Updates? What's that?

OK. I am updating this. Leave me alone Russ! :) I kid. He hasn't harangued me too much...

We are doing well. Just really really busy! Here's what's new with the kids:

BROCK:

He's learned to ride his bike without training wheels! YAY! He is SO happy! He wants to start going on 20-30 mile rides. I don't think he grasps just how far/long that really is. He said that Lance Armstrong did more than that. I mentioned that Mr. Armstrong also has spendy bike with a posture-pedic/padded seat. Brock is all confidence as long as he is wearing his various pads and helmet. He is very safety concious! Brock is always on the lookout for cars and has "earned" the right to ride to the end of our street and back. I can't believe he has soared by another milestone! He makes sure that Hannah minds the traffic and safety rules and doesn't hesitate to holler at her if he sees a car coming a few blocks away.

Brock is starting 2nd grade today! We get him this evening and I cannot WAIT to hear how his first day went. This is his first year with a new teacher (had the same teacher in K and 1st grade). Brock is definitely well liked by the staff. I was at the school's reader board changing letters last night when the principle came out to talk. He helped set up letters and close the sign. After talking about our summers, we spent a few moments talking about Brock and how much Mr. Abbott liked him. I doubt this is just the speech he gives to all parents as I have heard it from other teachers and the secretary.

My dad recently built a log bunk bed for Brock. We are waiting to set it up in his room until I get the walls/ceiling painted. Brock chose a selection of blues to make his Transformer room. What fun! He is so grown up! Cub scouts is starting soon too. My word he will be a busy man!

HANNAH:

Hannah is pushing 3 (9-21-06...wow) and is still very busy. She has learned to be quick with her "nonnies" (naughty behaviors). I was making cookies the other day and had to stop to get Lauren. I left the dough paddle from my KitchenAid on the counter as I was scraping the sides of the bowl prepping for forming cookies. Hannah knew very well what I was up to and snuck into the kitchen to help herself to the paddle. She didn't see/hear me return, get the camera and snap some pics. The last one she looked up and made eye contact. This is my sneak ninja girl when it comes to treats.


Hannah is starting dance class on Monday. She may even make the Year End Performance! I am so excited. Yeah...more so than others I think. :) I hope Hannah enjoys it!

We are also starting her 3 year at Dori's Learning Place. Hannah has thrived with the ciriculum and has grown so much! We are looking forward to another year of wonderful time spent at Dori's!

Lauren:

Lauren is 5 months old soon. She is a smiley bunchy little baby! So cute! She rolled over early, is trying to stand when held upright and is kicking her way around the floor. She is going to be an early mover and shaker like her big sister. I dread this yet am looking forward to it at the same time.

Lauren loves her bottles, bundling and of course her siblings. She hates having her nose wiped and wails to be bundled when she's ready to sleep. Brock can get her to smile at the drop of a hat. Hannah can get her to laugh by acting like a clown in her line of sight. Both kids seem to like Lauren well enough. We anticipate this adoration will last until Lauren is mobile and getting into their things!

Lauren had her first taste of solid food this last month. We've been plugging her full of prunes and other...uh..."relieving" foods as she is prone to constipation like her sister was. We were already in the ER once thinking her intestines were in distress. What fun! Lauren didn't seem to mind foor that much...
Lauren is also going to Dori's with Hannah. It sounds like she is quite popular with the kids and gets a lot of "presents" from them. We are looking forward to dressing Lauren up for Halloween and watching her take in Christmas. What fun!

Our summer has been full of friends and family. We went to the park to share in cousin Mirian's blessing picnic celebration.

With the exception of Hannah and Lauren both having a sad moment at the same time, it was a great time!






So this is what the kids are up to at least. I will fill in more as I have time (Russ). Hugs to all!

4 Years, Weekends, Cousins and Plans.

Today is the anniversary of Brian and I being hitched for 4 years! Ha! He's still stuck!

This last weekend was spent with my Ders! It ROCKED! I got to spend all day with my DerDer garage-sale-ing (good times) and celebrating the life and inpending birth of my nice-in-law Shaylee. Glorious! My Der-In-Law Nichole is just radiating that Mommy Glow despite the difficulties of this pregnancy. Amazing...And thanks to Brian and Sid, all of said time was spent without babies! Hannah did accompany us on a few garage sales. I am so taking that kid to more functions! She wore a summer dress that Brian picked out for her. People thought she was so cute that they kept giving her things. She ended up with a fairy wand, bead purse, new lace shirt, a dolly and a sunhat. I only paid for the sunhat and I am sure I only had to pay for it because I got it at WalMart. I wonder if taking her to the bank in that outfit will score us some free money????

