Watch out world!

My handsome boys.

Random life moments

Everyone has been sick this week so we have spent most of our time in our jammies. Mommy included.

Has it really been two years?

I think because Seth screamed for a year before becoming a fairly pleasant toddler that first year of his life kind of blurred. Add a pregnancy to his next year and it feels like I blinked and he grew up-into a two year old :)
Blame it on me trying to manage 4 kids, or little sleep, or the fact that all the kids (Besides Clark) have been sick for the past week, but this birthday was my most low key one yet. Like no cake low key... But in my defense I did make cookies from a cake mix.
Seth was none the wiser and focused on his little Debbie snacks instead anyways.

Seth has a very strong personality-which translates into him being my most difficult child. I know that this will be a good thing in the future-Hopefully he sticks so stubbornly to his beliefs and standards as he does to calling me daddy even though I have corrected him every time he said it over the last month. That doesn't really bother me so much as the fact that disciplining has no effect on him. So far I haven't managed to convince him to stop messing with my computer, camera, phone or anything else that he thinks is communal property. Hitting is a form of communication for him-along with pitching fits.  He also loves to smile and on the rare occasion that he does understand that he is in trouble he tries to win you over with them. He continues to be my child who charms most people he meets. He also is my only child that I have had to child proof my house for.

I love that he is in our family however. I love his strength and determination and his willingness to love and forgive. Right now him and his daddy are pretty inseparable which makes it easier for me in the evenings. I love His special little voice. He loves to sing and will blabber along with whatever song you play not getting most of the words right but enjoying belting it out. I love him a ton and cannot wait until him and Clark have each other to play with.

Me with the Birthday Boy

And this picture is added in honor of MD.

Happy Birthday Seth!

"Smile!"

Something about the camera makes my kids irritated. It could be because I love taking their picture so much that I take a million. So they have stopped cooperating.  

 I'll have to take what I can get.

Michael has stopped looking at me altogether

Hyrum will look but refuses to smile more then this

Seth loves to smile-though this time he put up a fight first!

And this fat man will smile if I talk to him long enough.

He's gained 6 pounds in two months.

He has a lot to smile about :)

                               Seth figured out the slide. It was a big day for us :)

Halloween Huish Style

The boys woke me up at 6 this morning asking if it was time to go Trick or Treating. My Poor boys were so disappointed when they realized there were several more hours until they got to have as much candy as they wanted. 

Today was such a busy day. It started with Michael's costume parade at school, ward parties, playing at the park and of course the hour of walking from house to house begging for candy! By the end of the day my feet hurt and I wanted to crash. Luckily that is basically what I did. The boys chowed down on their sugar and watched Hercules while I worked on the computer. 

I don't know if it is the costumes or the endless supply of sugar, but Halloween continues to be my boys favorite Holiday.

Here we Have Mr. Bones, Snake the Soldier and Hercules

Waiting for MD's costume parade to start

Hyrum decided to change his costume and be a ghost instead.

But then he decided he would rather be a dragon. The other boys changed as well.

Clark the mummy.

Huish Family at the ward party

The boys checking out their loot.

Both boys brought me their bags of candy after eating for an hour telling me that they had stomy aches (Hyrums words) and that they ate too much. Poor boys.

Interrupted

A Tad Bit Tacky

Sunday was my first day back at church since the beginning of July! I felt a bit insane towards the end. Boys hung all over me. Hyrum kept asking to play with my hair while his fingers were knotted in it, and Seth kept calling me daddy. Clark however slept in his carseat until relief society. As soon as I pulled him out a woman grabbed him and held him until he pooped on her.

What really got me laughing was the lesson taught by a dear friend. She gave an outstanding lesson (One of my favorite teachers) and at one point we got on the subject about how busy the Temples have been since Conference. The spirit was stong as testimonies were shared but all I could do was think about my last trip to the temple and giggle irreverently.

The Friday before I had realized that being home alone with 4 boys stopped feeling so good and started feeling like I was in a mental institution.  Michael noticed that I was about to rip my hair out so he asked if I would like to take him to his class.

That might not sound appealing to most people, but to me it was heaven. I could buckle my kids up, spend 30 minutes talking to Michael on the way there, hand around for an hour then have Michael back to help me stay sane.

