look! i'm a witty and descriptive title!

 So it’s really late but I’m trying to catch up on things in my life…like blogging (mostly because I went over my grading quota for the day and I know I should do more but I don’t want to and so I’m going to blog instead).

Here’s the thing—it’s super late, so all the italicized stuff in this post is from  be the email I sent to my family on Sunday (my mom has this awesome thing where she has been writing us Sunday emails since I first left for college in 2001.  THAT IS FOREVER to write emails!  Anyway, it’s fun when people write back because we all know what’s going on that week for everyone—as opposed to the super long group texts that are mostly full of pictures of my parents/sisters doing something awesome and me texting back a picture of my kids doing something crazy.  I’ll see your Pacific beach and raise you one screaming toddler! Anyway.)

Basically the email is about our weekend--we went to the Chicago Temple on Friday and it was so great!  So that's what all of the nice dressy pictures are about--taken before we went into the temple session.




Also, I'm not going to try to really organize this post.  Today I was thinking ohmygoodness I need to quit blogging, and this is my compromise with myself.  A non-organized post.  Random pictures and text.  Good times!

 I posted this to Facebook because I was so impressed with myself for doing my hair.  I think this is the first time I've done it since my sister's wedding in June.  Mostly because a) it takes forever and b) when I do my hair Nathan grabs it in his fist, shoves it down his throat, and then throws up all over both of us (trust me, I've learned the hard way).

Something I forgot to put in my email:  my favorite part of this weekend was when I was in the temple and had just barely missed the session by literally one minute—when I was asking if  the session had started I explained that I had a nursing baby and I was trying to time things around his schedule.  This made the ordinance workers really worried and so I quickly explained that it would be fine, and then one asked if my baby was there at the temple, and I said yes, he’s here with my husband and my other children, and then they asked how many kids I had, and I said five—and they both looked so shocked!  One of them told me I didn’t look old enough to have five kids, and the other asked if I had any twins or triplets.  Then they asked how old I was and I said thirty and then made some joke about how it was good to know I didn’t look haggard.  Hah!  Apparently I should have knocked on wood because I totally looked dead the next morning after a crazy night up with all 3 boys ALL NIGHT.  

 oh, and I really like these 3 photos.  especially the one where 4 of the kids look kind of crazy.

 Anyway, here is the email.  

*****

This weekend was the girls' fall break; we had been planning a temple trip for quite some time (I was bummed to miss out on this super-cool Halloween party we'd been invited to, but by Thursday Luke & Nathan both had such nasty colds that I knew we wouldn't have been able to go anyway).  We drove up Friday morning (Neil worked through his own fall break so he could take off this Friday) and really had a great time being together as a family.  We stopped at the Albanese candy factory on the way and the kids were AMAZED at the awesome variety of candy--Neil and I made all sorts of wisecracks about wow, it's like a kid in a candy store!  Luke was especially impressed by the 20-foot-tall chocolate fountain ("hew-ds canny, Mommy!").  **Note:  I have pictures from the candy store but they're on another device and if I wait to upload them it will be another week before I publish this post.  So...eventually.**

 Neither of these are great pictures but look!  our whole family! in one photos!  and...I love Abigail's expression as she is looking down at Nathan.

 We made our way over to the temple & Neil and I took turns doing sessions and hanging out with the kids at a nearby nature park/center/thingie.  It was the first time we've been able to see the new video and I was just blown away--I loved it so much.  It was a wonderful experience and I wanted to turn right back around and go through again--but I couldn't leave Neil with a hungry Nathan!  So I took the kids for a walk in the autumn woods and we had a wonderful time jumping from stump to stump and checking out turtles and frogs.  It was really lovely.  

 Here we are with the giant turtle--I was trying to take a selfie with the scary turtle but it moved away.

 The kids inside the bark lodge...well, this isn't the lodge.  It was like a teepee but are teepees still called that if they're made of bark?



We all--myself included--ran around the clearing jumping from stump to stump.  It was awesome.

I took some photos of the kids asleep in the hotel because they were so sweet and darling.  Please note that no man-child slept for more than 20 minutes consecutively all night, so these pictures are very deceiving.

 Okay, back to my email:  Then we went to IKEA, because Neil loves me more than he loathes IKEA.  I had a fun time.  :-)  And then we went to our hotel in Schaumburg, which was really lovely and a very comfortable suite.  It's a shame that we didn't get to enjoy it--the boys were so sick and miserable that they were up literally almost the entire night.  It was so horrible that it was actually funny.  Abigail & Juliet slept soundly through everything and popped out of bed way before anyone else wanted to get up--fortunately they were willing to watch cartoons on mute for an hour or so (hey, very exciting compared to no cartoons!) and that hour was the most sleep that Neil or I got all night.  Then we went to the hotel breakfast, which was quite good, and then to the LEGO store, which was pretty much heaven for everyone in our family.  Neil and I managed to sneak a couple of cool sets (for Christmas) through the checkout line without the kids noticing, because they were all in ecstasies over their new Star Wars minifigures which they'd bought with their money.  Seriously, you have never seen such happiness.  It was awesome and I loved seeing the joy on their faces.  So fun.

 Yeah, the boys totally conked out in the car on the way to the zoo.  I think I fell asleep too but I'm not really sure.  I do know that I fell asleep standing up while nursing Nathan and singing to him.  I was kind of impressed with myself.

 And then we drove downtown and all three boys conked out on the way.  They were SO tired.  I was totally going in and out of sleep myself--but we eventually parked and made our way over to the Lincoln Park Zoo.  Luke & Isaac had been talking for days about going to the zoo, and when we got there lo and behold it was the Lincoln Park Halloween celebration and it was CRAZY!  Tons of costumed people everywhere and almost all of the animal exhibits were closed.  Bummer!  We did hang around long enough for the African house to open and we went through that, but we skipped everything else (didn't want to wait in line for 2 hours to go through the haunted house made from the seal exhibit...it was all kind of like that).  So then we drove downtown and parked again and walked for half a mile or so down Michigan Ave. until we got to Hancock Tower, then we went up to the 95th floor and checked out the lake views.  By this time everyone was pretty exhausted and so we skipped the Tribune building and just drove home (the four youngest kids all fell asleep on the way, but they woke up before we got home to join in outraged chorus!).

 So here's something to know about Chicago--they go ALL OUT for Halloween.  Like crazy all-out.  There were giant spiders climbing over buildings all over the place.  This particular one in the photo also had a recording playing that was some version of the myth of Arachne.

Cute Jules taking a break across from Water Tower Place on Michigan Avenue.  It was actually pretty fun walking down Michigan with the kids (on the way there...the way back was another story).

 So if you're ever in Chicago and you want to see an awesome view, here's a little secret for you: don't pay to go up Willis Tower because you can go to the Signature Room on the 95th floor of the Hancock building for free.  Not the observatory, but the restaurant just below.  Same view, no charge.

Here's the thing--it's really busy and noisy and you might feel a little weird about not ordering any food, but there are a ton of other people doing the same thing.  Bonus: if you have your kids with you and they start crying because they're tired you can just pretend like maybe you WOULD have ordered some overpriced appetizers if your kids weren't tired.  (Full disclosure:  I have eaten there, the food is delicious, and I sat there and watched helicopters fly by underneath me which was really cool.)


Isaac as we were loading everyone back into the car.  I wanted to do the same thing.

Completely unrelated but I thought I should post photos of the thousand and one projects I've been doing around here.  I have been making so many things.  I feel a really desperate need to create these days because it's so soothing for me.  Anyway, I made these owl bookends for the girls trying to figure out a pattern for teacher gifts--now that I've done these I think I will do the next one about half-size (yes, I'm still trying to use up all the extra fabric from the girls' quilt...)

So my plan to make the kitten love me is sort of back-firing because now he doesn't want to sleep anywhere except on my pillow curled around my head.  Last night after I moved him 3 times he finally sulked away and fell asleep on my feet.

The kids and I did some Q-tip painting today.  So fun and just what I needed on a super-stressful day (aka the girls were still home from school and I ran out of antidepressants.  You better believe I ran 5 miles as fast as I could this afternoon trying to get enough endorphins to survive until Neil came home with my prescription...).

