Soon?

Maybe I should have mentioned in my last post that "coming soon" was a relative term. :) Where oh where did the past month GO?

Even now as I sit down to type, the baby (8 months old now!) is starting to fuss. Figures.

Ok, 20 minute break to feed baby and put him down for a nap. Now where was I?

Right. Catching up... Will I ever be caught up? Maybe when my kids are all in school full-time? That will be in about 5 years.

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The above was written a couple of weeks ago already. Seriously, the Summer is flying by so fast I can't believe it. Between a bored 8-year-old, a tantruming 4-year-old, a strong-willed, potty-training 2 & 1/2 year old, and a newly-crawling 8-month-old, life is chaotic to say the least.

What have we been up to? Here it is in a nutshell. Yes, the condensed version is all I seem to find time for lately. Sorry.

Seth has been job-hunting. He was a contractor at a company that no longer renews contracts beyond 2 years, so as of June 30th, he has joined the Unemployed. No fun there. He spends hours searching for jobs, tweaking his resume and writing cover letters. He has had several phone interviews, but so far no face-to-face interviews. So he is busy searching and doing all that. It takes a lot of computer time! (Therefore, since that takes priority, most of my computer time lately has been from my phone, and I don't do well with typing on that little iPhone keyboard, so this is a treat to use the laptop uninterrupted for a bit!)

Ethan is bored. He is always asking if I will play a game with him, or if he can play on my iPod, or if we can go to the beach / park / library / restaurant , etc. We have been going to the beach quite a bit. I need to get him in swimming lessons. He loves the water and wants to learn to swim. He also loves science and wants to do science projects around the house. He is always asking if we have vinegar so he can make a volcano, or blow up a balloon, or make crystals, etc. He is reading about space and wants to look at the moon through his telescope. He is interested in cooking and wants to help me bake (which I haven't done much of due to all the warm, humid days!) Yesterday he told me he thinks he'd like to be a chef when he grows up. Although this may come from watching Ratatoullie a lot lately!

Kibby misses school. She always asks to "go to school and see Ms. Julie" (her teacher this past year). She also wants to go to church several times a week. She was evaluated at the Clinic again, this time by a psychologist. (She was referred back in January but it just took this long to get her in! 6 months!) Anyway, the Clinic did some testing and decided not to redo the ADOS test for Autism that the school district had already done over the Winter because after reviewing the report saw no reason to re-test. That meant only 2 hours at the appointment instead of four! Yay! The recommendation was that Kibby stay in Special Ed preschool with the speech therapy included, but to consider adding Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) therapy as well. From what I understand this is a pretty intense one-on-one therapy, recommended for 20-25 hours (or sometimes up to 40 hours) a week with a qualified therapist. They work on developing adaptive behaviors while decreasing target behaviors by breaking goals and tasks down into smaller tasks for the child, and rewarding each small success, thereby increasing the likelihood of the child repeating the desired behavior. (Does that make sense?)
So we are looking into that for her. There are waiting lists and insurance hurdles, so it's been a process already. We are also looking into getting her a caseworker to help us navigate all of this, and to get the most help for her right now when she is young.

Ruby is 2 and a half, and is our drama queen, silly entertainer, and definitely a strong-willed child! She loves to watch movies, play outside, go to the park, to church, and to go swimming at the beach. She always asks for her "swimming soup". I love that so much I don't want to correct her! Is that bad? :) She is currently learning to use the potty, and isn't too thrilled so far. She will hold it in and beg for a diaper. Um, yeah. It's a work in progress, but I thought it might be easier to train her now before Ean starts walking!

Which brings me to Ean! He started crawling a couple weeks ago, and is getting to be speedy already! My gut is telling me he will not walk at 9 months like all of his siblings, and I have to say that makes me happy a little. :) I am NOT ready for that yet! Even though it's exciting to see them reach new milestones and it might have been cool to say "all my kids walked at 9 months" - I now know that they already are growing too fast and won't mind my baby slowing down a bit! He is starting to try to pull himself up on furniture already, though, and we have found him pushed up onto his hands and feet (instead of hands and knees) when crawling, which I find amusing. I should point out that he doesn't actually move then. He stays that way until he remembers how to get back down on his knees or topples over. :)
He likes to "dance" when he hears music, too. When he is crawling and hears music, he kind of bops up and down a little. It's hard to describe exactly, but so cute.

Whew! The laundry is calling once again, as Ean just overflowed his diaper in the baby swing. (Yeah, he still likes the swing! Unreal, but the weight limit is 25 lbs, and he doesn't try to climb out of it, so we've let him enjoy it as long as he wants to so far.)

Until next time! Forgive me for not proofreading - if there are typos I hope you'll all understand! I still have photos to post, so the next one will probably be mostly cuteness and less words. :) Hope you're all enjoying your Summer!

Happy Half-Birthday, Ean!

