Baseball

Baseball season is in full swing... and we are loving almost all aspects of it. Almost, because as Scott informed me at lunch a week or so ago, "Mommy, I don't like pollen." Nope, pollen is no fun. Allergies seem to have hit him pretty hard this spring and he is now taking Clariton regularly, hopefully only until the pollen settles down in a few more weeks and not year round like Daddy.


The good... we get to play outside more. We've been walking the neighborhood fairly regularly again and have gotten to spend several afternoons playing with neighbors. The boys really like it and ask everyday now if we can walk to so and so's house. Specifically, Daniel's house, and they always clarify, "Not our Daniel though, the other Daniel." As if I didn't understand.

Then of course, there's the baseball. :) Scott's tee ball season kicked off last week. It was supposed to start the week before that, but it rained... talk about a disappointed little boy.
So, we started last week. I am coaching. It's crazy, but I love it. Playing with little kids and listening to them and watching them try and figure out life is still one of my favorite things... and I am really missing my camp days this spring.

Scott is enjoying playing baseball too. Though, I think we have a problem... since we don't own a tee, he's never hit off of a tee before... he's not very good at it. He can hit a pitch, no problem, but the tee he's just not used to. Hopefully he can figure it out before the first game, but thankfully, this is the most non-competitive league I've ever heard of. I love it. They are passionate about baseball and introducing it so that kids learn to play and really like it, but more importantly, they are a ministry and the real purpose is to share the gospel, through the "wordless book" or in this case, the "colorful ball" and of course, through modeling the love of Christ for the players and their families.


Oh, and it's not just playing baseball, but also watching! We took a trip down to Clemson this past Sunday, for the baseball game. It was hot in the stands, but we enjoyed the 5 innings we stayed for. The boys, all 4 of them watched the game for almost a whole inning. The bigger ones enjoyed the game, the littler ones got sick of sitting in the stands, they were hot and tired and kind of cranky... apparently we still need to teach them "There's no crying in baseball."


Of course, by the time we were ready to take a nice Clemson family picture Daniel was asleep. The boys were very excited when we headed over to the 55 Exchange for some Clemson ice cream after the game... Blaise chose pink, and Scott chose mint chocolate chip (green), then they gave each other a taste (Blaise even shared a bite with Michael too) - I love it when they do sweet things for each other :)

Daniel Truth

I can't believe Baby Daniel is 3 months old already... time flies!

Here's the story, and I'm going to try to condense it a little bit...

We headed down to Clemson for the NC State game on November 6. Had a great time with friends. A few didn't even realize I was pregnant! I was 37 weeks. It took a LONG time to climb the stairs to our seats and boy was I winded when we got there... but no problems, enjoyed the day and Clemson even pulled off a win!



Fast-forward a whopping 5 days. Thursday morning I woke up damp and lay in bed wondering what was going on... possibilities being I wet myself, I lost my plug, my water was leaking. When I finally dragged myself out of bed, no easy feat for someone who is 38 weeks pregnant, it turned out to be option 3. After a moment or two of disbelief, I decided to change and go back to sleep (it was 5am). Yeah, that didn't work... I told Cullen, my water was leaking, so he should stay home and then got on the computer and notified the 3 people who needed to know what was going on- still in disbelief and wondering if it would seal itself back up and wait another 2 or 3 weeks. Cullen jumped into action, doing important things like packing the hospital bag. Nothing was ready, because we weren't expecting this for another 3 weeks. I should add, I was not having ANY contractions, just leaking water every time I moved. It amounted to about a pad every 1-2 hours.

Yep, spent the ENTIRE day like that on Thursday. The in-laws arrived, with my nephew, for the weekend, I finished everything that still needed to be done... including, washing, folding, and putting away all the baby clothes and the baby blanket. Later, my sister-in-law arrived with my niece and decided not to leave the 2 kids for the night :) I went to bed with a plan: pray that my water stops leaking or contractions start for real. In the morning we planned to call to dr office and head in to at least get checked, if we weren't on our way to the hospital. Cullen was going to work and his mom would take me wherever I needed to go, while his dad stayed with the big boys.

