First Steps

Chloe has been standing unassisted for a few weeks now. She's pretty pleased with her little trick and she's gotten to the point where she can actually stand up pretty well from the floor and get all the way to standing. Not gonna lie, it's impressive.

The way this girl works, she's not much into trying and trying and trying to figure milestones out. She's more of the not thinking about them at all and then one day it enters her mind that she can do something and boom, she's doing it type. So until she thought of walking herself, she wasn't going to do it.

And that's what happened tonight. We were watching Moana and the kids were bouncing off the walls from excitement of watching it. That movie is so high energy. Chloe caught the energy and was just going crazy. She stood up next to the couch and I offered my arms out to her. I was only a couple feet away, but just far enough she had to take a couple steps to get to me and boom, she did it! They were pretty unsteady, but I saw the look in her eyes. She was like, hey, I could just WALK to mom instead of crawling. Oh boy, nothing is going to hold her back now. She's ten months old and five days. That's virtually the same age as Spencer when he took his first steps. The other two walked at 11 months and 13 months, so she's winning development milestones here. I'm so excited for her to walk.

Blessings

Back when Bill and I got married 8+ years ago we were married over Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday weekend so we didn't have time for much of a honeymoon. At the time we were big into going to presentations for super expensive items we weren't really going to buy only to get the free gifts. They only convinced us once to buy, and I still haven't used that thing, so that's a testament to their sales skills. But one thing we got was a few days' stay at a hotel in Cancun and we excitedly planned it as a delayed honeymoon. We showed up in the airport that morning to discover that the name on my ticket and on my passport didn't match because of marriage name changes and Delta refused to help us with it. I was heartbroken. I haven't flown with them since. I may in the future, but it was awful. They did refund us the full price of our tickets, which is unusual. And the bird flu happened to be going through at that time, so going to Cancun wasn't a great option right then. But still. I was heartbroken. We've never made it down there since. Instead of doing that we decided to buy a digital piano with the flight money. I've never regretted that decision. We purposely chose to get a piano that wasn't so nice that we would never want to replace it with the real deal. I've not regretted that decision either and yet I've thoroughly enjoyed the piano we have had for the last eight years. 

Last night a friend posted on a group page that she was giving away her piano. You better believe I jumped all over that. She had been given her mom's piano and was giving away hers that is still in good shape. I'm over the moon about it. We're picking it up tonight. I can't wait to have the new to us piano in our house. 

This is a pretty stressful phase of life for my family. I'm ping ponging between doing great and being really stressed. This month in particular has been financially taxing. But yesterday I felt so blessed as this opportunity to get this piano popped up and I also determined that as a result of some extra money earned we can cover all the unexpected costs that came up. It's nice to feel taken care of even when this spot we're in is hard. 

An ode to computers

While Bill was out of town a couple weeks ago my computer suddenly died. And I do mean suddenly. It cut out in the middle of a movie the kids were watching never to start again. It's been a bit of a whirlwind trying to get that taken care of. A great friend let me borrow her laptop for a few days while Bill was still gone. For the last week I've used Bill's laptop, which is fine but looking at the screen for too long makes my eyes hurt.

I had an iMac and I dearly loved it. It's six years old and until the moment it died it was in perfectly good working shape. Unfortunately, replacing it with a new one was just a bit out of a price range that made me feel comfortable to drop money on right now, unplanned. We are so close to the end of grad school and a move across the country and saving for a house and paying off student loans and all sorts of things I want to put money towards more than a new computer. Yet my computer is my main work device so I have to have one that works. I've been in a pickle for a while trying to find the best solution.

We finally decided to get a new PC instead of a Mac and shopped around to find one with similar specs that I wanted. We ended up getting a normal desktop computer with tower, monitor, keyboard, mouse. I got it today and started setting it up only to discover that there is no way to adjust the screen brightness except through a horrible menu accessed directly on the monitor. I use that feature multiple times a day, so as weird as it sounds, that ended up being a deal breaker.

Bill is a super savvy shopper though and lo and behold he came up with a solution. We found another computer that had virtually the same specs but is an all-in-one just like my iMac was, but just a PC.

So after just hours with my new computer I'm packing it up and shipping it back and the new one is ordered and will arrive in a couple days. Hopefully the computer buying saga will end and it will be back to business as usual.

All through this process I've felt super blessed. Bill got a paycheck we hadn't planned on for some previous work done. I've upped my hours of work the last few weeks and am seeing a significant increase in my paychecks. I was able to sell the broken iMac for $145. Talk about holding its value. I appreciated that. We have been really blessed so that even though it wasn't in the plan to replace a computer just now, the money is there. It's lovely.

