One month

I'm visiting my parents this week. It's been a hard adjustment and I wanted 1) for Neil to have the extra work time and 2) for me to have the adult interaction/support during the day now that the kids are out of school. Have I mentioned that this has been hard? Before my pregnancy I was struggling to combat some depressive tendencies, and between a new baby, my best friend moving away, and a husband who needs to work upwards of 70 hours a week...it's a perfect storm.  Anyway, I don't really want to go into all of that, but I do want to be honest about what is going on right now.  There are many good things in my life, and I am trying to get back to a place where I can appreciate them whole-heartedly.

My beautiful Nathan is one month old. If I could figure out how to do it, I would upload a great picture on my new iPad (thanks, Mom and Dad!) showing his new skill--smiling! But that will have to wait for a more tech-savvy day.

Nathan was 10 lbs, 4 oz and 22 inches long when we went in for his checkup a week before his birthday.  Not quite as big as Luke, and I have no idea how big Isaac was at that age, but a respectably-sized young laddie with delicious little baby rolls!

photos I took today

Look at those little cheekies!  The Tot is growing quite nicely these days.

Today the boys and I went to Juliet's kindergarten graduation (right smack in the middle of naptime).

Juliet has the same teacher that Abigail did (whom I absolutely adore).  In light of the tragedies in Oklahoma, the two of us were soberly reminiscing today about Abigail's graduation and its disruption by a tornado.  I love where we live, but it's terrifying whenever those sirens go off.

 Fortunately we didn't have any unscheduled excitement and we were able to enjoy the program the kiddos had put together.

And...then we ate cookies (can you tell how excited Isaac was?  Sidenote: I didn't feel like making cookies this morning because I was so exhausted, and so I just made muffins so that the boys could eat them for lunch too, and then Jooj was looking at the table of treats and she said, "Are you the one that made those muffins so there would be some healthy food?"  In all fairness, however, they were crazy good because they were packed with orange zest and fresh strawberries, and I was kind of hoping that nobody would eat them so I could take them home and eat them all.  But no luck).
 

So apparently we know what Juliet will look like when she finishes grad school.  She looks way too old in this photo!


But pleasantly kindergarten-y in this one.

 And happily curling up to read as soon as we got home...

 Luke was playing with the markers tonight and drawing all over the world, as is his wont (he stooped down to draw on Nathan, looked up at me, and thought better of it).  He finally stopped drawing on everything when I offered to draw a little mustache on him, and he giggled and held very still the whole time (he looks sad in this photo because he was asking me to come outside with him and I was still finishing up the dinner dishes). 

Eventually we made it outside and he perked up again.

And look!  I'm in front of the camera for once!

 

 So tonight Isaac fell asleep with his nose in a book.  Literally.  Love that kid (and the way he totes this book around everywhere).

some Abigail update bits

Yesterday I took a few photos of my biggie and my littley.  I asked Abigail to hold Nathan while I ran in to start the first of dinner prep, and she was so sweet about it and happily held him for quite awhile--when I came back in to pick him up again, she told me to leave him with her because he was so sweet and cuddly.  Warmed my heart.

(She's reading D'Auliare's Greek Myths, if you're curious, which I highly recommend--all my kids love it.)

Abigail had a piano recital last Saturday--she's now been taking lessons for one year, and she's just about done with the Level 1 books (she finished the Primer level last fall).  She is really coming along as a musician; I always remind her to practice, but then she ALWAYS practices.  I know for a fact that she hasn't missed a day since she started lessons with her new teacher in January, and I think she only missed one or two days with her previous teacher.  It's neat to see her developing persistence and dedication along with her music.  And she's at the point now where she's really starting to play some fun stuff--yesterday she was humming Bach's Minuet in G and wandered over to the piano and started picking it out, and she was SO EXCITED--so I grabbed the real sheet music for it and she sat down and started playing it.  Good times and so fun to see her blossoming!

This post would be longer, but Luke is trying to help me to type, so...we're done.

Three weeks and everyone else

The Tot is three weeks old!  (Someone please tell me that I'm not the only one who spends months--nay, years!!--agonizing over the perfect name for each child and then immediately upon birth begins calling them by some inane nickname forever after, like Baghdad, Joojiefruit, Chizek, Luke-oo-Luke--oo-oo (there's a little descant for that, and our entire family sings it when we're calling for Luke, which is probably why he thinks his name is Oot), and Nater-tot/Totlet/The Tot.)