Friday morning... contractions, yay! And my water stopped leaking, yay! Cullen went to work. I hung around, contracting every 30 minutes or so. Michael woke up at 7 and wanted to be held, no surprise there. Suddenly, contractions were every 5-10 minutes. I told Mom it wouldn't be long, so she might want to get dressed. I called the office. The nurse called me back. I told Mom we should probably leave right away. I threw up. Jan (my amazing english mid-wife) called back as we were walking out the door. She agreed I should come in and mentioned how excited she was that she was on call... I agreed!

We met Cullen at the hospital around 8 am. Jan confirmed that my bag of waters was in tact. Good thing, because I was NOT admitting that it had been leaking since early AM on Thursday. I labored and answered the bazillion questions. Daniel was born in 1 push at 9:48am. No tearing, no problems, he was perfect. Noticeably smaller than his brothers, but also 3 weeks earlier than any of them. Born on November 12, 2010, 7lbs 3oz, 18.5 inches. I breathed a sigh of relief for another boy. I love my boys, all 4 of them and their daddy too.


The big brothers came to meet baby Daniel in the afternoon. Michael didn't like the hospital and didn't really care one way or the other about the baby. Scott and Blaise both wanted their turns to hold him. Daniel and I went home the next day and we began to settle into a routine.

Michael decided he really liked the baby, once we let him hold him. Now he regularly asks for turns to hold him and is constantly "petting" him on the head. While he liked the baby, he did have a hard time adjusting and we dealt with an extra helping of moodiness and drama from Michael for a month or so... none of it directed at Daniel, so we were thankful for that.



Daniel and I had a hard time at the beginning with nursing... we're talking the most painful 3 weeks of nursing EVER, and that's saying something, because it was no cup of tea with Scott either. I learned that it doesn't matter how many kids you have, they are all different. I already knew that... but now I know it more... and I'm sure I'll learn it even more everyday as we keep trying to figure out how to parent 4 very different little boys.



Now baby Daniel is already 3 months old... mostly sleeping through the night, smiling, except for the camera, laughing, babbling, grabbing for toys, still obsessed with his fingers and sucking on them, cute as can be. He's in the 14-15lb range, I think, and around 25inches long already, so a fairly big boy. I think he looks most like Scott, but also totally himself :)

Some Random Stories

Here are a few stories from our household that I don't want to forget. Figured I would write them here, since I haven't updated at all in ages.

This morning, when asked why he wasn't wearing his Clemson shirt, Scott (our 4 yr old who dresses himself), responded with, "I'm wearing McQueen, because I want them to run fast." Okay, I suppose I can't argue with that reasoning. Go Tigers! Beat Auburn.

Recently Blaise has coined the term "Beat-beat." This basically means it was a tie game. You see, Scott and Blaise insist on racing all the time to see who can dress the fastest, put sandals on the fastest, pick up the fastest, etc... this generally ends in someone victoriously shouting, "I'm the winner!" And someone else, throwing themselves on the floor crying, because they didn't win. One happy day, instead of doing that, they finished at about the same time and declared that they had had a "Beat-beat." I really like this new term :)

Michael has gone and gotten very dramatic... no really. If Grandma says, in a very sweet grandmotherly voice, "No, no, Michael, don't touch the oven." He throws himself on the floor and kicks and cries. Somewhat annoying and somewhat amusing at the same time. Generally, I have a hard time not laughing at him.

A quick update from the past 2 months... we officially started home-preschool with Scott and Blaise the last couple of days of July. (I know we'll be slowing down a lot in a few months for a new baby, so wanted to get a head start.) They are both doing really well. For now, we do a little bit in the morning while Michael naps and a little bit in the afternoon while Michael naps. Here's hoping he keeps napping... it's much harder to accomplish anything with him walking around trying to steal and eat crayons :) Scott likes math, quite a lot. We are doing Singapore Essential Math K, and he could probably complete the book in a week if I let him... I let him do 6 pages one day this week. It seems to just make sense to him right now, which I can totally relate to. I'm sure it will get more challenging and hope he continues to like it. He still loves to be read to, but isn't a really big fan of reading himself- though he's gotten quite good at it. Blaise likes to be read to (depending on what we're reading) and likes to talk- ALL THE TIME. He's quite the distraction and we are adjusting to working through the distraction. He's learning his letters very quickly and I wonder how much he already knows that I just don't know he knows. So far, I'm pretty sure he can do all of the math stuff we've done with Scott, but his fine motor skills, attention span, and desire to follow directions are not to the place where he wants to do a lot of workbook work. He might be almost as much of a perfectionist as Scott... if he circles something in a workbook and the circle touches something else, he can't circle the other thing, even if it's the right answer, because it's got writing on it. I still have NOT found a format for record keeping that I like... but we're having a good time with it and they seem to be learning quite a lot.

They really enjoyed a visit from their cousins back in August. It really made me wish we lived closer, the kids had so much fun playing together. Then Scott got to spend a week with his grandparents... he was supposed to get to go overnight on their boat, but that fell through (thank you Earl, for saving Grandma from having to clean major messes on the boat, since Scott wasn't feeling well that particular night.)

Settling back into the routine at home has been really really busy and feels very chaotic to me. Perhaps it's just that I'm feeling more tired and big (which means moving around takes more effort.) Scott has started soccer and seems to like it (everyday he asks when he gets to go to soccer again), though so far, it takes him a while to get into it... he likes to be "shy." It should be amusing to see how a game goes here in another week or so. Blaise would really like to be on the team too and I'll be looking forward to seeing how he does next year when he's old enough to play.

Maybe I'll update again, before November... no promises though :)

"Baby" Michael Turns 1

Well, you might be aware that I am actually posting this not just a few days, but almost 2 weeks late. At least I am posting it!


It's hard to believe it's already been a year, since baby Michael joined our family. I've been told I need to stop calling him "Baby" Michael... There are lots of things I will never forget from that night a year ago, when he was born. The whole water breaking in my sleep thing is a big one, along with a few other details of his birth that I'll refrain from elaborating on right now. Scott's excitement to hold HIS baby. How much screaming Michael did in his first 10 minutes of life. The little head full of black hair. All our visitors arriving at the same time at the hospital... we had a room full! A very good friend who let Scott and Blaise sleep-over twice.


That was last year... this year, the little man is walking (he took his first steps around June 24, then really took off around July 19) and he's trying hard to keep up with his brothers. He "runs" the loop with them, not noticing he gets lapped about 4 times each trip around. He has 5 teeth and eats more than his brothers (they're picky, and he eats everything... except scrambled eggs.) Michael is quite the independent little dude. He already insists on self-feeding, everything, including his morning yogurt. That makes a big mess, but he is surprisingly (or not considering he's practicing daily) good at it. He also tries (harder than his brothers) to put on his own shoes when asked. No, I don't ask him to put on his own shoes, just Scott and Blaise, but he tries anyway. I'm glad he likes his shoes... I was a bit nervous, since he'd been barefoot all spring and summer until after the 4th of July, that he would refuse to wear them once we finally bought them. He babbles a lot. We think he has 3 words... Yeah, Scott, and Hi. He thinks he speaks in perfect English... if you ask him something, he will turn, look at you, and say a bunch of jibberish with perfect sentence intonation.

