A morning with Mason.

Just a little post to give you a little chuckle over life with Mason this morning.

Lets start with when he second wakes up (the first time he wakes he gets in bed to nurse and sleep for another hour… or two… ):

“GOOD MORNING MOMMY! I love you, Buttcheeks!” Are you ready to get up and eat some breakfast and start your day? “Nooooo…. I stay Mommy cozy bed. I swee-sie (nurse) BOTH sides boobies all day!” No, why don’t we just get up, Mommy has to go potty and eat. The baby needs food. “No, no baby need food.” Then he jumps out of bed, runs to the bathroom. “I go tee-tee potty first! No Mommy tee-tee potty! MINE POTTY!”

The baking of Pollywog #5

14 weeks, 20 weeks, 26 weeks, 30 weeks

I feel like I announced Baby #5 and then just sort of left you all hanging. I mean, I'm in the final stretch of this pregnancy and this is only the second mention of it on the blog. And to think, I was actually worried when I announced the pregnancy on the blog that all of my posts would turn into pregnancy posts.

So, here is what you have missed in the baking of Pollywog #5:

Zach's Monster

I won’t lie, Zach’s monster felt like a never-ending project. You would think the time consuming parts would have been the body or arms, because really, a 2 round stripe gets tedious. But no, I zoomed through those. The longest most time consuming parts were the legs. I got one done, but it was in his original orange that he picked, and it looked BAD. Like eww. I told him no way, he needed to pick a new color. He stuck with orange, but instead of a neon orange he went with a pumpkiny color that looks surprisingly great with the teal and neon green.

That monster sat around unstuffed and legless for a month while I did nothing to it. Just the thought of starting the legs again (after the original orange) made me think of like 20 other things that I should have been doing instead. I just could not make myself knit those legs.

You can do a lot of changing in 10 years.

Ten years ago I had just had Zach. I didn’t put much thought at all into parenting stuff, and I didn’t put any thought at all into labor. I didn’t put thought into breastfeeding or circumcision or vaccinations or co-sleeping or, well, anything. I had just been trying to get through my junior year of high school and praying that he stayed in until I was done with the school year and that, please Lord, my water wouldn’t break while I was at school.

After he was born we did breastfeeding and bed sharing. Zach was such a sweet and easy baby and he made my first year as a mom such a breeze. I never put thought into if were going to be breastfeeding or not. I was raised seeing my mom breastfeed my younger siblings and my aunt breastfeed my cousins; it’s what moms did, so, I did. He was exclusively breastfed until I returned to school in the fall, and continued breastfeeding until he was about one. My favorite time of the day was coming home from school and nursing him. It wasn’t until years and years later that someone pointed out how odd it was for a 17 year old high school student to go into breastfeeding so unquestionably and continue doing it for a year. He also continued to sleep in my bed until right before Ryan was born.

The Mason Sleep Journals–Nights 1&2

Remember when I said that my goal was to get Mason sleeping through the night, without nursing and in his own bed before he turned two? Yeah… that never happened. I started working on it, but then he decided to cut in all of those pesky eye teeth and, well, it ended up not happening. On his birthday we decided that it was time. It’s time to try this for real – no excuses – and get him out of our bed. Step one is getting him to sleep through the night without nursing. I figure if we take care of that first we’ll have better luck getting him to sleep in a room (or bed) without me.

Patterns are scary when you have 4 kids.

Maybe I should clarify that and say that patterns are scary when you already have four kids, and you don’t want any more, and you notice patterns that go the same with your previous times of having kids.
(I’m not overthinking this at all, am I?)

THE PATTERN:

1. Someone gets potty trained. When I got close to having Ryan the little boy that my mom watched – Jared (also Zach’s best friend) was getting potty trained. Even though Zach was only about 18 months at the time, he too started potty training then. (Though he still wasn’t fully potty trained – daytime – until he was 2.) Then with Bella, Ryan started potty training at about the same time I got pregnant with her and made it out of diapers and pull ups about a month before she was born. Bella first started potty training a few months before I got pregnant with Mason and was fully potty trained right before I had him. Mason has recently started showing a real interest in the potty and has gone to the bathroom several times in the potty.

“Why are his eyelashes white?”

The blog recently got the following email:

“Hey! I was reading today’s post on your blog and realized that your son’s eyelashes are different on one eye from the other. Are they white? If so, do you mind if I ask why?” (post in question)

Yes, his lashes on part of one eye are white, while the rest are all a dark brown/black. The reason for that is because Ryan has vitiligo.

In which we discover the little girl next door.

The little girl (and boy too) next door has been there for quite a while. Actually she has been there since about 7-8 months after Bella got here. The fact that Bella has really just noticed this is rather humorous to me.