So thats what we did. However when we got to school, there were no available parking spots so instead of driving around for 20 minutes looking for one I took my boys to the temple. 

I parked and told the boys they could unbuckle themselves and play in the backseat. I had let them gather some toys so they happily went to town playing. I sat in the front seat going over some stuff in my head when I became aware of the following conversation

Hyrum"Look there's a missionary"

sound of toy gun being cocked

Hyrum "Don't shoot that missionary!"

MD"BAM!!! Too late!"

Hyrum"He got away. There' a mommy-shoot her!"

sound of knocking on the glass

MD"We got her!"

Me: "Boys why are you knocking on the glass first?"

Boys "So they can see us before we shoot them"

Nothing like looking crazy in the eye before they pull the trigger.

  

what made it worse was the boys dressed up in costume before we left:

The rest of the time they spend "shooting" at cars that drove past us.

If it makes it any better, the boys were pretending everyone who walked or drove past were bad guys.

Just the 5 of us

And then for a wonderful couple of hours it is the 6 of us. No more help-I guess I have "graduated" to being able to handle life with 4 kids! The truth is it feels really good. 4 kids is kind of hard (Ok really hard) but it feels so good to do something instead of sitting on my bum all.day.long.

One of the side effects of about 3 1/2 months on bed rest is that I am so out of shape. Walking up our stairs leaves me breathing heavy, and trying to do a warm up for a work out makes me feel like I just ran 4 miles...So trying to run after 3 kids while toting around the 4th makes me feel like I should have "super woman" on my shirt because of the enormous effort it takes just to do that!

But-I still feel so good. I love to move and feel the burning in my muscles. A few weeks ago I was watching "Forever Strong" (Great movie-I highly recommend it!) and watched some boys running and felt so motivated! I want to run! I can't yet, but I am looking forward to when I can.

Clark, who we lovingly call Clark the Shark, has started to wake up from being a newborn to being a baby. I am not sad at all. I like that he is starting to watch me and give me his precious smiles. He is kind of stingy with them, though his daddy can get one any time he wants! Me-I have to work for it. Sometimes I get confused and think he is smiling at me when BAM! There's an explosion in my hands that needs some immediate cleaning. 

My favorite thing about Clark right now is how much he doesn't look like me :) Having three versions of myself to look at makes having one brunette Huish a nice bit of variety. 

Michael Dunn has become a helper. What a difference that makes with a baby! He brings me diapers or wipes and tosses the dirty diapers into the trash (Hyrum however runs out of the room when he smells poop and tells me to go somewhere else to change the diaper.) Michael Dunn has also started singing sweet little lullaby's to Clark when he starts screaming. It's hard to listen to him and not feel emotional.

Hyrum is kind of going through a punk phase.  I love him to pieces. I love his energy and enthusiasm but he has decided he can do what he wants when he wants and thinks my orders to him are just suggestions. HA! It was really hard for him when he told me to go to the store and get him some cookies and treats and I told him no. Life's tough when you're a 4 year old. 

But not as tough as it is for Seth. 

Seth is MAD. He is mad at me for having a baby, mad at Daddy for letting me have a  baby and he is mad at his grandparents for leaving him with his parents.  He cries a lot and wants to be held for what feels like hours, but is probably more like 45 minutes. We hold him and talk to him, but mostly we let him run around and hopefully get it out of his system.

So I have decided the first thing to go is going to be housework. I obviously can't do as much right now, so cleaning is becoming the thing that I choose not to do when I feel overwhelmed. Which means there is a lot of the boys lunch all over the floor right now that I have chosen not to sweep up. No one should visit for awhile.

I also like to get away so Michael has been taking us on some lovely drives

We stopped at a campsite and let the boys run around while I held Clark.

Something about fall just makes me happy

Seth + Clark =

A very confused and angry toddler.

With my c-sections I am not suppose to pick up anything over 5 pounds or the weight of the baby for 6 weeks. (I cheat) 

Seth doesn't get it so he takes his revenge out on me by turning into a 30 pound baby.

So when he sees me taking pictures of Clark like this:

I also get a lot of pictures like this:

He likes to lay down and milk being a baby-Crackers right after your bath anyone?