In the size department, well, he's right at 20 lbs and somewhere between 29 and 30 inches. I have no idea where that is on the chart, because I'm too lazy to go look. He'll finally go for his 1 yr old checkup in another 2 weeks and they'll tell me what percentiles he is and give me more "precise" measurements. We postponed his 1 yr checkup, because everyone got sick on the 24th and there's no point in going for a well-check when you're sick... especially when you still need the 3rd dose of vaccine that you've managed to avoid at both your 6 and 9 month checkups.

For his birthday celebration, we started the day with cinnamon rolls for breakfast and watermelon. He was a happy boy!


We had to cancel his party though, because Scott and Blaise were both feverish. He didn't mind, staying home and playing with Daddy is just as much fun.

I made him a soccer ball cake... which he enjoyed, but in my opinion (and Cullen's) didn't really do a great job of efficiently devouring it. He did stick his thumb all the way into the center of it and cleaned the icing off of it though.


He opened his presents after getting cleaned up from the cake experience.


Being a 3rd child, he had a lot of help... and didn't mind until after the fact, when his big brothers also wanted to play with his new toys. We got him a couple of new cars and a soft soccer ball (from Ikea.) He's still learning that you aren't supposed to use your hands in soccer and can often be caught throwing his soccer ball (chase it, pick it up, repeat...) or any other ball for that matter. He does like to play catch, whenever he can get someone interested. Unfortunately, by bedtime the birthday boy was also feverish... at least this isn't a birthday he will remember for years to come. And on the plus side, he got to celebrate his birthday for 2 weekends in a row, rather than just one.

Walking

There you have it. This little man is on the move on 2 legs on a regular basis now. He took his first steps back around June 25th at Uncle Mike's pool. He's been looking for windows of opportunity between the chaos created by his 2 big brothers to practice. He'd hit 8 steps by the end of the 4th of July weekend. Apparently on Saturday, he decided to overcome the chaos and walk anyway. I came home from a book fair on Saturday to a Michael who favors walking over crawling and I've seen him walk across rooms and even (repeatedly) attempt to walk over our somewhat bulky transition strips.

The Saturday book fair was wonderful. I went with a friend and I found everything I was looking for. The plan is to start a somewhat structured homeschool with Scott and Blaise in August, so I can experiment and practice with the daily log requirement before we actually have to report to anyone. We are all excited about it and intend to have fun with it.

We officially have 2 cars that will seat our whole family after the baby comes in November. We bought a new Mazda 5 on Friday. Scott got to go test drive it with Cullen the weekend before that, so that was a really special thing for them.

Blaise has promoted himself from the kid-sized potty seat to the regular seat.

I have the opportunity this month to teach swimming lessons at a friends pool. My class of preschoolers includes my big boys and we are all having a blast... and learning that God controls the weather. We can pray and ask God to give us good weather... and sometimes he says "Yes," but sometimes he says, "No." So far, 2 out of 4 days have been postponed due to thunder and lightening.

I figured it was time to add a few videos again, so here goes. Michael is on the move on 2 legs now. Well... he's not really moving to walking exclusively yet, crawling is still much faster. He took 3 steps at the pool on Friday. On Saturday he was playing quietly behind me and I turned around to check on him and witnessed 5 steps across the living room (he didn't see me watching him.) He's been taking 2 or 3 steps more frequently since then and I expect he'll take off by the end of the week. Of course, the little man knows what a camera is and there's virtually no chance of catching any walking with one of those yet. However, he's also quite the proficient climber. Already capable of climbing onto the slide on the back porch, the top of the kids plastic picnic table, the couch (and safely back off)... and I got him mastering the old beach chair on video. Sorry, it's mostly of his backside :)

In other Michael news, he also likes to feed himself with a spoon now. He still needs quite a lot of practice with this new skill.

Scott and Blaise are still keeping busy entertaining me too. Blaise constantly says the most amusing things. 2 examples...

#1- While getting ready for bed a few weeks ago, Cullen had "encouraged" him to hurry up with an exasperated, "Come on, Blaise, get your pajamas on." Blaise looks over at me, dressing Michael, and says, "I'm coming on, because Daddy told me to come on."

