A little me and an overdue thank you.

Since I know people are really checking into this blog to hear about ME and only me...I will happily oblige and give you what you are in search of.

Plus, it's kind of my favorite topic to write about.  

(As long as it's in sarcastic tones.)

I don't know about those who have blazed the trail before me, but for some reason this fourth pregnancy is kicking my trash!  I'm not more sick, not more hormonal, not in more pain.  But I am BEYOND tired. I don't know that any amount of sleep would make me feel less tired, and I'm pretty sure this level of exhaustion while exerting little to no energy has never been achieved.

And as much as I am enjoying all this talk about me, I really HAVE to divert your attention to what I REALLY wanted to write about.  I know, I sucked you in thinking you were going to read a nice big post all about yours truly only to fool you.  

But alas, it must be done.

What I REALLY wanted to write about was Marty.  I owe him a HUGE thank you for all that he does.

(Including enduring a frilly daddy daughter dance with the girls and living to tell about it.)

If there's one thing Marty LOVES (not to be confused with loathes), it's attention and hoopla directed towards him.  So I'm going to make that a reality today and brag about how fantastic he is.

Marty is seriously the best husband ever!  If it weren't for him I'm not sure our kids or house would be surviving right now. As tiring as this pregnancy has been so far, it seems like Marty has just gotten better and better at it, picking up the slack without saying a word.  I haven't heard him complain once about the added responsibilities he has willingly taken over, and really he would have EVERY right to complain, because I am not the funnest pregnant lady to live with. (I know this seems shocking since I'm so incredibly delightful in all my interactions with people.)

There are many days that Marty is not only being the fun, crazy, silly dad, but is also taking over many of the mom "responsibilities".  

-Some days his relaxing lunch break/nap on the couch turns into feeding the girls and doing dishes.

-Some days he comes home from a long day of work and happily offers to cook dinner if I haven't.

-His Saturday's to catch up on sports, reading or sleep have turned into doing all the grocery shopping, errands, yard work and making sure the "chores" get done around the house.  (Although I did go grocery shopping a few days ago...I'm trying to get back into normal life.)  

-Some nights he takes over all the baths and bedtimes with the kids.

-His evenings to veg in front of the TV have turned into late night runs to the gas station for some strange craving I have.  

And you know what...he always does it all with a smile.  

I don't know how he does it. 

Today I fell asleep on the couch while he was home for lunch, and of course, in true Marty fashion, while I was asleep he put Addison down for a nap and kept the other girls busy and told them not to bother me  

(I really didn't mean to fall asleep, I swear!)

But when I woke up, something dawned on me.  

Here and there Marty will throw out a little "Maybe this baby should be our last" type comment.  I usually just roll my eyes.  I have always assumed he said this because he worries the stress of raising and caring for any more than 4 kids would just be too much for him. 

But I think I was wrong.  I have decided he COULD handle more kids. 

It's another pregnancy that might put him over the edge. 

Poor Marty....he really got the short end of the stick.

I guess the good news is the nausea seems to be slowing down and I'm feeling a little better and have started trying to pick back up my end of the responsibilities.  Unfortunately the nausea seems as though it is being replaced with raging hormones, and all I want to do is cry all day.  

Marty just can't win!

So, thank you SO much Marty!  You're sure a peach, and our little family is SO lucky to have you!

(And all those other babies waiting to come to our family are lucky too. ;) )

Addison Update (3 months in the making)

I really just wanted to document/update about Addison for my own records.  I know these type of posts aren't that exciting, but sometimes it's good for me to be able to look back and see how much things have changed so I can get a good perspective.

Back in March I wrote this post about Addison and how I was concerned about her being behind with her speech thanks to a LONG winter full of ear infections and how we had gone ahead with getting her tubes, hoping for improvement.

So now that we're a little over 3 months out from her tubes, her speech is taking off, and it makes me so happy!

Before her tubes she was saying about 8 or 9 words.

Her current list is closer to 40 (I lost count, missed some and she adds a new one every day it seems): hi, mama, daddy, thank you, uh-oh, wow, what's that (wu zat), Cuh (for sisters) Lizzy, see ya, night, binky (ginky), blanky (ganky), done/all done, gone, doggie (goggie), outside (owside), go, shoes, ow (like owie), stinky, ew (like gross), eyes, nose, whoa, belly, good job (goo jah), yah, yay, no, drink, okay, Elmo (la la, because of the song), oh, hello, what.

It's amazing how FAST a little child picks up on things.  I would say even more notable to us above her increasing vocabulary is that her comprehension has EXPLODED.  Before the tubes she didn't seem to pay a whole lot of attention to us and didn't follow any directions.  While she still doesn't follow a whole lot of directions thanks to a stubborn streak, she understands us and will go get things we ask her to find, she will put things back that she gets out, answers questions like "where is your head?" etc.

