party pooper

Sometimes I think my life really can't get any grosser than it already has. Like I've probably seen the worst of it. I mean you can't really get grosser than being puked on, peed on, catching the poop ... right? Wrong. Tonight was not just gross for me, it was gross for a big pool full of kids (and all of their parents who were not in the pool thank goodness).

It was a friend's birthday down the street. We all ate dinner and had cake and ice cream and headed to the pool. Well all the dads and kids did. The wives stayed back at the house... except this one 'cause Dan doesn't really come home too much in the summer time I'm starting to realize. So me and 10 dads sat and watched our 20 kids have a super happy time. All four of my kids were in the pool. My favorite little 10 year old babysitter, Rylie was holding Angus and Addie was swimming happily with her little puddle jumper keeping her afloat. Mya and Winter were diving for toys and jumping in and just doing what kids do in the pool I guess.

It was getting kind of late, like 8:00 or so. My kids go to bed at 7 usually so I thought to myself, we should get going but everyone is having so much fun... I wonder how long everyone else is going to stay. My kids will throw a fit FOR SURE if we have to leave. Do I want to deal with that? 

Then it happened. My friend Melissa said, "Is that poop?" I cringed. Of course it was. Of course my little potty-training cutie pie pooped in the pool. "Yep that's definitely poop!" She said. I looked down and there was a little brown cloud in the water. It wasn't just poop. It was diarrhea poop. Melissa is a take charge gal (which I appreciate immensely) so she began taking charge of the situation telling all the kids to get out of the pool. The only problem (okay not the only problem) was that it was by the stairs where you usually exit the pool so the kids started swimming head first through the poop to get out. Melissa started yelling for them to swim away from the stairs, away from the poop. I just sat there with a sad look on my face while all the kids got out and just stared at the poop, not sure what to do. They were all wondering what was next. They were asking very good questions like, "Why did Addie poop in the pool?" and "When can we go back in??"

All the dads just kind of sat there and yelled things like, "Okay lets go!" It was probably better that the moms weren't there. It may have been a different scene altogether. A bit more frantic I would imagine. I grabbed my little stinky one and started the process of cleaning her up. I took her over to the shower and began spraying her down but somehow it created a poopy mess on the shower floor from the reusable swimmy diaper and the poopy kid so I went into the bathroom and began to clean the swim diaper in the toilet. I know, so gross. I had my hands in the toilet with the poopy swim diaper. Why did I buy the kind you can re-use? Well, I figured it would hold in poop better than the disposable kind which may be true but I don't know if I want to go through cleaning a poop filled swimmy diaper again. This is the 3rd time I've had to do this actually. Luckily Addie got out of the pool to poop in her diaper the last two times.

My friends all asked if they could do anything to help but I assured them I would be okay after we all had some baths and recommended everyone else do the same. And here I was thinking we could skip baths tonight because everyone went in the pool. It's like a giant bathtub with chlorine. Nope.

Melissa made a cute little sign to go on the pool gate. I'm not sure that it makes it any less gross that there was diarrhea poop in the pool.

black and white

I love black and white photos. When you take the color away, something happens to the people in the photos. It's like they immediately become a memory or something. I took these the other day when I was too tired to think. My attitude quickly changed from self-pity to thankfulness for the blessing of 4 amazing children and wonderful husband. This is why I blog. Every time I post pictures I start to see the good stuff; the stuff that's hard to see when you are sleep deprived and your children are home for the summer and your babies need every spare second of your every day.

I love these people.

occupational hazards

There should be a book of warnings available for those who are thinking about having kids. Maybe it would help keep the population down. But seriously, no one warns you about a few things… 

1. Your body will take a constant beating. I'm not even talking about pregnancy and childbirth here. I'm talking about the constant day to day abuse your body will experience by simply taking care of kids. 

While trying to put Addie into her car seat the other day she grabbed the handle up top and stopped my momentum and somehow I managed to hit my nose on her head and bump my head on the top of the car at the same time.

