(my) quotable kids

Forgive me. I've neglected to mention my big kids lately. I've been a little consumed (obsessed?) by our newest family member...for good reason I assure you. Newborns are all consuming plus he's so sweet & cuddly. And let's be honest, while quite demanding, his needs are far easier to meet than the big kids' needs. Sleep. Eat. Poop. Repeat. That's pretty much it. Therefore I have deferred most big kid activities and responsibilities to Joe. Because I could. He had the entire month of February off from school. A luxury I've never had before with previous babies. Typically Joe has stayed home a couple days after the birth of our children. Not weeks! 4th year has its perks! And I have been taking full advantage.

But rest assured the big kids are still here. Up to all their kid-like antics. Farting at the dinner table during prayer. Sneaking fruit snacks and granola bars instead of eating dinner. Rainbow looming. Crafting. Coloring. Begging to hold baby Levi and smothering him in kisses.  Planning and playing games only they understand. Peeing their pants. (OK. That one is mostly just one of the big kids:) Playing Legos. Making messes. Fighting and taunting each other. Creating and gifting belated Valentines. All those things siblings do. Basically driving me crazy AND making me fall more in love with them every day. 

Isaiah was spoiled with a one-on-one date with his aunt this weekend. They went to a dinosaur exhibit. They also stopped in the gift shop. Isaiah found gifts for his sisters...and promptly spent his aunt's money! Ha. He totally has her wrapped around his finger.

But in all seriousness, how sweet is that? He thought of his sisters first! It's moments like that that make me think we haven't completely failed as parents to our first born (and by default guinea pig) child.

The girls have been saying hilarious and sometimes insightful things. Like the other night when I pulled out a gallon of ice cream to have a little dessert as a family...

Hannah: Why da icecream in da throw up bucket?

Clearly we spend more time throwing up into ice cream buckets than we do eating ice cream. Sad. I need to fix that. 

Charlotte: Mom. Look!

Me: (Stopping everything because it MUST be something good.) What?

Charlotte: Your tummy! It is almost back to normal. 

Almost being the key word. Maybe I shouldn't increase our ice cream intake after all!

Charlotte: Mom do you know the hardest part of having a baby?

Me: What's that Char?

Charlotte: Pushing them out and feeding them. 

Not sure how she came to those conclusions. But I might have to disagree. The hardest part is figuring out how to care of the baby AND all the older siblings! Something I am going to have to figure out this week as Joe returns to the hospital to learn the art (the science?) of reading radiographs. Wish me luck. And maybe a little for Joe too?! 

Levi : 4 weeks

LIKES: Eating & growing (I am already packing up newborn clothes. Stop growing little man!), his froggy wubbanub (And don't take it away...as exhibited above in the 3 week picture. Although he is fickle about his froggy. He LOVES it during the day. Not as much at night.), swinging (once he is asleep or already content), bath time and diaper changes (particularly on his changing table), his carseat and long car rides (although sometimes this could fit under the dislike category as well...so I guess its a toss up!) and most of all ME (he has definitely figured out who his mama is and prefers me - I don't mind one little bit!). Oh and wearing stripes apparently! 

DISLIKES: getting dressed, not being held all night long (or not being fed all night long for that matter!), being left behind when mommy runs errands and taking breaks from eating to burp. 

QUIRKS & HABITS: Levi has the saddest newborn cry (best I can describe it as a cross between a pony and hoarse infant - pulls at my heart strings every.single.time because it is just so pitiful). This boy spits up A LOT and I never seem prepared for it! Just this past week at MOPS I settled him to sleep upright on my chest and he instantly spit up...and it all ran down my shirt (inside my bra!). And I had no way to clean it up and I didn't want to disrupt the meeting. So there I say with a snuggly baby and warm spit up covering me. Motherhood never felt less glamorous!

Reasons why I am currently smitten with him...

He has THE softest baby head (I know all babies have soft skin, but I don't remember my other babies' heads being THIS soft. It's heavenly. And I rub it constantly.). 