I think I figured out how to get videos to work. So here's a shot of Sidney and Hannah "sharing" our glider chair. The video times out before the shove-match gets going.

The two toddlers had a great time mauling each other, Sidney's toys and of course...'Phia. I am so glad that Phia can hold her own! Most of the day Saturday was spent with Hannah and Sidney careening around the living room with a duck and bubble toy in tow. There were several spats about who's turn it was to ride the trike, pull the wagon and sit on Phia. I'd like to say these disagreements were handled diplomatically, but if you know either of our children, you can imagine what happened. I'd like to reckon it to the kind of riot you'd find at an Irish pub or Senior Center when the beer/bingo spotters dry up.

Lauren spent her time in a blissful state of milk-drunkeness. She fussed pretty bad Friday evening. She's been going through spurts of extreme anger and gets all red-faced-square-mouth over seemingly nothing. She has to be calmed before she can eat/be changed/etc which makes it even more dramatic. The doctor said that this just sometimes happens. The best you can do is snuggle and comfort until she wears herself out or gets the burr out from under her saddle. Other than these few instances, she spends most of her alert time like this:


The baby shower was a great time! It was really nice to see all the family/friends show up. And for the first time EVER, I won a game at a baby shower that wasn't mine! I took the pedicure prize 'cuz Nichole and I are having a home-spa day when she comes to visit next week! Woot! There was also a lot of tasty food at said shower. I've been having some weird cravings for peanut butter (and marshmallows...I know...freak) and there were some awesome cookies there. I couldn't figure out why I liked them so much until Erica pointed out that they were peanut butter. *sigh* I'm such a junkie. We got to ooh and aww over all the precious baby clothes and presents. Nichole's dad was the only guy there and I got the impression that he was kinda uncomfy about that. :) He served the cake (which also rocked BTW) and made several funnies throughout the shower.

Yesterday Brian and I pulled weeds, laid landscaping cloth and moved wash rock to landscape part of the front yard. Whew! We also washed both cars! So busy! The front yard is starting to look less like a trailer park poster and more like an actuale home. It is nice to to be THAT house on the street! It is also nice not to have enough dirt on the car for a geologist to do carbon dating to figure the last time it was cleaned. Martha Stewart and the HG network better watch themselves!

Yesterday was also a day for Brock to play ball! My darlin' Ichiro-star hit the ball 3 times! He was so stunned that he got the ball the first time that his running was delayed. He was tagged out before he got to 1st but he got a taste of confidence and success! His second hit was a foul and his 3rd was a healthy pop-fly to 3rd base. Alas, the baseman caught the ball (I wasn't fast enough to trip the kid...) and Brock was out. He didn't seem to care as much because he "...hit the ball really high..." We called both sets of Grandparents to share in the great news. We're anticipating him taking more swings at the ball and eventually gaining more ground with the whole game. He still enjoys playing and is always wanting to go out and hit the ball in the yard. The neighbors aren't keen on the idea as they have gotten several balls in their yards. We're not keen on it because we don't want to pay for windows/etc when the ball hits. Napolean loves the thought because he gets new toys when the neighbors throw the balls in our yard where he can reach them. We haven't played ball outside since.

Well I have a date with the weed-whacker and a ton 'o weeds. Hope this finds you all well! Love you all!

Here's what's on my plate for the rest of May/June and July:
- writing Lauren's Birth Story
- filling out FAFSA (done) and getting on with med/nursing school stuff
- quitting my job at the jail (YEAH BABY!) and being around my babies until school starts
- winning the lotto???
- landscaping the front yard (almost done!)
- getting rid of that baby weight
- graduate Ninja School
- visting family and friends
- sticking it to The Man
- have a huge garage sale
- redo the bathroom painting stuff (done)
- organize my poor dishevelled house (done-ish)
- get the kids in swim lessons
- going out to the bars/getting tanked more often. C'mon...who doesn't want this!??!
- saving more money
- being happy with my career choice, enjoying life, and not stressing over lame politics.

As I type this:

I've been trying to type this out for literally a week now! ACK! Now that I sit down to the computer, Hannah is trying to burgle Brock's room AGAIN. She was just sent to her room for this! Lauren wants to eat now. Fantastic timing! If I get one more stupid time share sales call on Brian's phone I am going to scream! Oh joy! Brock and Hannah have gone from playing to arguing to fighting to trying to out-tattle the other. *sigh* Maybe this is a sign that blogging is just not for me? At least not until the kids are 18 and out of the house? So yeah. When I can get a moment without kids and distractions, I will write out Lauren's birth story (minus scary details of course) and share pictures. I will also include pics from my All-Star's baseball games and Hannah's gymnastic feats. Well I have to go. Lauren is a new shade of angry purple and the other two are about to be permananly installed in their rooms. Hugs to all!