#2- After dinner tonight, the boys are all playing in the living room, while I was putting things away. Blaise says to Scott, "Scott, let's do that thing where we hug each other and make us dead." Scott responds, "Okay." And for those that are wondering... here's the video of that thing.

We had our ultrasound yesterday... I guess you could say it went well. It's a baby! What we could see of the baby was perfect and actually measuring a few days ahead (we are 19 weeks now.) The parts of the ultrasound that didn't go so well... oh, the screaming 11 month old big brother who would have rather been actually taking his morning nap, and also the uncooperative baby who was basically folded in half with both legs and both arms up over his head... we have to return for a follow-up in 4 weeks, since they couldn't see everything they needed to see. This is our 3rd uncooperative baby in utero, for the record. (Anyone local want to keep the big brothers for the next one?)

For those that want to play the guessing game with us I started a new game at www.expectnet.com called "chipmunkkeen" Yes... this baby's nickname is chipmunk, as in Chip & Dale and we even have authentic Disney World Chipmunks for the baby's first stuffed toy (since we decided to start trying for this one in Disney World.)

It's June!

Can't say I'm sad to see the end of May. May was a long hard month for us... with a celebration on either end. First B's birthday... then sickness... then more sickness... then bad news... then worse news... then a wedding :)

Okay, here are a few details, but just a few. All 5 of us, yes, even baby Michael at just over 9 months old, had strep throat. Cullen missed several days of work that week. The following week he was out of town and I started a major head cold/sinus infection that I've been dealing with for more than 2 weeks now. While Cullen was out of town, we found out that my dad has a 2 inch tumor on his pancreas. More than a week later, he finally had a biopsy and they confirmed the tumor is cancer. They are still trying to work out details of a treatment plan, but have an oncologist who is setting up chemo and radiation, at the same time as they are meeting with a surgeon to determine if/when surgery will be possible (which would be best case.) PS- if you're not familiar with pancreatic cancer, it's not a good thing, the life expectancy is 2 years at best.

Ah, the fun stuff... the wedding. My brother got married on Saturday. We had a fun weekend with lots of family in town. Scott got to meet his birthday buddy for the first time. He and my cousin Rachael (who lives in Texas) share a birthday. Blaise slept through the wedding. He fell asleep in the car on the way there, we put him down on a pew inside the church and he didn't wake up until the very end of the wedding. Michael enjoyed eating watermelon with my cousins Rachael and Laura... in fact he basically stole Rachael's watermelon, rind and all, and chewed mercilessly on it. He cut a top tooth on Friday and I'm sure watermelon felt great. I got to visit with my cousin Somer, who I haven't seen since Blaise was a newborn. According to Somer, we haven't seen each other since, "I don't know, there were only 2." :)

Sunday morning the boys had a performance at church, for the end of our Sunday school class for the year. They have been doing and ABC Bible Verse class, learning a verse for every letter of the alphabet. Blaise opted out of the performance, but Scott was in rare form. He did interpretive dance the entire time. Never doing what everyone else was doing. Stamping his feet, standing when everyone else was ducking down... it was quite entertaining. I'll be trying to get a copy of a friends video of that one.

One more funny... yesterday Blaise was playing with a toy airplane. It was going down the runway (arm of the couch) and then taking off. After about the 5th take-off, he looks up and says, "Off to Neverland!"

Maybe I'll add pictures later... I'm waiting for them to finish uploading from the memory card.

4

And then there were 4...

Happy Thanksgiving :) This years holiday season is looking to be quite a bit different than years past!

When Blaise Turns 3

What a day! Blaise turned 3... wow, where did the time go? We had a very busy day of celebrating. At his request we spent the morning filling the kiddie swimming pool on the back deck. We'll see how long it lasts this year before breaking. With another year behind each of them, they seem quite a bit rougher this year. They had a blast. Giving each other "baths" with the hose. Blaise wasn't quite as interested as Scott, so mostly Blaise hosed Scott- which I thought was a nice change :) And the water was COLD, but the weather was nice and warm.

