Well hello blog. Sorry I've basically abandoned you for over a year and skipped most of documenting 2017. For a while I contemplated being done with blogging altogether, but every now and then i'll go back to old posts, and feel so thankful for the information I've kept here. It's such a gift to tell stories to the kids, and be able to go back and show them pictures, and get more detail. So here I am, close to the start of 2018, and feeling ambitious to document what I can, when I can.
I thought i'd start with a snapshot of our current life. I love the little details that feel normal now, but I know change yearly, if not monthly.
Right now we are a week away from the daylight savings shift, and Ben and I are counting down the days until our kids sleep a little later than 5am. On most days, Levi wakes up crazy early... like 4:30 early. I can't believe it, but I'm still nursing him. I planned to wean him shortly after his first birthday like I did with my other two, but we passed that mark. I was waiting for him to stop showing interest and well, he hasn't. Anyway, when Levi wakes up in the morning crazy early, I will nurse him, and then put him back into his crib with some books and the closet light on and then go back to bed. Maddie wakes up soon after Levi around 5. We always know she's awake for the day because her door squeaks really loud. Sometimes she sees that no one is awake and then closes her door for a few minutes. Other times she comes into the hallway and whispers "daaaaaaaaad" Ben is amazing and gets up every morning with the two early birds. Usually by this point, Levi is over being in his crib and yelling "MAMA! DADDDYYYY! OUT!" Ben gets the kids breakfast every morning (usually pancakes or waffles) while he gets himself ready for the day. Around 6:15, he comes in to my room and usually says "Babe, it's time to get up." or "Can you listen for the kids? I need to take a shower." That's my cue to get the day started. I usually read a couple devotionals on my phone or read from new morning mercies and check my email. I get ready a little bit, gather the kids clothes for the day and head downstairs. I try to quickly make something for myself to eat, get the kids dressed, pack snacks for Colter, do Maddie's hair, make sure I have everything I might need for the day.. homework, water bottle, random school project, etc. The kids usually have one show before we leave for school so that I can get everything packed up and ready.
We leave the house by 7:45 every day, and I always check google maps to see what route is the quickest to school. 99% of the time the fastest route is taking the back roads to school. It's almost the exact route I drove when I was working before Colter was born, so it feels a little nostalgic. I love the drive for the most part. Lots of curvy, tree lined streets with minimal traffic. We drive through a neighborhood during the last part of our drive, and it's my favorite place. The streets are super wide, the trees are huge, the lawns are well taken care of, and the houses are all unique and beautiful. I never told Ben about my love for the neighborhood, and after he took the kids to school for the first time, he mentioned loving the neighborhood too. We always have similar taste in homes and neighborhoods. We usually get to school around 8:15. I park, get the stroller out and then make sure everyone has everything.. backpacks, coats, show and tell, etc. Colter starts school first, so we head into school, drop his backpack at the locker, and he inevitably gets out his cliff bar snack, meant for recess time, and eats it. I put the rest of his snacks in his desk, give him a hug and head out. He's done really well with drop offs this year. I think I can count on one hand how many times it's been a really hard/dramatic exit. If he's having a hard time, the therapist (Kate on MWF and Liz on Tu/Th) will take him to the quiet room next door, and I will leave from there. After dropping off Colter, we walk over to Maddie's preschool. Her school starts 30 minutes after Colter's, so we have some time to play before we go. Maddie almost always goes right to the swing with her friend Maddi and they beg me over and over "can you push us super duper high with a twisty twist?" Levi usually wanders off to the house area, where he plays with all the kitchen food and the phone. Lately he's been really into the water table, and sometimes he'll end up at the train table or on the slide. Around 8:45, I give Maddie a hug and do a "grand finale" swing and then tell Levi it's time to go, which is never fun. He's getting harder to convince to leave places lately, so usually I'll talk about something with a lot of excitement as I swoop him away "OOO maybe we'll see a garbage truck!! Do you want to ride in Maddie's seat?! We get to go to little gym today! Oh look! A squirrel!" It works 90% of the time.