Waiting Game

The last few weeks of pregnancy are the "waiting game" period. According to the perky magazine articles, I should enjoy this time of "awe" and bask in the haven of that "any day now" thrill. Yeah...I call bullsnickers on that one! What normal woman is enjoying 3 straight days of Braxton-Hicks contractions? The inablility to sleep? Living in the bathroom? Dealing with the thousands of remarks from stupid people like "...oh...still pregnant..."? No you mental reject. I have a beer gut exasperated by Hep C. How about "you must be SO excited" and "when is the baby coming"? I'm thrilled people. Really. If I knew when the baby was coming I wouldn't need to be seeing a doctor/etc.

Why on Earth would a woman in her 9th month be basking in the thought that any day now could mean tomorrow but really should have been yesterday? I say pooh pooh on all of the sunny authors and their Wonder Bread ideals. They can take a step back and re-evaluate their raindrops-on-roses statements. Let me give them 3 days of immense discomfort and stress. Oh yeah, where do they gush about pulling 12-hour shifts day/nights, dealing with sick children and maintain some semblence of a clean house; all while feeling like a sick/bloated whale? I must have missed that part of the article. I'll bet is somehwhere between grandma's porch swing and the whiskers on kittens. Bite me you lollypop-licking dream-catching fingerpainting Cornell University drop-outs! Not every pregnant woman smiles dandilions and farts rainbows!

Some of us are just overtired and ready to have our baby OUT! This doesn't mean we are less the woman or that we don't love our children. I am lucky to have a child. I am blessed to have my family. I know all this and appreciate each item. But I refuse buy into a cookie-cutter sugar-frosted acid trip that is Every Pregnant Woman is a Contended Being.

From one tired Mommy to the next; God Bless our families and Praise Hime for our circumstances.

Now pass me the epidural and let's get this show on the road...

Petri Dishes and Updates

Ok. I am convinced that Hannah is a Petri dish. That poor child is always coming down with something. I was worried (as was my mom) about her skin rash she's had for the last couple of weeks. Mom thought it was some sort of reaction to food/etc and thought she may have some sorta allergy. I dropped Hannah off a daycare one morning at 0600 and had a call from her teacher about 9:30 saying that she had developed a rash that looked like chicken pox. Nice. So I call her Dr and get her in by 10:05. After a check and a fierce battle for a blood draw (BTW: it takes 3 people to hold Hannah down to get a draw out of her arm...), we received test results 2 days later. My little Dish contracted chicken pox. What gets me is that she's had the vaccine. Hopefully her polio, hepatitis and measles vaccines work better... Luckily Hannah hasn't been too bad off. She was the most traumatized by the blood draw; although her solace was bought for one yellow bouncy ball out of the doctor's office Treasure Box. She had a follow up appt the next day and was again bought off by a bouncy ball. So we are waiting for her tiny spots to go away. I read up on chicken pox and pregnancy (yeah...that's what a need to worry about now...) and learned that it is only really dangerous during the first trimester. There are several smaller issues that can happen in the last trimester/just before birth that I will discuss with my dr on Tuesday's appt. Especially since I woke up with several spots this morning. Forgive my pessimistic Eeyorishness, but why me? I already had these miserable things when I was 13! I'm hoping its just a breakout or some skin thing rather than the pox.





Brock has been doing well in school! Not surprised about that! We had his parent/teacher conference the other day and learned that he is right on track with his reading/math/science etc. He has made great improvements in his reading and writing. The teacher's only complaint was that Brock wants so badly to be the first one done with everything that he skips over stuff and writes sloppily in haste. This is an easily corrected problem though. Brock was proud to show off how neat his desk was, how involved his art/posters were and how much work he put into his science journal. He was using works like buoyant and viscous when they learned about liquids and solids! His teacher obviously enjoys working with Brock and has shared some great stories about how he arrives at solutions and answers to problems.







Brock also had his first Tiger Cubs award ceremony recently. He earned his first merit patch! He is thrilled to have a uniform with all the trimmings! By the way, he spilled fruit punch on his lap just before going up to get his award/posing for pictures. He was embarrassed by the wet mark on his leg poor dear.

Hannah has started gymnastics again. She picked up right where she left off! She actually responds to the instructor's directions and goes through the motions of the exercises with the class. She still has problems staying on track, waiting her turn in line and skipping ahead to the equipment she likes best. We haven't had any deviation from proper directions on the trampoline though! She loves her "M'nastics" and will squeal with delight when we drive towards the building. Hannah also adores the "libary". We've started going 2-3 times per week for story time and for checking out books/movies. They have a pretty decent selection of kids stuff and have bigger things out like a puppet theatre and a train set for the kids to play with. Hannah will hear the word library and freak right out until we go.