When we bought our house back in 2008 we had high hopes and dreams of having the sort of friendship and relationship that my parents have with their neighbors. Alas, that has not been the case at all. In the past 6 years we have spoken to the neighbors right next to us less than a handful of times, never to the people in the house behind us (or to the 2 families that lived there before them – it’s a rental), and very rarely to the people across the street. I don’t know any of their names. I don’t know anything about them. And we never have each other over for chats or dinners. As I am a rather social person, I kind of hate it, but not enough to try any harder than I have in the past to get to know them all.

Sharing–Not quite what I meant.

I’ve been working on Mason and sharing. His version of sharing is usually – here, I don’t want this anymore, you take it now and I’ll take what you have. Or it’s I’m going to stick my face right in your face and yell at you until you give me what you have that I want. OR it’s no, this is mine, you can’t have it ever and if you take it I will lay on the floor and scream until you give it back to me or I forget that it exists.

Ah, one and half year olds, so much fun.

Zach stayed home from school sick today (though I slightly doubt his level of sickness…) which made Mason happier than all get out. His “Acky” is his favorite person in the whole wide world. When Mason got up from his nap he did what he always does – he nursed for a good twenty-thirty minutes. About 15 minutes into his breastfeeding session Zach came in to the living room to wax on about how bored he was. Mason noticed the introduction of his favorite person to the room so he popped up and started yelling “Acky! Acky!” After Zach acknowledged him Mason started calling for him again while signing milk over and over. And just in case Zach didn’t get what Mason was hinting at, Mason would yell and sign, then latch on, then pat my chest, call Zach again, and sign again.

Zach finally did in fact catch on to what his brother was wanting. He gave a big sigh, rolled his eyes, and said “No Mason, I don’t want a boob.” It was at this point Mason decided that he actually didn’t want one either, got off my lap, and went to get on to the couch next to his brother.

That lasted a whole 5 minutes before he decided, no, he really did want to nurse after all, not sit on the couch with Zach.

Ryan on the mind.

Ryan has been occupying a lot of mind lately so I thought I would do a post dedicated just to the dude.

"OK! I brushed my teeth! Only, well, I couldn't find my toothbrush so I used my finger. But that's OK to do."

Let him sleep.

I’m not going to lie, or feel any guilt or shame in admitting this:

Mason still sleeps in my bed. Not only does he still sleep in my bed, he’s almost 18 months old and he still doesn’t even pretend to sleep through the night.

I don’t mind. I feel deep down that as long as he wakes to nurse at night, and as long as he feels he needs me, that we are doing the right thing and that he is exactly where he belongs. The few times that he has slept through the night (in his pack-n-play right next to my bed) I never sleep well. I’m up all night checking on him or waiting for him to wake up.

I know bed sharing and co-sleeping isn’t for everyone, but it’s always been the way our kiddos have slept as babies before they would start sleeping through the night. And up until Mason it wasn’t any big deal. With the big boys it was just me and them, and then with Bella, and Mason at first, it was us and them. I’m pretty sure John enjoys snuggly baby loves more than me – this is probably because they aren’t trying to latch on to him when they snuggle him.

Back to School - 2013

The dudes, off to fourth and second grade.

They get to walk half way to school on their own this year. (There’s a way too busy crossing they have to make to go the whole way alone.)

And, since the chick didn’t make it into the county PreK or the one at the boys’ school -

Cause a chick has to get her learning on to get ready to go to kindergarten next year.

Our life in black and white.

If you know anything about me and my photo editing preferences you know this – I’m not a fan of making my photos black and white. I can love to death someone else’s black and white photos, but when it comes to my own, eh… not so much.

Then last night while I was laying in bed, it came to me.

Summary–Birthday/Father’s Day Weekend

Can you spot the baby party crasher?

The slumber party was a huge success! The boys all had a great time, and Zach proclaimed it to be the best two days of his life. We just had two boys for it (we only invited 3) and it was tight just with them. Bella and Ryan got sent away for the night, Zach really wanted Mason to go too, but well, as he still wakes to nurse 2-3 times a night that wasn’t happening. The boys went through 2 pizzas, 2 bags of popcorn, a can of pringles, and a container of ice cream. Who knew three nine year olds could eat so much!? They stayed up late watching Oz The Great and Powerful and Netflix. When I went to bed at 12:30 all three were still wide awake (though thankfully quiet) and all three were up and going when Mason and I woke at 7:30.

It isn’t that easy….

Today Bella pulled out one of my favorite dress up skirts she owns, and I was looking at her in it and I just thought “WOW! She has grown so much in the past year.”

You see, one of my favorite pictures of Bella is from July of last year when we tried out rag curls in her hair. She was wearing the skirt and stopped whatever it was she was doing right next to the backdoor and I was all “Ohhh! I need a picture of that right there!” Pretty sure it’s one of my favorites of any of the kids ever. It’s just so sweet and girly.

