The house

Kaitlin, this is for you. Ha ha! I just made a list regarding all of the different projects, furniture, and upgrades I still want and need to do for the home. I haven't done that much due to having a baby right before moving. I have been too overwhelmed. I am still overwhelmed. But at least I can start dreaming about my list of things to do. Here's what I came up with today.

Here's the living room that needs Board and batten done beneath existing chair rail  xas well as coming up with a color scheme and more wall decorations.

Our entryway needs some thing big up there. I just can't decide what. The previous owners had a big clock up there and we really liked it but those are expensive. So we will have to wait or come up with a different idea.

I want a photo while gallery going up the stairs but I want to use the same colors as the living room so that needs to be figured out first. I think I want to add the first initials of the kids names in the gallery wall as well and paint them the living room colors.

This sad entertainment cabinet I built was awesome in our old house but looks pretty stupid in this house. So I'm hoping to get a cabinet or dresser to refinish off of craigslist that will span the entire length and then install some shelves above that.

And the office needs desks and chairs and an overall idea of what we are doing in it. The bedrooms will be done probably last because we will be shuffling the kids into new rooms once Oliver grows out of the crib in the next year at the latest. So I have no desire to put up decorations and create their rooms when they will all be moving into new ones eventually. Right now Isabel and Elliot share and Oliver has the connecting room through the Jack and Jill bathroom. And then Avery is on her own. But once Oliver is out of the crib, him and Elliot will share the blue room and Isabel will go into the Jack and Jill connected room or into the separate room and then we will move Avery into the connected room. But that's not set in stone yet so once again I can't begin to decorate. So as you can see not much progress has been done because I need to start with one of the biggest projects first. Once that is done then we will hopefully be able to start making some color decisions and go from there.

Isabel's birthday

This will probably never happen for Isabel's February birthday again...but it was 70 degrees and sunny! We went to the free zoo day (with everyone else in Denver...) and then Isabel and I went to a kids salon to get her ears pierced and a manicure before going out to eat at Chick Fil A. Fun day!

Avery at 2 months

Weight: 11 lbs 2 oz (37%) 

Length: 23.5" (84%) 

Head: 15.5" (77%)

She consistently wakes up only one time a night.  Hooray!!!!

Smiling and almost giggling!

Very content and serene, just enjoys looking around at things. 

Outgrowing a lot of clothes in length, as evidenced by her 84th percentile length!

A baptism and a blessing

IWe were so grateful and lucky to have family come into town to help celebrate our special weekend. Isabel was baptized and Avery was blessed. We felt bad because we kind of asked for special permission to hold Isabel's baptism outside the assigned stake baptism day. And then to have Avery blessed outside of the normal Fast Sunday. But in our defense, our last stake didn't have a stake baptismal day and so we already had a day planned with our family when everyone could come out before we found out about the stake baptismal day. In the end, it turned out wonderful and was such a special day for Isabel. It was fun for Isabel to wear the Rowan granddaughter baptismal dress while Avery got to wear the Rowan granddaughter blessing dress. So fun that we have those little traditions to pass down.  Isabel got a homemade comforter from Grandma Porter, a homemade scripture case, an uncirculated 2007 penny, and CTR necklace from Grandma Rowan, and a set of scriptures from us. Avery got some breast milk. But apparently that's all she wanted because she smiled through the entire blessing, according to some peekers in the circle. 

My sore derriere

So, having 4 kids is kicking my butt.  I really went into having Avery thinking that we had this whole parenting thing down, we understood our kids and had a good groove and adding 1 more child wasn't going to be that hard.  

Enter reality...

It's been much harder than anticipated.  It's not impossible, but I definitely feel like Jim Gaffigan's take on having 4 kids...it's like you are drowning...and someone hands you a baby.

The hardest part is Oliver.  I feel bad saying that, but he is impossible right now.  He's just soooooo busy and into everything and too young to actually discipline effectively. His therapists have noted that he has a below average attention span for his age, so I'm sure that doesn't help.  Add on his inability to communicate with words and it just that much harder.  He tries soooo hard to get tell us what he wants, but so often we are unable to understand him, and then he gets so frustrated and it just turns into a scream fest.

I'm trying to decide if we just don't remember this age, or if Oliver is actually our most difficult child so far.  I think it's a little of both.  Last time we went through toddler-hood was with Elliot...and we only had Isabel and Elliot to take care of at that time.  This time we have 3 extra kiddos to keep track of AND Oliver is a little above and beyond in difficulties.

Poor Avery.  The other day I left her doing tummy time while I was doing my makeup and she went from her protesting coos to full on screaming bloody murder...and when I got to her, I saw Oliver sitting on her head, smashing her face into the carpet.  Oliver isn't malicious towards her, but he just can't quite grasp the concept of being gentle.  He actually loves Avery a lot, actually too much, and that leads to him being in her face...all.the.time.  It's just too much.

Robbi has told me that having 3 young kids at the same time was the worst year of her life...and I totally understand that now.  My reading time has drastically been reduced, my ability to keep the house clean is soooo hard, and just getting out of the door without forgetting something vital is pretty much impossible.  I tried to go to Target the other day and my goal was to get there by 9 am.  We walked out the door at...10:45 am.  I had to nurse Avery, then she fell asleep so I let her nap, meanwhile I started some laundry, got Oliver dressed, got myself ready, played a game with Elliot while we waited for Avery to wake up, then she woke up and needed to nurse again, then threw up on herself, then needed a bath, then we FINALLY walked out the door.  And I forgot to bring snacks so then everyone was whining and hungry for the entire shopping trip. Sigh.

Anyway, in other news, we've been having fun getting to know more of our ward members.  There are so many families that are in similar makeup to ours, 3-4 kids, our age, etc.  Most of them don't have family nearby either, so their Sundays and holidays and weekends aren't already filled with family activities...which makes it easier to plan things with them! So we've had a really great time being social.  Silver linings, right?

We've also been busy figuring out our finances.  Matt and I have both read an investing book, and we are going to trade them here soon, and we are even meeting with a financial planner that Matt's group pays for.  I feel like I've REALLY learned a lot about it all and it's been very interesting.  But it's also stressful, realizing how much of our income is already spoken for in order to play catch up for the years of med school and residency when we weren't able to really put retirement savings into play.  Add in student loans, and wow...we don't have much disposable cash.  But that's okay, I'm so grateful we have the means to pay for our goals and loans and still have SOME left over, even if it's not as much as I would have liked at this stage in the game.  All in good time, right?

Professional Photo Shoot

We were lucky enough, again, with Avery to have an amateur-turning-professional photographer want to get some more infant shots for his portfolio and was offering a free photo session.  Since we had an infant, I decided I might as well help him out. :)  Too bad for Isabel and Oliver, they only have our own attempts at photography while Elliot and Avery got the pros. I didn't expect to be in any pictures so I didn't wear the best shirt. Whoops!