We are still waiting to hear back on Brian's background investigation. My patience is wearing thin (mostly due to hormones methinks...) and it is hard to remember that God is in control of all this. Whew. What a chore that alone is!





We have 36 days until Lauren is due! I cannot wait for that either! Well, I'm obviously not thrilled about the physics of it all, but I will be delighted to have her out and with us!





I think that's all have for right now. Much love to you all! Hugs!

Everyone Else Is Doing It...

OK. I am ashamed I have not updated this thing in a while. We've been trudging along with work, school, life, etc. and really haven't done anything ground-breaking. :)

We had a great time with the cousins! It was so sweet to see them all playing/fighting/etc. Ok. Maybe Hannah and Sidney clashed the most. Both of them were lemmings to any and everything Brock did! Fia sat back and took it all in. I wonder if she realizes exactly what she's related to...poor babers! Erica and I raided thrift stores seeking the latest fashions at rock bottom prices! It was great! I spent $4.30 and got enough pants for Hannah to make it through the next size. Oh yeah...I am a rebel!

We have our 3 two-week check on this coming Tues. I think we have one more 2-week wait before we go in once a week. Time is going by fast, but not nearly fast enough. At least it feels that way when I try to sleep or dare I say...get comfy? Soon now. Only 3 weeks to wait before labor is safe!

Uh...nothing new on the job front. We're waiting for the background checks to go through. There's a lot of hurdles to jump but worth it in the long run!

My Pampered Chef stuff is going well. I am hoping to make my sales quota for a new consultant by next weekend. I am stoked! So far, I've done 1 show and 1 catalog show and have earned enough money for gas for the month! This is an easy and enjoyable second job. Not to mention it gets me some time away from kids/house to spend with other women. Of course we end up talking about kids/house/etc. Ah well. Can't win them all right?

I should get going. Have some stuff to get done before I go home. Hugs to all!

Milestones

Brock had another milestone reached on Friday afternoon. He and his friend were playing in his room when I heard a gasp/squeal and his door come flying open. I heard Brock running down the hallway gasping (much like Charlotte from Sense and Sensibility when she finds out Mrs. Jennings is taking the girls to London...) and yelling something. His friend was hard on his heels yelling the same something. Being in "something's wrong with my baby mode" I prepared myself for gushing blood, missing fingers or gaping head wounds. I saw Brock covering his mouth with his hand and holding something in his other hand. I got him to slow down enough to hear "I loss my toof!" repeated over and over and over at a rate I am sure would break the sound barrier. His little friend was chiming in with "he ate dog poo!" at almost the same rate.

We got Brock's tooth/mouth cleaned up and it was time to call Dad. Brock was trying to tell Brian over the phone what happened while his friend still sang about him eating dog poo and grabbing at the phone. The two boys argued a little over who was going to tell the news before Brian got to hear what happened and why Brock was in such a lather. We put the treasure tooth in his tooth fairy container (plastic tooth on a string courtesy of his school) and made ready for the Tooth Fairy to come do her duties. As it turns out, Brock was spending the night at a friend's house and didn't get to "see" the Tooth Fairy until Saturday. So...this will be Brock's 3rd tooth he lost! And all on the bottom row! What a handsome toothy grin!



We got up for church on Sunday to find it snowing again! I found a dress in Hannah's closet she hasn't worn yet that was a gift from one of her cousins. Miracles never cease but I found a matching pair of tights and a headband. So...here's our little girl looking too much like a little girl instead of my baby. She was a hit at church and got lots of waves and hellos. All of which she returned with angelic innocence. People were convinced that we had a cherub on our hands. I am convinced my daughter is an accomplished actress... :) Brian and noticed that she is losing her baby belly and is getting lean and tall. That is NOT FAIR! She is wearing 3T clothing, speaking like a preschooler and giving orders as to how her world is to be run. Sad moment for us parents. But then again her cousins aren't that far behind. Sorry Ders...it had to be said! :)

We are waiting to hear from Brian's interview at the end of this week. I will not get a good night's sleep until then I'm sure! He feels pretty good about the whole thing. I am praying like mad that things work out. I know God will have his plan followed and that we should accept this, but it is awfully hard to imagine that this wouldn't be in his plan. Or timing. Guess it is more wishful thinking? Either way, we should have an answer by this coming Friday. It will be a long week in waiting!

Hugs to all!