Later!

lifeisbeautiful-esse.blogspot.com

Our kids were so excited about the presents, well Kason didn’t know much about it but Kade and Anika couldn’t wait for Christmas Eve to open the presents.  Every time while we’re at church for the Christmas Eve service, the angels deliver all the presents under our tree and it is so fun to watch the kids’ reactions when we come back and they see all the gifts there.  We had a very nice and relaxing family time that evening and enjoyed it fully.  Anika has been wanting a camera for months now so she was very excited to get one.  She keeps walking around with it and taking pictures of everything in sight.  It is a kids’ digital camera and the pictures are very low quality, but she doesn’t care.  Kade got the biggest gift this year so we wrapped it in a huge box even those it’s pretty small – a nintendo dsi.  He’s been wanting one for over 2 years but we were not going to get one for him just because all of his friends have one.  So we kind of made a deal at the beginning of the summer, that if he saved half of the cost of a ds he can get one for Christmas.  So he did a great job doing his chores, saving his birthday money and putting it towards the dsi.  He was thinking he was getting a ds, a cheaper version, because that’s how much money he saved up so he was shocked to get a dsi.  And really, he earned it with paying for more than half of it.  He’s really enjoying it on his school break this week, but we will have to have big restrictions on it once the school starts again.

On Saturday morning we went to Ehren’s mom and dad’s for a brunch with the family.  It was a nice time with all the cousins playing together and enjoying more gifts and stockings.  We went home for Kason’s nap and came back for dinner and it was nice to visit with each other longer.  On Sunday we had planned to have everyone come over to our house for dinner but that plan went out the window after my episode.  Saturday evening I felt just fine, we were visiting with Brent and Ingrid before going to bed.  When we went to bed I felt a small stomach ache but nothing bad and just went to sleep.  I woke up around midnight-1am for a really bad chest pain, kind of like heart burn but bad and nothing was helping it go away.  We got Brent up since he’s a doctor and he too didn’t think it’s anything too bad, probably just heart burn or something.  So I tried going to bed and it got a little better but at 4am I woke up to even worse pain.  I tried to wait it out so I didn’t wake Ehren up so early but finally I told him we gotta go in.  At the hospital they gave me this worst drink I’ve ever had in my life which made me throw up everything that was left in me and then they gave me some morphine for the pain.  That took most of the pain away but I could still feel it and just got really groggy.  They also took blood tests to see if some levels were elevated to see if my body was fighting something but it didn’t seem like it so they didn’t do a cat scan.  The doctor told me to go home and if the pain is still there to go to my doctor and get an ultrasound.  So Sunday all day I  was out, just lay in bed all day and tried to sleep.  The family just got together at Mark and Audrey’s and had our dinner there.  On Monday Ehren stayed home with me and helped taking care of all the kids.  It was a huge help because I was still pretty weak and I was gone for a while at the doctor.  Ingrid stopped at our house on Monday morning and told us her little girl Sage was throwing up all night and Audrey was getting sick too.  So it was definitely not a happy ending to our Christmas weekend, but at least nothing serious happened.  Now I need to go in for an ultrasound today to see if they see anything wrong with my gallblader or anything.  I just hope it never happens again because besides giving birth that was the worst pain I’ve ever had.

So, the Christmas to remember for sure.  I can’t wait to get back to normal and have more energy.  But despite everything, it was nice to be able to have some great family time.

So, with the school year starting our craziness during the week is too.  I got my daycare license 2 weeks ago and with that 2 infants to watch which is taking a lot of my energy.  Ehren has been great with helping once he gets home because some days I’m just spent by the time he gets home.  2 families whose kids I watched until now stopped coming so one infant is to replace them and the other is my niece, Emily’s sister Aveah.  The 3 kiddos (Kason, Ani and Emily) are so great and play very nice together, but it will for sure be a huge adjustment for the babies.  Anika is such a good little mommy.  She just has it in her, actually way more than I ever did at her age.    Ani helps me a lot and always wants to cheer the crying babies up.  It doesn’t even faze her that she can’t calm them down most of the time and just keeps trying.  Monday nights I go to a preschool class with Anika which I know she’ll really enjoy and Wednesday nights I’ll be helping at church with Cubbies, which is pretty much like a long Sunday school hour for 3-4 year olds.  So I think we are not going to plan much for any of our weekends because it will be plenty busy during the week.  Whenever I have some time during nap time, I also do little preschool lessons with Anika because I want to be intentional with her about learning.  Since she misses the birthday cut-off for school she would need 2 years of preschool and I didn’t want to do that.  I think one will be plenty for her, but I know she’s ready to learn so I want to do that with her.  So far she’s been doing really good and we do things like letters, phonics, vocabulary, numbers and math.

