Minions

 Wow, time really does fly when you are having so much "fun".  HAHAHA...or it flies when you are kept busy all day every day for about 20 hours a day with crazy kiddos.  I took these pix of Lawson today and only when I looked at them on the computer compared to the ones I took a few days ago did I realize how quickly he is changing.  It does make the 1 am, 3 am and 5 am wakings every night seem a little more bearable to know that soon he will be out of this stage...and leaving for college.  Haha, OK I'm not jumping ahead too much.

People keep asking me how he's doing and I've found less and less positive things to say.  He was awesome for the first few weeks and since then, well, he's a little less awesome with each passing week.  So Lawson, before you become totally un-awesome, let's try to work on this sleeping thing a little and do more of it when it's dark outside, rather than during the day.  Please, pretty pretty please with Halloween candy on top?

 The kids were begging me to do cutout cookies with them...which are the most time intensive, painful cookies to make of course.  But they had so much fun decorating them tonight.  Of course as soon as I walked away they started covering the ENTIRE cookie with candy corns and chocolate chips so you can't even see the cookie anymore.

 We were watching the weather for Halloween all week and decided since they are still calling for rain just to take the kids over to their grandparents' neighborhood tonight to go out in the dry weather.  They had fun and got so many compliments on their awesome costumes, which were SO generously lent to us from our friends.  Thank you M & M for the great minion costumers.  It was so nice only having to make one costume this year.  Can you guess which one it was??  Fits her personality so well too!! (Evil Purple Minion Sienna)

...said no one ever

 I think I should just stop talking about sleep.  I mean, pretty soon, I'll be so used to not getting any, it won't even seem like a big deal anymore.  Kinda like a phase I went through in my younger years, but now, well I just don't need sleep anymore.  I'm so much more efficient when I don't sleep...all those extra hours of the day to get work done, or sit and stare at a fussy baby in the dimly-lit nursery.  Yup, I really wish I'd given up sleep sooner...said no one ever!!



There are so many things in life that are negotiable, but I'm pretty sure sleeping every night is not one of them.  So if I run through all four of the kids names before I arrive at the right one (and may throw in a couple names that don't even belong to our kids), don't judge, OK??

I thought it'd be nice to go for a bike ride with the kids yesterday since I haven't been able to ride my bike in like a year.  Derrick hooked the bike trailer up for me so I could pull Sienna, and Carter and Reese said they would ride their scooters.  Well we made it for about 5 minutes before Reese was too tired to scoot and Sienna was screaming at the top of her lungs to get out of the bike trailer.  My gosh, you'd have thought I was suggesting that they throw away all their toys, or run through a sprinkler on a freezing cold day.  This was all after I had tried to take a walk in the morning with the girls, because they wanted to push their baby strollers around the loop.  Reese made it halfway around before she said she was too tired to push it anymore.  Sienna barely made it across the street, so I had to run her right back home and run to catch up with Reese who was already 5 houses down and apparently deaf to my screams of "Wait up!"  "REESE!!!"

Am I making a big faux pas by nursing the baby in front of the kids?  Well, I didn't think so, but lately Reese and Sienna have both been hiking up their shirts so they can "nurse" their baby dolls in front of me, all while making slurping sounds so it sounds like their baby is really eating.

The Walking Dead [Tired]...

I'm doing it...I still don't know how.  The effort of putting one foot in front of the other grows harder by the minute, the longer the day wears on.  Yesterday was a 20-hour "workday" for me...and I am sure there are many more still in store.  My friends who already have four or more kids have earned my deepest respect.

The whole time you are pregnant it seems like you are constantly thinking, "I can't wait to have this baby."  And as soon as you have the baby, you are constantly thinking, "Geez, I sure had it easy before the baby arrived!!"

For some sick and twisted reason, refrains of the Lego Movie Theme song keep running through my head during these difficult days.    "Everything is Awesome!"

Yup, like when I was awake at 4 am and never did get to go back to bed, I was thinking "This is Awesome!  I love starting my day at 4 am!"  And  that same day when I had to wake Lawson up to take him to the pediatrician for a checkup at 8:30, yup that was awesome too.

