Catching Up with Pictures

I keep telling myself, over and over and over, that I will make time to post on here. Each day that goes by, there is yet another thing that I think to myself, "Hey! I need to blog about that!" But alas, at the end of the day, it just doesn't go onto my 'high priority' list. Basically it comes down to the fact that when Evie goes to sleep, I dare not disturb her by clickety-clacketing away on my keyboard in the bedroom. My back doesn't agree with couch computer time all that much so I just shrug it off until another day. I figure at the very least, I can sum up half of what has been going on around here in pictures. 

So much seems to be happening here. One of the biggest things is epic in the eyes of a kid. Alex lost his first teeth! Yes. Teeth. Multiple. His bottom two front teeth were loose. At the end of said teeth's life, they were looking very snaggle-toothesque. One worse than the other. And like his mom, those big boy teeth were already pushing through. We had to take Abby to the dentist for a cracked filling and the dentist peeked at Alex's teeth and said they needed to go. They put some numbing gel on the gums and approximately three seconds later, both teeth were out. One even bounced across the room. I was glad to see them go and Alex was super pumped to get his very first visit from the tooth fairy. She/he left him $1.50 per tooth and a little note. Now he's pumped to get the next teeth out. Hopefully without the aid of the dentist.

Smitten sisters. Yep. That's my girls. Alex loves Evie too, but Abby is smitten. She is constantly trying to make Evie smile and let me tell ya. Evie adores her. They "talk" to each other all the time and I can't go a day without hearing Abby ask me to take a picture of them together. It's super sweet.

 And just for good measure, here's is an adorable picture of little miss Evie. She loves to smile.

We got a surprise visit from my brother. He came back to visit my Granny who was in the hospital. He got to meet Evie for the first time while he was here. It was nice to see him as he moved to California last year and we don't get to see him as much. The kids were happy to see him. They love their Uncle Aaron.

I have been trying my best to do things with the kids that make them realize that I'm not always just focused on Evie. Since she arrived, it's been hard spending so much time with them and sometimes I think they feel rejected a little. I try to break out my crazy mama self and get them to laugh. So crazy frosting mustaches seemed to make their day. Scary how a little frosting on my face makes me look so much like a dude. I look like a pale version of a spanish conquistador. Yikes!

 Me and my new wee one together. I love that little face! Now if only she'd get some hair.

Tummy time rocks if you have two fun siblings to watch. Any other time, tummy time isn't nearly as interesting.

4 Months Old

Evie at 4 months

Four months old and getting bigger everyday! Evie turned four months old yesterday and she's a completely different baby these days. With each month, she shifts into a different baby and it's just as wonderfully fascinating as it was with Alex and Abby. Evie is still doing an awesome job in the sleep department. She's been waking up to eat more often at night, but I think it is because she is growing so fast. She's technically old enough to start rice cereal, but I'm pushing her to at least five months and perhaps six if she can handle it. Sometimes I think she won't last until then because she's always so hungry, but we'll see for now. So on to Evie updates round four.

Movin' and Groovin'- It's hard to keep her still these days. She is constantly kicking  her feet and when you hold her, she tries her hardest to climb up your stomach and chest. When on the ground, tummy time is the best. She will watch Alex and Abby play and just grin like crazy. She rolls both ways now and is in love with chewing on whatever toy she can reach. She is also trying her hardest to scoot forward on her tummy.

Thumb- I think it's official. She loves her thumb just as much as Abby loved hers and I think that it's a habit here to stay. She sucks it all the time and uses it to put herself to sleep.

Not quite Giggles- She is almost to the laughing point. When you play This Little Piggy, she will get so close to laughing that it almost sounds painful. She tries so hard to laugh, but mostly it comes out as a grunty-wheezy sound. It's cute and I can't wait for the full on giggles to hit. It will be fantastic.

Sissy- The kids have grown incredibly fond of Evie now. And she is equally in love with them. Alex and Abby have been calling her sissy and Evie will just smile ear to ear when they talk to her. It's adorable to see them grow on each other. Have I mentioned how much I love my kids?

Germaphobe

 

You send your kids to school and hope for them to learn all sorts of fabulously wonderful things. Writing, reading, math, social skills. All of which Alex has learned above and beyond his tiny kindergarten call of duty. What you do not expect them to learn are the things that you just don't see coming.

One day, the school nurse came to Alex's class and had each of them put on some special lotion that had small particles in it that would show up under a black light. These small particles were to represent germs. They look at their hands under the black light and see all these "germs" and are told that this is what your hands look like before you wash your hands. Each kid then washes their hands and looks under the black light again to see that washing your hands takes away all those germs. It's a fantastic thing to teach kids, you know? Washing your hands and staying healthy, blah, blah, blah. The problem? My kid, due to his slightly neurotic tendencies thanks to food allergies and the like, took the "germ" lotion experiment a tad too seriously. Quite frankly, it scared the metaphorical poop out of him. From that day on, he has become a germaphobe. He washes his hands all the time. No. Seriously. All the time. Upwards of 30 times per day since the experiment. At the peak of this problem, it was so bad that his knuckles were swollen to the point of looking as though he no longer had knuckles. His hands were more raw than ground beef, cracked and bleeding, and so dry that even his teacher asked me what is wrong with his hands. Alex, being asthma boy, is also prone to outbreaks of eczema. So dry skin for him is slightly more problematic than for others. Turns out that he was using so much germ chaser between washing his hands at school that we had to get him an alcohol free hand foam for his own personal use in the class so as to cut down on the horrific burning of his poor skin. When I say that he's a germaphobe, I'd be likely to compare him to Bill Murray's character in the movie "What About Bob?". He washes his hands after silly things like, oh...I dunno...taking a shower, touching his shirt...touching the "dirty" soap dispenser! If you hand him a snack, he promptly asks, "Did you wash your hands?" If you say no, he'll throw the snack in the trash complaining of the tainted food. He is terrified of germs. Absolutely, whole-heartedly, terrified.

