's amazing that we lived this way for 8 years and now after 2 months of having a car per adult and then being thrust back to sharing a vehicle again life seems so difficult!  Since there is no way I can even fathom being his taxi driver with 3 kids in tow, it leaves us homebound once again.  We've taken some freezing walks to avoid cabin fever and were able to enjoy a few snow days- Alex thinks it's her responsibility to shovel the old neighbor lady's walk- only I'm not even sure if she still lives there as we haven't seen her at all since we got back! I think she is probably making someone happy though and it makes me very proud.  I think we would wander the neighborhood more if Quinn would only keep her mittens on.  You really need to cover every inch of skin in order to be even a little warm out here, and even in a snowsuit I can't seem to keep Quinn dressed for very long before she is mostly undone.  This happens in the crib at bed time as well, we have to safety pin her zipper up on her footy PJ's or without fail she has stripped and taken her diaper off before falling to sleep.  I'm tired of changing wet sheets.
        This week I made cookies AND muffins AND dinner every night.  I didn't think such a thing would ever be possible again the way I felt a month ago and it's so nice to be able to compare and SEE that I'm feeling better.  I can feel the little guy kicking a lot of the time and it's still the sweet little thumps instead of the uncomfortable thuds I know will come later.  My hips have started their deterioration but I usually only notice when getting out of bed.  My belly button is officially now a nose.  I feel so huge and super pregnant and then I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror and am almost shocked at how not pregnant I look in comparison to how I feel.  It's a long road yet.
         Next week Tyler starts his internal medicine rotation which is located fairly close so hopefully even if the hours are bad it shouldn't be a long commute.  Unfortunately the only parking available is street parking where he would have to feed the meter all day, or a $10 a day parking garage.  It baffles me how these rotations are required and yet how unaccommodating a lot of these places are to the PA students!  On the bright side, Tyler has been treated to lunch daily this month by his current cardiology Doctor.  I told him he is basically living my dream, eating out every day for free at a new place (and these are sit down joints not fast food!)  Sometimes I tease that the best part of my day is hearing what he ate for lunch.
       Homeschool is going well,  Heidi is inspired by Alex's sudden jump into reading (it's all she wants to do anymore) and I've caught her sounding out words in books and teaching Quinn the ABC's  on the chalkboard.  If she weren't so distractible I think she would a lot further by now, but she is still only preschool age so I'm not worried.  Everything comes so easily for Alex that the real trouble is teaching her not to be discouraged when she doesn't get something the first time it's explained.  As we get into more complex math concepts it's fun watching her brain have to stretch to figure things out- she doesn't think it's very fun though.  The kids have decided to teach Quinn the Alphabet and it's signs and sounds and it's just adorable to hear little Quinn saying "A, Ahhhhhh, A" and trying to do the sign.  While I love having my girls home with me and teaching them all of these important basics, in the back of my head I already find myself worried about next year and what we will do.  There is so much more that I want to teach my kids, but being the Mom to 3 as well as the Preschool and First grade teacher makes it very difficult to do well at any of it.  Or at least not 'Pinterest' well.  I've learned to let go of a lot of things but I've also learned that the kids are old enough to pick up a lot of slack and we've made daily chores a part of our school routine which has really helped out.  I really do enjoy homeschool and it is something that I want to continue for the foreseeable future but I'm also starting to see that it will depend a LOT on our situation in 6 months.   Wherever we are I refuse to send Heidi to an all day Kindergarten although I think she would probably enjoy the social interaction and constant entertainment.  I think public school would cause Alex more stress than it would be worth at this age although I can see that in the right school she would excel and learn a lot.  She is very aware when children around her are making bad choices and being inappropriate and it bothers her.  I'm glad she is developing a good moral compass and it gives me hope that she will be less of a sponge if put into the school system.  Quinn is a tornado to put it nicely.  She likes throwing play dough and dumping crayons and coloring on the wall.  She won't play alone and needs constant attention from someone.  She loves destroying the older girl's school work.  We love her and she makes us laugh a lot, but we all really enjoy nap time.
      The other day Alex picked up a calendar we had of Jesus and started reading the scriptures passages written on the various days.  She was so excited about this that we gave her a Book of Mormon of her very own and she has treasured it.  She reads a verse a day to the family which has gotten Heidi excited as well and so now she wants to read us our scriptures at night.  Each morning after breakfast we read a chapter in the BOM and talk about what is being said.  While the girls might start out bored or upset that we are doing scriptures, by the end they are always squished one on each side as we talk about what is going on.  These are the best moments of my day.  Alex has also added a subject to her folder regimen every day on her own accord.  She reads a chapter in the children's Book of Mormon stories comic type book and then does a corresponding page in a 'Discovering the scriptures' workbook I got last year.  Yesterday we had a discussion about who was a better leader Zeniff or Kind Benjamin and today she announced out of the blue that Abinadi was her favorite prophet!  It's these moments that lay aside all my doubts about whether homeschool is right for our family.  The freedom to choose writing assignments and spelling words from the scriptures, or take an hour and talk about how Nephi saw a vision of the founding of America and how God had a hand in the pilgrims and Columbus coming across the ocean.  It offsets the bad days for sure.

