Family Pics

My friend took some family photos for us and she got some total winners. It's basically insanity trying to take pictures where all four kids look good, so I'll take it if at least one or two are smiling and I'll laugh all year when I see the kid with the crazy eyes in our family shots. :) The individual shots are pretty much my favorite. Here are a few.

What a day

This morning was pretty much a slam dunk for rough Monday starts to the week. I went running and the hills got to me and I had to walk at least half the run. My jogging stroller pulls to the right and is annoying to push, but mornings are my best time to run. So I'm in the market for something that works better and we'll see what comes of that. I want a BoB. Hopefully Craigslist will be my friend.

Halfway through my run I got a call for a meeting I was supposed to be calling in for, but I thought it was tomorrow, so I'd left to go running. I told them I'd call back in 20 minutes. Well, the course I was running goes across a levy by the lake, which is gated on both ends. I have to take the kids out of the stroller and fold it up to get through the gate. At the first gate I unknowingly dropped my phone out, probably when I folded the stroller up. I didn't notice for a hundred yards or so when I tried to get it to make that call. I went back to search and didn't have any luck, despite knowing the phone had to be right there.

I headed over to Bill's work to borrow his phone, which didn't have the number I needed, or I thought it didn't, so I had to call my mom, then make the call, 20 minutes late. In the process of all the juggling Bill was in the van watching the kids and I walked out the door of the lab without his keys. Yep! Locked out! The look of panic on Bill's face said it all. Thankfully, not a minute later a guy drove up who has a key. Huge blessing there because nobody else is in Bill's lab and it's a few miles from main campus. That was one less delay for the day.

He headed back to help me find my phone and I took his phone to call it. I walked the stretch it would be in and still didn't find it. I only found it after calling it and following the sound. Someone had wedged it in the gate. Unfortunately, they or maybe me stepped on it before that happened and the bottom corner of the screen is shattered, with cracks spread across the whole phone. It's new as of July. Total bummer. I ordered a screen protector from Amazon and shelled out to have it come tomorrow. I'll put the cover on so it can't break anymore and hope that there's a good deal on Black Friday next month and I can limp to then with the broken screen.

In better news, nothing else went wrong today. Ha! Here's to a better tomorrow.

3 Months

This sweet girl is three months old. In the last week or two she's suddenly realized there is a world around her and she is really happy about that. Don't be fooled by these pictures. She is super smiley and starting to giggle and it's delightful. This is one of my favorite stages, when babies really start to interact with the world around them. 

At three months Chloe still sleeps through the night most nights. She's still in her rocker sleeper and loves it. She isn't much of a day napper unless she's in her swing, so we do that a lot. She sleeps really well in her carseat too, which is lovely because I do a lot of pickups/dropoffs these days.

She's very patient with her sibling's love. Genevieve can't stay away from her. She kisses her all day long and Chloe mostly isn't bothered.

She's growing like a weed. She is over 13 pounds now and fitting into her 3-6 month clothes and even some 9-month clothes. She loves all things cloth. The fastest way to calm her down and help her sleep is to give her a blanket, most particularly a beautiful white knitted one from her Grandma Great, Bill's grandma.

I take her and Aaron running with me a few days a week and she is kind enough to tolerate it. She doesn't sit up well yet, so she kind of slumps in her seat, but with the head debobbler thing from her carseat that she grew out of she is pretty comfy in the stroller and she usually falls asleep.

Mostly she just tags along with me everywhere I go and is pleasant as can be, which is really awesome. Oh how I love this sweet little girl.

She laughs!

Chloe started laughing this morning. I even got it on video. It's adorable. But it was before we got all the way dressed for the day and there's a bit too much undergarment in view. Hahaha! So just know that we're enjoying the cuteness and I'll try to get a video soon with clothes on.

We went to the Clemson First Friday parade last night. It happens every year the Friday before the first home football game. Not gonna lie, it was the tamest parade I've ever attended. Apparently Utah knows how to make parades a bit more exciting than this one was and I was spoiled without even knowing it. We had fun even as I wondered why I would want to see all the sororities on campus walk by shouting the Clemson cheer. I noticed not a single fraternity participated. We've never gone to it before, so chalk it up on our list of lasts. It was hot! I've been checking the weather and this weekend looks like it will be the last two days in the 90s. Folks, 93 degrees is too hot for September. Chloe's face in the pics says how she feels about that.

But regardless of the heat and the general chillness of the parade and lack of floats and people throwing candy, it was totally worth getting out on a Friday night to be with the crowds and let the kids get all excited. We're starting to come out of our shell of staying at home all the time. When I had Aaron that first year we basically hibernated. It was so stinkin' hard to get everyone out the door to do everything. But now a couple years later it's somehow not so hard, and so rewarding to get out and about. I think it's because the other kids are a lot older and more capable even as we have another baby. It makes all the difference. It's good because I'm not a natural homebody, so being able to get out and about again fills my cup.

Aaron is all about balls, so these ones totally made his night.

Guys, I'm hot!

The low flying plane and news helicopters were pretty fun for the kids too.

No seriously guys, it's hot, and this hat is doing nothing for me. Ha!

Lasts

We drove there and back 9.5 hours yesterday to go to Isle of Palms beach by Charleston. It was a whim of an idea I had Sunday night that Bill jumped on board with and helped me make happen, and it was awesome. Getting back at 10PM on a school night was maybe less awesome, but it was totally worth it.

See, Bill and his advisor are both pretty certain he will be able to finish his PhD in time to graduate next May. As all grad students know it's never certain until he has passed his dissertation defense, but it's a very good sign that both he and his advisor have the same goal and expectation and are working towards that.

That being the case it has suddenly hit me that we may only have nine months left here in South Carolina and we better enjoy as much as we can before we graduate and head off to who knows where, but most likely far away from here. I really love living here. We have such great friends and grad school has been about as good an experience as we could expect from it, and I will really miss this place when we leave. It's been almost four years and that's definitely the longest we've lived anywhere since we got married, so it has definitely grabbed me. It will be a sad day when we drive out, albeit also wonderful because college will finally be over and that makes me ecstatic.

Anyway, so we headed down to Charleston and had a lovely day at the beach. Chloe experienced the ocean for the first time and seemed okay with it. The other three had a fantastic day. They love the beach and playing in the waves and building dribble castles with dad and shoveling mountains of sand and going and playing more in the waves. It made me a tad nervous how far out they were comfortable going, but I was also really pleased that they got over their fear of the waves, especially Aaron, from when they were younger. The footing is pretty uncertain in the ocean and they figured out how to stay upright, which is great. We stayed close enough to grab them if they did happen to get knocked over, and all three had at least one wave completely wash over them at one point during the day, but they were okay and came back for more.

The best part for me was when we pulled them around in the shallows on the boogie board. Aaron especially had this look of pure ecstasy on his face that made me so happy. I was surprised he wanted to do it, but after seeing Bill pull Spencer and Genevieve around, he hopped on and asked me to take him for a ride.

It was a good day. It may be the last beach day before we move. We shall see. Check that one off the list though. 

Oh, and Bill and Aaron were certainly there but I only took pics while I was hanging out with sleeping Chloe and when she woke up, and they didn't come over then, so we'll just pretend we have pics of them.

Genevieve is 4!

My sweet and spicy Genevieve turns four years old tomorrow! She's been so very excited about her birthday all summer long. Hers is the last of our four summer birthdays, seven weeks after Aaron's, so it feels like a long wait. But tomorrow is the day and she's so happy. She keeps telling me things that will be different since she's four, mostly things she won't be scared of, like the Harry Potter movies for one. I love how her mind works.

