Oh the Joys of Kids....=)

One of my goals is to regularly update the blog and turn it into something like a baby book. I have some pictures and activities that I want to add, but today's events I wanted to make sure I wrote down while I was still thinking about them...=)

I guess you could say life isn't dull with 3 small children. I finally (after two years) made an appointment to get the kids pictures taken. The original appointment was last Wednesday. The day started out great, I had everyone up, bathed, dressed, fed and out the door by 8:30. Plenty of time to stop for a coffee and to change and comb hair before the appointment at 9:30. We got just north of Gretna and all of the sudden Kate stops goofing around with Abby and starts screaming in this panicked sort of voice. We'd been exposed to the stomach flu earlier in the week from our neighbor boy, so immediately my mind went to her getting sick. And sure enough, a couple a seconds later she threw up all over herself. Poor kid. It was the first time for her and she was mortified. So needless to say, we rescheduled pictures! =)

Fast forward to this week. Pictures are scheduled for tomorrow. The weather is horrid for May. Cold, windy and probably rainy tomorrow. The complete opposite of last week. Strike #1 against getting pictures taken tomorrow. Strike #2 We all are either coming down with a cold or suffering from allergies (which would be weird, because, um, it's been raining, but whatever). Strike #3 After lunch, the girls went to their room and played while I cleaned up the kitchen and relaxed a bit. Usually we read stories right away and they go down for a nap, but they were playing so quietly (this should have been my first warning) that I decided to switch things up. After awhile, when I went into their room to let them know it was time to read stories, I was greeted by this overwhelming smell of fake fruit. When the girls heard the door open, they looked up at me and both had this look on their face they said GUILTY. Yep, they'd decided they wanted to make their hair colorful with blue, fruit scented chapstick. It.was.everywhere. Abby's bangs and all over Kate's hair. For the first time in my parenting career I couldn't keep a straight face when I needed to. They looked ridiculous and they knew they done something wrong. I wasn't about to give them a bath then (hello naptime?!?! I'm not giving that up!) so I put cornstarch all through their hair in an attempt to soak up the grease. After naptime, I washed, rinsed, repeated several times. Tried the cornstarch thing again and lathered up with baby shampoo and baking soda. So far it's out of Abby's hair for the most part, but Kate's is another story. It's better, but not great. I may get her up early tomorrow and try the above again and add vinegar to the mix. We'll see if we actually get pictures taken tomorrow or rescheduled again.

Oh and earlier in the day? A bird poop incident. The girls were playing outside and came up the stairs telling me they'd found something kind of strange. Kate had picked it up to show me. At first I thought it was mushrooms, but when I'd asked them where they found it they pointed a big spot on the patio that was full of bird poop. It was a massive, fresh, gooey wet piece of bird poop. They hightailed it inside (complete with trailing mud until I could tell them to get their shoes off) to get their hands washed. With soap. Lots of soap. Yuck! Next time I told them to have me come see what they have a question about instead of bringing it to me!

Catching Up....

Since you know....October. Nothing worth mentioning has happened since then. Life is boring with 3 small children in the house and nothing worth remembering ever happens. Ha! Wait a minute, that's totally not true. There is so much going on that I'm not doing the greatest job of keeping up. My goal when I started this was to record the kids' lives since scrapbooking wasn't exactly getting done...or started for that matter. I guess I can call it a small, minuscule success since I'll have 3 posts once this one is finished, but I still have a long, long way to go.

At any rate, here's what we've been up too. Hopefully I'll get some pictures up to go with it by, oh maybe, then end of summer.

Snow, snow and more snow. We broke the record for the most consecutive days of snow on the ground this winter and it felt (and still feels to an extent) that winter will never end. Daddy took off a day early for Christmas so that we could head back to my parents before a big snow storm. We made it just in time before 2+ feet of snow along with 30 -40 mph winds hit. Once we got there we were snowed in and couldn't visit anyone else so it was a very different Christmas, but nice for a change.

Kate finally got me convinced that she needed to be potty trained. She was ready awhile (probably before Josiah was born or shortly thereafter) but I kept putting it off. At any rate, once I decided it was time it didn't take long at all and she's doing a fantastic job.

Josiah just turned 1! What a big boy. We had his well baby appointment yesterday and things are going just fine. He's back to hanging steady at around the 50% after his height shot up to the 75% at 9 months. He's just over 22lbs and just 29.5 inches long. He's pulling up and cruising and I can finally say as of last week that he's actually crawling on all 4's. Up until then he was army crawling. He did that for 3+ months before he finally figured out that it's much easier to use his legs than to drag them on the ground behind them.

