A New Chapter Begins

The milestone that I have been waiting for all these years, has come and gone.  All four children are in school full time.

I'm discovering that my seven hours sans children seem to fly by.  So far the house doesn't seem any cleaner and the dinners haven't been any more remarkable.  I have yet to bake cookies to welcome the kiddos home from school.  I've not done any scrap-booking.  My desk is still a mess, with stacks of papers and things to be done.  And the thing I was most looking forward to - being able to get into a great exercise routine - hasn't worked out that well either.  (But I don't feel that one's entirely my fault since I keep having to go back to the doctor to have him cut stuff out of my back and each time he wants me to take six weeks off of exercise. Seriously, doc?!)

I have been spending a lot of time at the school, helping out with various programs and even in the classroom.  I did manage to thoroughly organize my daughter's room...only to have her mess it right back up, within days.  I made a good start on the other daughter's room and she too messed it right back up.  In fact her room looks about ten times worse than it did before I started.  My one success has been my own neatly made bed every day.  And so far I'm still managing to pack lunches the evening before, which makes life so much better.  (I was having the kids pack their own lunches but after a few weeks of that, I decided I'd better step in and better manage the ratio of healthy to less healthy food!)

Even if the seven hours feel more like three, I am loving this bit of free time.  Dwight and I have started running together in the mornings, which is great.  We often grab lunch together, which is a real perk to having him work from home. I've also been enjoying lunches and Starbucks rendezvous with friends.  And there was even a weekend jaunt to Phoenix to visit my nephew (and his parents).

So life is good. And hopefully soon I'll get into a routine and I'm even hoping to get back to blogging.  So perhaps you might check back in a month or two, as opposed to a year or two.  :)

It's Baaaa-aaack!

We have a little girl in our house who desperately needs to nap. She's taken maybe half a dozen naps since the end of May...and this is a VERY BAD THING. For a while I thought maybe she was just giving up naps early and while that sucked for me, such is life.  But it has become increasingly apparent that she NEEDS to nap. She gets so grumpy.

The problem started when she stopped sucking her thumb in May.  Since then it's been nearly impossible to get her to sleep during the day. At first it seemed like she was okay.  But she's not.  So last month I really started my campaign to get her back to napping.  I tried laying with her (which in reality was pretty much me trying to be a straight jacket for her because she was not going down without a fight). That was no fun and it didn't work anyway.  Well, it worked once when she finally wore herself out but the rest of the times she wore me out first.  I tried bribery. That didn't work. I tried lulling her to sleep in the car...and in the stroller. None of that worked. So now I'm trying the only other thing I could think of. Eight months after having taken it down, the crib is back. *fingers crossed*

Crib, originally uploaded by hezro.

Work

Kardynn apparently thinks that Dwight goes to work "at the gym" and "plays basketball".  He wishes that was his job!

I can't remember what prompted it but last week the other kids and I got into a discussion about work and jobs.  Oskar said, "Being a mom is a really hard job.  You have to discipline people." And that was the extent of his description.

We had some big milestones last week and all of them happened at the gym. The first big milestone is that Oskar and Annika went down the enclosed water slide. A few weeks ago Annika tried the open water slide and she had a hard time getting out of the water at the base of the slide. So I told her she wasn't quite ready for it. But she's been making great headway at swim lessons so I encouraged her to try it again. She did great. After a few times down that I told her I thought she'd be fine to do the other one too.  She and Oskar both decided to try it. They went down several times. Oskar loved it. Annika got water up her nose on one of descents and she didn't like that but I think overall she liked it. On the weekend we dragged Dwight to the gym with us and they all rode the waterslides together numerous times.

They had another success which I initially forgot about (and that did not happen at the gym).  We went swimming at a neighbor's house and they both swam in the deep end (sans life jacket).  Annika tended to make sure she wasn't too far from either the edge of the pool or a float but she certainly does not lack for confidence.  Oskar, on the other hand, swims much better than he realizes.

The second success at the gym happened on Thursday. I met up with my friend to work out. When we dropped the kids off at the child care center, I realized that Kardynn's diaper was wet. I no longer carry a diaper bag - of course - so to spare me a trip out to the car (in the rain), my friend gave me a pull-up to use. About 50 minutes into our workout, I got paged to the child care center.  When I got down there, they told me that Kardynn needed help in the bathroom.  I said, "Oh, she's not potty trained".  In the meantime, she had spotted me and came running up shouting, "Mommy, I need to poop."  Alrighty then. So I took her into the bathroom. And guess what?!  She used the potty!  Hurray!  Now I need to teach her the difference between peeing and pooping.  *hehe*  When she informs me that she's poopy, 90% of the time she's actually wet.  When she does poop, her trend is to flat out deny anything is going on. Strange child.

Growing Up

Annika amazes me with her seemingly fearless approach to life. Last week she and Oskar did a rock climbing camp and she easily conquered that challenge.  She had no trouble reaching the top of any of the routes they did.  Oskar said, "Mom, she's younger than me and better than me!"  (I admire him too for the way he wants the best for everyone around him.  He's a very selfless person.)

Yesterday Annika went down the waterslide at the pool again and this time had absolutely no problems. I encouraged both of them to try the covered waterslide and they did.  Oskar loved it.  Annika was not as sold but she still tried it several times.

Speaking of Oskar, yesterday we were walking out of a building and Kardynn pitched a fit for some reason or another.  (Who knows why?)  I started walking away (making sure she was safe from cars, of course).  But Oskar was so upset. "Mom, she can't get up. She needs you to pick her up."  Twice he tried to go pick her up himself but of course she shooed him away because she was having a tantrum.  He's an amazing kid. I went back and picked her up.  Not because SHE was demanding it but because HE wanted it.

Oh my...they're all growing up so fast!

Word

Gradually Kik is getting closer to saying everyone's names correctly. Now we're at "Otter", "Lawdika", "Hear-ten" and of course she's got Kardynn down.

O & A are frequently in fierce competition with each other and forever declaring themselves to be the winner. I think I've already mentioned that O will declare them both to be winners if he can't convince Annika that he was in fact the sole winner. I like that attitude. Coming in second is no problem because you can just declare there to be multiple winners. But I digress. This morning A finished her cereal first and declares herself the winner. So O says that's a winner too because he's almost finished. Then he says, "We're changing it. The one who has some cereal left is the winner and the one who has no cereal is not the winner."

We had a milestone this weekend. O said a bad word...not a majorly bad word but a minorly bad word. It happened when he was out with my sister-in-law's troop. So anyway, when I found out about it...I asked O where he'd heard that...blah, blah, blah. He's definitely NOT a tattle tale - despite my previous concerns - because he'll rarely incriminate anyone (other than his sisters who he's happy to report on). He clams up and says things like, "I just know it." Eventually he said that it was probably someone at school but that was the most I ever got out of him. "Probably" means "definitely" in Oskar's lexicon. So I gave him a speech about that not being a nice word for a little boy and so on an so forth. Anyway, later on I mentioned it to D&A in front of O, so Uncle Danny says, "Oskar, you shouldn't say bad words in front of your mommy, that makes her sad" or something like that. O pipes up, "No, I didn't say it in front of Mommy."

Today I put K2 in the "Jonny Jumper" for the first time (I don't think it's an official "Johnny Jumper" so we'll just call it a "Jonny Jumper" for Uncle J.) I tried out the megasaucer a week or two ago but even though her head is strong, the seating area is still a little loose for her. I'd have to put a blanket behind her, or something, so that she wouldn't flop around.

This weekend I asked Dwight if he ever reads my blog and he said, "no". So I said, "good!". *smile* So I can continue to speak freely... *hehe*