We celebrated her birthday today, with all the food she wanted to eat, plus her requested cake, strawberry with pink icing. My friend posted it on her blog and it is divine. We went to a handy dandy funfest put on by Clemson City and she thought it was all for her birthday. Win! She got lots of great presents from us and her grandparents and when she went to bed tonight she told me it was the best day ever. That's what I like to hear! And we're going to celebrate a bit more tomorrow, so it will keep on being awesome.

My oven isn't level, so everything comes out slightly thicker on one side than the other. Since this was a double decker cake I just strategically put the rounds so the thick and thin parts matched up. Voila!

This is so Genevieve. No clothes on, hair in her face, and so happy about her new gifts. She's a firecracker of a girl and she sure does know how to enjoy life. 

She helped me add on the sprinkles before we blew out the candles. She's not as interested in cooking with me as her brothers, but she comes in sometimes.

So much happiness in this special girl.

Genevieve is a girl of extremes. She feels everything so strongly, so she is so happy, then so sad, then so angry, and whatever other emotion she can feel. I love that she tries to make others feel good. I wish she wasn't so good at setting her brothers off, ha! She loves Chloe with utter abandon. That baby has received thousands of kisses from Genevieve. :)

She's so excited to start preschool. She has to wait about 10 more days, but it's coming up and she's going to love it, I'm absolutely certain. I can't wait to see what this year holds for her. She's going to rock it, whatever it is.

First week of school in the books

Spencer had his first week of school this week and it went awesome!

I can't believe how old he looks in this picture. He is doing so well. He loves everything about kindergarten. 

I took him to school on the first day. I walked him into the gym where the other kids were and sat down with him and asked him if he wanted me to walk him to his classroom. He thought about it for a good long moment and said no. I asked if he was ready for me to go. Another long moment of thought, then yes. Ha! It's like he wasn't nervous at all. Maybe he wasn't. That's not an emotion he feels very often as far as I can tell. I had a much harder time leaving than he did having me go, but no actual tears, just teary thoughts. 

Since then Bill has taken him to school on the way to work and I pick him up in the afternoons. It's working out great. 

I don't have tons more to say about kindergarten except that I knew he would love it and I'm so glad he does. He wants to go back every day and that makes me happy. 

We're reading a ton now. I had gotten out of the habit through Chloe's pregnancy because I was so tired, but we're back on it and have been plowing our way through the Little House on the Prairie books. The kids love it. We're on book two and read a couple or three chapters a day. 

Genevieve starts preschool in 2.5 weeks. She's so excited for that too. We went to a preschool playdate on Wednesday and she had a ball. Her backpack that had been on backorder finally came in and she wore it all day long. It was adorable.

 

Come September 7th when she starts it is going to be really quiet around here in the mornings. I can't wait to see how much she loves it too. I know she will. 

End of the summer

Remember all those articles that come out every year around this time with controversy about parents being too excited for their kids to go back to school and throw guilt around about how we should treasure every moment with them and we're bad parents if we are ready for school to start and get them back into it? I'm sure another round is just waiting to come out in the coming days.

Well guess what? They're utterly ridiculous because kids going back to school is awesome. Awesome, awesome, awesome. And not just for the parents, but for the kids. So while I'm probably not going to stage a photo of me jumping for joy in the background of my kids' first day of school photo as if I can't wait for them to be gone, well, I can't wait.

This summer has been a total wash. School ended and I went through the last few weeks of my pregnancy, which are always the worst. Then I had Chloe and spent the next month recovering from that. That's mostly past now. But I still only have a seven-week old and her schedule is all over the place. I have three other kids who have decided they need to take all their aggressions of being cooped up and a bit bored more often than not on each other and fight entirely too often. This summer has been horribly hot and humid with very little of the normal breaks for beautiful rainstorms that we usually have. Going outside is pretty torturous most of the time. There aren't a lot of activities to do in our little rural neck of the woods that don't involve swimming, which is really hard to do with just me and all my kids. And let's talk about how most activities are hard to do with me and four kids five and under.

