I love being a mom to three little ones. To me, the more the merrier. I usually don't feel stressed, I just feel BUSY. Busy dealing with one disaster after another some days. But mostly just busy making more food, cleaning up more messes, wiping more butts, folding more laundry, ... Life is good.
Here's what we've been up to:
1) Landon has now been in underpants for 10 days without an accident. This is HUGE. HUUUGE. We had some serious poopy issues going on. As in ... there was no poopy happening at all. You can skip the details if you want, but I have to document this so I remember :) Last summer, we thought Landon was potty-trained, but he would hold his #2 for days on end in order to keep his underwear clean, and never did end up going on the potty. It was so painful to watch. We decided to just put him back in pull-ups indefinitely and he basically stopped using the potty at all. A few weeks ago, I started trying to really encourage him to go on the potty. He wanted to be wearing underpants, so I let him, but it was one accident after another. The hard part is that I wouldn't notice his pants were wet until long after the accident happened. I would ask him about it and he would always just tell me he cleaned it up, but wouldn't tell me where in the house it happened. UGH!
One morning, after noticing he had wet pants, I told him that we needed to wash his bottom off before we put on new pants.
L: "Why do we need to wash my bottom?"
ME: "Because if the potty stays on your skin, it will really start to itch and burn."
L: "It will burn? There will be fire on my skin?"
T (yelling from the other room): "No, but it will feel like fire!"
That seemed to REALLY get his attention and his eyes got wide. I decided to pounce on it.
ME: "Oh yeah, and if you poop in your pants, that will burn your bottom, too! That's what happens once you turn three. Your poopies start to burn your bottom."
I KNOWWWW ... so mean. But guess what ... it WORKED!!! Thanks to a little MiraLax, he had no other choice but to go in the toilet :)
2) Landon pooped on the potty for the first time last Wednesday. Just minutes after he dropped my iPhone in the toilet. Thankfully, I fished the phone out before the action took place, but still, I had to buy a new phone. I can honestly say it was all worth it, though. :)
3) Kellen is growing exponentially. At his one month appt, he was 11lbs 3 oz and 23 inches long. This little boy is WELL-loved. I can't even tell you how many times I have to say throughout the day, "Back off boys! Give him some room!" It's not uncommon for me to have two big boys climbing all over me trying to get to Kellen while I'm nursing.
The other day, I gave Kellen a bath before breakfast. He smelled so good and was so fresh and squeaky clean. A few minutes after cleaning up the breakfast mess, I went to get him out of his swing and he had a big patch of syrup in his hair -- the result of syrupy kisses from his big brothers, I'm sure.
In fact, he's been getting so much lovin' from the big boys that we had to make a trip back to the doctor this week because the little man was sick. He was inconsolable Sunday night from 6 until about 3 in the morning. I was so sad for him. I thought it was probably a tummy ache, but he did have a goopy eye and a bit of a temp (100.2), so I decided to take him in the next morning. It's a good thing I did. Poor thing has an ear infection, which is a scary thing for a newborn. The doctor was very concerned about meningitis and also that he might become septic, which FREAKED me out. He's on antibiotics now and seems to be doing much better. THANK YOU, GOD!!! I've pretty much been sending up a prayer for him with each breath I take.
BTW ... he weighed in at 12 lbs 10 oz at his sick visit. Yes, that's a pound and a half in just 7 days, folks. LOVING his chubbiness!
4) Tanner was up all night last night with an earache and sore throat. We made another trip to the doctor today (my new home away from home) to confirm that he does have an ear infection. Poor babe -- he had to miss his first bus field trip today, and he was so looking forward to sitting next to Scarlet :) With two sick kiddos, one of them a nursing baby, I'm getting my first real taste of sleepless nights since Kellen's birth. Getting up twice a night to nurse is one thing, but doing that on top of taking care of sick kiddos during the night is quite another. Can't WAIT until Grammy gets here tomorrow night and I can just rest a little!
5) Tanner has started talking about having kids over from school to play. Actually, one day last week, he informed me that Brady was coming over the next day. "Ummm, Honey, in order to have a friend over, I need to talk to their mom first. I'll have to get some phone numbers." So the next day, I go to pick him up from school and he hands me a sheet with a bunch of numbers on it that he says are his friends' phone numbers. The problem is that some had too many numbers, some didn't have enough. It was pretty funny. His teacher laughingly said to me on my way out the door, "I hope you know, you have 4 kids coming over tomorrow!" LOL! It's kind of weird -- because he's my first, all of his playmates are my friends' kids. This is my first experience with inviting kids over from families that I don't really know.
One of the friends that he wants to have over is Josh. Here was our conversation the other day:
Me: "Buddy, what is Josh's last name?"
T: "Oooah."
Me: "What?"
T: "Oooah, Mom!'' "Josh OOAH!"
Joshua. LOL!!!
5) I just booked my first photo shoot of the spring. I'm a little bit excited, a little bit nervous. I was just kind of getting into my groove at the end of the fall, and actually haven't taken a ton of pictures since then. As you can probably imagine, I don't have a lot of extra time on my hands for photo-editing at night. But I do love taking pictures. I'm hoping God will give me exactly what I can handle and nothing more :)
Okay, that's it. I'll work on some more pictures! I guess that's how it is these days -- words in one post, pics in another:) Oh well -- gotta just do what I can when I can :)