By the way, I almost forgot to write about our big success with Kason. He got potty trained in a couple of weeks.  At first I thought there is no way he’ll get it because he didn’t care if he peed in his underwear but it only took a few times and he would not do it again.  He’s been staying dry most nights so far too and just surprised both of us.  He loves being praised for going potty and is so proud.  Even though it’s been a few weeks I still love our good job hugs afterwards.  He does get a little scared with pooping even though he’s gone plenty of times and sometimes holds it for too long so he gets a little constipated but I hope it will pass soon.  So it feels like all of our kids are growing up.  No more babies in our house – I mean that are ours.  I feel honored when someone entrusts me with their precious little ones, but I am also glad I get to hand them off to their parents at the end of the day and just keep our precious 3.  It’s a sure baby fix

Now we’re all finally over the colds and feeling better and I have my energy back so I’m able to run again.  My big project right now is working on Kason’s potty training and he’s getting better at it quick, a lot faster than what I thought it would be when we started.  At first he could care less if he peed in his underwear and would try to hold the pee for half a day and just cry when he couldn’t hold it anymore.  But now he’ll have no peeing accidents anymore, is all excited when he goes and even stays dry during naps and over night.  But it stops there and he will not try to poop sitting on the toilet.  He either waits for a diaper (usually during a nap) or just poops in his underwear.  It’s a bit frustrating to me because how do you make someone poop on the toilet?  You can’t hold the pee all day but you can hold the poop for days if you’re stubborn.    It is funny, but Kade did the same thing when we were potty training him.  He got peeing down right away but always went to hide when he had to poop or else waited until we went to town and he had a pull-up on.  He was almost a year older than Kason is now and for him I know he was scared about the pooping in the toilet but it took only one time of him doing it and he figured it out.  With Kason though, you can’t even tell he’s pooping.  He’ll do it standing up, wherever, no signs he has to go.  So I guess patience is something I need right now, mainly to deal with the messes.

Since we got quite a few nice and warm days I’ve been taking the kids to a nearby outside swimming pool and they all love that.  I would go on the days I only have one extra boy who is Kade’s age so it works out great.  The only hard part about it, and I mean exhausting hard for me, is Kason who has no fear of water and who would literally drown if I didn’t look at him for 2 minutes.  He is constantly jumping around and going into the deep water and his favorite thing is if I throw him up in the air and he goes down in the deep water and he tries to swim back up.  There were a few times when he didn’t quite make it up right away and instead started rolling around under water until he was out of breath but that didn’t scare or stop him at all.  Plus, the hard part is that the pool is only open in the afternoon, right during his nap so with his nap cut into a 20 minute cat nap on the way there he’s a lot more crabby than usual and insists to “swim” his way.  But despite that we’ve been having some good times at the pool and I’m very glad we’ve had so many nice days to go so far because last summer we probably had one nice week the whole time.  This past Sunday I got to go just with Kade and Ani and it was so nice and relaxing.  I was finally able to swim and play with the kids instead of frantically watching Kason’s next move and it made me think that maybe in a couple of years it will be like that with all of them there.  It’s been fun to see Kade so much braver in the water this year.  He’s been swimming under water and just really enjoying it so I signed him up for swimming lessons that are going on now for 2 weeks.  He is loving that too although there were a few days where he had to change from swimming and go straight to tennis.  So, I keep thinking that I am so glad we only have one child old enough for this fun stuff because there is no way we could have all 3 kids doing this much.  Once they’re old enough we’re going to have to cut the activities for Kade quite a bit I think.  It worked out fine this summer because while Kade had swimming or tennis I would take the other kids to the park, sometimes met friends there.  Whenever we could we went to the parks and had lunch there too so there has been just a lot going on during the week.

Other than that we had the kids use our blow-up pool in the back yard and on the days we had too many kids at home it’s been a fun thing for them.  It’s not fun to keep refilling it though because it gets so dirty from bugs, rain and stuff.  Ehren and I went to his parents’ cabin over the July 4th weekend and we had a really nice time there.  We even went on a bike ride in Bemidji with Audrey and all the kids and it went really well.  Kade got a tandem hitch bike that goes behind Ehren’s bike and I pulled the 2 kiddos in the bike trailer.  I was glad there weren’t too many hills because it is not easy pulling 70 lbs but I guess it’s a good workout.  Ehren would have pulled them instead of Kade but when I tried the tandem thing I said no way I’m doing that.  When I ride it I feel like I’m going to lose balance and fall any time, at the slightest turn.

And now there’s only one month of summer left and it’s going to be pretty busy too.  We’re getting together with friends this weekend, the week after that I’m going on a girls’ weekend to the cities with Ani, then the following week Seth and Angie will be visiting from NY and after that it will almost be time for school.  I’ve been going through some math and reading work books with Kade so he doesn’t completely lose touch with what he learned and that has been good for him.  Somehow it’s nice to have a steady routine of school, especially for Kade because when there is nothing on the agenda he gets a little bit lost and doesn’t quite know what to do with himself.  I’m very glad we’ve had so many playmates for him at our house this summer or else he’d be very bored.

Well, that’s enough about our summer so far, here are some pictures from what I was talking about.  I probably had most of them on facebook so you might have seen them already.

Ehren undertook a huge project this past week- a new swing set that I picked out.  After a bit of a rough start mainly because of me trying to tell him how he should get some help ASAP, it turned out great and Ehren was able to do all of it by himself.  I’m really proud of him and it was good practice for other big projects coming up like building our boys’ bunk beds or walls in the basement.  Kids really like it so far but I think Anika is the most excited about the swing set and will put her rubber boots on a million times a day just to go out there and swing or play on it.  I know she’ll have even more fun when her cousin Emily comes over.  She’s been home with her mom and baby sister this summer as Jess is on maternity leave but they should both start coming to our house in the fall.