Real Life

So my blog mainly highlights the highlights of our lives. The fun stuff. The good stuff. The interesting stuff. Not the average doldrums of our every day lives. Not the crud I have to deal with every day. Nor the cruddy mom the children have to deal with every day, as well. So here are some of the lowlights of our lives - just to put a different perspective and glimpse in to what goes on at our home and with us. Just so you know our lives are not very glamorous after all.

1. Sometimes I yell at my kids - not a lot and not often, but sometimes.

2. I often raise my voice at my children. Excluding only Lucy. Unfortunately, I'm sure her time will come.

3. Emmy talks back to me. Example: "Emmy if you continue to scream you will go to your room." Emmy - "No, you'll go to your room!"

4. Emmy pees her pants all day, every day. Little squirts. She smells bad a lot.

5. My boys often don't want to go to the bathroom (ummm, #2) until it's too late. A little bit escapes. It's disgusting. Luckily they are big enough to clean up themselves and their underwear.

6. My patience runs thin - especially by the time Ben comes home from work. I don't know why he thinks I'm a good mom because by the time he gets home, I've usually had it.

7. I've got piles of folded laundry on my bed waiting to be put away - they've been there for 2-3 days and will probably be there for 2-3 days more.

8. I've eaten too many candy corns the past month.

9. Emmy can make incredible messes in her closet - taking all her clothes off the hangers and on to the floor. It's annoying.

10. Frankly, I'm bored of playing "princess."

11. Our boys sometimes have to be separated at bedtime. Miles is currently sleeping in the basement. They have all "slept" there, including Emmy. Excluding Lucy. But we do take them back up to their rooms when we go to bed.

12. I usually am up for the day by 5- 5:30am.

13. Many times the worst part of the day is toothbrushing time.

14. You want to hear my last Tuesday morning? Okay, a little bit of a background: I AM PETRIFIED OF BIRDS OUT OF THEIR CAGES. K. So we walked Miles to school. Then on the way home we stopped by an elderly friend's home to say hi. It's been a while and so it was good to visit with her. We stayed for almost an hour and then headed back to our home. We went inside. I'm in the kitchen getting snack and heard some rustling going on. What the? THEN ALL OF A SUDDEN A BIRD FLAPS OVER MY HEAD. I'm freaking out (thus the CAPS). I scream and then run out the back door. Jonas runs out, Emmy runs out screaming because I'm screaming. Ha. It wasn't our pet-bird; this bird was big and black. I see the bird in our window and scream again - tho I am outside and the bird is inside. So then we head back to the lady's house and call Ben. He's in surgery and we have to wait. But when he does call back he is able to come home in 20 minutes and save us! So we walked back to our home, waited for Ben, hoorayed for when Ben came, hoorayed even louder for when Ben caught the bird and released it back outside. Sheeesh. (The bird got out through our fireplace - the fireplace was not securely latched and birds tend to get stuck in our fireplace).

15. Want to hear my morning today? Emmy crying before 7:30AM. Scrambling to get us all ready to leave to take Miles to school. Lucy crying the whole time. Miles suddenly has to go to the bathroom. Miles doesn't have shoes on. But we made it on time. We come home and. . . a BIRD! LUCKILY our fireplace was securely latched and the bird is just inside the fireplace. I put our giant couch-chair on the hearth to even more securely lock the bird in there. Golly.

16. My kids hardly ever listen to me the first time I ask something.

17. My house is a mess.

(so you can't really hear the bird on the camera. trust me, it's there!)

18. and that is only the tip of the iceberg. . .

2 months already

So I lied about my post title. But it's still just as uncreative. Anyhow, Lucy is 2 months today. 2 months. That's 1/6th of the way to becoming one. Whoa.

So what's new with Lucy? Not too much really. She does get more and more adorable with each and every day. I'm not joking. Her round-face is so yummy. Every so often she flashes the sweetest little smiles. Just today she was making faces at me by raising just one of her eyebrows - a trait she must have inherited from her Grandpa G. She doesn't mind bath-time. She doesn't mind tummy-time. She watches her siblings like a hawk.

She hates her crib in the day-time. Loves it at night-time. While I should count my blessings (for I am so lucky she sleeps there at night!), she drives me CrAzY during the day. She sleeps wonderful in my sling - and so when we go places and she's cozied next to me in the sling, she's awesome. But at home and in her crib - she's awful. She'll maybe nap 20-30 minutes (max) and then cry out. And it's not that she's done napping because as soon as she's picked up, she's back to sleeping. I can't accomplish much at all during the day. She's not so newbie anymore that she'll just sleep right along with whatever I am doing at the moment either. So it's a little tough. Sometimes she just has to cry in her crib because I can't cut up dinner holding her, I can't read books to my other children while she's screaming, etc. I think she'll survive. I hope I'll survive. It's not that bad, really, I guess. But slightly annoying, in a cute baby way.

Like I mentioned in my other post, my house is in a state of constant clutter. CHAOS. Ugh. It just drives me wild having "things" all. over. the. house. I'm cringing right now as I write this. That's the one thing I have not been able to keep up with since Lucy - an orderly home. I know a clean home isn't oh-so-important in the scheme of things, but it sure does make me happier. I've got to come up with a better system. And too bad it's not Miles making all the messes (since he's away at school all day) because Miles can clean awesomely. Emmy? Well she's not so good. Jonas? He's okay once he stops whining.