So you know what? I'm really excited for summer to end. I'm excited for Spencer to start kindergarten. He's giddy over his teacher and going to school. I'm thrilled Genevieve gets to start preschool in a few weeks. She can't wait. She's going to love it. I can't wait for the potential of Chloe and Aaron being asleep at the same time occasionally. The idea of sitting on the couch and just not doing anything for a bit and not having anyone come blazing in with some need is tantalizing. I can't wait for the kids to come home after their days happy and make better use of the time they have here at home instead of counting the hours. Despite Chloe sleeping through the night, I still don't get enough sleep because I have other responsibilities when she's asleep and most of the time I don't go to bed at a decent hour.

So crazy articles aside, I am thrilled for the end of summer and the start of school. I'm thrilled for them to be gone so I can breathe again. I'm thrilled for the experiences they are going to have that I can't give them. I'm thrilled for their growth and learning. And I'm ready for a bit of breathing room to get the handle of this four kids life. It's something else. I love them so, so much and I'm grateful for every one of them and their amazingness. I'm also completely overwhelmed at regular intervals and feel totally lost. And let's not forget that I'm there's a real possibility that we could be done with grad school next summer and the happiness that brings me knows no bounds. For now Bill works days, he works nights, he sometimes works Saturdays and all so that can become a reality. He is working his tail off and he is amazing for the effort.

This article touched a chord for me today. It's very true. So onward and upward and let's be done with summer and onto the next phase. No regrets and no guilt. Just excitement for new things. 

Pictures from this week

Sleepy Chloe on my shoulder. So sweet

She deigned to sit in her bouncer, which she does not love yet, for a few minutes late at night while she was happy right before bed.

Spencer asked us to take his picture at the park

More park

Everyone's favorite seat, though we officially call this Chloe's stroller now to avoid all arguments.

Look, she does smile! She's rather long suffering of her sibling's love and starting to favor us with more of these. It's fantastic.

These are pizza rolls. They are amazing. The cheese leaked out the bottom and got crunchy. Oh so good. Home run dinner. We'll be making these again. 

Not a good shot since it's through the screen, but Genevieve and Aaron decided to camp out under the trampoline. Aaron was full on laying on the dried out grass with no clothes on. We've had a horribly dry summer, so the lawn is basically dead. It made me cringe as I was worried about ants mauling him and scratchy dead grass, but he didn't seem to mind at all.

Impromptu Potty Training

Aaron is in the midst of potty training. He's two years and three weeks old. This is like six months before I would have even thought about potty training him, but it turns out kids sometimes have their own agenda.

Tickled pink to be in "big kid" underwear

He's been telling us he's poopy for at least a month. Most of the time he's not, he just wants his diaper changed. We've been coaching him to tell us he's just wet and he sometimes does that too. In the last couple weeks he's started actually taking his diaper off, which is shocking when you find him naked. It's only happened once when he was poopy, but it made me nervous.

Lately I've been telling Aaron that if he needs to poop or pee he should just go in the toilet. Every time he very firmly said, "no!"

So Bill and I decided two days ago to pull down the potty seat that fits on top of the normal toilet. Aaron has never seen it before and I figured why not, we used to put Genevieve on the toilet before we put her in the bath and that worked well when we actually potty trained. Well, Spencer and Genevieve got all kinds of excited and helped us show Aaron how it worked and what do you know, he peed in it right then and after that he refused to put a diaper back on. Since he's already taking them off, it's not like we could really keep it on him. Instead he said he wanted underwear. I happen to have a few pairs from when Spencer potty trained and they were too small, so these were new. We put them on Aaron and he was beyond tickled. He spent the rest of the day going pee about every ten minutes on his own. He was totally enthralled. There was not a single accident.

The evening rolled around and he utterly refused to put a diaper back on for bedtime. Good thing we've potty trained two kids already and have lots of bed pads and that whole routine is old hat. We took him to the bathroom, put a pair of underwear on, and left him, fully expecting to have a wet bed when he woke up the next morning. Except there wasn't one. He stayed dry all night! By comparison, neither of my older ones could do this until much after they day potty trained and one still isn't dry every night. So at this point I'm totally blown away.

