What was Vanessa doing at 2:00 am?

Hmm...tonight's shenanegans from Vanessa make me want to put her back in her crib and hook on the zippered crib tent to it for her to sleep in.  Don't worry, I won't be doing that.  :)  Just made me think about doing it for about 5 minutes.

At 2:00 am last night (or I guess that would be early this morning), Violet came into my room, tapped me on the shoulder to wake me up, and said, "Um, mom.  Vanessa was in my bed.  She climbed up to the top bunk and jumped on me and woke me up, bonked her head on the ceiling, and then started laughing."

I got up pretty quickly after hearing that.  I went into the hallway and saw Vanessa just standing there with a smile on her face.  I took her hand, walked her back to her room, and put her back in bed.  I gave her her blanket and told her to stay in bed.  She actually did, but cried herself back to sleep.

I tucked Violet back in her bed and crawled back in mine until my alarm went off at 6:35.

When I was helping Violet get dressed for school, Vanessa was still sleeping heavily (of course, on a morning when I have to get her out of bed so I can get her in the car and take Violet to school since daddy is out of town for a night).  I asked Violet how Vanessa got up into her bed and she wasn't sure.  I asked her how she got down.  Violet told me she climbed down over the side of the bunk and helped Vanessa down by telling her where to put her feet.  Amazing that she decided to get out of bed and help Vanessa get down.  Violet can really be mature and think quickly in situations like that.  I told her thank you for helping her get down and expressed to her how well she handled the situation.  Vanessa knows she is not allowed to climb up to that top bunk.  Why she decided to wake up in the middle of the night and be naughty I don't really understand.

Violet has a loose tooth

A couple days ago Violet discovered she has a loose tooth.  Her lower right central incisor is wiggling a little.  She is excited but also doesn't like how it hurts.  I guess since she's 7 she can lose a tooth! 

Spring Break 2013

We started off Spring Break week with the kids trying to stay awake all night.  Calvin made it to 11pm, Violet made it closer to midnight.  Since they didn't have school, the kids had fun sleeping in many places throughout the house.  I remember being a kid setting up our sleeping bags in the basement and sleeping down there many nights, just loving the "newness" of the sleeping location.  Violet and Calvin ended up on their floor (on many layers of blankets) for a couple nights.  They shifted their "floor bed" to Vanessa's room a couple times.  Tonight they are sleeping in the basement.
I look back on the week and loved many things about it.
- No early mornings waking up Violet to get ready for school.
- No taking kids to and from school at all.  I loved "no schedule" and being able to sleep in and go places whenever.
- Calvin had a permanent play buddy with Violet home all week.
- Not working hard to get kids to bed early.
- No waking up kids from naps to get somewhere.
- Visiting Jay, Molly and Stella on Wednesday.  I made a daytrip to visit them for lunch at Wendy's then the kids played at the Play Station (big indoor park) while we talked.  Violet thinks adults are boring because all we do is "sit around and talk"...booorrrinnnggg in her mind.  Little does she know how relaxing it is!

So what did we do all week?  My first thought is "legos".

Something I did the Sunday before spring break week was take ALL. THE. TOYS. TO. THE. BASEMENT.  Everything.  Except for a box of baby stuff and some balls.  I tore down the kids play room with cardboard houses and moved them to the basement.  Every stray toy got chucked in a cardboard box and I drug it downstairs.  I got to the point that "putting toys away" meant throwing them in a huge heap in the cabinets and everything that didn't fit got shoved in some other random place.  I will admit I have no organization system for the toys and NO ENERGY to go through all them.  Too many little tiny toys with little tiny parts to go together, I do not have the ability to keep track of it all and keep things in the right places.  So...everything got mashed in probably 6 big cardboard boxes and other plastic bins and relegated to the walls in the basement.  I vacuumed the entire main floor.