Last night Derrick and I entertained the kids by playing "Just Dance" on the Wii for at least an hour.  Carter was playing too but Reese mostly watched.   At one point he was trying to dance while holding Lawson and I was trying to dance while holding Sienna.  It was awesome.

But this was really and truly awesome...I was checking out at Whole Foods yesterday and the guy bagging my groceries said something to me that no one ever does.  We were talking about the baby car seat wedged in my cart and he was joking about trying not to wake up the sleeping baby.  Then he asked, "So how are you doing?"  Everyone always asks how the baby is doing and I thought that was pretty remarkable some total stranger would ask me that.  My conclusion is, he either has a wife who recently had a baby, or he is the most empathetic person ever.  I called the store back a few minutes after I left to tell a manager that he was doing a good job.  People like that deserve a little extra recognition...

WOMD

Is this the face of a little monster???

...that's Wailing Of Mass Destruction, in case you were wondering.  It grates on you like fingernails on a chalkboard...it's powerful enough to make you shiver and shake.  You hear it, even when there is silence...it's haunts your very thoughts.  And, just when you thought the baby was asleep and you would have a few moments of quiet, chances are the hypothetical 2-year-old who may live in your house will choose this moment to have a sobbing spree.

I am a victim of WOMD...it has taken our house by storm and there's no escaping it now.  Maybe I'll ask Santa for some noise-cancelling earphones for Christmas this year...

1 Month...Reality Sets In

This picture totally encapsulates my life right now!

Well, we survived the first month...and I'm not gonna lie, it definitely feels like a struggle to survive.  The days are long and exhausting, as are the nights.  Even on the nights Lawson sleeps really well, someone else is always awake at least once or twice.

Lawson has decided this week to wake up from the newborn haze, as I like to call it.  And he likes to stay awake for most of the day now.  I would not rank him up there with Sienna in the fussy baby department, but he's definitely not "easy" anymore.  Couple that with Sienna's daily mission to scream and carry on as much as possible and it seems like we're constantly being double-teamed by unhappy babies.

But it's all good...one month down and....well I don't even want to think about how many more to go till we get to a sane place again.

Carter played his first round of real golf yesterday with Derrick and Pap Pap and really had fun.  He also lost that stubborn front tooth tonight and has his first tooth to put under his pillow since he swallowed the first two to fall out.

1 Month Old

Sienna's Shenanigans...

Sienna has really been keeping us on our toes ever since we became a family of 6.  I'm trying not to be overly hard on her, I mean, I'm sure the transition from being the baby of the family to being just another "big kid" is a tough one.  But she seems hell-bent on making us work as hard as possible every day and has pushed our patience to the limit and beyond...

She is still obsessed with getting the mail every day and opening it by herself.  She slaps my hand away if I try to take anything away from her.  The other day I let her have a big stack of junk mail as soon as we got in the front door...a few minutes later I peeked around the corner and she had shredded all of it into little bits and scattered it all over the entryway.

Yesterday she broke the child safety lock on the kitchen cabinet where we keep cleaning supplies because she knows that's where I keep bubbles and she wanted to do them...I came into the kitchen and found her with a bottle of vinegar and a bottle of Windex, shooting the spray back into the open cabinet.  She turned around to hand me half of the broken lock and said, "I broke it."

I have been trying to get the kids out for short walks whenever possible these last couple weeks.  Sienna and Reese both wanted to walk their little strollers yesterday with their babies in them.  Sienna kept stopping every couple of minutes to take her baby out and burp her.

I was burping Lawson yesterday and Sienna came over to help.  She had a total surprise and shock when after she gave him just a few pats, and he spit up all over the burp cloth draped over my shoulder.

Sienna has been waking up so early the past few weeks that she has fallen asleep while eating dinner at least three times recently.....like mid-chew head nods down and she's out.  It is completely hilarious to see it happening.  In addition, on the days she did not fall asleep while eating she falls asleep while sitting up on the couch after her bath.  How about this, stubborn child, sleep AT NIGHT so you can get all the way through the day without looking like you have narcolepsy!!!  Just an unbiased, sleep-deprived parent suggestion....