Nathan is six months old!

Holy mackerel!  I can hardly believe my little Tot Tot is six months old.  And Older Nathan, please forgive me for the fact that I have been so lousy at taking pictures lately.  Please rest assured that your cuteness is beyond all description and I spend so much time kissing your little cheeks that I'm far too busy to photograph your darlingness (also, I lost my camera for a couple of months and I had to hide my iPad from Isaac).

And since I'm coming back to update this post, you weigh 17 lbs.

Anyway, even though he's not smiling in this picture at the top of the post, you can still see what a beautiful little boy he is.  What you can't see is what an incredibly happy boy he is--I think he just might be the happiest of all my babies.  I can make him giggle so easily and he even laughs his way through diaper changes.  He still throws up quite a bit from reflux but he always cheerfully giggles and grins as I'm wiping him clean (oh, that reminds me, I DO have a picture of the time he threw up in his own ear, but I'll spare you that.  I was so impressed by his talent!).

So Nathan started on solids about, um, maybe six weeks ago?  And he super loves them to the point that he was really fighting me on nursing during the day, so I had to go solids-free for a few days last week to get him hungry enough to nurse again.  In all likelihood he would be doing much better on nursing if I was as rigid with his schedule as I was with earlier children, but poor little Tot is at the mercy of our busy days (although I do try to keep things as regular as possible for him).  He still wakes up 2-3 times at night to nurse these days.

So here he is having his first taste of oatmeal a looong time ago.  (Please excuse the fact that I was about to head out for a run and Neil has awesome hat hair, and I have no idea what's going on with my hair but we'll just ignore it...looks like a French braid that got attacked by a small child's hands.)

 

 Natie-Tot, we love you so much!!!

I hate feeling behind on my blog

So here are some things I should blog about with pictures but I probably won't but maybe some other day:

1) Neil and I celebrated our 11th-year-anniversary-of-proposal-acceptance (as opposed to the day he actually proposed, because those weren't the same day) last week.  We had lunch with the boys at a playground in the rain.  It was actually really sweet and Neil noted that it was fitting since he proposed to me at a playground (not his plan.  Our engagement is an interesting story because neither of us can tell it without the other one jumping in to correct the other person.  It also involves him kneeling down and me yelling at him to get up and refusing to hold his hand because I was so mad at him.  Great beginning, right?!).  Anyway...it was lovely to spend lunch with him and reminiscence while we watched the boys chase carnivorous squirrels (I once saw the squirrels at that park eating a chicken leg and I've been slightly freaked out by them ever since). I took some really good pictures but I don't feel like uploading them right now.

2) I ran another half-marathon.  It was the first one I'd run without Neil and the first one I've run so soon after having a baby (my first one I ran when Isaac was 9 months old, the second when I was pregnant with Luke, and the third when I was pregnant with Nathan).  It was also my fastest so far--I'm not setting any records but it was cool to beat my previous PR.

3) I am secretly trying to ensure that the kitten loves me more than anyone else (it makes a nice change from Luke & Isaac's commentary on my mothering prowess).  When everyone else goes to bed Hermes comes out from wherever he's hidden himself from Luke's pre-bedtime frenzy and starts purring like crazy and winds himself all over the place begging to be petted.  Right now he's sitting in front of the computer screen batting at the keyboard.  Lately he's taken to sneaking into our room when I'm asleep and curling up next to me on my pillow.  I never thought I would be someone who would sleep with a kitten, but apparently I'm starved for affection from someone who is small and dependent on me for their survival (seriously, I really loathe the stage where toddlers learn to say "I hate you").  Anyway.

4) It's cold enough that tonight we officially started up fireplace nights again.  I LOVE FIREPLACE NIGHT.   It's so Norman Rockwell-esque. We all snuggled up in our pajamas in front of the fire and I read three chapters of The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe to the kiddos.  Fireplace night makes me feel (for a few brief minutes) that I'm managing to be my own idealized vision of a stay-at-home mother...reading aloud with my children gathered around me (sometimes I even knit).  It's awesome.