Weather and videos

This week we've had a series of thunderstorms come through. There's been tons of wind, which is very abnormal for this little corner of South Carolina, and tons of damage. Earlier this week I went to pick Spencer up and discovered that trees and power lines had been knocked down in a line just missing the elementary school. That was startling. Their power was out and the road was blocked in both directions. I discovered a super windy road through a subdivision by the school that I didn't know existed and it turned out to be the only way to get to the school. It was pretty chaotic that day.

Several nights we've had crazy amounts of thunder and lightning. The thunder shakes our whole house. I remember storms like that growing up in Colorado Springs. Turns out they're just as intense to weather as an adult as I remember them being as a kid. We have a dead tree in our yard that hasn't been removed yet. Tons of other trees have fallen but so far that one is still there. It's pretty far away from our house and the wind blows parallel to our house so if it did fall it should go away from us, but that's kind of nerve racking. There was a while this fall and winter where we were in a drought, but looks like that is past. We've had inches and inches of rain this week.

There's not really much else going on at the moment. It kind of feels like a time warp actually. Bill and I are both working a ton. Time seems to stand still but we're already a week into April, so obviously it isn't.

The kids are doing lots of fun things. Spencer is learning tons of awesome tricks on the trampoline. Genevieve is the queen of the rings we have in the carport. Aaron is perfecting his ability to pester his siblings. He's living up to his little brother status to perfection. It goes both ways. Genevieve has gotten into cutting hair. She cut her own bangs this week and she trimmed a chunk out of Aaron's side burn too. Chloe started standing on her own this week too and she cruises a bit along the furniture. She can drink out of a straw these days and I make kefir smoothies daily and it's pretty much the best thing in her day. She starts hyperventilating if we don't give her one fast enough when she sees I've made them. Today is the beginning of Spring Break. I haven't a clue what we're going to do, but I'm sure it'll be fun.

Here's a picture Spencer drew. "Jump in the puddles."

And here's a few videos I've posted elsewhere, but they're good here too.

Trying to keep a balance

I'm in such a weird place in life right now. It's full of transitions. Bill is super close to the end of his degree, but the end date isn't set in stone and he just doesn't have a clue how long it is going to take. We thought we would graduate in May but there ended up being some setbacks and now we don't know.

It's getting close to the end of the school year. I had planned to be gone in June. Now that I think we'll be here I'm like dang, I've got to think about summer and what we're going to do around here. Summers with school-aged kids seem way harder than when they were younger without a plan. Money is a factor. Our rural location is a factor.

I've registered Genevieve to kindergarten but I don't know that we'll be here, so I'm torn on committing to things or not. They have a Jump into Kindergarten event planned this week and requested parents only bring the incoming kindergartener. Why do schools do that? Even normally that is a bit tough but I'm soloing this week so that's not even possible. I don't really care to find someone to watch three of my kids so my one can feel extra special, yet I don't want to get the sidelong look if I bring everyone. Ugh. It's not like she hasn't been to the school a million times, but it would be fun to go just for her. I feel guilty no matter what I choose to do. Love that mom guilt!

I was in the thick of downsizing and thinking of what we want to keep and what we're ready to part with and the delay in finishing has made me want to settle back in so I don't feel perpetually in limbo. Except I do feel in limbo anyway.

Every time I go to Costco or look think about buying meat from my beloved Zaycon Foods company, the thought always pops up, I don't want to over purchase so that I have to throw a bunch of stuff away when we move. Except we don't know when that will be. Gah!

I'm getting the itch to build things again too with the advent of summer and Chloe getting bigger and more independent. I can't wait for her to start walking so that she can hang out outside while we do stuff without having to be carried everywhere. There's too many biting bugs for me to feel comfortable letting her crawl around in the yard.

We're perpetually practicing songs in primary at church that we'll eventually use in the primary program in the fall. I'm wildly curious to see if I'll even be here to accompany the program or not.

Basically I want to have deadlines and make plans around future events, but I can't because our timeline is completely in the air. It's a very uncomfortable place to be. I'm trying to own it but I just feel off kilter. Here's to getting a bit more comfortable and most importantly, for Bill's research to get over the current bumps and he be able to see the end of the dissertation come back into sight. Send happy thoughts my way that I'll handle the weirdness better than I currently am between now and whenever the end of this phase is.

Chloe at nine months

Chloe is just flying through milestones. She doesn't seem to be a kid that thinks too hard about what she wants to do and tries until she can do it. It's more like an idea never crosses her mind and then when it does she does it right then. So she never even thought to stand up until one day she did and she did it right then and hasn't stopped since.