After feeding times (when he hasn't dozed off) he gazes up at me with his baby blue eyes (just like his daddy!) and snuggles up to my chest and fits perfectly, And in those moments all the hours of lost sleep are forgotten...and almost forgiven!

every two hours and twenty-three days

Living life with a newborn means living life in two hour increments. And the first 30-40 minutes of those increments are consumed with feeding the newborn. (Which admittedly are some of my favorite minutes...as long as no one else is demanding my attention and it's not 3am.) This two hour increment living is strange. Because time moves at its own pace and that pace is ever changing. Sometimes it flies by. I blink and its already feeding time again! And other times it drags and drags and I swear the clock is frozen in time. Mostly the days fly by and the nights draaaaag on. And I rarely accomplish anything significant with my time. 

Small tangent: Nights go a little something like this...nurse baby between 7 and 8pm. Then again around 10pm. GO TO BED. <--that is the critical step that I too often skip! Baby wakes again between midnight and 1 am to nurse. And this is where everything derails! It's my fault really. I too often fall asleep during this middle of the night feeding. And we aren't just talking nodding off for a few minutes. Nope. I fall ASLEEP! And I sleep for 60 to 90 minutes. Sitting in my rocking chair in the corner of my room with Levi nestled in my arms. Then I wake in a stupor and can't remember if I fed the baby or not so I start nursing him again. And then I fall back to sleep and the vicious cycle starts all over again! On a good night I will crawl back into bed after just an hour or two. On a bad night Levi and I don't get back in our beds until morning. It's a pretty awful routine we've gotten ourselves into and I don't know how to stop it! Well besides going to bed earlier of course. That might help. 

BUT that post-kid bedtime is so wonderful. It's completely uninterrupted. Time in which I can think and breathe. And just feel like me. Albeit a very tired me. It's when I get fun stuff done. Like these... 

Don't be too impressed with my novice art work. These little masterpieces took me nearly 3 full weeks to complete. And I'll be honest they aren't even 100% done yet.  (FYI - in case anyone is curious - the handprints are hard! Footprints are much easier.) 

I can't place ALL the blame on Levi for changing the dynamics of time. See the thing is we are waiting. Waiting for something significant. And waiting definitely makes time go slower as well. Today Joe submitted his rank order list for residency. And today residency programs submitted their rank order lists of students. All of those lists are being run through the MATCH logarithm. But we won't know the results for another 23 days. 

23 days until we know where we will be moving. And when exactly we will be moving. (Each program has a slightly different start date.) 23 days until we know if our new home will be here in Minnesota. Or if it will be elsewhere. 23 days until we know which state we will call home for the next 3 years. That's a lot to wait for. Especially when there is nothing we can do at this point to change the outcome. So we wait. 

Yep. Time is standing still. Right now 23 days feels like a lifetime. 23 days. Or more accurately 276 two hour increments. 

SUBMIT

Last week for Joe's birthday we went on a "lunch" date to Applebees. I put lunch in parenthesis because by the time we got the two littlests down for nap and everyone settled with my parents it was after 2 pm! Regardless it was nice to go out just the two of us.  (Beggars can't be choosers.) But really we are so thankful to have family willing to watch our kids! It's a huge blessing and one we are so very grateful for after years of living far away from family. Although admittedly once we were seated at the restaurant we questioned our wisdom in going out...an afternoon nap was sounding extremely appealing to our sleep deprived bodies. But we persevered and enjoyed a peaceful meal just the two of us. It was tough but someone had to do it!

And then after lunch because I am super practical and not romantic in the least we made a quick(ish) trip to Walmart. I had printed a few pictures of Levi and wanted to pick them up...plus we needed a few other essentials. Toilet paper and toilet bowl cleaner. See? Not romantic. 

(In hindsight I now realize I should have picked up something...anything...for the birthday boy as well! Instead he got a "Happy Birthday" from me this year. Lame! I know.) 