So yesterday we had more of the same. The toilet wasn't as much a novelty anymore, but he still only had one accident and it was outside on the porch, so totally not a big deal. My house has all wood floors, so even when there are accidents inside, it's not even a big deal. And this morning he woke up dry again.

Today hasn't gone as well. We've been in and out doing all kinds of things and he's had a few accidents, but he also pooped in the toilet, which is amazing again because that took Spencer a few weeks to figure out back three years ago when we potty trained. He peed during his nap too, but again, fully prepared for that, so not a big deal, just another load of laundry with a pad and blanket.

So there you have it. We're potty training completely at the mercy of Aaron. He started it and it seems we're going to keep doing it. In my experience potty training usually looks like an initial few days where you have like 30 accidents before the kid figures out, generally through bribery, that the toilet is okay to pee in. Then there's months after where you remind them pretty regularly to use the bathroom and eventually they figure it out and go on their own, but it's quite a few months. I'm just tickled that it looks like we totally skipped that first phase. I've always found that part so taxing and it's pretty well the best news all week that I may not have to do it this go around. Aaron is definitely earning favorite child status for this week. Hahaha!

Chloe at one month

Chloe hit her one-month mark on Saturday. What do you say about a baby that tiny still? She's still cute. :) She lost all her hair on the top of her head last week, just like her brothers did. We still haven't decided if her hair is blonde or red. We'll have to wait for it to grow back in to see what how it looks.

She still sleeps through the night, which is amazing. She slept from 8:30 to 4:45 this morning. That makes such a huge difference for my recovery.

She's getting more interactive. We're seeing more smiles and she likes to look at everything. She lets us lay her down on the floor now and she'll just look around.

She has trouble actually going to sleep and will only sleep so far in her rocker/sleeper, not flat on her back anywhere. But that isn't a problem, just a bit of a future worry for switching her to her pack and play, but whatever, no use worrying about that now. My friend just gifted us their swing, and she is loving that tonight, which is wonderful.

She's growing like a weed. I don't know exactly how much she weighs, but based off of trying to weigh her while I held her the other day, she's already up to 10 pounds. So pretty much she's growing like a weed, which is great.

She still has her siblings completely enamored. She's tolerant of their overzealous love, thankfully. And that's it for now. She's calling me. :)

Aaron is two

Oh geez, this kid. I love him to pieces. It's hard to believe he's already two, but more so it's hard to believe he's only been earthside two years. He's packed a lot of impact in that two years and I can't remember at all what it was like before he made his debut into our family. So without further ado, here are a few great things about Aaron that I don't want to forget.

Aaron is a charmer. Those that know Bill know about the little twinkle in his eye that he gets when he's about to say something really funny to someone in a side conversation or have the perfect comedic comment. Well, Aaron totally inherited this trait. He has the best sense of humor. He gets that same twinkle in his eye and I always know whatever he does is going to be super funny. He loves to laugh and make other people laugh.

Aaron is always up for trying something new. He doesn't have a lot of the boundaries that the older two have developed. For instance, I usually keep a bag of homemade cookies in the freezer. We usually have one a day. The instant Aaron learned how to open the freezer, the barrier of my kids asking me if they could have a cookie evaporated. See, Aaron goes and opens the freezer and gets one for himself without asking. He always grabs one for the older two as well and sometimes one for me too. How can you be bothered at a kid for getting into something he maybe shouldn't when he shares with everyone around him?

Aaron is adventurous. Why not hop back in the pool after your bath and getting pajamas on? Seemed perfectly reasonable to him. I just laughed. I find that's a better reaction than getting bothered. Everyone is happier.

Aaron loves to be carried. Mostly he just wants his daddy to carry him everywhere, because he's more attached to Bill then I thought possible, especially after Genevieve going through this age phase, as she was super attached, but Aaron takes it to a whole new level. He LOVES his daddy. 