While quickly reaching for a bowl of Cheerios with milk in it that was about to fall off the side of the table I managed to give myself whiplash… I had a sore neck for the rest of the day.

I have been bitten by teething babies more times than I can count. Probably about 50.

Dan trips over toys and steps on small sharp objects (legos, Barbie furniture, blocks) all the time. He can't see them... Something having to do with his glasses and depth perception?

I'm usually in a hurry so I am always stubbing my toe, bumping my shin on a table, running into corners on shelves etc. I have bruises all over.

2. Your skin will come in contact with a ridiculous amount of poop (or pee or vomit) all the time. Just yesterday I woke up at 4:45 with Angus as I often do, about 50% of the time. I grabbed a blanket and laid down on the couch while he played. I didn't make coffee in hopes that I would get to take a little nap until Addie woke up. I snoozed off and on while Angus would come over to the couch, smack my face then crawl away and play with a ball or something. Addie woke up around 6 and joined us downstairs. 

We are still potty training so I had to remove her diaper to force her to put her peepee in the potty. She's doing great as long as there's no pull-up or diaper to go in. Usually I just take the diaper off of her while she's standing up. It saves time. And there never is any poop in it. She poops after breakfast... usually. Not this particular morning. This morning she took a nice big wet dump before she came downstairs. And normally I would check to make sure the diaper was just pee but I was still half asleep so I took it off with one hand and out rolled a tennis ball sized piece of poop. I reached out to catch it with my other hand... why? No idea. It wouldn't have been the end of the world if poop landed on our kitchen floor. It wouldn't have been the first time. WHY?! Why did I catch the poop? I looked down in a daze at the large piece of poop in my hand. It was wet and squishy. I've been feeding Addie a lot of fruit pouches lately to make her go. It was a good idea I thought... As soon as it registered, I screamed and ran to the trash and threw the diaper and poop in. Addie screamed EEEEWWWWW! I ran to the sink to immediately washed my hands 8 times with soap and scalding hot water. Gross. I have about 10 more equally yucky stories I've probably shared on this blog.

3. You will easily pee when you sneeze, do jumping jacks or laugh too hard. I don't need to elaborate too much on this one. But I will say that I have learned to do a curtsey type cross my legs move when I need to. A friend of mine who shall remain nameless sneezed the other day and I heard her say, "Dammit, I forgot to cross my legs. Now I have to change." Poor girl. 

4. You will physically age a good 5 years per kid. Your knees and hips will start to make noises, new wrinkles will form around your pretty eyes and your fit parts will become jiggly parts. Fun new spider veins will appear on your legs too! 

5. Weird things will happen to your hair. It will start to curl in places and fall out in others. I actually thought my hair was thinning but it turns out it was just pregnancy stuff. Then one day after Angus was born, I started to notice it was filling in again. Dan was like, "Did you always have really short curly hair sticking out around your hairline?" I was relieved it was back but not pleased with the way it made me look... crazy. 

6. You will never get a straight 8 hours of sleep again. There are too many things to wake you up now. You may have to pee in the middle of the night or you hear a sound that could be someone breaking in to steal your children (that turns out to be the ice maker) or your baby is teething or your 2 year old has a bad dream or your 5 year old gets up at 3AM for a cup of water or your 6 year old hears your 5 year old make a sound that she thinks sounds like she may throw up but really she's just eating something in her sleep. OR the dogs ate some playdough and now they are making pukey noises and need to be taken outside at midnight... see what I mean? You will be forever tired... until the kids become teenagers and then you can't wake them up.

I'm going to stop here. There are so many things I would have liked to know... not that I wouldn't have had a bunch of kids but it would have been nice to have a heads up to mentally prepare.

Okay, they're worth it.

Mya

Mya is my serious one most of the time. So when she says something funny it catches me off guard. And it's usually not meant to be funny. 