The other day I was laying on the floor next to her and she stood up against me and then let go and stood independently for a second. Whoa girl! You're not even nine months old!



She is such a little monkey. She crawls everywhere and over everything. Nothing seems to get in her way. She can stand up against a flat wall now, which seems to be the last milestone before they start working on walking. She's got fantastic balance.



This is how I find her always now. She only wants to be standing. I forecast she'll be walking in the next month, two at most. She's just starting to see that she could take steps besides just stand up and based on how she does everything else, once she realizes it's possible she'll be off to the races.



Her siblings are her other favorite thing right now besides eating everything in sight. She loves all of them and lights up when they play with here. Aaron is already noticing her encroaching on his space and he's not that happy about it, ha! Hopefully they'll figure it out. She loves him and he's like girl, you are in my space.



At nine months Chloe puts everything in her mouth. She eats like a champ. She often sleeps through the night, particularly if she liked dinner. She is a bit shy around strangers these days, but is always willing to smile and be charming. She's finally growing a tad bit of hair. It's looking blonder all the time. She's at such a great stage and I'm particularly happy that it looks like she'll start walking soonish so that she will be more independently mobile with warm weather coming. Some parents don't want their kids to walk. I'm like bring it on! Then we can go outside and you won't be in the dirt with all the biting bugs and junk we have here. So we will see how it goes.

Ode to PhDs

I have a lot of friends and family that have gotten PhDs. It never fails, if you ask them about the details they have some story of how it was so difficult to finish. I guess we still needed to live that part of our PhD story. We couldn't just smooth sail to completion like it seemed was happening. The internet isn't really a place to go into details, but suffice it to say that the timeline just got pushed back an indeterminate amount and there is more work than expected before Bill finishes. So here's to keeping on dreaming of the future when school is done and living in the reality of a bit more time here. I'm registering Genevieve for kindergarten and hoping we won't actually be here that long, but hey, it's in the realm of reason.

Chloe at 8 Months

Chloe at eight months is adventurous. She's always finding things to chew on. She puts everything in her mouth. Case in point, she's fascinated by the cords under my desk.


Chloe at eight months loves food. She eats everything we give her. She has two little teeth and she seems to be able to eat anything remotely chewable.

Chloe at eight months is way more clingy than she's ever been. She likes to smile and interact with people still, but safely from my arms. She used to let anyone hold her. Now, not so much. I spent the whole weekend in Utah with her in my arms while she charmed everyone she met.


Chloe at eight months sleeps through the night again! She took a 10-week hiatus from that skill, but she's remembered how to do it. She's slept through four of the last five nights. It's blissful. Maybe after a few weeks of this my sleep deficit will diminish and I won't feel so tired all the dang time.

At eight months Chloe loves to babble. She shakes her head and thinks it's so funny. She loves her siblings. She gets made when folks leave her behind. She's crawling like crazy and starting to pull up on things. I forecast an early walker but we'll see how it goes.

At eight months Chloe is still completely attached to her white knitted blanket. She will not sleep without it. She wraps it around her hand, sticks her thumb in her mouth, rolls onto her stomach in a little child's pose position and sleeps. She naps several times a day and those naps are stretching longer and longer. We spend a lot more time at home because a sleeping Chloe is a happy Chloe.

She's an adventurer. She's loved beyond reason by her siblings. It's so cute to watch them be gentle with her. Well, not always gentle, but they sure do love her.

A weekend for good memories

I had the best weekend. I was able to drop everything and spend a few days with my family in Utah celebrating my sister and her family being sealed. It was a beautiful day, made even more special because she chose this date specifically as it is the one-year anniversary of my dad's passing. Being in the temple together as a family and then again gathering at my dad's grave to leave some flowers and make some positive memories was the best way I could think to spend this day. I'm so, so, so happy for my sister and brother-in-law and my adorable nieces. They've earned every happiness. Such a great family.

I took Chloe around and let's just say she's not a very good flying partner, but she makes up for it in cuteness. Most of my family hasn't met her, so she got to meet gobs of people. Anyone she met she'd stick her little hand out and grab a button or a necklace or watch or something else that caught her eye. Seriously, every time. This girl is not shy. It reminded me of how Spencer noticed all the little details like that when he was tiny too.

Now I'm back home and it is so good to be in my house again with all my cuties. Traveling is the best and coming home is too.

This and That

I'm spending every free moment lately looking for houses. This is ridiculous because it's still several weeks away from when Bill actually goes out to our prospective new hometown and he won't get an official offer until then. Plus, no houses are available now to rent or to buy that work timeline wise as we're a few months out from being done. And we have no proof of income because we don't have an offer yet. But yet I look, multiple times a day, at multiple sites. I obviously need something else to focus on. Anyone have any ideas? It's like a siren call, lol. Come back and check again, just to see if anything else has been posted...

