Calvin's potty attempts

Calvin is beginning to process how to control his bowels. He gets excited to poop on the toilet because he knows he'll get a hershey kiss chocolate treat if he goes. Most times he starts to go in his diaper, then tells me he has poop, and if he's not done yet, he'll finish on the toilet. I haven't even officially started potty training him but he's learning. I don't think he even knows the difference between #1 and #2 yet because if left with nothing on, he'll just pee all over the place. Yikes!

I feel like its been awhile - Vanessa - 8 weeks and other life stuff

So maybe I should make a blog entry...seems like this summer is just flying by, one long day at a time. One change for me this week is I started exercising again. I have gotten up with enough time to get the kids all fed and in the van by 8:50 am so I can get to exercise class at 9 am at OHC a few blocks away. During the warm up I felt like I was going to muscles were screaming and I wanted to pass out....my oh my...I felt out of shape. But once that initial "break in" was over, I just felt like the whole time was a bit more effort than I would have liked. But I did it. I went Monday and Wednesday this week, and I'm not nearly as sore as I thought...so that is a good thing. Dave and I are making better eating choices and I just feel overall feel better when I'm exercising...maybe I'll lose enough weight to get out of my maternity pants. :P The child care workers at the church during fitness class are still the same. They immediately recognized me and Violet. They couldn't believe how much Calvin grew up and didn't recognize him at first. They were surprised to see me with a new baby. The kids had a ton of fun in the child care room - Violet's friends were there since Kim and Trisha were also exercising, their kids were there. Vanessa does great there too, I make a point to have nursed her immediately before I drop her off and wearing a clean diaper so they don't really have to do anything but rock her and let her take a short morning snooze. They love holding her so it works out great. Violet is having a great summer, I think. She doesn't talk about preschool much and seems to enjoy the weather. Her favorite things to do are (let's see how many I can come up with): - put on socks and slip across the tile floor - put puzzles together - create houses with Lincoln Logs - make "crowns" with the connecting beads...Calvin and her each take 8 and turn them into little circles they put on their heads - play "bedtime" with Calvin. Both of them get their little sleeping bags all ready and pretend to go to bed in the dark. They take turns playing mommy and baby. - make "cards" for people. She decorates a piece of paper with flowers, hearts, words she knows how to write (mostly her own name, mom, dad, and Calvin), and pictures of animals she knows how to draw. She cuts the pictures out with scissors, folds up the paper, and puts them in envelopes to give to people. She drew a flower for Landry the morning she knew they were coming over for a short time, and today she asked me what to draw for me so I asked her for a purple flower, a pink flower, and lots of hearts. She mentally took note carefully of what I said, and came back to me after 15 minutes with exactly what I asked for. She was very proud of herself. She colored in a butterfly last week and was so proud of how pretty it looked that she ran to get it to show our neighbor when we were standing in the yard talking. The picture ended up taped to the wall in Dave's office. - help me in the kitchen with anything and everything related to food prep. She insists on pouring her own cereal and her own milk (if the gallon is light enough for her satisfaction, if its too heavy she asks for help). - using the blocks to make steps up to the fireplace steps - watching Word World and Curious George - going outside by the pool in the gazebo with plastic cups, scooping up water and watering everything in sight. Calvin is really into...well...pretty much everything Violet is. He is an excellent play mate for her about 75% of the time. He also enjoys almost everything she does and copies everything she says. He likes to play with his dump trucks, his wooden train set, play make-believe games with Violet. He can sing many words to the Star Spangled Banner (thanks to Violet) and sings the entire Twinkle Twinkle Little Star song. He is into "doing everything by MYSELF" stage...and throws royal screaming fits if something is done for him that he wanted to do himself. Its hard to know how to deal with his behavior some times. He also has an extremely soft heart and a sweet side to him. He will randomly say "Mom? I really, really want you." and I can scoop him up and get a huge hug and kiss from him. He also likes it when anybody acts like a lion and roars loudly for him so he can pretend to be scared and go hide under a blanket. That game can never be long enough for him. Vanessa is still a sweet little baby. She is 8 weeks old and has grown two inches in length since birth. I measured her out of my own curiousity the other day...no wonder her little newborn outfits are too small already! I don't know how much she weighs, probably almost 12 pounds. She takes about three naps a day, falls asleep for the night around 9:30 pm and gets up one or two times a night still. She spends most of her time in my arms, in her swing, or propped up in the sitting position on the couch. She has gotten the least "tummy time" of any of the kids...I'm so afraid of her getting trampled and stepped on. That's about all I got for now...gotta get to bed!

