Ten on Tuesday

1. We got hit with the EXACT same virus we had last week again this week. The only thing worse than four kids being sick once is four kids being sick TWICE. It's been a miserable, miserable two weeks that have literally brought me to tears more than once. I begged Jason to switch "jobs" with me but he would not.

2. Trying to contain four kids in the house as much as possible, watching movies on the couch is an nearly impossible feat. I've emptied my bag of tricks. They're tired of me and sadly, I'm tired of them. The whining, the crying, the fighting. It's enough to drive a person mad. We've been fever free for 20-22 hours and ventured outside (it's been in the 80s here) and sure enough as soon as we come inside Bella is running a 102 again.

3. Drew is wheezing and sounds like a freight train. He spent the night with Jason and I last night and no one slept. I will say once he did fall asleep, he did have happy dreams because we heard him giggling in his sleep. He's back on his breathing treatments and the decongestant so hopefully that will help.

4. Drew is crawling all over the place like he's been doing it for weeks. I am getting used to him being so mobile and following me around the house now :) We had to purchase a baby gate this weekend to keep him off the stairs. Will is now climbing up the side of the stairs and over the gate.

5. Adventures in potty-training with Will continue. The girls potty trained start to finish in three days. Sadly, this is not the case with little brother. He is trying my patience for sure. Yesterday he sat on the toilet for 20 minutes two different times. He got up from the toilet, went to his usual "spot" did his business and then proceeded to go back to the toilet and take off his diaper by himself while sitting on the girls' brand new bathroom rug. I thought Isabella was going to die.

6. Speaking of potty talk, this one's for my Dad. I was changing Drew's diaper the other night and Isabella starts complaining about the site and smell of the contents. I'm not a big diaper fan myself - surprising since I've probably changed around 12,337 between my four and all the kids I've watched over the years. Anyways, here I am changing the diaper and here complains my five year old from the couch. I tell her to leave the area, she can't she's watching Super Why and wants me to hurry up. Really. She continues to complain and starts gagging. I tell her to Evacuate the area NOW. She tries but throws up in the process. I have no idea where she gets the weak stomach from.

7. Our neighbors are all avid gardeners and brought us a beautiful strawberry plant yesterday from their garden. Isabella is ecstatic. Any guesses on how long it takes for me to kill it? I do not have an ounce of "green" in my body and I will not remember to water it. Guaranteed. The only plant I can keep alive is a cactus.

8. The girls are supposed to be practicing their dances at home. I'm a little (a lot out of practice for this) and can't seem to keep stage left straight from stage right and explain this to a five and three year old. Hopefully we'll all get it figured out before the end of May.

9. It's a well-known fact that I do all my shopping online. I have to buy the girls both slim sizes and taking four kids to the mall, is not my idea of a good time. Every time the doorbell rings, Amelia announces "Mama the QPS is here". Regardless of how often I hear this or correct her, it makes me laugh every time.

10. We have always worried about Amelia being stuck in the middle. She's always trying to keep up with her big sister and always trying to outrun her little brother. This week when Isabella was trying to tell her what to do we heard her say "Isabella I have a great idea, you're not the boss of me."

egg hunt at the garden

I totally forgot to post pictures of the egg hunt we went to at the Botanical Garden. It was a little rainy the morning that we went but the kids were so excited that they didn't seem to mind. They had music, juice and cookies, the Easter Bunny and over 9000 eggs. More than enough for everyone. The divided the kids by age group and each of ours were in a different group, time and location. It wasn't really crowded, probably because of the rain, and the kids came home with baskets overflowing with eggs. They were SO excited.

Easter

The Easter Bunny brought a lot of candy in the baskets this year. Probably because he didn't know that it was going to be close to 90 degrees and we weren't going to be able to do our egg hunt outside. The kids were all smiles when they saw all the chocolate goodness bright and early Sunday morning. And I mean bright and early. We have one of those high tech alarm clocks that resets itself if the power goes off. Easter Sunday it had reset to Daylight Savings time even though it wasn't actually Daylight Savings time. The alarm went off at 6 and it was really 5AM.