Abby has been busy learning her alphabet, numbers and writing her name. She can copy her name and has knows most her alphabet and sounds. Nate pointed out that every night she whispers in Josiah's ear, "Good night my Prince Charming". Ahhhh! I just love that. She has a very sweet, thoughtful heart and I hope it stays that way as she gets older. Hopefully she'll always be so sweet to her brother, but I'm sure there will be at least a couple of years in there that things won't be quite so sweet between them.

Babies are crying...must get off the computer!

One Year Ago...

I realized earlier in the week that this week (actually October 6th) marks the anniversary of finding out that we were having a baby boy. During my pregnancy, I had quite a few unplanned ultrasounds for bleeding episodes. They were so numerous that after the first couple, I usually would travel to the OBGYN for the ultrasound by myself. The way we saw it, it wasn't worth Nate taking off work to come to the doctor with me to find out that everything was okay. So on October 6th of last year I had another episode of bleeding. We knew more than likely what was causing it, but to be on the safe side I was told to come in to the OBGYN office for a checkup. The only thing that was a little different this time was that my Dr. was out of town and the nurse practitioner was unable to perform an ultrasound. Because of this, they sent me to the hospital for an ultrasound. I didn't think anything of this and took off for the appointment by myself. Once I got there, I realized the appointment was going to be a little bit different in the sense that instead of just doing a quick ultrasound to check on baby and what was causing the bleeding, the tech performed the growth and anatomy scan that is usually performed around the 20 week mark. Towards the end of the scan, the tech asked me if I wanted to find out the sex. I was so tempted, but I wasn't quite sure if it was such a good idea without Nate there. I thought about for only a second or two before I decided that the risk was totally worth it (plus I don't think I could have really willpower to say "no"). The tech pointed out that it was a boy (complete with arrows...I was so surprised that I was having trouble comprehending what I was seeing!) and after that the rest of the ultrasound was a blur.
After the ultrasound I treated myself to Panera Bread (where I swear, I could not wipe a ridiculously huge smile off my face). I had the rest of the day off of work so I used a gift card to JC Penny's to shop for a few boy clothes and picture frame to display the "proof" that we were having a boy. I talked to Nate a couple times that afternoon, but completely played dumb about what was going on. I hurried home and displayed all the goods on the cabinet like this:

and waited patiently for Nate to get home. When he came home I was peeling potatoes at the sink and it took all I had not to turn around the aforementioned goofy smile, but I held strong and waited for his reaction. And waited, and waited....Finally he said something to me about going shopping. Um....yeah, I went to shopping, do you notice anything about what I went shopping for? Hello....?????? Finally, it dawned on him that the clothing was blue and it was for a baby and then, finally, I got a reaction. It was the best reaction I could have asked for. Nate was so surprised, I don't think he even knew what to say. It was just so awesome...definitely one of the best days of my life.
And now, from a mere 14oz in his ultrasound picture last year to 17+lbs today, Josiah is here, safe and sound and a complete blessing to our family. He is such a joy and we are so thankful for him.

And so it begins....

Well, I started this blog earlier and then decided that I didn't have anywhere near the time I needed to keep up a blog, so I let it go. That is until I was talking with another mom a couple of weeks ago and she mentioned that she has a blog that she uses to record the details of her childrens' lives that would normally go in a baby book or scrapbook. My ears perked up at that idea because I have baby books for all 3 of my kids and all kinds of scrapbooking stuff, but I have done nothing with either of them. I've always meant to do it, but, it's never happened so far. (This may be because I had 3 kids in 31/2 years, who knows...)

So hear goes my attempt to actually record the happenings in my childrens' lives....

Abby and Josiah had their well baby appointments last week. Abby just turned 4 and Josiah is 6 months...

At 4 years Abby is 40.5 inches tall (75th percentile) and 33.4 pounds (30th percentile). She completely shot up this last summer -- I think especially in the legs. Her Easter dress fit perfectly at the beginning of April, but by June it was too short, as were most of the rest of her dresses. A HUGE problem given her love of dresses! ;) I think she'll end up having my body type. It's crazy how much she is like me in pretty much every way. Looks, personality, she appears to be a mini-me. Kate on the other hand appears to be very much Tasler in all ways. We'll see if it stays that way.

Josiah is 6 months old. Time is flying by and he's starting to look like a little man. He is still super laid back, but has no problem using his lungs if he feels like he's not being heard. He's rolling all over and stretching for toys that he sees, but no crawling yet. He loves his baby food and I've finally figured out after 3 kids that making your own baby food really is that easy! He's holding steady at the 50th percentile for both height and weight. He's measuring 26.75 inches and weighs 17.6 pounds. His head circumference is actually on the chart at the 90th percentile instead of off of it like his sisters. What can I say? Our kids need those big heads for their big brains! =)

Abby on her very first day of dance class. She is having a blast and loves going every week.

Sweet Josiah playing outside while camping earlier in the fall.