Mya: Mommy did you fart or did I?
Me: umm you?
Mya: good job! you get a sticker

Me - You are so pretty Mya. But you know that what's inside is more important than what's outside. Do you know what that means? It means that it's more important to be kind and loving and all that good stuff that Jesus talks about.

Dan - yeah that's totally right.

Me - you know that right Mya?

Mya - yeah... I think I have a hair in my mouth.

Dan - good talk

summer shenanigans

When do babies start sleeping in? At least until 6:00. I can't remember but I hope it's tomorrow. Last night Angus went to bed at 6:30 and woke up at 5 AM. It was awesome. Usually he wakes up at four. But at some point the kids start sleeping in until six or 630-ish… looking forward to it.

Summer is in full swing around here. We have been busy bees. I went in the pool with pants and a top on the other day because Addie tried to drown herself, unsuccessfully fortunately. It's always good for them to go underwater a couple times though. It teaches them how the whole body sinking in water thing works.

Winter still wears a floatie because I don't trust her to listen to me and stay in the shallow end and I can't be saving her all the time. She's getting swimming lessons in a week so hopefully she'll be able to swim after that. She kind of can now but not up to my standards. Mya is a great little swimmer. Of course she is. One down, three to go.

We started piano lessons! Mya did awesome, as expected. Her teacher, Jillian, was surprised at how fast she picked it up. And Winter, true to form, had to be bribed in order to finish the lesson. I kept hearing the sound of Winter running her fingers along the keys from one end of the piano to the other. I couldn't help but laugh. She earned her money that half hour. I heard her say, "Okay Winter, if you can get through the rest of the lesson (5 minutes) without playing the piano, I will teach you how to play heart and soul when we're done." That was Winter's first and last lesson... for now. I asked her if she liked it and she said, "No! I never want to do that again!" No problem. We didn't really plan on her taking lessons anyway. I just needed her to experience one so that she wouldn't ask if she could have lessons like Mya all summer.

So, the potty training is going ok-ish. Addie can get most of her peepee in the potty. She misses pretty often but she's on the right track. Several times she's said, I go peepee in the potty! And there's a puddle on the bathroom floor and a little bit in the pink princess potty. Now I keep paper towels and baby wipes in the bathroom to clean up the mess. The poop is still scary for her. She's gone a little bit twice but she cried the whole time for her diaper. 

I left her with a babysitter, Becky, Thursday. I put her in a pull-up and told Becky to remind her to go potty. I knew she was going to poop in the pull-up as soon as I left. Becky said she filled that thing up. It even oozed out down her leg. Poor thing. She was so traumatized by the potty she saved 3 days worth of poop for the pull-up she knew was coming that night. Addie is a bit harder to potty train than I expected. Winter and Mya were pretty much potty training rock stars. They had it down in like 2 or 3 days, or maybe that's just what I tell myself. Addie's funny about it. She walks around holding her butt like she could go at any time and she doesn't want anything to escape. I'm not worried though. It's just exhausting dealing with all the other kids while potty training Addie. 

Winter always asks for a snack and Mya always asks for my phone right when things start to get crazy and I'm sitting on the bathroom floor cheering yay! poopoo! and Addie is crying hysterically because she doesn't want to go poopoo in her diaper but she doesn't want to go in the potty either. She's caught in the in-between poopoo land. Winter and Mya have totally learned when to ask me for things. Usually it's when I'm trying to sleep on the couch in the morning while the babies are still in a good mood and play by themselves for like 20 minutes or they ask when I'm elbows deep in diaper mess. Clever little ones. 

The big girls are having fun so far this summer. We've been making all kinds of things. 

I had some very ripe bananas so Mya suggested that we make banana bread like Auntie Wendy does. She asks like once a week, pretty much when there are overripe bananas in the house. So this time I actually said okay. And we did. It came out in one piece which is rare so I decided that we would give it to our neighbor across the street who always buys us really expensive gifts and we've never really returned the sentiment. We just bake her stuff. Winter was not on board. We're still teaching her how it is better to give than to receive. She refused to go deliver it with Mya. 