Anyway, today when I saw Bella in the skirt again I decided that I just had to attempt to get a similar picture of her in it. I knew it wouldn’t be completely the same since, you know, we weren’t putting curls in again, and she’s big enough now we don’t just let her go around without a shirt anymore.

Lets just say, she really made me work for this picture.

Second post today!

I promise, most days of the challenge won’t be sporting two blog posts, but I wanted to go ahead and put up the end of today’s video and… my boys have news as well.

The boys got awards today!

Zach got Most Improved and his class voted on awards and he got Most Compassionate, Most Likely to be Injured or Bruised, and History Lover. Ryan got an award for having the highest Math scores in his class.

I’m feeling super proud of my big boys at the moment.

Of sick kids, spiders, and volcanoes.

Of course Ryan has to be difficult.

Our house came down with a stomach bug last week. Everyone got sick. It was… gross. Ryan however did not. Ryan, who has the constitution of an ox, generally does not catch most sickies that the rest of us get, so I figured we were all good now.

Oh no. Ryan just wanted his own sick time it seems. I got called Wednesday afternoon to come and get him from school. He had already thrown up twice, and then he threw up two more times while I was waiting on him. The nurse told him just to leave all his stuff in his class, she’d rather he didn’t walk all the way back across the school to get it. Got the boy home – no more pukes, or sick feelings AT ALL. Yet, since he got sent home for throwing up he couldn’t go back yesterday. Yesterday, with a bored Ryan, was a very, very long day.

How I spen… MASON, NO!

Mason is such a Spencer.

Spencer is my younger brother, and Mason is named after him as a nod to their almost shared birthdays; March 23rd and 25th. I told him if Mason was a boy they could share middle names, I kinda didn’t think I’d actually get lucky enough for another boy. But nope. He’s a boy. He has all the parts to prove it.

You might be wondering how one can be a “Spencer,” please, let me explain.

As a baby, toddler, young child (lets be honest, he’s 20 and this still applies) Spencer was the child you weren’t expecting. Cute, chubby cheeks, sweetest little angelic smile, loving, and could destroy a room in under two minutes all while laughing and saying he loves you. But no, there’s more. Even little he looked for adventure and had to explore everything. And touch everything. And taste everything. Sweetest child ever, but you couldn’t have him out of your sight for a second or all heck would break loose. (If you’re curious how I know all of this – I’m six years older than Spencer)

A Bella Style Party

Today my precious little chick-a-let turns four. I can’t believe that she’s no longer that sweet quiet cuddly little baby that she was this time four years ago. It just doesn’t seem possible.

We had her party yesterday. It wasn’t big; just my family, my aunt, my cousin and his family. The funny part is that Bella was the only girl-child at her party, but it didn’t bother her. Heck, I don’t think she even really realized it since she’s so used to always being the only girl.

I hit up Pinterest for the cupcake and snack ideas. The pictures aren’t that great, but they all seemed to be a big hit. And if you are wondering – yes, those are pig cupcakes.

cupcake pins (no specific one) - http://pinterest.com/search/pins/?q=pig%20cupcakes
trix crispies - http://pinterest.com/pin/177540410282719565/
candy popcorn - http://pinterest.com/pin/177540410282719557/
(For the popcorn I did make some changes – I used microwave Kettle Corn popcorn, and instead of adding vanilla I added cotton candy and bubble gum icing flavor packets by Duncan Hines.)

And lastly, her birthday invitations that I made (click for larger):

Thank You Lord, we made it to Monday.

It started out a good weekend, long, but good.

We’ve had plans for months now to combine all four kids into one room, but a combination of being busy and lazy kept us from ever getting around to it. Well, my parents are getting their house ready for my grandmother moving in with them, this meant that we needed to get our act together and go and pickup Bella’s big girl bed and the boys’ bunk bed. Friday the kids cleaned, Saturday we made them actually clean (because I’m pretty sure Ryan and Bella just put everything under their beds and in their closet) and we got to rearranging the room and setting up the beds.

(Seriously – we own more beds than we could ever need. Two bunk bed, 2 twin beds, 1 crib, 1 toddler bed, 1 queen size bed, and 1 full size bed, this is why the new beds were at my parents’ house.)

(all that crud in front of the crib came from under Ryan and Bella’s beds)

(Bella’s big girl bed, until now she’d been using the crib – it converts to a toddler bed, not to be confused with the actual toddler bed we also have in storage.)

Sunday we all woke up in great moods. The kids slept on the old mattresses in what was Zach’s room, but is now the play room. We kept the tv in there, but we moved the Wii from the living room to there so that they can watch Netflix in there and play their video games. And of course, Mason is still in the bedroom with me, because even though we have set up the crib in what is now the sleep-room, he is nowhere near ready to move since he still wakes up several times a night to nurse.