So I mention legos because that is the one toy I left upstairs.  All the legos are spread on the dining room table and its the toy that Violet and Calvin have migrated to for hours daily.  They know how to follow the instruction books to make things like tractors, houses, little animals, etc.  They also got a larger square building base for Christmas as well as newer legos.  Violet created a huge "duck house" that she keeps her little lego ducks in.  She also created a little farm on the building base and Calvin drives his tractor and trailer across the table to a pile of yellow lego pieces they've deemed as "hay".  So they feed all the farm animals.  They invent all sorts of scenarios to play legos with.  "You pretend I'm xxxx and I'll pretend I'm xxxx" and so on and so forth.  I love listening to their creativity!  They build ramps, buildings, "overhangs", driveways, parking lots, rockets, blast off towers for the rockets, airplanes, etc.

I do have to constantly remind them to pick up legos that fall on the ground so Eli doesn't pick them up and swallow them.  Calvin is extremely keen on Eli's whereabouts, and if he sees Eli coming near, he'll quickly scower his playing area and pick up stray pieces.  He's even fished out pieces from Eli's mouth.

So this week they played with legos, for sure.  They did some pinwheel crafts with me to help decorate for my "spring fever" bunco party on Tues night.  Violet made a blank scrap book for her to draw in.  She practiced piano and did 20 minutes of reading almost every day.

I do not mean to make the week sound like its been easy though.  I'm working on looking at the positives (something I have to force myself to do...I'm such a natural pessimist!) Vanessa has been whinier than normal...she doesn't know quite where she fits in with the family.  She is constantly seeing what Violet and Calvin are up to.  If they don't look for a few minutes, they will find Vanessa over by the legos destroying things they've created resulting in frantic tears.  Vanessa likes to "play" with Eli which usually ends up badly.  She tries to give him affection, which somehow hurts him and makes him cry.  Vanessa will grab markers, pens, crayons, anything to write with, and write on ANYTHING available to her.  A bill from the mail I opened that day, or a picture Violet was coloring on.  I know a few things Vanessa loves (playing a puzzle on my Kindle Fire, or watching Dora) but I don't let her do those things every day.  She likes reading books and working on physical puzzles if someone helps her.  If Calvin is interested in something independently, Vanessa and Violet will play amazingly well together.  If Violet is interested in something independently, Calvin and Vanessa sometimes play well, other times they just fight.  It just seems like Vanessa is trying hard to find someone to play with.  I am not always available to be with her, she she gets into trouble.  Its a unique dynamic to have four kids at home all day.  Most days I didn't go anywhere because it just seemed like too much work to pack them all up and go someplace when I could wait til later in the evening when Dave was available to watch a couple of them.  This paragraph seems like she's a little terror.  Ok, sometimes.  But not all.  She is showing more affection by giving gentle kisses and likes to help me with everything, which makes me a more patient momma.  The Lord knows I need that. :) Making coffee, unloading the dishwasher, spreading peanut butter on bread, etc.  She's up there helping me.  So I let her.  And we try to have a good time. :)

I also taught Violet a lot of card games when I had some moments to do so.  I got super silly with her playing Slap Jack, Crazy 8s, War, Go Fish, and 31.  She is a "quality time" girl, she gets all lovey and huggy when I sit down to play with her.  She loved it and giggled through every game. 

So the days were full of playing, watching cartoons here and there (their latest favorite on Netflix is Richard Scarry's Busytown Mysteries with Huckle Cat) and playing some games on my Kindle.  Calvin and Violet's favorite game is Where's My Water and Vanessa likes the preschool puzzles.  I tend to avoid media entertainment though...its fine in small quantities, like sweets. :)
Oh yeah, one day we made banana muffins.  Not much else to do other than bake with brown spotty bananas.

Dave did travel Sunday through Tues afternoon.  He flew to Oregon to help settle an angry customer, then had a physical check up in IA City Tues morning in preparation for a surgery he is going to have done on his knees next week Friday (removing some pieces of knee caps that never fused together that should have as he grew from birth ~ they're becoming quite painful when he sits still).  So those couple days Dave was gone we hung out in the house.  After Dave left on Sunday I gave Calvin a haircut and all the kids got baths after that.  For Awana that night was "green" night for St. Patrick's Day something...so all 4 kids got green shirts on.  I sat in the coffee nook area and got to catch up with Dakota.
I think I did take all 4 of them to Walmart by myself, which wasn't so bad. I just avoid it if I have to.  I can't think straight even if I'm prepared with a list.