Winter is an excellent pancake flipper. 

Side note: Slime is a bad idea... unless the kids are super responsible with it. But what's the fun in that? They mixed it with water and it ended up creating a sticky gooey mess all over the back yard. Really hard to clean up. So we won't be making it again. I'm glad Dan was working that night. He would have flipped.

I had some cake mix that was about to expire so we made cupcakes... in new gymnastics leotards. Why not.

More summer adventures to come!

Interview with Addie

It's like trying to solve a puzzle...

Me: What's your name?

Addie: Mama!

Me What's YOUR name? 

Addie: Addie!

Me: How old are you? 

Addie: Two! I two!

Me: Show me two.

Addie: I two.

(With a little prompting, she holds up two fingers)

Me: And what did you do today? 

Addie: Uh.. do the slide and the foot I cry.

Me: What did you do? Did you go to church?

Addie: Yeah

Me: What did you do at church? 

Addie: The slide, the foot. It's owie.

Me: Oh there's an owie on your foot?

Addie: Yeah

Me: Who do you love? 

Addie: Uh duck.

Me: Duck?

Addie: No, dudu (no idea)

Me: Dada?

Addie: No

Me: The duck?

Addie No

Me: Who do you love? 

Addie: A dee I love dee. 

Me: You love that? Out there? 

Addie: Yeah

Me: Oh okay

Me: And who else do you love?

Addie: Daka (if you know who this is let me know. They have something to do with the foot and the owie at church)

Me: yogurt? (okay I'm not a total idiot. Her yogurt kind of sounds like daka)

Addie: Daka

Me: I don't know what that is.

Addie: Daka that the foot and the owie.

Me: That's the foot and the owie okay...

Moving on.

Me: What's your sister's name? 

Addie: Uh... sissy there!

Me: And who else is your sister?

Addie: Two sister. 

Me: How 'bout Mya?

Addie: Mya too.

Me: Mya too? And Winter? 

Addie: Yeah

Me: What's your brother's name? 

Addie: Angus the brother.

Me: Angus is your brother? 

Me: What's your doggy's name? 

Addie: Uh two!

Me: What's your doggy's name? 

Addie: Uh doggy too!

Me: What's your doggy's name?

Addie: Doggy fee!

Me: Doggy's sleeping? 

Addie: No doggie up.

Me: Is your doggie Otter? 

Addie: Yeah its a doggie. This the Otter! That's the Twitch.

Me: Twitch? 

Addie: Yes. Otter Twitch.

Me: What's your favorite thing to eat?

Addie: FOOD!

Me: Food? 

Addie: Yeah

Me: What kind of food? 

Addie: A poopie and a eat the food.

Me: You poopie when you eat the food?

Addie: Yeah. 

Me: Oh.

Me: What's your favorite thing to eat?

Addie: Uh... APPLE!

Me: Apple? 

Addie: Peanut butter apple.

Me: Peanut butter and apple?

Addie: Yeah

Me: What's your favorite thing to do?

Addie: Uh... daka take a foot owie. (we've come back to that again) I want bandaid on the owie. (Maybe daka is sticker...)

Me: Okay can you say this is Addie over and out?

Addie: Yeah

Me: Say this is Addie, over and out.

Addie: Addie in a and out!

Exhausting trying to decipher that code isn't it.

operation awesome summer

I'm a big dreamer and a big planner. I start off full steam and usually peter out soon thereafter. I'm aware of this personality trait but it doesn't stop me from dreaming and planning.

So my summer goals are:

1 - Summer learning program - Mya and Winter complete one page of school work Mon-Friday. Read a book a day to Winter. Have Mya read 2 chapters. Practice writing with Winter. I should have Mya practice writing too I guess.