He's a food lover. He doesn't always want to eat what I give him, but he loves to eat. It's refreshing.

He loves hats. I have to say he looks pretty good in them too. 

He adores his baby sister. He was the first one to hold her the day she was born. He mostly calls her Baby, but he knows her name too and he'll use that. She's been crying a lot in the car the last couple days and he will say, "Mommy, rock the baby." So sweet. He has a gentle soul. He sees when people don't feel good and wants to make them feel better. He is so attached to his Goonie stuffed bear. We've bought one for each of the kids and when one of his siblings is crying he'll run and find theirs and bring it to them. It's like he thinks in his head that Goonie makes him feel better, so obviously it will make them as well. They don't have nearly the attachment to theirs, but not surprisingly, they have grown to love theirs a lot as well! This kid is influential.

Aaron is a problem solver. He comes upon an obstacle and rather than be deterred he figures out a tool that he can use to get past his problem. It's a marvel to behold. He climbed on chairs way earlier than any of my others. Honestly, he has had more bumps and bruises than the older two because he's always pushing limits to do more. I kind of love it because he's not easily frustrated and that makes a rather delightful child.

Speaking of delightful, he's just such a sunny personality. He has mastered the concept that saying please gets him a lot of things. He's currently exploring the screaming option as well, likely as a result of seeing his older siblings try it, but he's quick to stop when we tell him it won't get him anywhere. He's a thinker and it's fun to see the wheels turning in his head. 

Aaron knows what he wants. He's very willing to share his opinions. Again, it's super refreshing to ask him whether he wants to eat something or do something and get an honest, clear cut answer. I really appreciate that when life at my house is so chaotic. 

And so that's Aaron right now. I can't wait to see what the next year brings. This kid is such an integral part of our family and I'm so glad he's ours.

Naming a baby

I don't think I've ever told the story of how we chose Chloe's name, and now seems like a great time to do that. I'm convinced she's in on choosing her first name. Bill and I somewhat half heartedly had thrown names around the first few months of my pregnancy, but nothing was sounding right. We didn't have any names we both liked. I can't remember exactly when it happened, maybe sometime in January, but one day I woke up with the name Chloe bouncing around my head. It was kind of like a bell rang in my head and I just knew that was her name. It felt so certain to me that I hesitated to tell Bill in case he didn't feel the same way. We went out on a date for our anniversary a day or two later and I told him I had a name but I was hesitant to share it, lest he shoot it down. I really shouldn't have worried. Bill totally isn't like that, but whatever. Anyway, to my surprise not only did he not shoot down the name, but he loved it. We basically just looked at each other, marveling.

So we had her first name, but her middle name was another story. We spent the next probably four months throwing names around to no effect. In the past we've used family names for middle names, but this time that didn't work out as well. I love both my mom and mother-in-law, but neither of their names worked as a middle name very well, and I didn't want to use just one and not the other since she's our last baby. My other kids are middle named after Bill and I and then my dad.

I finally decided I wanted to find a name that had a meaning that was special to me. I started searching around and still didn't find a lot, but kept at it. We actually decided on the name Chloe before we knew for sure she was a girl. I had always thought we would have a boy, a girl, and two boys. That's a different story, but I felt like Chloe was a girl pretty much from the day I found out I was pregnant, which was both very surprising and very exciting for me. Another boy would have been great, but having a girl was unexpected and a lovely surprise. It balances our family out and just made me very happy. So my searches for names that had meaning centered around all sorts of positive words like happiness and joy and such. I actually found the name Anabel a few months ago and Bill didn't hate it, but didn't love it either. We threw out quite a few other names and nothing else clicked, so we decided basically that unless something else came to us, that would be it. And nothing else came, so there you go, Chloe Anabel, our sweet surprise of a girl. She's a wonderful addition to our family, completing it and bringing that special feeling into our house that comes from a new little one.