So...I know this is starting to come across as a "Look how smart my baby is!" type post.  But this is just simply because looking back at where we were three to four months ago with her versus now is basically a completely different child, and it's amazing!  I am so happy I pushed for the tubes and listened to my mother's intuition when other people were telling me to avoid it and to use more "natural" remedies for her ear infections.  The thing that natural remedies couldn't do was remove all the built up gunk and scar tissue that was lodged down in her ear canal making her hearing bad.  

I will never regret getting her tubes.  It's opened up a whole new world to her, and she is SO much happier now than she has ever been.  Which is so wonderful to see as a mother.  Sure she's till crazy and a dare devil and has put a good chunk of gray hair on my head (seriously...I'm too young for gray hair!), but she is cheerful, social, outgoing, talkative and wonderful.

Some pictures of Addison now:

She insists on wearing this helmet basically every day.  She was also wearing a backpack and a black headband as a necklace in this particular picture.

I have had ONE person tell me she looks exactly like me, but I'm pretty sure it's just because of her curly hair.  (For some reason people tell me I look like people who also have curly hair...even when our faces look NOTHING alike.)

A little cleaning before bed.  I took half the handle off the Swiffer so she doesn't keep trying to use my broom, which was sure to end in stuff being broken.

Addison was being quiet in the play room, so I thought for sure she was up to no good.  When I went to check on her, she had climbed in this doll stroller, picked up a baby doll and was sucking on it's fake plastic binky.  She is such a ham.

I just adore our little Addison and am so grateful she's in our family!

Our New Summer Schedule

Let's get right down to business shall we?  

I'm a huge slacker of a mom.

There, it's off my chest...we can move on.

When it comes to the basics, my kids get fed and have clothes.  But thanks to home sickness, stress, pregnancy blahs (tired beyond belief, nauseous all day, grumpy, did something dumb and hurt my lower abdomen area and can hardly do anything without it hurting) things were getting neglected beyond that.  

And I knew that really needed to be remedied.

So in order to keep from going absolutely CRAZY this summer with Brielle out of school, leaving us schedule-less, I decided it was time to implement a new summer schedule.  

Plus getting a little slave labor out of my kids didn't hurt either.

We won't really be here long enough (at least we hope) to sign them up for any activities, and we won't get to Utah soon enough to sign them up there either.  Poor children...have to go without me spending hundreds on them this summer. I hope they survive.

Anyway, I came up with two different job charts, and a reward system to help get us through this summer.

The first job chart is for the girls.  It's their "Daily Chores":

Obviously these are pretty easy chores, and should go without saying.  But like I said, I'm a huge slacker and there are definitely days that none of the things on this chore chart happened.

Our second job chart stemmed from an idea I heard somewhere, sometime from someone.  I heard to split your home into zones, and focus on ONE zone a day, making that area look nice.  I really liked this because I have a BAD problem of starting to straighten one room, getting distracted by something in another room and working there, getting distracted again...etc., etc., and never actually completely cleaning one room.  So, we now have our "Weekly Zones".

When the Daily Chores and Zone for the day are completed, I created a "Fun Jar" full of little slips of paper with activities, that...get this...I do WITH my kids.  I think that was more exciting to them than anything.

And yes, I know it's not a jar...I fully expected my kids to say something about that, but so far they haven't.  I just didn't have a jar and am too cheap to go buy one.

So today's activity from the jar was "Trace your hands on paper, color on jewelry and paint the nails."

As you can see the girls were so excited I let them use REAL fingernail polish to paint the hands that they went a little hog wild.  But that's okay, they had a great time.

So let's hope this helps keep summer moving along without too much boredom, fighting or laziness.  Because those are three things that I really can't stand.

Kindergarten Graduation

It's hard to believe it...but Brielle graduated from Kindergarten today!  I've been counting down the days, so ready for summer to just start.  But now that she's actually graduated, it's crazy!  I can't believe she'll be in 1st grade next year!  

Brielle has done SO well in Kindergarten, we couldn't be more proud.  She's blown the "benchmark" reading goals out of the water and is really gaining a love of reading.  Her teacher loves her (who doesn't though?) and told us she is so sad we're leaving and is considering calling President Obama to make sure we stay here so the other teachers get the joy of teaching Brielle.  

Brielle is such a WONDERFUL girl. 

Right before heading off to her last day as a Kindergartner.

 

Walking in for the start of the ceremony.  Apparently they were told not to talk to people and stuff, so she's trying SO HARD to not look at us and laugh.  Such an obedient girl.

It's hard to see her, but she's standing up saying:
"Good afternoon, my name is Brielle.  When I grow up I want to be a radiologist, a tennis player and a cheerleader."

Our little graduate.

Outside of her classroom door.

Congratulations Brielle!  We love you!