Maddie goes to school on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. Tuesday she has gym and library and Wednesday is her show and tell. Colter has gym on Tuesdays and library on Wednesdays. He also has art and music on other days, but he's never made it to those specials this year, so he usually stays in the quiet room. Maddie is always coming back from gym on Tuesdays when I come to pick her up, so we wait in the car and watch her come back. Her and Maddi have a favorite high school boy that walks them back and they always yank on his arm the whole time. I always feel bad for the guy. Once they get back to class, they never want to let go of the boys arm, so I usually have to pry them away. Colter loves gym but at one point decided he was never going to go again because his PE teacher apparently threw out his favorite mat that he had been using all year because it was old. Well, somehow the mat reappeared and was fixed after a few weeks, so all was well. I always hear about some sort of car that he makes using the mat and the scooters. He also likes to line up the scooters and make a train. During recess, he plays "bot team" with other kindergarteners . I'm not sure exactly what it entails, but I know it involves staying at a base in the trees and trying to capture people.. usually his therapist. There was some drama at one point this year, when some girls decided that they wanted to use the base and Colter had a hard time understanding why all of a sudden they wanted to use it. They worked it out after a few days, and they are back to using it as their bot team base. Colter is the only 1/2 day kid in his class, so i'm the only one waiting at pick up. He gets out at 11:40, and I pull up to the front doors and wait for him. Colter rarely complains about going to school, but never seems to really love school. On hard days, he usually proclaims he's never going back again, but that only lasts for a short time. Overall, he has done pretty well this year with the adjustment to kindergarten. He sometimes gets work sent home that he has refused to complete during the day- usually his bible journal which involves writing words and drawing pictures from the story. They are currently learning how to count by 10's, how to count using tallies, and addition. He seems to be really quick at picking up math and understanding numbers. I haven't seen a lot of progress in reading, but I don't really know how much they are working on it. The first part of the year was a letter review, and now they work on sight words and writing words. I do get worried about how he will learn as the concepts get more challenging. He does not like to try things when he thinks he will fail. I know he's very smart, but it's hard to challenge him without causing a melt down. Sometimes I feel like his anxiety gets in the way of his ability to do things I know he could do if he was calm. It's easy to look ahead and try to make predictions about schooling, but really we have to take it one year at a time, and this year, Shoreline Christian has been a gift to our family.
Maddie has done really well in school. At the beginning of the year, she stuck to her swing every day, and never seemed to be really interested in the other kids. As long as she was on the swing, she was ok. Her friendship with Maddi began in November, and she has really helped Maddie open up. Her circle of friends is still small (Mainly Maddi , but also Madelyn and Claire). She kind of reminds me of how I was.. always really close with one or two people. From what I can tell, she is very obedient , is a great listener, and is smart. She enjoys school and always tells me super random things about her day.. usually much later. We had a great debate around Christmas time when she told me that one of her teachers said that Jesus never cried. I realized that came from the song silent night, when it says "but little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes." There are some wild boys in her class that are always either acting like wild animals or the villian from the tv show PJ Masks. Sometimes they come up to the girls and paw at them, or shout "I"M ROMEO!" but Maddie never seems too phased by them. I think having a brother that is challenging, has really helped her be more understanding towards others. I know she's ready for kindergarten next year, but recently i've been feeling sad about her being in school full day next year. I know it doesn't make sense for me to do two pick ups, and I know she can handle full day, but to go from three 1/2 days, to 5 full days feels like a lot. I'm going to miss my time with her.. it honestly went so fast having her at home with me.
Right now I have free days on Mondays and Thursdays. I usually try to see a friend one of those days, and the other day we either come home to play and catch up on the house, or go grocery shopping. On Tuesday mornings, Levi and I usually run an errand or go to Cloud City coffee before Little Gym. Levi seems to love little gym. He loves exploring the gym - especially hanging from the bars and walking on the balance beam. He's getting pretty good at forward rolls, and loves busting out the hula hoops. There are lots of different personalities in the class, but my favorite is a boy that has figured out he can deflate a certain kind of ball by ripping the plug out with his teeth. It is my favorite thing to watch him run from ball to ball, ripping the plug out, while his mom frantically chases after him, trying to keep him from doing it. I always want to get a video of him, but I don't want to be awkward. Levi loves the bubbles and the stamps. On Wednesday we go to see Marieka in downtown Edmonds . We mainly talk about how things went during the week with Colter, and she gives me some strategies to try. I feel so thankful for her and feel like it has helped me so much having someone to talk to about the struggles. Levi loves playing with all of her different toys, and does really well letting me talk. He always seems to poop while we are there, so I have a running joke that he must feel really relaxed during therapy :) Maddie is taking ballet/tap with Harper again this spring, and she's loving it. She is also finishing up a gymnastics class with Sydney on Wednesday afternoons and takes swim lessons with Colter on Wednesday afternoons as well. After gymnastics, she's going to start soccer on Saturdays for the Spring. She seems to like pretty much anything she tries, so it's been fun moving from one thing to the next. She doesn't necessarily love anything enough to keep her in it for the long term. Swimming had been going really well and both kids have made a lot of progress. It's been a bit bumpy for Colter the last couple months and i'm not really sure what shifted. First he didn't want to do a certain backstroke, then problems started over lots of different things.. not being able to splash while doing bobs, not getting to go on the platform, not wanting to use the paddle board. It's pretty stressful because when he screams , it echoes in the pool area, and all of the parents of course are curious what is going on. Autism is hard because a child doesn't look a certain way where people know ok, he has autism. Its easy for me to feel embarrassed and I find myself wanting to wear a shirt that says something like "nothing to see here, just dealing with autism." I know most parents probably feel bad for me, but it's easy for it to feel like judgment. I'm hopeful that we will get back on track with swimming, because it's been so fun for me to see Colter doing something he enjoys since he's never played a team sport, and didn't like lego camp or boy scouts.