      So here we are in almost the same spot we were in 2 years ago.  Pregnant and anticipating a move.  I don't know if my 'nesting' is due to impending baby or desire to de junk and rid ourself of the unnecessary before packing boxes cloud our judgment.  We are great at accumulating things and our dungeon seems full of things that I just need to "go through" and donate or sell.  I've set some goals though and I already feel our lives are bit less cluttered which is so nice.  Tyler will be done with tutoring this weekend and we can start to focus on preparing for the big exam and getting his resume in order.  Big changes are coming!
   

It's a BOY!!!

So it's a boy!

It's been 2 days since we found out, we cut open a cake because the girls insisted that this is how we find out.  It wasn't until later that I realized that they thought this is how everyone finds out the gender of a baby, the Dr. gives them a cake and then they get to cut it open to find out.  It was fun decorating and making cupcakes and having friends over for the big reveal!  I think everyone was sort of voting for a boy except at the last minute Heidi decided she wanted another sister, so she could see Daddy cry.
   People keep commenting on how relieved I must be, how excited, how happy I must be that I FINALLY get my boy.  It's easy to agree and go on with these conversations, and I am happy we are having a boy, but I would have been happy with a girl as well.  With Alex I was so sure the baby would be a boy that we were shocked at the ultrasound.  With Heidi I think I knew all along somehow and with Quinn I was so terrified at the thought of having a boy that I was so relieved when we cut that cake and saw pink!  This pregnancy I've been wavering.....

     I know girls by now.  What they wear, how they think, the hair, the drama, the cuteness.  I can picture myself holding a baby girl in the hospital because I've done it 3 times!  Girls are familiar, girls are comfortable.  If we had another girl then they could all share rooms the rest of their lives.  All the clothes would remain the familiar shades of pink and purple, and I could keep oohing and awing at the adorable little dresses at the stores.  I almost feel cheated- or feel that maybe Alex will eventually feel cheated, because when I had my first little girl, I had no clue what I was doing.  We got hand me downs and so I used hand me downs.  Clothes were to cover the child up- not provide a fashion statement to the world about our entire family.  Baby hair was a mystery and things like tiny little hair rubber bands were not in my sphere of awareness until Heidi was born.  I feel like either the world has changed in the last 6 years or maybe I've just changed, but I think that if I started having kids now, they would be a lot "prettier" as babies.