5) I need to end this post so I can go run.  Ho-hum, I need something new to train for.  The race was on Saturday; I took Sunday off as always, and then yesterday I ran 3 miles to shake out the crazy soreness in my legs and blah, so boring because I didn't have any goal in mind other than just getting rid of the pain.

6) I'm trying to reconquer my life with things like planning lots of make-ahead meals (because invariably I am swamped with craziness when it's time to make dinner), somehow making Nathan nurse again, getting some creative time in (I'm working on a project that I'm really excited about!) and working more conscientiously to keep all my visual lines clear.  I'm so much calmer when there is nothing on my kitchen counters.  A little petty, right? But true.  Next up:  somehow dragging myself out of bed BEFORE the kids get up and actually being there for breakfast instead of falling asleep nursing Nathan while Neil wrangles the crazy show.

7) Today instead of going home after school we went to get delicious donuts and then hung out at the library for an hour.  We usually hit the library at least once a week but the donuts were a fun surprise and you know what?  I have a deep-seated need to create awesome memories for my kids, but sometimes I worry that they all seem to involve food (kids! let's bake cookies! kids! let's roast s'mores! kids! let's pack up a picnic and go on a hike!)  Is it just because children eat constantly?

8) I finished editing the thesis I was working on, which means in theory I should start painting trim or cleaning my carpets.  Right?  But I went to the library today...

Lucky us!!

When we bought our home, I didn't really look much at the school district, since I figured we'd be gone before our children started school (hah!).  I sort of vaguely knew that it was supposed to be good, but I was only thinking about it in terms of resale value.

Fast forward a few years and my children's elementary school is suddenly SO important in our lives! Fortunately, we have an amazing amazing amazing school with fabulous teachers (it's even a federally recognized Blue Ribbon School).  I cannot even tell you how much I love our elementary school, and how grateful I am for the wonderful teachers who have been so influential in my children's lives.  (Seriously. They are out of this world.)  Did I mention that I love their teachers?

And incidentally, one of the (many) cool things about our school is that it has 2 courtyards that the students regularly use (Abigail's first-grade class often had writer's workshop time out by the lily pond).  The photos in this post are all taken in the outdoor classroom.

The school that my older two children currently attend (Isaac's preschool is equally amazing and I love his teachers dearly, who also taught Juliet, but that's another post) is a really cool melting pot.  Last time I checked, it had students from 45 countries, many of whom are here for a few years while their parents complete graduate degrees.  There are 1060 students in the elementary school (it's the biggest in the district, if I recall correctly), and about 50% of them are in families whose income falls below the federal poverty level (hello, graduate students!).  One thing that's pretty neat is that a lot of the students are either the children of professors or graduate students, so education is a top priority for many of the parents (sadly, that's not always the case, but I've been really impressed by so many of the parents that I've met & worked with in the classrooms).  And they have a fabulous principal--he knows all of the kids by name and enthusiastically greets me by name as well (probably because I have a horrible habit of jamming the copiers so he knows to watch out for me).  Both of my children's classes had lunch with the principal & the vice-principal in the past two weeks, and many times when I've been working in my children's classrooms or attending a classroom event, one or both of the principals is there.  And of course, I am still so amazed and grateful that the school has dedicated high-ability classes that both push the kiddos and make learning fantastically fun (i.e. for their economics unit they've been helping to run the school book fair).



Abigail's class has been studying the moon for the past month or so--she's been keeping a journal every night where she draws & describes the position and appearance of the moon.  One of the atmospheric science professors from the university came in to talk to the class (his son is in her class) about the moon as well, and they wound up the unit with a moon-viewing party for students & families.  (Okay, I don't know about you, but my elementary school experience was not like this at all.  Did I mention that today Juliet attended a play at the university for a class field trip?)

They had a half or dozen or so telescopes set up and focused on the moon--you could just wander up and check it out whenever you felt like it.  It was really neat to use the various telescopes to see particular features.  I seriously loved it!  (Abigail, Isaac, and I were the only ones who went; we didn't stay super long because we wanted to get back to visit with Neil's parents, who were briefly stopping by on their way to begin their second full-time church mission.)