Must be a boy thing

I was at Walmart with the kids today. Vanessa was in her car seat in the shopping cart, Calvin was in child seat, and Violet was being my "big helper" with her own shopping list at the store. She even carried her own purple purse on her shoulder and crossed off things as we found them. One of the things on our list was coffee, so we went to that section of the store. Violet picked up a coffee bean from the floor (it had fallen from the self-dispensing beans) and gave it to Calvin...who promptly stuck it up his nose. Yeah...I said stuck it up his nose. Ew. He started freaking out, and couldn't get it out...so of course he shoved his finger up his nose further which got the bean even more stuck. It all happened quicker than I could stop it. I called Dave to see what he thought I should do...since I wasn't really sure whether to laugh and figure it will fall out eventually or go the medical route and have it taken out with tweezers. I told him to blow hard out of his nose, while I plugged one of his nostrils, and amazingly, it worked! I didn't know he could really "blow his nose" with that much power...but the bean went flying out of his nose and onto the floor. Violet was excited to see he had gotten the bean out, and ran over to pick it up. I was really disgusted at the thought so I stopped her before she got to it. Calvin threw a fit because I just left the bean on the floor and pushed the cart away. He wanted the bean back but I said no!

Vanessa's first smiles - 6 weeks

And of course, her dimple:

Vanessa - 6 weeks

My little girl is doing great. She is cracking a few smiles a day, but it takes awhile to squeeze one out of her. She smiled quicker than my other two babies did! I think her first was at 5 weeks, the other two didn't really smile big til 8-9 weeks. Anyway, I had my 6 week PPD check with my midwive here in Cedar Falls, Sandy Lewis. She said my incision look great and baby looks really healthy. I wanted to see how much she weighed, and I was a little surprised to hear she is only 11 lbs 4 oz. That's only a pound of weight gain in 6 weeks. I checked my older two kids' baby books and both Violet and Calvin passed 14 pounds at 2 months, and they all started out with in a few ounces of each other at birth. Vanessa is 2 weeks shy of 2 months and not even close to that. Every baby is so different. She did lose the most weight in the hospital ~ she was 9 lbs 6 oz when we checked out. So I guess that is a two pound gain. When people ask me how old she is or how big she was at birth, I get the same reaction from people: "No way! Really? she doesn't look like a 10 pounder" She must be holding all her weight in her belly and head, because her arms and legs DO look pretty skinny. :)

Pooper shooter

Vanessa must have something against my black capri pants. While in labor, my water broke while wearing those and all her meconium poo saturated them. After being thoroughly washed, I thought they were finally good to wear again. This morning while changing her diaper, I thought I had waited long enough for her to finish her business, but I was wrong. I took off her diaper, began wiping, and she squirted the farthest poop I have ever seen ~ it traveled probably four to five feet through the air. It landed on the towel that was underneath her, on my right leg all over those black pants I had just put on for the day, and all over the floor and it even hit the laundry room door that was open (her "changing station" is on the laundry room counter top). Goodness! I couldn't help but laugh, because just then she started smiling at me...as if she had been planning it. Can I just say...I LOVE my washing machine!!

I'm a genius! (broccoli smell)

Tonight when I was feeding the kids supper (broccoli and chicken nuggets) Violet said to me: "Mom! You're a genius! You put the smell in the broccoli that I really like!" I have no idea what "smell" she was referring to, but it made me laugh. :D

Violet gaining more independence

This morning was a very atypical morning. I had to wake up and feed Vanessa a couple times but the last time I didn't even check my phone to see what time it was. Dave had gotten up to go work out at the rec center, and I woke up when I heard the garage door open. I really thought it was closer to 6:30 when he leaves, but he was coming home and it was 8:30. Violet didn't wake up til 8:45, and its 9:45 as I'm blogging this post and Calvin is STILL in bed! I took a shower when I woke up at 8:30 and when I came downstairs, I found Violet in the kitchen by herself munching on a bowl of cinnamon crunch cereal. She proudly told me she got the bowl out of the cabinet, got the box of cereal out of the cupboard, got the milk out of the fridge and found a spoon, all by herself. She managed to pour the cereal and milk with out spilling much. She finished up a gallon of milk that didn't have much in it, so she had gone out to the garage to bring in another gallon of milk. She got the seal ripped off the lid but couldn't open it herself. I'm so glad she didn't get the full gallon open, it is way too heavy and I'm just sure she would have made a huge mess of milk if she had tried to pour the full gallon herself. I was pretty impressed by her ability to manage all those potentially very messy steps and do it in a very neat manner! So now I gotta get Calvin out of bed so he takes a nap today! It is very overcast and raining, I think that may the reason he's still in bed. The plan is to wait for Rachel to arrive (she's driving here I think around 10:30) and got to Chuck E Cheeses for entertainment, also to meet up with our ladies in Bible Study to discuss what we are going to study this fall.