In other news we've had a pretty fun week. I posted on Facebook about how an old bookcase collapsed around my children in the living room yesterday. That was exciting. No one was hurt and we were going to throw it away anyway, so this just sped up our timeline on that, but it was quite the adrenaline rush.





Genevieve got some tattoos as part of her Valentines cards. She was so happy to put these all up and down her arms.



Chloe loves to eat. And grab the camera.




Spencer lost his first tooth. I love his new little grin.



I made this delightful cake for Valentine's Day. It's so rich we're still eating on it. You can only eat a little sliver at a time. Yum.



I also made these s'mores brownies. But when I went to toast them under the broiler I got distracted by Chloe waking up from a nap and Bill opened the oven to find brownies on fire. Exciting! I scraped off most of the marshmallow. This is what was left. They still tasted pretty good, surprisingly.



Aaron was sad in nursery a week or so ago and my friend, his nursery leader, did some snapchat filters with him. It was so cute.

Spencer is learning to ride his bike two-wheeled. Pretty fun stuff. We don't really have anywhere to go bike riding by our house, so we haven't bothered teaching him any earlier than now. We headed to the park to let him practice. He picked right up on it, though he needs some practice.

And Chloe got to ride a swing for the first time. She loved it. 

Eleventh Hour

Spencer prayed at dinner tonight that Daddy could finish his project soon so we can move to Colorado. It made my heart happy. It's permeating us all. We're so close to the end and everyone is pulling to be done. Bill had a great interview this week at his unicorn firm. They're going to bring him out there to interview more. We're super excited. There's still so very much to do before the semester ends. It's insanity. But we.are.so.close! Ten years in the making! Bill has been working so hard for so long and he's earned every single bit of this degree and this job opportunity. He is amazing. We're already planning what we're going to do in celebration. It's all in dream form still, but so very, very close to reality and the feeling is out of this world.

We're running on little sleep, little money, mostly just that last burst at the end of a marathon. We're digging down somewhere to find just a little bit more to give. So if you're the praying type, send prayers our way that we can just give that last little bit more needed. It's a huge accomplishment this PhD business and it's taking everything Bill has, everything I have, the kids see it, and we need all the blessings we can get.

7 months old

This has been the month of developmental milestones for Chloe. A month ago when I went to take her picture, she couldn't even sit up reliably on her own. She was still a lump. Cute, but mostly a lump. Now she's like a different kid.

It all started when she stopped sleeping through the night. That unfortunately hasn't changed. She woke up twice last night. But it was the first sign of big change to come and I'm no longer surprised she stopped sleeping because so much is going on she must need loads of energy to get it all done.

So what can she do now? Well, she sprouted her first tooth. She learned how to sit up. Then she learned how to reliably roll all directions. She learned how to go from laying to sitting. And she started getting up on all fours. That progressed to getting up on hands and feet, monkey style. Now she gimpy crawls to whatever she wants, and happily sits and plays with a bucket of toys for hours on end.

She started eating this month too. Boy howdy does my girl love to eat. She eats anything we give her. This coincides with a marked lack of attention to nursing most of the time. She's distracted by everything, whether there are people in the room or not. It's about this time all my babies have done that, so it's good she's such a great eater.

And so begins the crazy crawling stage that makes life super interesting until she starts walking and can get her nose out of the dirt. It's pretty fun for now. 😊

The most memorable anniversary and birthday week to date

What a week! Surgery Monday, anniversary Tuesday involving laying on the couch all day, more convalescence Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday because hey, this was just a minor surgery with little recovery. Unfortunately not my experience, but it is what it is. Yesterday was mine and Spencer's birthday, and while it was pretty low on my list of good personal birthdays, it was really fun to celebrate with Spencer, so I'm going to talk about that instead.

Friday afternoon I picked up Spencer from school and told him Saturday was his day and he could pick whatever he wanted to eat and tell us what activities he wanted to do. I'm not sure I'll be able to fulfill all his dreams quite so easily in the future, but this year he was a pretty easy case.

He wanted German pancakes for breakfast, but he wanted to make them because he knows how. Except he wanted Bill to put them in the oven, because ovens are hot. Smart kid I've got. 😀  Then he wanted breakfast dessert. I told him every other day of the year there's no such thing but today, today he can have dessert after every meal. lol. He picked fruit snacks, the special ones. Turns out those are the normal ones. Again, it's never going to be so easy to fulfill his wishes again.