I've been patient with him. So far, I've had a tiny bit of success. He's now down to about 20 times washing his hands at home during the day and now trusts me to wash my hands before feeding him (most of the time). It's just another little curve ball that life threw our way and it naturally happened to Alex. Poor kid. It's not like he doesn't have enough to worry about already. Oh, and if you're wondering how the germaphobe times are rubbing off on Abby, it's pretty simple. It's not. She chews her nails, never wants to wash her hands, eats food off the floor, and merrily wipes her nose on the back of her hand giggling all the while. Kids. What are ya gonna do?

Kindergarten Roundup: Round 2

It's already that time again. Last year at this time, I was going to Kindergarten Round-up for Alex and last week I got to participate in round two for miss Abby. What does this mean for me? A drastic change in life at home starting August of this year, that's what. My little girl is heading off to school full-time with her big brother. Honestly, it makes me sad. I'm so used to her being home all the time (save the few hours of pre-school). I'm going to miss her, even in her crazy, self-created, princess drama world. It will just be me an little Evie all day until she heads off to pre-school herself. But that's forever from now. I picked up the paper work for Abby's pre-registration for school. I sat down at the table to begin filling it out and she asked me what I was doing. Upon explaining that it was forms for her going to Kindergarten, she promptly slapped her head on the table in true princess dramatic form and said, "But I don't want to go to Kindergarten!!" *sigh* August will be interesting for sure. Am I worried that I'll be the mom with the kid who latches on to my leg while screaming in utter horror, making it seem any effort to shake her off without getting embarrassed is futile? Yep. Actually I'm about 99% certain this will be the case. Of course, I'm not going to tell her this. I'm going to do the mom thing. Build it up. Smile a lot. Tell her how awesome school is. You know...lie my fool head off. It's never easy adjusting to change for Abby so I'm slightly concerned. For now, I'll just work on smiling. Maybe that will be enough.

Mandatory Unpaid Vacation

Here we are again. It's been two years since Josh last worked. No wait. Hold on. That's not right. Two months. Months, Jessica. Months. It just feels like two years. Now I can't really say it's been two months in truth. He does still have a job. He's officially "employed". Of course I'm using that word in the loosest form possible and also because I'm not sure what other word I can use that would be more accurate. Purgatory, perhaps? No...that's not right either. That being said, the maximum number of hours he is privileged to work each week has been right around 16 hours at it's best. Last week was significantly worse. It figures. We did the worst possible thing we can do when things start looking up at his job. We looked for a house. You see, Irony likes to follow me around with a giant club and beat me on the head quite frequently. One day Irony and I will be good buddies simply because of the sheer time we've spent so close to one another.

We need to move. I know some people say that and don't really need to move. But you don't understand. We really, really, need to move. The walls are closing in now. That tiny office sized bedroom that Alex and Abby share is not equipped for three twin beds. Not to mention that one of those kids is a boy who, at this rate, will be sharing his bedroom with two girls. This can't end well. Puberty called from the future and told me so. So, right as we went to look at our perfect house, Josh began his mandatory unpaid vacation with apparently no end in sight. (Just FYI: It's not really called vacation if you'll see past my never ending sarcasm.) If he takes a complete layoff, there are 100 journeymen on the bench at the union hall and that makes him numero 101 in line to get a job. And some of those poor souls have been on the bench for over two years. Unemployed for two years! I'm scared. So Josh opted to stay at his current job (the one with the boss/owner who will retire in September) (Oh, and also the same job where Josh is the only employee besides the boss/owner). He's taking what he can get and let me tell ya, it ain't much. The good news is, we haven't killed each other yet. 'Yet' being the operative word. The bad news is, it's become apparent to me that we can no longer call this way of life a "phase". Phases don't last for four years and continue to get worse. Having hard times is officially simply our way of life. We are trying to climb our way out of the poop pit and it's just not working very well. One step forward, two steps back.

On a fun note, Josh has also decided to let his beard grow perhaps until the next big job comes along. We figure he'll be a stunt double for ZZ Top before that happens. If mice start nesting in it, it'll have to go. Just sayin'. It also looks like we'll be matchbox living for the rest of our lives. Now if you'll excuse me. I need to go put a want ad up on Craigslist for a triple bunk bed...or possibly a straight jacket. I'm gonna need one or the other (possibly both) soon.