Thursday night was small group.  We've started a new one at Weidenbacher's and are reading through A.W. Tozer's "The Crucified Life" book.

Thursday night we also had the pleasure of Jeff and Denise Winters (Jeff is Dave's cousin) and their 3 kids join us for a night.  They were heading down to St. Louis for a Winters family event and stayed with us for a night.  They had already gotten to our house when we got home from small group.  We got to sit and visit after getting all the kids to bed.  The next morning we cooked up a breakfast of waffles, bacon and strawberries, and they were off.  My kids enjoyed their kids too!  Michael and Zachary, the twins, are only 3 weeks younger than Eli.  Their 2 yr old Nicole didn't say much but ran around and seemed to enjoy playing.

Then Friday came, and then the weekend.  Today spent a few hours at the chapel cleaning the coffee nook.  From noon-3 we were there.  I packed food for lunch and we ate there while we worked.  Dave noticed earlier in the week that some close-by construction project happening in the building caused a thick layer of dust to build up on the entire coffee nook area, so we pulled it apart, mopped the floor, wiped all the furniture and equipment down with wet rags, and make it sparkle again.  The reward was a yummy latte. :)

I played Blokus with Violet and Calvin tonight while Dave decided to whip up some pork fried rice for supper.  It turned out super yummy.

So that's a wrap!  Monday starts the end of the school year.  Only 10 weeks of school for Violet left!

*I just read my blog post from a year ago about Spring Break in 2012.  I can't believe the weather was in the 80s!  This week's high I think was close to 35.  Brrrrrrr!! 

Some pics from the week:

 

Told the kids (older 2) they could stay awake all night if they wanted to

Violet and Calvin have been very interested in "night time" when we are all normally sleeping.  They ask about what the house is like, how long "night time" takes, etc.  For fun we thought it would be something for them to discover themselves.  We told them last night that they didn't have a bedtime, and they could try stay awake all night if they wanted, and end up sleeping wherever they wanted to when they got tired.  You should have heard the screams of excitement!!  They couldn't WAIT to NOT go to bed. :D  This may be interpreted as irresponsible, but we had to get it out of their systems so they'd stop asking to stay up all night.  Of course we knew they would never make it all night.  We wondered when they'd eventually fall asleep and where.

Dave put Vanessa to sleep around 8:30 like usual.  Violet and I played a game she created (drawing numbers 1-45 out of a bucket and writing down what number you get and adding it all the numbers at the end of the game).  Violet made score sheets for everyone with 45 boxes each.  Calvin only was interested in drawing numbers and writing them down about 9 times, then he got bored and left.  Violet, Dave and I played the rest of the game.  Eli eventually went to bed around 9:15.  Violet made a list of things she wanted to do when she was awake all night.  Her list included coloring, playing legos, making crafts, cards, playing house, and playing school.  After coloring for awhile, they both got interested in legos, and played those quietly for almost an hour and a half while Dave and I talked in the kitchen.
We couldn't really believe how quietly and nicely they played together.  Maybe they enjoyed their Vanessa-free play time.

We still made them brush their teeth and put pajamas on, "just in case" they felt tired enough to sleep.  A few times we would catch a glimpse of Calvin he looked all glassy-eyed and tired.  He would try spring to life and act like he wasn't tired.  He did grab a big blanket and a few books around 11:00 pm and say "I'm just going to lay on the couch and look at some books for awhile."  Violet informed me "he was just taking a little rest, then after resting, he would come play with me."  Calvin was sleeping with in 5 minutes of "looking at books".  Violet was bummed her play mate was no longer awake.  She got her little pink kid computer with games on it and played some music on it, trying to have her own little dance party to stay awake.  At 11:30 Dave and I decided to go to bed and leave her alone, wondering how much longer she'd be awake.  She liked the idea of being awake with everybody else sleeping.  She got herself all set up in the corner behind her cardboard house with plenty of things to do and said goodnight.  Dave and I got ready for bed then he sneaked downstairs to spy on her.  She had gotten out a blanket too and decided to lay on the couch with Calvin.  She was asleep shortly after that.  Calvin sometime got up and went to his bed.  Dave tried putting Violet in her bed later but she refused that, and decided to sleep on the floor instead.  I think they both wanted the fan on to sleep with.