Anyway, isn't he developing some delicious little chins?  (And bubbling as he snoozes happily in his carseat.)  Nathan is by far the most alert baby I've ever had--probably because our house is a constant beehive of activity--but it's not unusual for him to be awake for a solid 2 hours.  Sometimes he's awake for 2 hours, takes a little nap while he nurses, and then is awake for another 2 hours.  But he's pretty reliably giving us one good 4-5 hour stretch at night, so...I'm not complaining.

Today Jules & Isaac & I were making this very complicated bread during naptime (it didn't turn out because I made a rookie mistake that I'm blaming on postpartum dementia & I killed the yeast and knew immediately afterwards that I'd killed it, but the recipe was so complex that I went ahead anyway).  And Nathan was fussing and so I asked Jules to go give him his pacifier, which he hates, but then he always settles down once he finally stops gagging on it and starts sucking happily--anyway, she came back in and said, "It took a long time but he finally took his paci and now he's asleep."  So I went in a few minutes later to check on him, and this is what I found:

He'd totally flipped it around and was sucking happily on the bottom edge.  Nice!

So, because this is a post about everyone else too (sorry, Nathan), here is the world's cutest little sleeping bag model:

 We're planning a big trip later this summer and we decided that it was finally time to upgrade our sleeping bags (we only have 3 and we've been either borrowing bags from my parents or just camping when it's warm enough to not need sleeping bags for everyone).  We are SO EXCITED to go camping in the mountains this summer, among other delicious vacationy things like weddings and family reunions--in part, we are going to be redoing this particular bit from a vacation almost five years ago where Neil & I both fell in love with the general gorgeousness.  I seriously can't wait to see both of our extended families and have time with our own little family all in one trip!

So speaking of being excited about things, Abigail was horribly afraid of all the creepy-crawlies that infested our house one night during monsoon-like rain this spring (seriously, it was the most insane storm, and all of these little roly-poly bugs started coming in from the west side of our house--enough that we were vacuuming them up multiple times during the wee hours of the morning).  Anyway, thanks to an etymology unit at school, she now refers to them as isopods and collects them for her terrarium.  (And slugs.)  Guess who took the photo (and half a dozen more).

 Actually, Abigail took a whole bunch of photos while we were all out working in the garden together tonight.

 Some of us were working harder than others. (Classic Isaac quote from today: "Foccacia is good, but Halloween is betterest.  Because candy.")

Nathan was totally not pulling his weight--just daydreaming under the maple tree.




So I was not really looking forward to all the work we needed to do in the garden today--I've been having a hard enough time keeping up with all the inside stuff. But once we got out there it was so great.  The girls and I were working in the lettuce box weeding, thinning, and harvesting, and singing an obnoxious lettuce song as loud as we could ("Plant a salad, in your garden, watch your salad GROW GROW GROW") and it was so nice to be working together as a family.  At one point Jules said she didn't want to weed and she wanted to swing, and Abigail asked her if she wanted to eat the fruits of her labors or not, and Juliet promptly responded, "Oh yes!  I want to have food for the winter!" and I thought...kids are awesome.  And we are teaching them good things.

It's days like these when I look around and think that I could have ten children.  Okay, maybe eight.  Or six.  (And then while I'm looking around dreamily as I sit nursing Nathan and thinking how wonderful they all are, somebody dumps a cup of purple grape juice on Neil and he suddenly does not share my opinion.  True story tonight, post-baths.)

 
Seriously though, in all of the adjustment to the fifth little baby in our home, I'm just so glad that we have our children.  There have been a LOT of moments in the last three weeks (oh, who am I kidding?!  The last eight years!) where I think "WAS I INSANE?!  Who thought that having kids was a good idea in the first place?!" but I am really grateful for these little people and the things I am teaching them and the things they are teaching me.  And the general joy that I feel when we are all together as a family (especially when we're outside.  Being inside usually means we're creating messes, but when we're outside, I always feel like we are creating memories).

And we're all thankful for salad.

some catching up

First of all, thank you all so much for your kind comments & emails on my post about Nathan's birth.  It was hard to endure, hard to process, and hard to recover, and all of the kind thoughts and wishes sent my way truly helped.

Secondly, aren't these little kidlets cute?

