Thursday, April 4, 2013

Family Update...Finally!

Now that Desktop Dino is up and running, C is napping and the twins are watching Sesame Street, I can squeeze in a few minutes to update you on our recent adventures.  As soon as I find the USB cable for the Nikon, I'll do a photo dump of the last two months for you (I hope).

Baby C: He's just 5 days shy of 11 months and getting into everything!  He's been army crawling since the first of Feb, but now he gets up on all fours occasionally, pulls himself up and cruises the furniture.  This week, he's been found pulling himself up in the crib, despite wearing a sleep sack!  Hubs dropped the mattress allllll the way down - I hope that will keep him in there for another year!  We are planning his birthday party already and are handing out invites - eeek!  I can't believe my baby is almost one.  I am definitely more schmoopy about this birthday than I was the twins' first.  I guess it is because I know he's my last baby without a doubt.  So he and I are working on the weaning process and are down to just morning and nights.  This is different for me, since the twins just bit and quit on me one day, so it was quick. Not painless, but quick, like ripping off a band-aid.  C is attached to me at the...you know, and it's so sweet and cute, and he hasn't bit me even once with all his seven chompers.  He's eating everything in sight and does NOT want to be fed baby food, so meals are SO. MESSY. I forgot about the need-a-bath-after-every-meal stage. 

N: He had a ball at Easter this year, searching for eggs at our house, my mom's house, and my mother in law's house!  He's even remembering his manners and using please and thank you - when I'm not around!  N LOVES baby C and is always squeezing him, playing with him, and dancing around to make him smile.  N loves to be a helper and will put laundry away, put toys away, help rake the leaves and park the trikes at the end of playtime.  He got a real big boy haircut at our new hair studio just two blocks away and looks like a bona fide four year old!  His absolute favorite thing is to wrestle with Hubs, who is teaching them wrestling moves.  And boundaries, since he wants to wrestle everyone!

M: He's in the question stage!  I'm doing my best to answer everything as accurately as possible, and fortunately he hasn't asked where babies come from, but if he keeps up at this rate it won't be long.  My favorite question happened last week, when we were in the van on the way to Bible study and he asked, "Mom, are we disciples to Jesus?"  My heart melted and I smiled and said, "Yes, we are!" He paused about a second and excited, exclaimed, "Look!  A street sweeper!" as we passed one.  The conversation didn't last long, but it still happened and warmed my heart forever.  He also likes to play with the Imaginext castle toy that Santa brought the boys...it's so cute to see them putting the figurines' helmets and swords on, climbing them up the ladder and fighting the lion...their imaginations are really taking off!

Me: My greatest accomplishment this week has been finishing the "response paper" required by the state of MN to renew my teaching license which expires this year.  It was a doozy, but I finished it and sent it off to my former district along with the rest of the paperwork for my required 125 continuing education hours.  Now I'm just waiting for their approval so I can send MN my application (and money) to renew my license and buy myself five more years to figure out what I want to do when I grow up.  Also, besides regular mom duties, I've been running around getting the boys' wedding outfits for my brother in law's wedding April 27!  Finding two blue and black size 4 suits and appropriately sized (and priced) dress shoes, as well as something for C to wear has been quite an effort!  We are going to do a trial run with the suits tomorrow and take the kids to get their pictures done at Sears for their birthday shots.  (Please don't judge me photographer friends!!)

Hubs: We've had a fun family week since he's been home and off work!  Having him around has been the kind of at-home vacation you always say you need but never get so that you can actually get stuff done.  As a result, he's been able to finally unpack his office and set up the desktop so he could get the taxes done, as well as clean up 20 bags of leaves from our lawn!  Together we've taken the kids out to the Chippewa Nature Center and Open Gymnastics, too.  We have begun our first furniture refurbishing project and will hopefully have photos for you soon.  Hopefully this weekend we can work on it some more and start organizing that garage - everything that didn't come in the house the day we moved got stacked up in the garage and hasn't moved.  In order to get the summer lawn furniture and toys out, we're going to have to tackle that heap!

It's finally spring here in Michigan and is going to be warm today, so I'm looking forward to taking the kids outside.  Then more wedding stuff: Mom's going to hem my bridesmaid dress (I doubt it will need to be taken in!) and then we are going shopping for baby dress shoes - baby C doesn't have any shoes that fit, despite a trunk of hand me down clothes from the twins.  We are just as busy as ever , maybe even more so, but beyond happy to be here near our families, seeing the grandparents all the time, enjoying pre-school, and re-connecting with old (like from first grade kind of old) friends again. 

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