Funny night!

Just some sweet pictures I wanted to share

Eli - 9 months old

I read through the review of Eli when he was 8 months old.  Not much has changed, other than his top two teeth coming in (one has poked through the gums, the other is about to).  He had a bad cold and was wheezing a lot.  It took 4-5 days to get through that.  He had his first bad diaper rash (who knows why...teething and drooly maybe?).  And he is more vocal now!  Saying "ba ba ba!" and "ha ha ha".  I think he imitates laughing.  He yells when he sees food now and gets excited by flapping and smacking his arms down. 
Still loves his pacis, blankies, and mommy. 

Adding to this post about his 9 month baby check up.  I took him in on Tuesday the 12th of March for his normal well baby doctor check up.  He weighed in at 21 lbs 13 oz, 29 1/4" long and 18 1/2" head circumference.  Violet at this age was 21 lbs 6 oz and 31" long (for comparison's sake, for fun).  He's a hunk to hold!  The doctor noticed some what looked like infected fluid his ears but saw no redness so wasn't sure if it was the beginning or end of an ear infection.  A few days have passed and he seems happier so maybe its cleared up by now. 

We also had his pics taken at Portrait Innovations and they turned out super cute.  I will post some if I remember later.

Carrie LaMarche and her 3 kids visited us this weekend

(I took a whole bunch of pictures, so will post later when I figure out what is up with my SD card reader on my computer.  It suddenly won't read my memory card for some reason.  And the USB cord that connects my camera to the computer doesn't read the pics either.)

The last three days have been a lot of things: wonderful, busy, slightly stressful, and heart-warming!  Carrie's husband Josh is out of the country for work and asked if we would be up for a visit from them.  It turned out to be a perfect weekend for them to visit.  The winter storm that hit the day or two before blew over and the roads were clear.  We were left with 15 inches of fluffy  snow to play in.  The weather was sunny and not-too-cold.  They arrived Thursday night late (10pm).  All of them slept in the basement Thursday night.  Even though Violet and Calvin both had school friday (Calvin had pajama day at OHCP), the cousins had a blast together . The favorite "in the house" toy was the legos on the dining room table.  Violet, Calvin and Austin put together a cool maze with legos on the construction lego board.

Renee came with me to pick up Violet from school on Friday afternoon.  Violet was excited to see her in the car when I picked her up.  The whole group of us went to the library at 4pm on Friday to go see the monthly puppet show (first Friday of the month).  The highlight of the puppet show was a scene with a shark trying to get a pig, and a conversation between a little boy asking his mom a ton of questions while she tries to sleep.

We made tacos for supper that night, and decided to let Austin and Renee sleep in Violet and Calvin's room.  They were pretty rambunctious but eventually settled down.  I don't think we got them all in bed until 9:45 pm.  We stayed up pretty late talking.

The next morning (Saturday) the 4 kids that slept in the same room were awake at 6:30 am.  3 of the 4 of them had their swim suits on because they knew we were planning to go swimming that day.  Not til after supper, but hey, they were excited anyway.  The plan was to go to the church and let the kids play in the gym for awhile ... while the adults attempted to get some quiet time and sit down with some yummy coffee.  That worked, sort of.  We got there later than we anticipated...more like 10 am.  The kids did play in the gym for awhile, but got bored and started tearing around other parts of the building which wasn't working all that well.  We kept them contained in the gym but they didn't seem to get getting along all that well.  Lots of "moooommm!! So-and-so is hitting so-and-so" or "moommmmm so-and-so is not letting me have such-and-such!"  We stayed long enough to talk to those who were practicing for music the next day, and grabbed Little Caesar's pizza on the way home for lunch.

After feasting on pizza, everybody had some quiet time.  Austin worked on puzzles, Renee fell asleep on the couch, and Violet and Calvin looked at books.  Eli, Vanessa and Wesley all took naps.