Then we went to Carowinds. The boys wanted to go and a friend of mine I hadn't seen in a very long time was going to be there. Yes, I know, I'm crazy to take 3 kids by myself to Carowinds (before the water park is even open.) We managed. We only stayed for about 2 hours, at least 40 minutes of which was walking back and forth from the parking lot. Blaise insisted he didn't need the stroller, so I wore Michael and got to carry Blaise on too on the way back. We did get to see my friend- which was really neat. We rode the carousel. Scott rode the airplanes, kind of like Dumbo only much smaller, lower, and slower. Blaise said they were too fast. We all rode the little train and the sky tower. Blaise was pretty worried when the sky tower first started up, but he calmed down, when he realized it wasn't going to do anything fast and enjoyed the view.

Grandma and Grandpa were here when we got home, but Blaise and Michael were completely asleep in the car (after the whopping 5 minute drive.) They napped and we played. Then we all went out to Cheesecake Factory for dinner. Blaise had requested a "cheese birthday cake," and when presented with the option he was quite excited about dinner at Cheesecake Factory. He ended up with a hot fudge sundae with 3 candles and waitresses singing Happy Birthday to him- which he thought was really cool. (We did share some cheesecake with him too.)

He's still fairly small for his age... 36 inches with shoes, and just under 30 lbs. But he is growing and eating well. He's 99% potty trained day and night, only occasionally needs to be reminded. He still has an amazing vocabulary for his age and is very quick with words. He loves to play with Scott and with Michael. We're not 100% certain that he really knows his shapes and colors, but we think he does (at least for the most part.) Probably 50% of the time he will answer all color questions correctly and the other 50% of the time he will say, "purple." "Green" was Scott's go to color, when he couldn't remember the name of the color he was looking at, so maybe it's just that, or maybe he's just pulling out leg, or maybe he really is still a little confused- who knows, but we're not worried. He can spell his name, but isn't into writing much of anything. Although, recently I handed him Scott's dry-erase maze book and he spent a long time just doing the mazes (and erasing them) over and over again. He's so independent- so different from Scott.

He's gotten a lot faster at running, better at jumping, and was even galloping a little and experimenting with standing on one foot recently. He has a blast every time he gets his scooter out and is remarkably good at that too. (Too bad for him, our driveway is gravel and we only have a short sidewalk to scoot on.)

Just Add Water

It's officially strawberry season! The strawberry patch up the road opened on Friday and we were there that day picking our first 2 gallons. They're almost gone. How many gallons do you think we'll pick this year?

Michael is getting quicker with this walking thing. He definitely still needs some hands or a walk-behind toy to hold onto, but he's cruising faster everyday. It seems to come with being the littlest, he's good at holding on tightly to things he's playing with and getting around (or over in some cases) obstacles (like Blaise, or anyone else) that are in his way.

Other Michael news... he seems to be changing so fast these days. Babies never cease to amaze me in that regard. In the past week, he's significantly increased his speed with his walking toy, he's started waving (mostly to that incredibly cute baby in the mirror), he finally cut his 2nd tooth, and he started clapping a couple of nights ago at dinner. Busy guy. They learn so much so fast in their first year. Amazing.

We are gearing up to celebrate Blaise's 3rd birthday on Friday. Actually his 3 friend play-date (party, but so named to discourage gifts, we have plenty), is tomorrow. In getting ready for that, we've been cleaning up the porch and that included cleaning out the sand table.

We'll add more sand in a couple of weeks maybe... but for now this is great! I really should have thought of this, oh, say, 2 months ago- being as there's only been a really small amount of sand in the table left over from last summer anyway.

Now the question is... how many minutes til they ask me to get the pool out again? Oh wait, they just asked at dinner tonight.