 One of the things we are most thrilled about this summer is that Neil's summer job magically worked out to be one where--for the VERY FIRST TIME IN GRAD SCHOOL--he is allowed to take paid time off without being grilled for it.  I cannot even tell you how amazing and wonderful this is.  My little sister got engaged the week that Nathan was born, and as we were wishing that we would all be able to travel there for her wedding, Neil was told that he could take some time off AND we found out that he won a substantial cash award for his teaching prowess AND we realized that the wedding was back-to-back with his family reunion, so we are feeling very blessed by the way the timing worked out for all of this.

 And we are practicing our best marshmallow-roasting skills for the camping we'll be doing en route and while we're there.  Who wants to queue up for one of Luke's marshmallow masterpieces?

One night when my mom was here, I convinced Neil to stay home from work after the kids went to bed & we went out for a 4-mile run over the hills and trails through the beautiful spring-time scented woods.  We ran through the dusk and watched the sunset while we listened to the frogs croak in the bog.  It was wonderful.  After we got home I thought I would take some pictures of my postpartum squishiness to remind myself how things REALLY are if we have another baby and I have the same body issues afterwards, except Neil kept popping up over the shower curtain and making me laugh.  I surely do love that man.

And speaking of loving my husband, on Thursday my mom convinced me that I should take a shower before Neil got home (this took some convincing, because I have been thoroughly enjoying just slouching around in my pajama pants and showering in the evening after I exercise).  I felt a little abashed about how I was apparently looking really grungy when my husband got home every night, so I even put on makeup and real pants instead of yoga pants.  Good thing I did, because Neil walked through the door and told me that he'd made reservations at two really fun restaurants downtown, and as soon as I picked the one I wanted to eat at, we'd be off.  So we had a lovely evening together (we saw a movie afterwards--and went grocery shopping, because we're cool like that!) and he made me laugh, as always, with his antics.  (that's a whole baby squid, and no, it was not delicious.)

And this part is going to be really fast--serves you right, Jooj!--but last week Isaac and I took Nathan and went to Juliet's class Mother's Day celebration.  They sang lots of songs and gave us some lovely presents and then the kids gorged themselves on cookies.  And now I have to end because Juliet is going to die if I don't core her an apple rightthisminute.

Luke turns 2

 

My darling Lukey is two years old today.  Can I just tell you something?  Luke is the most delightful kid.  He is stubborn, enchanting, willful, sweet, cuddly, and constantly on the go.  I love, love, love this kid.  He is so fun to watch (and he is surprisingly gentle with Nathan, although he is fascinated to the extreme by Nathan's eyes...probably because my labor was so violent that a whole bunch of blood vessels burst in Nathan's eyes so they're still very red).



I love to look at Luke and imagine what he's going to be like in another ten or fifteen years.  Big, for one thing--he has a very solid build and I imagine he's going to inherit my dad's broad football shoulders (which I also have! That made shopping for prom & wedding dresses kind of interesting).  He's got great physical coordination and trust me, you don't want to make him mad, because he has no compunctions about nailing you right in the head with a ball, beanbag, or toy hammer (as Isaac discovered when he tried to take Luke's birthday hammer away).

Luke is a very willing/adventurous eater--this past week, for instance, he ate grilled asparagus, gulab jamuns, roasted broccoli, and garlic hummus until we finally ran out of each.  (And he asks for more by say, "Moh, honey?" to me so of course I can't resist and fork some of the asparagus from my plate to his.)

 Luke loves his fringed blankie and pacifier and can't sleep without either.  He's also developed a deep affection for a stuffed rabbit that was formerly Abigail's until she kindly turned over ownership to him (he immediately took his new bunny on a nice swim in the bathroom, so we christened it Toilet after it re-emerged from the washing machine).

And like most toddlers, Luke has one speed setting--weddy, set, GO!!!  I tried to take a picture of him in his new birthday outfit (thanks, Great-G'ma and Great-Papa!) and he ran around like crazy the whole time.

Happy birthday, sweet Lukey!  We're so happy you're part of our family.

P.S. On Luke's birthday, I remembered to snap the traditional photo with the birthday banner that I'd forgotten to take of Abigail on her actual birthday, so that post is updated here.  And yes, if you're wondering, we DID plan to have all of our kids born right in a row.  :-)

Nater-tot

He still seems so small (although he's gaining about 2 oz a day) and we are just soaking in the newborn preciousness.