I got this awesome summer activity workbook my sister convinced me to buy. She's a teacher and insisted the girls would be dummies come fall if they didn't continue to do something to stimulate their brains. I plan to read to Addie as much as possible. She will let me read anything to her as long as it has animals in it.

2 - Addie potty training program - This is how we potty train. I roll back the big rugs, throw the small ones outside and strip Addie down to her cute little naked body. I remind her many times to put her peepee in the potty. Then I give her lots of juice which she never gets so she sucks it down. She always poops in the morning so I just have to wait for the squat. That's always a bit trickier. For some reason poopoo in a potty is scary to a 2-year-old, even a pink princess potty that makes a cute little flushing twinkle sound. I use pull ups at nap time and when we go out of the house until I feel confident that she's ready to tell me when she has to use the potty.

3 - Work out Monday through Friday. I'm trying to alternate upper and lower body workouts with running a few times per week. I'm still hooked on fitnessblender.com. Love their workouts. They are so basic yet effective. And there are tons for any type of workout for any length of time. 

4 - Make stuff - I want to make something with the girls a few times per week. Meals count. Winter loves scrambling eggs and has become quite the little chef. Other things we make are smoothies, pancakes, cookies, banana bread, zucchini bread, pizza, play dough and slime. 

5 - Eat lots of fruits and veggies - I'm trying to cut up different veggies for the girls to eat for dinner and snacks. I'm only buying the ones they like so they'll actually eat them. They dip most veggies in ranch. They love all fruit so that's easy. 

Other things planned for the summer are piano lessons, gymnastics and swim lessons. It sounds like a lot but piano is once a week and swim lessons are only for one week, Monday-Friday. And gymnastics is also once a week for 50 minutes. Oh and we'll do VBA (Vacation Bible Adventure) That will wear all of us out. 

So far so good! It's Monday and we've implemented our summer learning program with only one melt down from Winter. She hates writing her lower case letters. We started potty training! Addie peed on the floor about 10 times which is definitely a record in this house and cried for her diaper periodically. But she is getting the hang of it. She's peed in the potty like 5 times and received a skittle each time. She waited until I was busy with Angus and went in the living room and pooped on the floor. But the rugs are rolled back so it wasn't horrible. We'll try again to poop in the potty tomorrow. I worked out my lower body today with my little 5 and 6-year-old workout buddies. Winter lasted about 5 minutes until she quit and got a snack but Mya stuck it out for the whole 30 minutes. Go Mya. We made some pink and purple play dough. That stuff is so cheap and easy. We didn't have any veggies. Can't win 'em all. We had lots of fruit though...

Awan de diapo!! (I want the diaper)

Reading material is always helpful.

random May part 2

Here we are at the annual San Marino firefighter pancake breakfast. 

I went to Winter's school for their Mother's Day celebration. 

Taking advantage of the other two being in school for a couple of weeks more, Dan and I went out to breakfast with these two. So much easier with two. And they don't have much to say so Dan and I can talk about whatever we want. I forgot how nice it is when the kids have no idea what we're saying.

I volunteer in the nursery at church once a month. It's my duty as a mom with 4 kids being cared for by loving nursery and Sunday school workers each Sunday. This is my fav group. The crawlers. The cuteness is just too much. We had these 5 adorable boys last time. 

To pass the time one afternoon, Mya raked leaves.

Winter made "soup."

Mya lost her 2nd tooth! And she didn't swallow it! And I remembered to leave money from the tooth fairy!

Winter graduated from preschool! Finally. Mya and Winter will be at the same school next year. One drop off. Yesssss.

Since this is random May, here's a random good idea. Use foil to cover the bottom of your toaster oven instead of washing the tray all the time. We use our toaster oven like 5 times a day so it gets crazy gross. This has been one of the best ideas I've ever had I think. 

I got to spend the afternoon with old friends sans kids yay! Happy 35th Elizabeth! I can't believe I've known these people 20 years. Mid 30's. When did that happen? And we don't look a day over 22.