Since it was just a few items and it was FREEZING outside Joe dropped me off at the door and he waited in the (running) car. I quickly grabbed the toilet paper and toilet bowl cleaner and made my way to the photo counter. When the first clerk couldn't find my pictures she called in reinforcements...an elderly manager. The manager asked for my last name and came up empty-handed. He tried searching using my telephone number. Again no pictures! Strange. I had just put the order in two hours earlier. The manager then leaned over the counter towards me and very sloooowly and loudly asked "DID YOU HIT SUBMIT?" To which I responded "Um yeah. I think so..."  Again I was asked (this time with the elderly manager miming clicking a mouse) "DID YOU HIT SUBMIT? Because you have to submit the order in order for it to print!"  At this point my confidence in the fact that I had actually hit submit was waning. It was all too much for my very tired, sleep deprived brain to recollect. So I sheepishly said "Maybe I didn't. I'll have to go home and check" and tried to hurry away. But the photo manager generously offered to let me pay for my items at the photo counter (which at Walmart is a HUGE time saver) so I gladly accepted. 

He scanned the items and I handed him a gift card to use as payment. He scanned it. Nothing happened. This process repeated itself half a dozen times without success. So he called over another employee to help. Yep that's THREE employees all to help me, the girl who didn't actually have any pictures to purchase at the photo counter! The new clerk tried several times to scan my gift card without any luck. But then just as I was about to hand her a new form of payment it worked...only for her to discover the card had a ZERO balance. I could have hung my head in embarrassment at this point! Instead I handed over my credit card and inwardly cursed sleep deprivation! 

Because it's a real thing. And it renders me barely functional on a daily...sometimes hourly basis these days. It's cruel really. Trying to function in the world with very little sleep. Those Walmart employees must have thought I was the biggest space cadet. I promise I'm not. I'm just tired. Really really tired. The kind of tired that can't be fixed with a can of Pepsi unfortunately. 

Later that evening when I turned on my computer (to do something else because at that point I had completely forgotten about the pictures)...there was my photo order staring at me. Sitting in the "shopping cart"...waiting for me to click SUBMIT. Mocking me. And reminding me just how much I miss good quality sleep. 

Even more DIY family pictures

Because I like to torture myself and my family, I decided that we NEEDED family pictures now that we are a family of six. And in crazy Bear fashion these pictures had to be taken ASAP after Levi's arrival into our family. And since I own a decent camera and love a challenge, we of course went the DIY route (once again). 
 

Joe thinks Hannah stole the show in the sibling picture. And I kinda have to agree. Those pigtails + that smile! Gah. 

Unfortunately the experience was not nearly as serene as these pictures would suggest. The real story is that it took us nearly THREE HOURS to get everyone ready for this "photo shoot". Ridiculous. Who knew it could take soooooo long to get six people fed, dressed and seated on a couch? Not I. But now I know. I really, really know. It's A LOT of work getting a family of six presentable. Naively I thought the worst was past us once we were all dolled up. Wrong! I quickly discovered that getting on the couch was only half the battle! Arranging the children + getting them to cooperate...nearly killed me! But we persevered. And won!  If you call cute pictures winning that is. (I do! Victory was mine that fine February morning.) 

So the calm, serene ambiance of the pictures (can pictures have an ambiance?) may be forced. But trust me, the love and adoration my big kids have for their baby brother is 100% real. It blows me away just how much they love him. They can't get enough of him. Their love for him is the real deal.


Now while I would love for the world to believe that this is how I look while taking pictures with my seven day old son and family...

Truth be told, this is a much more accurate depiction...

Yes. It was every bit as painful as those pictures would have you believe! And thank you Joseph for capturing these precious moments. They are real framers. Even Levi was upset by his siblings lack of cooperation...or maybe it was mommy's scary tone of voice as she barked orders at everyone:) Either way him and I were not impressed.

I did manage to snap a few actual frame worthy pictures of newborn Levi....on a different day when all of his big siblings were otherwise occupied (ie at school or napping). The close up of Levi's head resting on Joe's hand is my favorite!!! And if I ever get around to making a birth announcement that is definitely the picture I will be using.

Ok. This last picture is a very close second favorite! I mean a baby in scrub pants and cap...too much cuteness. Levi will be wearing this outfit to MATCH DAY if it still fits him:) Although Joe thinks no one will recognize it as scrubs. Come on? Its obviously scrubs, right?!

Ok. I think that's the end of family pictures. For now. I mean I think I should be good for another six months or so.