And since all fun parties have fun treats, the teachers had kept going with the moon theme--there were Moon Pies, Milky Ways, and--such a great idea--a whole bunch of sugar cookies that the students had coated with various amounts of frosting to represent the phases of the moon.  

As we were driving home Abigail told me that she will miss her school most of all once we graduate, and I had to agree whole-heartedly.  We have been so, so, so blessed in our time here, and I am and will be eternally grateful to the amazing opportunities and teachers my children have had thus far.

(And this really has nothing to do with the post at all, but I was thinking today about how mature Abigail's getting these days--she made a batch of lemon bars all by herself after school--and tonight I wore a pink velvet blazer that I would never have dared to buy on my own, but she was with me and talked me into it, and then told me several times how much she liked it tonight. So fun to be with this kiddo!)

Outsourcing

I was reading the blog of a family member the other day who was discussing how his therapist had asked him to make a list of triggers for his depression and anxiety, and another list of things that helped to calm him.  In thinking about similar lists for myself, I’ve realized that the state of my house is a huge trigger for me—it’s the easiest way for me to feel overwhelmed and bring on panic attacks. I’ve always been kind of a neat freak (understatement), and it’s been an adaptive process for me learning to be okay with the inevitable mess that accompanies a family like mine.

What I’d ultimately decided was that I was okay with the skiff of toys if everything was clean underneath.  I’ve written before about how I’ve had my regular to-do list items laminated on my ‘fridge for years—that list includes everything from daily storytime and one-on-one time with each child to cleaning out my ‘fridge and vacuuming my car. 

But. It’s been many months since I managed to cross everything off on that list each week (usually I do pretty well on Monday and then it’s a downhill slump from there.  Today I spent most of the day in my pajamas reading stories to the boys and building Lincoln Log towers.  Good on the mothering front, but not so great on the “bathrooms really need to be cleaned” front).  Today after dinner (which was PBJs because a) I was so tired and b) I haven’t been to the store in two weeks because oh my gosh have I mentioned a million times that I was sick and Isaac has been…recovering?  Not well, in fact, and his doctor started him on 3 new medications today--I've been doing well on dinners up to this point and making up random things from my cupboards [i.e. yesterday we had cheese tortellini with roasted carrots & broccoli tossed with fresh pesto & cherry tomatoes from the garden], but today I so did not feel like making food or cleaning up), anyway…today after dinner I was folding laundry with the girls and I said something about tired I was and they said they would clean up and I just dropped the socks in my hands, told them thank you, and went to bed with a book and a headache.  Half an hour later, they had cleaned everything up and I felt SO much better just looking around at my serene home.

I’m not really sure where I’m going with this other than the fact that I have finally decided to hire someone to come in and deep clean my house on some sort of regular basis.  I’ve gone back and forth on this a lot—I’m home all day!  Shouldn’t I have time to do it myself? Is this really what I want to spend this money on? Can’t I just get the kids to pitch in more?

But the bottom line is this: I stay home with my children because I want to be with them, not because I want to deep-clean my house in the way that it needs to be cleaned with the 7 people living in it.  And yes, there will still be plenty of daily maintenance work going on, and my children will have far more chores than they’d like, but I feel so much calmer already now that I’ve committed to outsourcing some of the big jobs that I dread. So I’ve decided that if a few dollars can buy peace of mind, it’s money well spent.

So that’s what I’m thinking about today.  Keeping it real, folks, keeping it real.

(And the image at the top is the list Abigail made of their cleaning tasks—I found it tonight after the girls were in bed.  She is SOOOO much like me that it’s not even funny.)

Nathan is five months old, Isaac's surgery, and the last little while

Oh my, I’m never caught up these days.  I’m combining the Nathan-is-five-months-old post with my attempt to recap the last little while.