Lunch he wanted some muffins and maybe some crackers. I asked him what kind he wanted and he said well, I'm not sure. I'll get back to you on that. I figured he'd be super happy if I made him chocolate muffins, so I pulled out a recipe I had saved to try and made him some double chocolate chunk muffins, which of course went over supremely well. 😂  They were so tasty. A total contender against Costco muffins but they didn't make us feel like we'd been punched in the gut after eating them. Chloe got in on the action of eating those and boy was she a fan.

Dinner he wanted Little Caesar's pepperoni pizza and red chocolate cake with red icing. Red is his current favorite color. I planned to make some red velvet cake, but had a surgery recovery hiccup and ended up napping for a couple hours in the afternoon, so Bill made it instead. He popped the cake in the oven and only then realized he'd completely forgotten the red food coloring in the cake. Whoops! Spencer wasn't too disappointed. We made red frosting for it and it ended up being so tasty. Now we just owe him a red cake sometime in the future. Bill is thinking Valentine's Day.

It was rainy all day so we stayed inside. We're going to take a trip to the children's museum sometime soon, but we haven't told him that yet. For yesterday all Spencer wanted to do was watch Magic School bus, so we did that pretty well all day long and he was happy as could be. We opened presents at some point and he got some Legos and a ukulele, which went over fantastically well. He loves it so much and it makes me happy.

I was going to go to a Lularoe party my friend was hosting and take Spencer along because hey, more treats, and he loves doing novel things by himself with a parent, but due to that unfortunate surgery recovery hiccup I was concerned about getting too far from home if pain hit again, so we stayed home. That was pretty well the only sad thing that happened to him all day, which is awesome because at this age sometimes there's a lot of not fun things in the day, but this birthday was great.

Maybe someday I'll want to do some more things for me on our birthday, but this year this was just perfect. It was laid back and easy and best of all, the kids were happy pretty well all day. That ranks high on my list of good days. Kids make celebrating so fun, and the day went just about perfect, especially considering my less than functional health state.

Spencer is fantastic. He's growing up so fast and learning so many things. He's a great helper. He's independent. He reads like crazy and loves it. He's getting to the point where it's more companionable to be with him as opposed to always reining him in from doing crazy little kid things. I can't think of a better way to explain that, but he's just in a fun phase and I love it. I can trust him in a lot of ways when he's not in sight of me, and that's a wonderful thing. Here's to another great year. Six is looking pretty fine.

National Championship Parade

It's been real fun to be a Clemson football fan the last few years. As much as we love to watch from home, actually going to the games is a bit out of reach at this phase in life. It would be way hard to take all the kids, not to mention expensive, and it would be a really long time for someone else to watch all of them for as long a time as it would be for Bill and I to go alone. So we content ourselves watching from home and figure someday our kids will be at better ages to go to the actual football games.

So we've watched all season long and it was just so fun to watch the success happen. The national championship game kept us on our toes the entire game and I have to say I was trying not to get my hopes up because we lost but just a bit last year and I was afraid it was going to happen again. But then it didn't and that was the best thing ever!

We took the kids to the celebration parade yesterday. It was so fun. So much cheering. Lots of singing the fight song. Lots of Go Tigers! The kids had a great time and I was glad we made the effort. As I look at these pictures I laugh because Bill and I both look exhausted. Ha! We are. Oh well. S'all good. One of these days we'll sleep again.

Our one snow of the year

We may have scarred Spencer's love for South Carolina this last week. He is well aware that we are moving sometime this year once Bill finishes, and that wherever we move is going to be a lot less temperate a climate than Clemson, SC. Well, when we got hit with a pretty decent snowstorm by South Carolina standards this weekend and the kids had a grand ole' time playing Saturday morning, and then a few hours later the sun came out and it started melting, he was devastated and informed me that he didn't like South Carolina anymore and we needed to move right now to a place that gets more snow. 😂  My poor child that would just as soon wear only underwear at home and regularly tries to go outside without much more on. Colorado or Vermont or Canada or wherever else we end up is going to be quite the shock to the system, lololol.

Nevertheless, it was a fun little snowstorm, the best kind of snow for snowball fights and building snowmen. We had a great time playing in it for awhile while Chloe napped. And then I rolled my eyes Monday and Tuesday as the school district cancelled or delayed school while the roads were completely dry and Genevieve didn't get to go to preschool, much to her dismay. But whatever. That's part of the experience living in a sun-loving state that doesn't really do winter. And there are some very good things about that. I have no complaints about light jackets in January. The mountains in Colorado are calling, but I'm going to enjoy the beach and the warm water while I have access to that before we answer that call.