Anyways. . . back to Lucy and the crib. Awful in the day, great at night. She'll go usually about 4 hours during the night (sometimes 5 - but rarely)! Amazing, I think. And I even got her to go to bed around 7:30 or 8. I had to do the whole cry-it-out approach. Some people hate this, others love it. I hate and love it. It is so, so, so, so hard to do (especially with your "baby baby"), but so, so, so, so worth it - for both mom and babe. The first nite Lucy screamed/cried on and off for about an hour. I felt sick. The second nite? 20 minutes. The third nite? 5. The 4th? 0. We'll see if it continues, but I'm loving it.

Lucy coos and goos too. (How's that for "o"s?) It's about the sweetest sound on the planet. She grunts excessively as she poohs. Sorry, but it's true. It's also a little embarrassing. Loud grunts. It's nuts. But also pretty cute. Yes, mothers are endeared to weird little quirks their children have.

And that's about that.

I Love Lucy.

Glasses and braids

I used to be slightly more creative with my titles. Now I am not. To every thing there is a season. This is not my season of creativity. It's my season of living in a constantly cluttered home. Constant. But that's for another post. (Lucy turns 2 months on Saturday. And since she is part of the cause of the constant clutter, maybe you'll hear more about it then when I give a Lucy-update. Lucy-update. That will most likely be the title of my post.)

Anyways, I braided Emmy's hair into a french braid for the first time. So I thought I would take a picture. I know a french-braid is not necessarily news-worthy, but the pictures are darling to me and so post away I shall. She put on my glasses for one of the pictures - so cute:

Our pumpkins holding their backyard pumpkins

Sleeping Belle and some Letters

So Emmy is all about being a princess, still. As we were going through some fall clothing we came upon a coat given to us by generous friends. Later on in the evening I had Emmy try it on and told her it looked like a coat worn by Belle (yes, i know i am only encouraging her by saying things like this) (Belle is her favorite). We played "princess" for a bit and Emmy would put the coat on because it was a "cold and snowy day" (for pretend). Then it was forgotten as we ate dinner, read books, etc., etc. However, this is what we found when we came to check on Emmy before going to bed ourselves:

A sleeping beauty indeed.

Miles wrote this note to his teacher in his bed tonite:
"Ms. Thomas, I like to go to school and I like to do writing workshop. From Miles" Plus lots of "Boos" and bats. How festive and adorable is Miles. :)

I love all the double "oo's." It goes with his "boo" theme.

Oh and here is a note I just got from Jonas.

But since it is way past their bedtime I left without having him decipher it for me. So I'll guess:

"Love Mom and play with Mom. 11 12 13 14 15 17. Jonas 4rd Maxwell." With some periods, I'm thinking. Maybe a "40" thrown in there, too?

Poor kid still thinks his middle name, Ford, is spelled with a number.

P.P.S

apparently not!

P.S.

Do you think this doubly cute (babe and onesie) luck-charm will work for the Cougars tonite? Let's hope so!

Soccer Clinic 2010

So Jonas got to participate in a soccer clinic - once a week, one hour, for 3 hours. He liked it a lot, but did complain the last day and did NOT want to go. I don't know why. Whenever he goes to Miles' soccer practices he just wants to kick his soccer ball around the whole entire time. But all in all, Jonas had a good time.

Here are some pictures of the final day of clinic:

Goofy Emmy. :)

Jonas in action.

They played a little "game." This is Jonas - he actually kicked the ball in the net and scored a goal. Wahoo. He thinks he "won" a gold medal because of this goal. Awesome.

The gold medal and the very, very proud boy. He loves wearing his "gold medal" and shows it to all sorts of people. He's a cutie soccer kid.

Lots of Random Pictures

Just some cute pictures I wanted to post:

Jonas took this picture. I like it.

This is a play-dough replica that Miles made of his pet bird.

I love Miles in red. I told him that I just can't stand how handsome he is in red. His reply, "So take a picture." Okay.

Miles loves holding his sister, too. When he slows down enough to just sit. . .

So sweet.

A family movie night. Jonas put his arm around Emmy and told her, "This is what boys do. Like at church." Emmy screamed at him telling him, "Don't touch me!" But she did quickly calmed down.

Jonas loves, loves, loves holding Lucy.

The River Guitar

Well since fall is lagging behind, we were able to get out and enjoy and summerish afternoon in Ouray. We did a tiny hike up to a big waterfall where the kids had a huge amount of fun.

Lucy mainly just ate and. . .

slept. She hardly even knew we went to Ouray.

Miles loved exploring and scampering up the rocks and all that sort of stuff.

Jonas enjoyed riding his wood horse.

Emmy enjoyed making faces. . .

Her moods really do change that fast, too!

The kids got to go up with Ben and explore a little "cave." They all loved it!

They spent most of their time getting wet. Jumping over and off of rocks. Wading in the water. Scaring mom and dad that they would sprain an ankle. Talking to strangers (other hikers). Etc.

It was a delightful afternoon.

We even had a wonderful performance while up there: