Cute Pics

That's all--just the cutest pictures of the day!I can't get over his eyes--I know I mention it a lot, but just look at them!!

I'm sure we will look back on this and laugh...

Just not any time soon.

I drive the carpool to the elementary school in the mornings. This morning things got a little crazy--the girls were fighting in the back seat which caused Lincoln to start screaming uncontrollably and this in turn made Isaac decide that it would be a good idea to start playing with the spanish radio stations on his little transistor radio (see post on Easter for a reminder...). I really hate noise, so I was a little stressed out by the time we dropped the boys off and made it back home. Lincoln was still screaming so I put him in the house and went back to get the girls out of the car. They were pretending to be asleep so I would carry them in. I put Chloe in the house and turned around to go get Audrey when I heard the door close and a little click noise. Chloe had locked me and Audrey in the garage! It wouldn't have been that big of a deal if I hadn't been able to hear Lincoln, still screaming his lungs out on the other side of the door and I had no way to get to him. So I started banging on the door, kicking the door, demanding to be let it. I should have known that would have no effect on Chloe--she doesn't take well to being told what to do. I was hysterical--it really bothered me that I couldn't get to my baby! I didn't have my keys, my phone or anything. Finally, after about five minutes, she decided to let us in, then she ran and hid. Probably a wise move on her part. Lincoln was fine, I calmed down, Chloe apologized (in her own way) and we are all okay now. Still, days like today make me think about getting a prescription for Prozac!

Lindsay's Brilliant Parenting Tip

Take note...these will be few and far between. I actually downloaded the application to be on Supernanny the other day if that gives you any idea of my confidence level in my own parenting skills. However, I did come up with this idea that seems to be a hit at my house. Let your kids make their own lunch! It keeps them occupied for at least 20 minutes, they seem to be a lot more likely to eat their own concoctions (no matter how strange they may seem to you) and it is just one less thing you have to get done in your day.

Audrey made a peanut butter, jelly, turkey, cheese and fruit snack sandwich the other day. Not my idea of a tasty lunch, but she ate it!

Is this what they mean by "April Showers?!"

This is the girls playing in the backyard on Monday...Here they are this morning...
The wind was blowing so hard they couldn't even look at the camera. And, of course, it took us longer to get their snow clothes on then it took them to decide that it was too cold to play outside! They lasted all of 3 minutes.

How could I forget?

Lincoln rolled over while we were in Chicago! He did it twice while we were there, but has yet to show off his newfound skill since we have been home.

I'm Back!

We got into town a few hours ago and I am exhausted! We had a great, whirlwind trip to Chicago that went by way too quickly! I thought I'd better try to get it posted quick before my life gets going again. Sorry if I get a little long...since I don't keep a journal or a scrapbook anymore, this is the only record of my life! So, for my posterity's sake, I want to keep a detailed account.

On the first night we got there, Royal and Lincoln took some time to get reacquainted. Lincoln was kind enough to share his special blanket with his sweet little cousin.

On Friday morning we woke up, did some shopping and then went to a Cubs game at Wrigley Field. One thing I loved about Chicago was that we walked everywhere! All morning we walked from store to store, then we came home, got ready and walked to a subway station! Public transportation is an adventure every time! This is Erin and I with the boys in the subway station.

Here we are in front of the field. Things actually went downhill from here. I guess that Lincoln is more of a Rockies fan. He cried, no screamed, from the second inning straight until the top of the ninth. Finally I got up and walked back and forth in the breezeway with him to get him to calm down. It was then that I got hit on! A drunken Cubs fan smiled invitingly at me and told me that "Mommies are sexy." Oh baby! I walked away. Lincoln finally fell asleep and I got to see the last three plays of the game. Oh well, I am still glad we went!That night we got home pretty tired, but not too tired to eat the famous Chicago deep dish pizza! It was soooo good, and unlike any pizza I have ever had. The crust is not like bread dough, it is closer in consistency to pie crust, but very thick. All the ingredients were fresh, including the half ton of mozzarella cheese that topped it. I only had two slices and felt positively sick (in a good way!) I definitely recommend it!

We took a nice walk along Lake Michigan. It was beautiful!! This was right outside Erin's and Dave's apartment!

This is me in front of Erin and Dave's apartment building (the tall one!) They live on the twelfth floor. It is such a different life than mine out in the suburbs of Denver, but one that is really fun. I don't know if I could handle it with four kids in tow. Just to get home from the airport was a long train ride, followed by a taxi ride! Just picture me and Erin trying to get the stroller, car seat, suitcase and ourselves into a taxi. I can't even imagine doing it with the rest of my kids!! This is the view from Erin and Dave's apartment every Saturday night! They overlook Lake Michigan and Navy Pier. Just like living at Disneyland!!

Here are Erin, Dave and Royal on the bus. I was so impressed with the friendliness of the people in Chicago. I was worried about people's reaction when I had to get the stroller on and off the buses, trains and subways, but people were so nice! Often times they offered me their seat, just because I had the stroller! And many people jumped up to help me maneuver it when I needed a hand. I was really impressed!


Another thing I loved about Chicago was that the city just has character. I don't think I've ever lived in a place like that. There was so much history and culture just wrapped up in the atmosphere. It was so fun to be there. We went to this little Jewish diner for breakfast one morning. I loved it! I got Challah French Toast which was the best thing I have ever eaten and I also got some authentic Jewish bagels to take home. What a fun experience--I just loved that there was culture everywhere you looked! Here is Lincoln and I in front of the old Chicago Theater.

On Saturday afternoon we did some more sightseeing and shopping. We had to stop at the American Girls Doll store and cafe just to see if I could get a little something for the girls. It was a madhouse! There were little girls with their dolls everywhere. The craziest thing--they have a salon where you can pay $20 to get your doll's hair done!!! Not your daughter's --her doll's!!! How could you take yourself seriously if your job was a doll stylist?! Speaking of not taking yourself seriously--here is me in front of the Hershey's store. I took this picture for Ryan--it's his two favorite things. Ha ha.
Erin and I went to the top of the Hancock building to have lunch. We were on the 95th floor!! The walls were floor to ceiling windows that overlooked the city and the lake. It was beautiful and the food was good too! Here we are at our table (check out Linky's BLUE eyes!).
And this is the view we had at lunch...
There are all kinds of things to look at there, like this giant silver jelly bean. What else can I even say about that?!

Alas, our trip was way too short!! Here we are this morning, saying goodbye.
Thank you Erin and Dave for having us! It was so much fun...I'm not sure that I'm ready to be back...

Just Another Day in My Life

Here is a picture taken this morning to prove that Isaac is alive and well, despite the "adventure" we had last night. I was in my bedroom trying to feed Lincoln in a calm, quiet environment, and also trying to take a break from the other kids, who had really made me mad. Isaac could sense that he had pushed me just a bit too far so he decided to do what every six year old boy would do in that situation and push a bit farther. He pulled one of our little kid tables over next to the bedroom door and stood on top of it (against the rules.) The girls were thinking this was all some sort of fun game and were playing with Isaac and needless to say somehow Isaac got knocked off the table and his head landed on the corner of it. Next thing I know, Isaac is screaming that he is bleeding. I open the door and see blood everywhere--all over the carpet, the library books on the floor and streaming down Isaac's neck. Well, I am not good with blood or emergencies, so I immediately burst into tears and tried to stop the bleeding with a rag. I called Ryan, totally frantic and he thought it was an April Fool's Day prank. What kind of a sicko would tell someone their son has a massive head injury as an April Fool's Day joke?! He knew I was serious when he heard Lincoln screaming in the background because his dinner had been rudely interrupted.

Ryan got home (LATE!) a few minutes later and took over. Isaac had calmed down by then and was taking everything in stride. The bleeding stopped and Ryan decided that it was really just a superficial wound and that he would be okay. I called a friend, checked the internet and had the entire primary presidency (who had just showed up for a presidency meeting) look at it to get a second opinion. We sent Isaac to bed and checked on him all night long and he is still himself this morning, so I think we are okay. Here is a shot of his head this morning (don't worry, it's not too gory!)
Lessons learned? Head injuries bleed a lot. You can get blood stains out of carpet. Ryan should never be late again. I love my kids. I need a serious break from parenting. Good news--I am flying off to Chicago tomorrow to visit my sister (without the three older kids!!!)

Those of you that are shocked and appalled by this story must either not have kids or be much better parents than I am! But hopefully at least some of you can take comfort in the fact that I am honest about the realities of parenting, even on my blog!

Problem Solved

Those of you who live close to me or talk to me often enough will know that the past few months have been difficult for us in terms of Lincoln's sleeping habits. I've been concerned because, although he sleeps fine at night, he would NOT nap AT ALL during the day. It didn't seem normal to me that a three month old baby wouldn't sleep during the day. I would try and try and try, rocking him, nursing him, soothing him, putting him down awake or asleep--I tried EVERYTHING, but to no avail. He had also started having these periods of time when he would scream inconsolably for up to an hour and there was no way to calm him down. We thought he might be teething or have a tummy ache. We couldn't figure it out. Then last week, after thinking about things I thought maybe he wasn't getting enough to eat. It's kind of impossible to tell when you are nursing. So I thought, what the heck, and I gave him a bottle of formula. Which he devoured. Instantly. Then that afternoon, he didn't even want to nurse, but he took another bottle just fine. I continued to switch off nursing and bottle feeding for the next few days, not thinking that much about it, until today at his four month check up. The doctor informed me that she was concerned about his weight, because he had dropped from the 75th percentile to the 25th!!!!! HE HAS BEEN HUNGRY!!! How AWFUL!! The poor little guy has been so hungry he hasn't even been able to nap and it took me way too long to figure that out. I feel horrible. Well, the doctor did congratulate me for figuring it out before I had him weighed. I just wish it would have occurred to me sooner. The good news is, he will never remember this part of his life and the doctor assured me that naptime should be much easier from now on (he is asleep right now! It's a miracle!!) So--hooray for formula!! (FYI--it wasn't that I wasn't feeding him enough, believe me, that is all I have been doing for the past four months. Apparently I just wasn't producing enough.)

Luckily, Lincoln is an exceptionally good natured baby, who for the most part has been really happy even though he has been hungry. Check out this sweet little clip...(Just push play, Mom. It's the little button with the arrow :)! )




Here are his stats, sad but true. Height: 25 1/2 inches (70%)
Head: 43.9 cm (90%)
Weight: 14 lbs. 4 oz. (25%)
So who knows how he even supports his head! Strong neck muscles, I guess. Gosh, the mommy guilt over this is going to be even worse than it was the time I accidentally pinched Isaac's skin in his binky clip for five hours.

More Fun!

Occasionally at night I catch an episode of "Super-Nanny." I rarely make it through the entire show because the last thing I want to watch after a long day of mayhem, disorder, chaos and noise is someone else's mayhem, disorder, chaos and noise. But the other day Jo-Jo (the nanny) said something that I think I really needed to hear. "What we need around this house is more fun!" Sometimes I overlook opportunities to have fun with my kids because I am so busy trying to clean up around them or get projects done around the house. So, Ryan and I decided to instigate family fun days with our kids. Every Saturday we are going to do something fun together as a family--be it play a board game or go to a museum. We started last week with dyeing Easter eggs. This week we decided to start planting our garden.

We are starting the veggies from seeds in little cups in the house and we will transplant them in about six weeks. Our garden last year was very exciting for the kids--they loved to watch the plants sprout and grow, and we all loved eating the results! We will keep you all updated on the progress. In the meantime, I will try my hardest to breathe deeply and remember that we are creating memories, not messes!!

Surprise!

Kids are so funny! Yesterday we decided to surprise Isaac when we picked him up from school and meet some friends at McDonald's for some soft serve ice cream cones and play time. I told the girls it was a surprise so we shouldn't say anything about it. They seemed to understand completely. When Isaac got in the car, Audrey immediately said, "Isaac, we are not going to McDonald's!" She said the same thing like three times before we got there. I just kept trying to change the subject. I know probably all kids have done that before, but it still made me laugh. Unlike the time that Chloe walked into the room I was sitting in and said, "Audrey is not cutting her hair..."

Happy Easter!

Didn't I just post about St. Patrick's Day?! Easter really snuck up on us this year, but luckily the Easter Bunny didn't forget!! The kids were very excited to see their baskets this morning.I let the kids just eat candy like crazy, hoping that it would make them sick and they wouldn't want it anymore. No such luck. They just didn't eat any breakfast. Here's Chloe with a chocolate mouth...
The Easter Bunny hid plastic eggs all over the house filled with some yummy goodies. The kids didn't really appreciate the Bunny's attempt at a healthy Easter though, and all of them gave their yougurt-covered raisins to Daddy. Here is Audrey checking out what Grammie sent her for Easter.
Isaac got a fun little radio in his Easter basket. He has been listening to it non-stop and it has finally been banned to his room. He seems to prefer the Spanish stations.
This was left after Audrey abandoned her basket this morning. I noticed that she had taken one bite out of every piece of candy.
After all the secular madness, we got ready for Church and talked about why we celebrate Easter. After church we went to our good friends' house for a nice Easter dinner. Here are the girls all ready for Church, holding their Easter bunnies. They are the only ones that are really interested in posing for pictures in their beautiful outfits--but Easter outfits are really kind of a girly thing anyway. Isaac and Lincoln looked good too.

Hope you all had a wonderful Easter!

The Bunny Cake

What would Easter be without a fabulous Bunny Cake? The kids helped make this cake for our party with the cousins. It was very tasty and expertly decorated!!

Egg Hunting and Killing

We had the cousins up on Saturday to help dye eggs and do an Easter egg hunt. The girls got very confused when I talked about dyeing the eggs. They use the words "die" and "kill" in the same way--so they thought I was talking about some mass destruction of Easter eggs (hence the title of this post.) They figured out what I meant eventually and every one had a great time!

Happy St. Paddy's Day!

Despite my maiden name and natural hair color, I actually don't have a drop of Irish blood in me. Ryan and the kids do however, and we like to take St. Patrick's Day pretty seriously. I think it is fun to try to teach the kids a bit about their heritage and eat good food at the same time! This year the girls helped me make the traditional Corned Beef and Cabbage. Here they are washing the red potatoes that are used in the dish.We also made Irish Soda bread to go with our meal (the rest of the food was just American stuff, but still yummy.) Here we are with our finished dish, all ready to eat! (Notice that Audrey has changed shirts...the girls change clothes like 15 times a day. Today they were limited in their choices because they knew if they didn't wear green their big brother would certainly notice and take advantage.)
We invited a man from our church over to celebrate the holiday with us. His wife is sick, in hospice and not expected to be around much longer and he likes to spend time with families. I was a little worried because our kids can be crazy when company comes over, but he had them all wrapped around his finger by the end of the night.
He even brought stories to read to them. We had a fun time and I think he didn't get too overwhelmed by our out-of-control brood. Happy St. Patrick's Day everyone!!

I've Been Tagged!

So Kayla wants to know some random facts about me... I feel like I am such an open book, is there anything that everyone doesn't already know?!

1. I worked as a Singing Telegram in high school. Ta-dah!

2. I love to ROCK OUT! I listen to music turned up LOUDLY and dance around the house. I am always getting the kids into it--hips swinging, bootie shaking, the works! When I need to tune the kids out, I put on my i-pod and do housework. And preschool music in the car?! You've got to be kidding me. Some of our family favorites are Green Day and The Fray. The kids head bang to the beat in their car seats. Someday I want to get those car speakers that you can hear the bass beating from miles away (okay, so maybe not, but you get the idea.)

3. I hate the idea of milk being out of the fridge for more than the millisecond it takes to pour it. It grosses me out more than I can say. I guess some people leave the milk on the table for all of breakfast--YUCK!!!

4. When I am tired or hungry, I turn into a very mean person and I am completely unable to act like I'm okay. Combine tired and hungry and add in a little stress and the situation can really become lethal. That pretty much explains my behavior at most of Ryan's family reunions.

5. I talk in my sleep. When I am overly tired or stressed out about something, I have been known to act it out in my sleep. During high school musical season I would say my lines and act out scenes. I have rocked babies, bagged groceries, you name it!

Well, there are a few interesting (or not!) tidbits! So now I will tag Priscilla, Jenni (if you find the time!!) and Angie!

Hmm...Can you tell what I spend a large part of the day doing??

The girls are feeding their dolls... I guess they say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, right?By the way, I promise that the girls do have more than one outfit--they just really like this particular one a lot.

The things we do to our kids...

Someone gave us this hoodie for Lincoln. When we tried it on him for the first time the other day, we all had the same thought...

Isaac's Musical Debut

Isaac had a concert at his school last week. It was a musical celebration of dinosaurs--informative and catchy. We've all been singing about fossils and footprints for the past few days. We snapped a picture of the kids all ready to go before we left. I'm glad we did, because we couldn't actually see Isaac during the concert. I tried to videotape him, but got a lot of other parents' heads instead. It was still fun, mainly because he was SOOOO excited about the whole experience.

Cursed Toll Roads

Today I spent $6.00 to drive to the doctor's office!! I accidentally took a wrong turn and next thing I know, I am throwing all of my quarters into a machine--first to get on the road, then to get off in order to turn around, then to get back on going in the right direction, then once again to get off so I could go home. I actually ran out of quarters (surprising, right?) and had to take a little envelope in which I placed a personal check for 0.75 which I will be sending off to the great state of Colorado. Really, I have to PAY to drive on the road?! I initially took the toll to save 20 minutes off my trip...would have been great if I hadn't gotten lost!

You know it's been one of those days when...

Today I hit an all-time low when I found myself sitting in the kitchen, mid-afternoon, drinking chocolate sauce directly from the container and washing it down with Diet Coke. I love my children, but I will tell you having four of them is pushing me slowly over the edge!! I do find small highlights in every day, however, like a few days ago when I walked around the corner and saw this...
Mind you, it was probably 30 degrees outside, but the girls were ready for a swim. I'm getting a little antsy for the warmer weather as well! Saturday spoiled us with a high of 74! But yesterday a blizzard rolled in and we are back to the wind and snow. I never thought, after living in Arizona for six long years, that I would look forward to the summer!