I tried to get a few pictures of the kids before church. I wanted to get one good picture of them in their outfits. I could not for the life of me get a single one of my children to look at the camera and smile at the same time for one single picture. Please. Ridiculous. So we have cheesy grins, and Shrek DVDs to play with etc.




We went to church and then spent the day with our friends Paige and Robbie and their wonderful family. Bella goes to school with Kennedy and was so excited to eat lunch at Kennedy's Nana's house and have an egg hunt there. She told me all day that Kennedy's Nana sounds just like her Granny that lives in Ohio. We had a great day and it was honestly the first holiday I spent away from "home" that I wasn't homesick.

Ten on Tuesday

A few of the blogs I read do a Ten on Tuesday post. It lists ten random things that happened throughout the week that may not be worthy of receiving an actual blog post. I thought I'd give it a try :)

1. We've been in our new house a month now. Love, love, love it here. Someone asked me if we miss our old house? I surveyed the family and only Jason does. His reasoning.. the yard there was finally complete and this yard needs a little TLC.

what-ever.

2. We had a horrible virus last week that lasted until this week. 102 fevers around and a ear infection for Will. We missed a day of school and took a few days after the fevers broke to get back to feeling better. It was exhausting. The above mentioned virus is still going around school so we may or may not have seen the last of it.

3. The weather has been beautiful. Sunny and in the high 70s, low 80's. We've been spending A LOT of time outside. I love this time of year before the horrifying humidity hits. The increased heat however, is increasing hair volume in our house. Bella had a meltdown Thursday because "her hair is huge and always all over the place and in her face". And so it begins. (I also think Drew is getting curly hair but Jason says we're not going to talk about that yet.)

4. We had a new family move in up the street. The first thing that went up in their backyard was a trampoline. I am not a fan of trampolines and do not allow the kids to jump on them unless they are the "in-ground" versions in the gyms. Too many risks for broken bones, paralysis, etc. I look out my window and what do I see? The eight year old boy jumping ON a pogo ball (yes, I'm talking the pogo ball I had in the 80's) ON the trampoline. Great.. Just the kind of "mentors" I need around for Will.

5. I was changing Drew in the parking lot of the gym this week when I feel a tap on my shoulder. It's a 40s something man and he's letting me know he's going to be setting his car alarm - three spaces down. O-kay. Weird. Car alarms have been around for years now and I've never had anyone warn me that they're setting one. I'm more concerned about being "sprayed" by my now non-diaper wearing 8 month old and having to walk around wearing urine on my clothing than a car alarm. Still the man keeps talking and pointing. I finally look and see, a BRIGHT orange corvette. I couldn't decide if he was fishing for a compliment on the car or he was taking the worst ever gamble and trying to hit on a frazzled mother of four. Either way a lose/lose situation for him.

6. Speaking of Andrew, he had the worst diaper rash I have ever seen this week. We had tried everything and I finally, desperately begged for advice on facebook. (thank you to all my friends who responded). Our kids are all allergic to Zinc and I sat in the drugstore aisle literally reading every single label looking for a suitable cream. I finally found A&D and it has been a miracle. Did you know to treat diaper rash you can use: Monistat, Maalox, Aquaphor and Maalox?

7. Drew is now crawling.

8. Will is finally showing some interest in using the potty. I need to work on calling his underwear, big boy underwear and not big boy panties. We had three success stories today.

9. The kids are participating in a cancer walk at preschool next week. I'm proud of their school for getting them involved at such and early age. Cancer is everywhere and I think it's important that they are aware of what they're walking for and who they're honoring.

10. I babysat two of the neighbor children yesterday. Wow is all I can say about that. Six kids is a lot of little people to keep happy at the same time. I had two little babies following me around crawling and crying at the same time. I was totally not used to that.

So there it is my first totally random ten on Tuesday post. We'll try it out and see how it goes. I hope everyone has a great week.

7 month pictures

Here are a few of Drew's seven month pictures. I have to thank our amazing photographer Simplicity by Christy for allowing me to post these. Christy's the best and if you need a photographer I highly recommend her.