I came across this conclusion while thinking about the timeline of my life.  Highschool was an odd time for me.  I wore my older brother's polo shirts and random ties with converse shoes (before it was cool for girls to wear ties and converse).   I was in art club and went to concerts on the weekend.  My hair was long and straight and either in a ponytail or worn down.  I was trying to figure out who I was. I entered college I still barely wore makeup, I had a roommate who introduced me to the benefits of doing hair and wearing pretty clothes, and after I married Tyler I was still trying to figure out my hair (let's be honest, I still am) pregnancy and baby threw me into a whole new world that did not include things like makeup or dressing for success- that I feel that I'm still trying to figure out.  I sometimes I feel like I'm going to be 50 before I learn how to do makeup or match clothing.             Anyway, back to girls.  Having girls has taught me about girls and what things I need to learn so I can teach them.  I feel like I'm doing a pretty good job of raising spunky little girls that can look nice, but understand it's more important to be kind than pretty.  We have our share of 'clothes drama' especially on Sunday morning, but these gals aren't obsessed with clothing and styles and jewelry like it seems so many other kids their age are.

    But a boy.  Boys are different, they don't stop moving and they hit.  I thank Quinn for blazing the trail for our son because all my fears of having a little boy 2 years ago come to pass through her.  She has shown me that anger, violence and nonstop movement are not necessarily "boy" traits, I just had 2 really calm first children.  Boys aren't accessorized so easily to be made cute, and I feel like I'm finally getting a hang of ponytails and hair clips.  Any boy clothes these days, sheesh! It's all skulls or dinosaurs if you are going generic boy, or you can start early and brand your boy as a punk with all the right t-shirts, beanies and shoes, or a little gentleman with tiny suits, ties and sweater vests.  Every outfit I see these days seems to shout something!   We've been so immune with the girls because of hand me downs- we've had to purchase almost nothing, and the hand me downs I haven't approved of have just gone the way of DI without a second glance.  With 3 older sisters stacked against him, I already feel this pressure to put my fetus in sports,  find playgroups with lots of boys so he can get his man time in, and try an understand the scouting program.  So when people ask if I'm so excited to have a boy......... I don't know!

      I don't want him to read this someday and think he was unwanted, on the contrary we've been waiting for him for 6 years!  We are happy to complete our family and finally get Tyler his little sidekick he's been wanting for so long.  Alex especially is over the moon about a brother, and Heidi is as well.  We are excited at all the new adventures a boy will bring, and all the changes.  I feel as though now that he is finally on his way that this phase of our life might finally be over- the pregnant phase- and that is both exciting and a little sad.  I hate being pregnant, and it gets worse every time, but I love those little babies and how slow life gets when you are just trying to survive those first few months.  Watching the little ones grow and learn is so fun- and thinking that this is my last time is a little sad.  But on the other hand the freedom that will come once my body is my own again!  In the past 7 years I've only had a few months where I was not either pregnant or nursing, I'm excited to be able to maintain myself and not constantly struggle with the gaining and losing of weight and all the body changes at the same time.  And yet that's been the norm since my early 20's.  I'm a bit afraid of what life might be like next, a step into the unknown.
     This year I will turn 30, have my 4th child and first boy, Tyler will graduate from school and hopefully we will settle into longterm employment for the first time in our marriage. We will move somewhere potentially of our choosing, and maybe even set down roots.  In a way we will be starting the life that I imagined came once you got married, a house, neighborhood, job, long term friends, kids, the whole bit- it's just taken us 8 years to get there (minus the kids).  I wouldn't trade our experiences for anything and I've learned so much in my 20's, but I am excited to finally be there, to be nearing the finish line I've been gazing at for so long.
       So a boy.  If I'm being honest with myself, I've never bonded with any of my children until they were outside my body.  The first 20 weeks I've always struggled with remembering the sickness is because of a baby and not being bitter.  Once we find out the gender and can start imagining our lives and choosing names, things get a little easier.  And not even those first moments in the hospital can i say I have an instant connection.  So little boy it's not you, it's me.  I have no doubt that 5 minutes into holding you I will be madly in love and share you with no one.  Until that point I'm just going to focus on getting to that point, and start getting excited for all our rowdy adventures.