After school, I feed the kids lunch , put Levi down for a nap and turn on some shows for the kids. Colter always wants to watch youtube videos about minecraft. We call the youtube person"the guy" . Maddie usually watches PJ Masks or some other show on netflix. While they watch shows, I usually take care of business- make phone calls, pay bills, respond to texts and emails, and prep dinner. When Levi wakes up from his nap, he always wants to look out his window at the dogs in our neighbors yard- we call them Big Pup and Moose. Once Levi is up from his nap , I try to get us all out of the house for some fresh air. Sometimes we ride bikes to the mailbox, occasionally we go to one of the parks, other times we go in the backyard. We got a trampoline for Christmas, so a lot of days, the kids want to go jump. Sometimes our neighbors will see us outside, and come out and play. This almost always leads to someone coming over to our house to play usually until dinner time. Maddie really enjoys Sydney and Emmie.
Around 4:30 i'll start to finish up dinner. Colter usually plays some legos or wants to act out a random story- usually minecraft. He always wants to be a baby zombie and I'm usually some random character- a cave spider, Steve, who knows. He basically tells me what to talk about because I have no clue what minecraft is about. Most of the time I have no idea what he's talking about- command blocks, jungle temples, ender dragons.. but we play the best I can. Ben is usually home around 5:15 because he has started leaving at 4:15 since traffic was getting so bad. He carpools with David on most days, but he's one week away from beginning a new job . We are so excited about this new opportunity for him. He's going to be working at a bank that is around 15 minutes away! The culture at the new bank seems to be such a wonderful fit for him. We can't wait.
Dinner is challenging . We rarely all sit at the table for more than 5-10 minutes, and it's one area that consistently makes me feel a little sad. I hope as the kids get older, and actually want to eat dinner, that we will have more conversation and enjoy staying longer. Colter pretty much only eats a smoothie at dinner, which I guess there could be worse things, but he finishes pretty quickly. Levi and Maddie usually eat some part of what Ben and I make. Levi is definitely the best eater of the three. After dinner, we might play a little bit, or move right into bedtime, depending on how everyone is doing. I usually put Levi to bed around 6, and then Ben and I alternate putting the two big kids to bed. I do admit though- Ben puts Colter to bed more often than I do. I read Maddie two books, and then she likes to have tickle scratches and picture stories. Once I finish two stories , she almost always tucks LuLu under her arm and literally falls right asleep. I usually hang out for 5-10 minutes after she's asleep. Colter likes to do different things before bed. Sometimes we listen to an audio book, sometimes we'll read a book if he picked one out from school, other times we just talk - or more like he talks about minecraft. He also likes us to lay with him before bed.
Because the kids get up so early, Ben and I don't stay up very late. We usually watch a show if we have one recorded . We both like Fixer Upper and the Amazing Race when it's on. I watch This is Us and Dateline.. usually as I clean up the kitchen once the kids are in bed. We just cancelled cable though, so i'm not sure what this will look like going forward. Sometimes we just talk if we have a lot to catch up on, other nights we'll play a game, or do the date box from the month. We usually head up to bed around 9. Ben is working on his last school paper, so sometimes he'll stay downstairs to work. I'm usually asleep by 9:30.
On the weekends, we usually have a few events.. whether its a family activity, birthday party, girls, night , etc. We have been attending Hallows Church since late summer. It's a super small church, incredible preaching, and kind people. We haven't gotten as plugged in as we'd like. It sometimes feels intimidating to have people over because we can have challenging times in the home, and sometimes it's hard to open yourself up to that. I know both Ben and I love connection with others , so we hope to put ourselves out there more this year. We've really enjoyed the kindergarten parents, and we've done several date nights, girls nights, etc with them. I love that our kids will grow up with many of the same kids and families and that we will know their parents so well.
Wow, well that was a lot of detail. Mainly for my brain because I know life will be different soon! I am really enjoying this stage in life, although I definitely finish most days feeling pretty exhausted. I like having breaks from parenting all 3 kids at the same time. I really cherish the time with Levi and Maddie because I know soon it will just be me by myself during the day. Hard to even imagine. Anyway, thanks for joining me on my snapshot of 2018!
See you soon.. hopefully sooner than a year from now!
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