John decided that the bunk bed was just a touch too wobbly, so Sunday afternoon he got it into his head to add braces to the posts to make them sturdier. I told him, no, wait, but he said, no, he could do it. Well, he broke the beds. Completely split and cracked on of the posts. This led to a fight on how we were going to have to rearrange the room around three twin beds and a crib. MY idea was to just block off the closet (which we don’t even use) and put one bed on each wall. John, bless his heart, said no, he didn’t want to block it and kept Bella’s bed and the bottom bunk where they were, then moved the crib so that it runs next to the bottom bunk with only a foot between them and the top bunk is half in the closet. It’s stupid. I’d take a picture but just going in that room makes me mad all over again. This led to a huge fight between John and myself.

This means that Ryan picked a really crappy time to do something so stupid.

(That is not a stock image of a crying Ryan, that’s from last night after he saw what exactly what it was that he did to himself.)

A little after the bedroom fight I am in the laundry room folding clothes with Mason when I hear John yelling “What the **** did you put in your mouth??” This has me worried, I mean why on earth is he yelling at one of the kids, and as I have Mason it’s not like this is another occurrence of Mason finding a marker and then chewing on it. So, I pick up Mason and rush from the front of the house to the back of it and I find John and Ryan standing in the bathroom. Ryan is just bawling and John looks ready to commit murder because apparently Ryan is not fessing up to whatever it was he was chewing on. I’m a little confused on how John knew Ryan was chewing on something, yet, he does not know what. Then Ryan turns to face me and I notice that his tongue is sticking out. I go and look and notice one whole side of his tongue is bright, bright red and that it has no taste buds. Zach and Bella start to come out of the play room and we push them back in, put Mason in his baby seat, and rush Ryan to the kitchen. John is yelling at him over and over “What we’re you chewing on Ryan!? You have to tell us! We can’t figure out what to do until you tell us!” and Ryan is just crying and screaming that his throat and tongue feel like they are burning. John, in a moment of great non-stupidity, makes him stand at the sink with a cup and the cold water running and rinse his mouth over and over. He then went to the back of the house to see if he can find what it was that Ryan had gotten in his mouth. He comes back a minute later even angrier, and looking just shocked, and yells at Ryan “PLEASE TELL ME THAT YOU WERE NOT STUPID ENOUGH TO HAVE BEEN CHEWING ON THIS ****ING BATTERY!”

Yep. A battery. He’d been chewing on a battery and managed to puncture it, and had ended up getting battery acid in his mouth. John goes to the Poison Control site to find out what we need to do, and I stayed in the kitchen with Ryan as he kept rinsing his mouth over and over all the while he’s gotten down to uncontrollable crying and whimpers of how bad it hurts. It was so bad he started gagging and hearing him John yells, “Whatever you do, do NOT let him throw up!” I am freaking out and trying very, very hard not to let Ryan see how freaked out I am. After a minute John gathers Ryan up and drives him 20ish minutes away to the closest hospital that our insurance covers, and I am left at home freaking out – and now crying hysterically – waiting for my mom to come get the other three kids and for my step-dad to drive me to the hospital.

I get there and the receptionist is like “I bet I know which kid you’re here for.”

They examined his mouth, tongue, and throat. Then they x-rayed his throat and chest (to be sure he didn’t swallow another battery and just didn’t want to own up to it. After about two hours Ryan's tongue has started to swell some where it was burned (pictured above) and the doctor comes in and says that his throat and mouth are fine to go home, that the burning was just slight. His tongue however, will take a while to heal but that there really isn’t anything that they can do for it. To give him Tylenol for pain as needed – absolutely NO Aleve in case any of the acid did get to his stomach – and directions to only eat soft, non-salty foods until it has healed some more.

(a nurse gave him a new car to play with so that he wouldn’t be so bored since the tylenol kicked in and he said that it didn’t hurt as much anymore.)

Now, if you are wondering WHY he was chewing on a battery…
Ryan is a chewer and always has been. I’m pretty sure that most of the time he doesn’t even realize that he is doing it. He just chews on whatever he is holding if he is sitting and not doing anything (like yesterday sitting and watching Netflix). Today he thankfully already had a doctor’s appointment for a medicine check up since we thought his ADHD medicine wasn’t being as effective and I brought it up to his doctor. Because last night as we were thinking on it we realized that the chewing just started back up about the same time we noticed that his medicine wasn’t helping as much. We always figured that it tied in with his ADHD as a type of fidgeting. Well, when we into the doctor he followed up on the burns and when I asked him about the chewing (as Ryan is sitting there chewing on a corner of his shirt) and Ryan announces that he does NOT chew on things and we point out that he was JUST doing it, his doctor said that on rare occasions some children with ADHD do develop chewing as an obsessive behavior, and that the medicine dosage should help, but that we should also stock up on some sunflower seeds and give them to him as we notice him doing it.

And this is why it’s lucky that all my children made it to Monday.