At dinner last night (a meal she finally didn't fall asleep during), Sienna started to sing "Happy Birthday, Sienna."  And she kept singing it over and over and over again for the entire dinner.  She had such a stoic expression every time we sang Happy Birthday to her for her real birthday...but I guess after a month it finally sunk in that birthdays are actually pretty cool.  Oh my dear Sienna....you do make us smile....and sometimes cry...

The Intricacies of...EVERYTHING

I cannot go through the experience of pregnancy and childbirth and holding a brand new baby in my arms without reveling at the wonders of Creation.  With each of our children's arrivals, I've felt this wonder again and again.  I guess in some ways, it is what fuels me to want more children, even knowing the difficulties that come with a new baby.  There is something about a new life that draws me closer to God every time.

While I am pregnant, it is knowing how God is "knitting together" a baby inside of me.  Knowing that that baby is growing day by day, that all of the body parts it needs to survive are forming perfectly.  (Psalm 139)  I look at the eyes, the ears, see the chest rising and falling with little life-sustaining breaths...feel the tender little heart beating rapidly in his chest.  All of these things working together to create LIFE.

And then I stop concentrating so hard on life's craziness that is all around me, take a deep breath, and look out the window.  I see, everywhere I look, God's wonderful, amazing, unspeakably complex and perfect Creation.  I look at the leaves on the trees, now revealing their autumn splendor.  I see birds eating seeds from our sunflowers, I see the clouds, drifting lazily by in the sky, I observe a quiet and lovely sunrise or a brilliant, bold sunset.

I think about places I have visited over the course of my life...majestic snow-peaked mountains, warm sandy beaches with ocean so blue it doesn't seem real, fields full of wildflowers that no one even had to plant, trees so tall that my neck hurts trying to see the tops.,,,and I am amazed by God's creativity and the depth of His love...

I am filled with humility when I realize that God has created all of this for me, and gives me the free will to live my life in this amazing place and make choices on my own.  He even allows me to decide if I will believe in Him, or chalk all of this up to chance and science.

I look at the sweet face of my newest baby, and with all of this in the back of my mind I think about the goodness of God. I think about the depth of my (imperfect) love for my children and am astounded by the depth of perfect love God has shown to me, a floundering human being.  I am thankful for the reminders He gives to me daily, of His love for me, through my children and through this amazing world He has placed me in.

1st vs. 4th

I've been thinking back on how things have changed since we had Carter.  It's rather amusing really, to remember how little we knew and how careful we were when it was only one baby we were looking after.  There are some pretty drastic changes in our parenting style that have evolved over the course of having four children...let me elaborate...

For the first child, I was afraid to even walk out to grab the mail from the mailbox without taking the monitor (tuned to full volume) with me.  For the fourth child, I'm wondering, "do we even still have a monitor??"

For the first child, I would postpone eating for hours or skip meals so I could pace around the house with the baby and keep him from crying.  For the fourth child, I hold him while I eat my meal or even let him cry a little (the horror!) so I can finish with two hands.

For the first child, I would stay at home all the time, afraid to take him out and expose him to germs or get off his schedule.  For the fourth child, it's schedule-shmedule!  He gets lugged everywhere the other kids are going.  And his schedule...we don't even try...

For baby number 1, I would get so worked up about the little things....his crying, the constant diaper changes, the amount of dirty laundry, more diaper changes.  For baby #4, I roll with the punches, and the crying is more of a background noise in my already ridiculously loud house.

As I sat eating my delicious dinner last night while burping the baby and felt his spit-up leaking through my shirt sleeve and running down my arm, I thought to myself, "Ah, look how far we've come."

Just ducky!

 
 We enjoyed our first day of Derrick's leave by taking a trip to the Zoo.  The weather was perfect, except for a bit of rain at the end, and we had the whole zoo to ourselves.

Sienna had to start the trip out with a little excitement by pushing the alarm button on the elevator on the way into the zoo.  Fortunately it just sounded a loud bell, but nothing more!  Hopefully it scared her enough not to do it again.

Lawson enjoyed his first visit there I think.  The highlight of the trip was a super friendly mallard duck who ate right out of the kids' hands.  Is it ironic that the kids have their backs turned to the elephants and giraffes and are enthralled by a little duck!?