When quiet time was over, Dave voted to stay home with the younger sleeping ones while Carrie and I took the older 4 sledding.  It turned out to be a perfect sledding day.  No wind, warmer temps, and fluffy snow.  The kids had fun sharing sleds and trying different ways down the hill, even braving some of the previously constructed ramps that sent them flying in the air.  Ok, not flying in the air.  Just soaring a few inches off the snow. :D  Mom, don't get worried.  Violet's face did get all snowy which she pressed into my warm t-shirt under my coat to dry off.  There was another little girl at the sledding hill with her grandma that was friendly and made friends with Violet.  She got accidentally knocked over by Violet going down the hill, which she felt bad and apologized for.  The girl and her exchanged sleds a few times.  Calvin tucked himself into a little ball inside his tube sled to go over the ramps so he wouldn't fall out.  He looked like a turtle in a shell!

After about an hour and a half, everybody was tired of climbing the hills over and over.  We went home (Aal 3 littles were awake when we got back from the sledding hill) and got started with supper - we grilled BBQ chicken and heated up veggies and rice.  Feeding and clean up all took time, but it eventually got done.  We packed up swim gear and headed over to the UNI Rec center.  This event we went to we were invited to by ReMax Realty (the realtor we had help us with selling our river house and buying our current one is Gary Anderson, he sent us an invite).  This is an event we look forward to every year.  The gym is packed with blow-up bouncy things.  The pool is open.  Delicious buttery popcorn and drinks are handed out for free.  This year something new was a photo booth - where we all put on goofy dress up stuff and a photographer snapped our pic and printed out the picture for us to take home.  We decided to get a pic and it turned out SO funny and cute!  The kids played on the jumpy things in the gym for the first 20 minutes or so, then were anxious to get in the pool.  I stayed out of the water with Eli, and Carrie, Dave and the other 6 kids took to the water.  Violet and Austin took off swimming on their own and went down the big twisty yellow slide a bunch of times.   Carrie stayed with Wesley, and Dave stayed with Calvin.  Vanessa bounced between Carrie and Dave.  Everybody just seemed to have so much fun.  Calvin was proud to show off the confidence he had gained by jumping into the water where he could touch and swimming under water for a short time.  Vanessa was splashy, smiley, huggy, and happy with whoever would let her jump their arms.  She played with a purple ball.  I think she was the most excited to "go 'wimming".  Calvin even asked Dave if he would take him down the yellow slide.  They couldn't go together, but Dave told him he would go first and catch him at the bottom.  Calvin went after Dave twice and loved it.

We packed the kid's pajamas to change into after swimming.  After the effort to get get everybody out of their suits, dried off and changed, we got the popcorn/drinks and took a photo.  We sat down to eat our snacks and the comments from the kids were so fun to listen to.  Violet, Calvin, Austin and Renee all were chattering a thousand words a minute about how today was the BEST day ever and didn't stop talking about all the fun things they got to do.  Hearing how much fun they all had makes all the effort of taking all 7 of them places worth it.  Austin even told Violet he wanted to marry her and then he said he wished he was her brother so he could live at our house.  Then he thought that maybe that wouldn't be the best thing and said he might get bored at our house. haha!  Anyway...all in all...wonderful times, great cousin bonding, great memories created, and a good (but messy) time for all.

Saturday night with all 4 kids sleeping in the same room went much smoother.  We turned it into a game saying if they were all quiet they could all have 5 M&Ms in the morning.  Worked like a charm.  Silence when we left their room after putting them to bed.  I'm sure a big part of it was the fact that it was 10 pm and they had all had a very busy day and were exhausted.

Sunday they came with us to BBC and all her kids did well in Sunday School.  We had leftovers for lunch at our house and Carrie packed up and left around 2:00pm after taking a picture of all the kids together.  Vanessa and Eli took naps immediately after they left.  I gave Violet and Calvin a bath and then made them take naps.  Of course they protested saying they weren't tired.  But I let them sleep together in my bed (I even laid down with them for awhile) and about 10 minutes after laying their heads on their pillows, they were completely asleep.  I had to wake them up at 5 pm to eat something before going to Awana tonight.