Nathan quit nursing during the day (maybe because I was sick?) and so I’ve been doing my best to pump enough milk to keep him hydrated and happy (and praying fervently that he starts nursing again so we're not quite so tied down!!).  He won’t take a bottle, so I’ve been spoon-feeding him. A lot.  Fortunately (for his health if not my sleep) he’s still waking up a lot at night to nurse.  And yet he still continues to be the most darling and delightful little man—so many photos of him are blurred because he never stops moving.  He’s almost constantly giggling, and he just lights up whenever anyone smiles at him.  He and Abigail are sharing a room now and she is so sweet with him—she gets him his pacifier whenever he spits it out and occasionally picks him up and brings him in to me if he’s upset.  I don’t encourage the children to carry him around (in fact, I pretty actively discourage it), but I must admit that it’s really neat to see how trustingly and adoringly Nathan looks up at the older kids when they’re cradling him in their arms.  I can't get over how sweet and snuggly and darling he is.  Every new baby is such a miracle.  

 Here’s the last week or two in a nutshell:

Isaac had his tonsils and adenoids removed.  It has been a miserable ordeal for him and I feel so awful for him.  He was really excited to eat lots of ice cream and popsicles, but he’s been in so much pain (even with some pretty heavy-duty painkillers) that he’s eaten nary a bite of ice cream and only a single popsicle (we’re on day 8 post-op).  Every single dose of medication (every four hours) requires incredible negotiation, persuasion, bribery, etc.  And every time it's different.  It's pretty exhausting, actually.  I know that sounds like a silly thing to complain about in light of his pain, but it is getting really hard for me to figure out new ways to get him to swallow it down (thank heavens for Angry Birds in Space, which I purchased in the hospital out of sheer desperation--it is generally the only thing that can get him to stop shrieking at 3 am when the pain is super bad.  It's actually the only app I've ever purchased for my iPad, but boy, that was the best $2.99 I've ever spent in my life).






The kitten almost died and spent a day with an IV at the vet’s (I had a really awful morning going through all the possible options since the vet said it was about 50-50 on whether he would live), and I spent another four or five days force-feeding him with a syringe every few hours.  Thankfully he pulled through and is now happy and bouncy and playful and delightful (and most mornings I wake up to find him curled up on my feet purring happily.  He puts up with Luke “loving dah kiddy” all day and is therefore incredibly heroic, and every chance he gets at night he sneaks into Luke’s room and tries to go to sleep with Luke).  It was a really emotionally wrenching couple of weeks, but at the end of it I feel like we were able to save his life whereas he probably would have died if he had still been in the animal shelter.  He's gained almost a pound since he came to live with us two weeks ago (he was down to 1 lb 14 oz at one point right after we brought him home) and I really do feel like we've made a difference for this little kitten. 



Juliet slammed her hand in a door (when she was angry with me because I'd asked her to help fold some laundry--I know, I know, the audacity...) and lost the thumbnail.  You’d think that with a mother who’s missing part of a finger due to a door-slamming that my kids wouldn’t slam doors, right?  Maybe this will do the trick.

I nursed the kitten back to health, graded a giant stack of projects, ran about a bazillion miles, took my poor son to surgery, oversaw everyone’s daily life, and came down with bronchitis.  Fortunately my incredible mother was here helping out after Isaac’s surgery and helped me to hold everything together (I was soooo out of it the last couple of days she was here…). And she left right before General Conference, so Neil was home for the whole weekend when I basically went to bed for two days (whereas he normally would have been at work), plus I went running Saturday morning with a nurse friend who diagnosed me mid-run with bronchitis...tender mercies.

So all in all, it’s been pretty crazy.  But today I was looking around at my busy house and my active children and thinking how very very blessed I am.  I am so grateful for all of the people in my life and all of the learning and growing I’m able to do because of these opportunities.  Today after school I was hanging out on the playground with my children.  Nathan was on my lap, Luke was prattling away telling me some long involved story, Jules was shouting from the top of the slide all of the things she’d loved about school that day, Abigail was sitting next to me leaning her head on my shoulder and telling me about her day, and Isaac was sitting on my other side with my arm around him telling everyone who came near to go away because this was his spot with Mommy.  It was just as hectic as ever, but it was so wonderful to feel connected to all of my children in that moment.  

Yesterday was my sister's birthday, and we sent her this photo.  After the kids went to bed I kept staring at it and thinking oh my goodness, those are all my kids.  And they are beautiful, and bright, and fascinating, and I love being their mother.  Some days I think I won't survive being their mother, but boy, do those mountains make up for the valleys.