Yesterday my baby turned 6 months old. Wow. I don't know where the past half year went. It seems like I just brought him home from the hospital a few weeks ago! What's strange is that now that six months have passed, and I look back, there were times when I thought time was d.r.a.g.g.i.n.g. I remember thinking at times that I couldn't wait until he was doing this or that... like holding his head up better, or learning to self-soothe, or sleep through the night, or roll over, or play in the exersaucer. (Ok, so mainly the sleeping through the night thing...) :)
But now, today, it is bittersweet. The year is going so fast suddenly. Before I know it, he will be running and climbing with his siblings. All of our kids have walked within a week (either way) of the 9-month mark, so it really seems unreal that in 3 months it's a very real possibility that he will be walking, too. Again, Wow.

Here's a rundown of what he is doing now:

* Sitting up for longer and longer periods of time without support.
* Smiling at EVERYONE. (He's such a charmer!)
* Pivoting around on his hands and tummy when we put him on the floor.
* Playing with his toes a lot.
* Putting all of his toys in his mouth.
* Trying rice cereal (but he doesn't really like it!)
* Wanting to stand up on our laps when we hold him (as opposed to sitting in our lap).
* Babbling and talking more and more. He "says" quite a few different sounds.
* Usually sleeping through the night! (HOORAY!)

I took a video of him in the backyard on Easter, and I'll try to post it here:

It was his first time feeling the grass under him, and he didn't think much of it. And he let us know! :)

Here is our sweet boy today. Er, yesterday, actually.

Happy 6-month-birthday, Ean! We love you very much!

All I Want for Christmas is My Two Front Teeth

After all the drama of the tooth coming out (and there was lots of drama!), he said he wants to keep it instead of putting it under his pillow for the Tooth Fairy. I said that was up to him, and that the Tooth Fairy probably wouldn't go broke quite as soon that way. ;) Here he is holding it in the little tooth case he usually uses for when he puts them under his pillow. This is his fourth tooth he has lost. I'm hoping it will be a while before he loses any more!

One month already!

I can't believe Ean is already one month old! Here are some recent pictures:

Here he is trying to talk to Seth. (We were trying to get him to smile!) He is beginning to find his voice and says "ah" more every day now!

Yesterday (the 2nd) he smiled at me for the first time! And I don't mean in his sleep, either! The first time he did it, I thought it was unintentional, but then he did it 3 more times! He was so alert and just studying my face as I talked to him for about 10 minutes. Of course I didn't have my camera nearby, and trying to get him to do it when I do have my camera around is still difficult. It won't be long, though, and he will be smiling a lot more! :)

I'm Still Alive! I Promise!

Hey there everyone! I'm back!

Ok, so I didn't really go anywhere. I only took a looooong blogging break without really meaning to. It just happened. There have been plenty of times over the past couple of weeks where I have sat down to write a post only to be interrupted by some urgent request that *can't wait*.


You know, like dirty diapers.


And then yesterday I had every intention of writing a new post and really wanted to add pictures, but I wasted all my time looking for the USB cable for my camera to upload the latest... I still haven't found the cable. That's what happens when you clean your house, you know.


So, this post really SHOULD be about two things. (The two things that I meant to post about in the last few weeks but didn't.) They are:


Ethan lost his first tooth. Finally. He will be 7 in three months, and I think he was starting to believe he would never lose any! His adult tooth had already broke the surface behind his baby tooth, and so we told him to just keep wiggling the baby tooth to get it out! He finally resorted to using dental floss to hook under it and pry it out. I couldn't watch. I told him that my dad used to tie a string to my loose tooth and the other end of the string was tied to a doorknob. Then he would slam the door and out popped the tooth. (Very quickly but not always painlessly.) Ethan decided to NOT try that way. Can't imagine why...


He now has a second tooth that is loose, right next to the other one that just came out (bottom middle) and of course when I looked this morning I saw the adult tooth already through behind this one, too. So he is wiggling again. The tooth fairy brought him a dollar for his first tooth, and he was so excited that he wanted to take it to school to show his friends. I said no. I told him they've all seen a dollar before and I didn't want it stolen.


We'll see what the tooth fairy gives for a second tooth. It won't be long now!


The second thing I wanted to post was pictures of the girls eating my homemade chocolate chip cookies. I realized that both girls had their very first one at 16 months each, and I wanted to post pictures of each of them eating their first cookie! But I cannot find the picture of Kibby, and I cannot find my cable to upload the pic of Ruby. But I WILL find them! And post them at a later time. Along with the picture of Ethan's lost tooth. And by then I'll have another pic of him with his second tooth out. :)

Of course both of these things really should have been posted a long time ago. So that today, I could just post about the main reason I've been largely absent on the blogger / facebook / twitter scene lately... I've been spending a lot of time lying on the couch. Bone tired. Fighting nausea. Yes, morning sickness to be more precise. Yes, the kind of sickness that accompanies a pregnancy.


Surprised? I sure was! We were certainly happy with our three blessings we already had, and decided that we were done... Well, it would seem that God has other plans for our family. (I'll share more on this later. My couch is calling me again.) However, I wanted to tell you all that we are expecting another little addition to our family in October.


Ethan is hoping for a baby brother this time. :)