I think Vanessa tried to smile

I *think* this could be the first smile for Vanessa. I was changing her diaper, she was super focused on my face, so I just kept talking to her and smiling. She opened her mouth really big and I think the sides of her mouth started to go up and lift up those big chubby cheeks. But it really didn't last long, and I couldn't get her to do it again. I don't remember my other two smiling til at least 8-9 weeks, she's only 5 weeks...but I guess anything is possible! Of course I didn't get a picture, I'll have to keep that one in my memory. :)

Chiropractic adjustments

I scheduled a chiro appointment with my Dr. Green, my favorite doctor, this morning. I got myself and Vanessa adjusted. After working with Vanessa for 15 minutes, she told me she relieved a lot of the tightness in her neck from the rough labor experience. My right hip was also giving me a lot of pain so she worked on me for another 15 minutes. She told me I was majorly stuck on my right side with little mobility and it could have been one of the reasons Vanessa didn't settle into the birth canal correctly. Big babies gotta fit just right I guess with not much extra wiggle room. Vanessa fell asleep as soon as I got home, I hope she feels better. I'm going to go back on Thursday for another adjustment.

I got some rare cuddle time with Calvin

On Sunday, we went to a yummy BBQ at BBC to celebrate 4th of July. It was at 1 pm, and I knew that was going to be difficult with the kids' naps. I told Violet she could skip her nap, but we opted to feed Calvin at home before going back for lunch, and put him to bed in a crib at the chapel. I packed his favorite pillow, blankie, and kitty...and when we got there, I told him he was going to take a nap at the church. He screamed and threw a fit initially...but I held him in a rocking chair and he calmed down and snuggled with me for a long time while I rocked. He took a nice long nap while the rest of us ate lunch.

Another positive poopy experience

I guess its inevitable...I'm a stay-at-home-mom...I must blog about poop once in awhile...so don't read if you don't want to hear about poo! Calvin had success last night on the toilet. After dinner he stood up in his chair and passed quite a bit of gas. I said to him, "Hey, Calvin, you want to go poopie in the toilet?" I didn't know what kind of a response I was going to get, so I was surprised when he enthusiastically said "yeah!" so he took his diaper off, climbed up onto the toilet, and sat there. With in two seconds, he said "all done"! and tried to get off, but I said "Just push it all out like a big fart!" like I tried before, and he emptied his bowels. He was fascinated that it fell into the water. He was allowed to flush it himself and I gave him a chocolate treat as a prize. I wonder if he'll be motivated again to do it?

Vanessa - 1 month old

A little clip of my sweet baby girl!

Baby birds

The other day I had the kids in the driveway and Violet was spraying the flowers in our front yard with the hose. I saw a big morning dove bird fly out of the bush right by the front door, and wondered why that big bird was in there. I suspected babies but I wasn't really sure. Sure enough, I peeked through the bush, lifted up many of the branches to look further, and I saw a little nest with two baby morning dove birds in it. They were HUGE babies! I'm guessing they were close to leaving the nest. Today I tried snapping a pic but it really didn't turn out that great. It was hard to hold up the branches and take a pic at the same time. The mama bird on close watch nearby. This explains all the bird poop on the front porch!

Violet sang at BBC today

In honor of the 4th of July, Violet got the opportunity to sing at church this morning. Mark Wooderson asked if she could sing the Star Spangled Banner to kick off some of the songs, so we agreed to it. He knew she could sing that song a couple months ago when she sang it for him at our house during small group. She learned and memorized the song this past winter ago after she heard Dave sing it in the house with his friend Shawn Thompson ~ they were just being goofy and she really liked it, so she determined to learn it. A few weeks later, she had all the words and the tune down. She has listened to it a lot on her kid music CDs over the last few months too. We practiced with her four times before the actual event so she felt comfortable up on stage singing in the big room with a microphone. Wednesday she ran through it twice. She insisted I go up there with her so I was OK with that, as long as she did the singing, not me. She got a little nervous on Sunday when I went up there with her, but I started off with the first note, and she picked it right up. Gerald Anderson was kind enough to video tape for us so I have a clip to share. :) I didn't really realize she was doing this until I watched the video, but she is constantly playing with my red shirt as she sang. Many people came up to her to compliment her on her singing, and she pretty much ignored them or responded with a little smile. She didn't even know how to handle the praise. When we got home, she said "Whew!! I'm glad THAT'S over! I am never doing that again!" I'm sure she said that just to get a reaction out of her parents (just like her daddy does all the time!). But I could tell she was happy and proud of herself, because she asked me if her song was pretty and I told her it was beautiful, she did a great job, and was very brave.