His rebellion is extra sweet because he does a lot of his reverting with a smile. (With my mom not so much. I heard him screaming at her at the top of his lungs all morning the other day.)

So it was not much of a surprise that when I pulled out the baby bouncer Seth decided to break it in for Clark.

Clark sure appreciated it

Very Important Person

MD is a VIP!

 MD came home today SO excited today because he was chosen as the VIP for his class. The VIP gets to take home a special stuffed bear named Brownie to have adventures with (For the day) and then gets to write about them in a special book.

All afternoon MD has been running upstairs to tell me every thing the bear and him have done.

My favorites have been: "Mommy the bear watched me eat lunch!" "Mommy the bear watched me play basketball!" "Mommy the bear told me he loves me! WRITE IT DOWN MOMMY!!!"

Here is the very special boy and bear:

Man he's cute!
MD told me he was sad because he doesn't get to keep the bear, but he brightened up when he heard him and the bear were going to go play outside with Grandma!

Even though I struggled sending MD to school in the beginning I feel much better seeing how much he loves it. Most days he comes home and shows me what he did during the day though for some reason he has a hard time telling me about it :)

Homework has started, but it is not near as intense as I imagined it would be (The school made it sound like he was taking a college class) and MD seems to not mind it so much.

I think he is so cute doing his homework on my bed.

 

Hyrum of course wants to do homework as well, so I made up some for him in his notebook. He struggled a bit writing with his left hand.

MD and his teacher. I got to visit with her before school started and really liked her-MD seems to like her too.

Labor and Delivery

 Friday morning:

I woke up and rolled out of bed (Literally rolled. For the last couple of weeks I was unable to lift my my torso off the bed so rolling became easier.  If I was in the middle of the bed I would have to roll 2 or three times to make it to the edge) With MD starting school I had been trying to get up earlier so I could stay with the other kids while my mom dropped MD off.  While I worked on breakfast I noticed I had a pain start up in my lower right side of my back that spread to my lower right front of my abdomen. I have felt pains similar to that but this pain would not let up. However it wasn't bad enough for me to think it was anything more that ANOTHER uncomfortable thing about pregnancy. I got ready for the day. I had gymnastics to work out, Hyrums cast to get put on and we were going to have a "family day" out in town. So we headed out. I noticed that the pain started to get more intense so I mentioned it to Michael who jokingly asked me if he needed to check me into the hospital while they put Hyrums cast on.

We arrived at gymnastics where Hyrum happily showed off his broken hand to his instructor. After we worked out the details of when Hyrum could rejoin the class we headed out to town to buy our "treats" for our family night. The pain was STILL there and was still slowly building but I decided NOT to mention it to Michael because I knew he would either make me call my doctor or make me go lie down-both things I didn't want to do. 

At Hyrums doctors appointment I had a contraction. Nothing that got me too excited, except when I had that contraction the pain in my side intensified. As we headed home I had two more (We only live 7 minutes away from the hospital) And the pain in my right side had built to the point where it hurt just to sit there and I kept trying to get comfortable while grunting in pain. (Sadly yes, I do grunt) Michael started to realize what was going on and got excited-especially after I got home and had 2 more contractions in the next 5 minutes. My mom started talking about me being in labor, and even though I argued, Michael told he was going to call my doctor and made me go lie down and count the contractions. 

After I layed down the contractions started to slow down. They did that with Seth too and so I felt that calling the doctor or going to the hospital would be a complete waste of time. When Michael came upstairs I tried to make it clear that I was NOT going to the doctor any time soon, nor should he contact my doctor- simply because I didn't want him too. He completely ignored me. He called my doctor who of course told me to get my bum into the hospital because I had a much higher chance of uterine complications than most other woman. I wasn't even suppose to go into labor.

I still fought Michael, who was packing everything up until Michael told me that if nothing happened that night he would buy me a piece of chocolate cake from my favorite sweets shop. 

Fine.

As we left I noticed that my contractions had slowed down and had become relatively painless so I told Michael to take me somewhere to walk around. We ended up at BYU where we walked around for about 10 minutes before Michael forced me to get back into the car and he drove me to the hospital.

After they hooked me up I noticed my contractions were about 6 minutes a part but I still was sure I was going to be sent home. Sure enough my doctor showed up and told me that because I was only a few days shy of 38 weeks it would be much better for the baby to hold off until then. To be on the safe side though he was going to give me some medicine to stop the contractions. (If it was real labor the contractions wouldn't stop) He wanted to monitor me for an hour before he sent me home.

I was furious at Michael. I was also tired and they had to administer the shot to slow the contractions down on my bum, so I was humiliated too.

Surprisingly, as soon as the doctor walked out of the room my contractions picked up and became two and a half minutes a part and painful. I kept waiting for them to go away but they just kept coming and the nurse finally came in and told me that she was calling my doctor back and we were going to deliver the baby that night.
Everything seemed to speed up and become a blur at that point.

They hooked me up to all the fun needles and administered the meds and some antacids though the IV.  A few minutes after they finished I started feeling horrible. I felt breathless and antsy and I couldn't sit still. I started rocking back and forth and changing my position to calm my racing heart down. I was SO thirsty and when I asked the nurse for water she told me they couldn't give me any because I was minutes away from surgery. She watched me rocking back and forth and realized I was having an anxiety attach. Apparently the antacid medicine has that as a side affect.

Well I didn't believe I was having one. All I wanted was for her to leave the room so I could get Michael to sneak me some water and so I could tell him I decided NOT to have the baby that night and that I wanted to go home and sleep. (Sleepiness was also a side affect of the meds they were putting through my IV)
(Side note: I had always thought that "anxiety attacks" were mild little things that people exaggerated. I am SO SORRY to those who experience these on a regular basis-I had no idea just how intense it really is)

Luckily after about 15 minutes of this, the anxiety DID go away and I realized that I wasn't THAT thirsty and that the baby was probably coming tonight whether or not I stayed in the hospital or not so I should probably stay put. I was still a bit upset at Michael because I was hurting from everything and I just wanted to cry and I blamed him for forcing me to come to the hospital against my will :) I didn't feel prepared to have this baby right then.
But I received a blessing that told me everything was going to go fine.

They wheeled me into the operating room, got me prepped, gave me the spinal block and 20 minutes later Clark was born.

And the doctor informed me that my uterus was paper thin (again) and it was a good thing we had the baby that night.

I am glad Michael took me in when he did.

Clark is perfectly healthy

I will be perfectly healthy

and because of the c-section I get to spend the next month taking it easy and getting to spend a lot of one on one time with this sweet boy.

Hospital Stay

Last Saturday baby Clark FINALLY decided to come! I know he was technically pretty early coming at 37 weeks and 5 days but after being on bed rest for 7 weeks I felt like the pregnancy was going to last forever :)

This picture was taken the day before

A few minutes after Clark made his debut! He was born at 1:31 in the morning. I was SO tired that I ended up dozing through the last half of the c-section.

Poor Clark was pretty beaten up after the surgery. You can't tell so much from the pictures but he had bruises on his face, arms, legs and back! I think they had a hard time pulling him out. 

He was 6 pounds 14 ounces and 18 1/2 inches long!

Family picture. Lots of handsome boys!

The boys meeting Clark for the first time. 

MD was in LOVE! HE wanted to hold him much longer then we let him and he told me that "Clark is the CUTEST baby in the whole world!"

Hyrum likes him too-but mostly he likes to give him kisses

Seth just keeps his distance :)

We "celebrated" Clarks birthday with rice crispy treats. The nurse was also nice enough to bring in some cookies. The boys were SO excited! Right now the older boys seem to think that the hospital is an awesome place full of candy and sweets.

Some of my favorite time was spent visiting with my wonderful mother-as well as my Mother and father in law.

This hospital let us dress up our baby in our own clothes during the stay, rather then make us wait until we were leaving. So I enjoyed playing dress up :)

And after we got home I did a photo shoot.

This picture makes me laugh-He looks a little scared!

Clark is wonderful-He doesn't cry very much unless he is hungry. He also knows how to nurse! None of my other boys really got it (But in all fairness I learned from Clarks lactation specialist that I was taught completely wrong with MD) 

I am planning on posting the actual birth story later when I am not falling asleep every 10 minutes :)