Carter's stubborn loose tooth is still hanging on.  When he smiles it sticks out.  I may have to take some pliers to it when he's asleep if it doesn't fall out soon.

Chaos x4

Embrace Total Chaos.  That is my new mantra...

I was wearing a new shirt the other morning for a couple of hours and kept thinking to myself, "I must have shrunk this shirt in the wash.  The neck feels really tight."  Only when I was brushing my teeth and starting back at my tired self in the mirror did it hit me, I was wearing it backwards....

Such simple things as feeding the kids breakfast, or getting them ready to go somewhere seem to have ballooned into these epic two-hour long events.  This morning it took me 40 minutes to get Reese, Sienna and Lawson ready to see Carter's soccer game.  By the time we got there the game was almost over.  This was because before we could leave, I had to start a load of laundry so Sienna had diapers to wear today, Sienna needed a diaper change, Lawson needed a diaper change, the girls needed shoes and coats and a bag full of 20 library books to read on the two minute car ride, the girls needed to have their drinks, Lawson spit up all over his shirt....well you get the picture.  Once we got there, while trying to unload everyone, Sienna HAD to have a "mint" (Altoid) from my purse that very second.  And so when I turned away to get the baby out of the car she unzipped my pursed and dumped all of my mints out onto the pavement.  When I turned back around she was popping one happily in her mouth and picking up the rest and putting them back in the case.  Anyone who witnessed this must have been thinking, "Now there is a mom who has really got it together."  HA!

After lunch the kids went outside to play for a bit and were surprised by how cold it was.  So out came all of the winter gear.  Reese was so cold apparently, she was still wearing her raincoat and a pink fleece hat for a good two hours after they had come back inside.  Sienna didn't want to feel left out so she too was wearing Carter's hat and gloves, but no pants...makes perfect sense if you're cold.  (and two). After dinner when I changed Reese for church, I realized she had been wearing long underwear under her pants all day.  

We attended Saturday evening church this week just to see how it went.  We managed to leave on time somehow, but realized after we had left that we forgot to change the baby's diaper.  So once we parked I attempted to squeeze between the middle seats and lay him on the floor and change him.  The problem was, my hips were too wide to fit between the seats, so I had to turn kinda sideways while changing.  Of course he had chosen this car trip to have his first leaky poopy diaper.  Oh, and I had laid him on my new winter coat to change him before I knew it was a leaky poopy diaper, so at this point my execution had to be flawless.  You want to know pressure??...try changing a leaky poopy diaper on a skinny squirmy newborn while you are smashed between two seats in a minivan with three other children yelling at you to "hurry up" and asking "when can we get out?"  

2 weeks down...

 
Well, we officially survived the first two weeks!  Lawson gets the gold star for being the most laid-back and contented Berad Baby so far.  He is a dream compared to other children in this house who will go unnamed (SIENNA).  He cries far less than other children in this house who will go unnamed (SIENNA).  He naps peacefully and often, unlike other children in this house who clearly still need naps but refuse to take them (SIENNA!!!)

Carter absolutely loves Lawson and loves to hold him and talk to him.  He likes to lay next to him on the floor when we do tummy time and he shows him how to do a push-up so his arms can get stronger.  It is adorable!  Tonight he was holding him on the couch and gave him the sweetest little kiss on the forehead when it was time for him to go to bed.  It warms my heart to see him so attentive to his new little brother.

We had visitors yesterday and I needed to nurse the baby so I was using my nursing cover.  The kids aren't used to this and Sienna came over, very curious.  "Where's baby Lawson?" she asked me.  "He's eating," I told her.  "Where is he?" she asked again, visibly confused.  She climbed up next to me and looked down the little opening at the top to see what was under the cover.  "I found him!!!" she exclaimed.  I could not stop laughing.

I told Carter this afternoon that it looked like Lawson's cord stump was going to fall off today.  I told him it would be a good day for his front tooth to fall out too. This tooth has been hanging on for over a month now.  It is so loose and so crooked...it is hanging way over to the side and sticks out when he smiles.  Lawson did lose the cord, but the tooth is still going strong.  Maybe tomorrow...