More firsts with my fourth

Really you think it will be a breeze the fourth time around.  You know the drill.  No surprises, right? 

Wrong.  They are all so different from physical traits to personality characteristics.  Surprises abound! 
For example, I have never been so dependent on buckles before.  I have used them in strollers and in grocery store baskets most of the time, but never in high chairs really.  This is because none of my children have ever even tried to stand up or get out of the highchair until now.  I ran upstairs while Drew was eating some bananas and told Isaac to call me if Drew needed me before I got back.  When I walked back in to the kitchen Drew was standing in the highchair turned around reaching for the frame on the wall.  Isaac was calmly eating breakfast.  Oops!   Really, double oops, because I sometimes forget that Isaac is not Hannah.  Hannah, at 2 years old would have been on top of that.  I still remember her dumping out a bucket of toys to play with right in front of 6 month old Genna and immediately picking out all of the choking hazards and putting them out of her reach.  After I rescued Drew and made a mental note to use the buckle (even though I have my doubts that a mere buckle would stop this guy), I explained to a completely unaware Isaac what to do next time in a situation like this. 

Drew has also tried to dive out of his float in the pool, nearly successfully. And, of course, there was the time when Isaac was trying to keep a toy away from Drew and put it on the kitchen table.  Drew reached up and could reach it since it was on the edge.  Isaac moved it back and before I knew what happened Drew put one foot on the bottom rail of each chair next to him and had his elbow up on the table.  Whew!  I have never had a climber, and one with no fear at that!  What am I going to do?  And how am I going to homeschool and keep this guy out of trouble?  Drew's guardian angel sure has his work cut out for him.  Each of our children have different struggles, and Brian and I pray specifically for each of them.  Brian told me the other day that we need to pray Drew simply makes it to adulthood.  True, true.

Typical Drew

One of my favorite things about my son, Drew, the thing that I can't help smile at every single time is how he says "Wow" and "Oh" so often.  I just love it and I told Brian that I really needed to get it on video before he outgrows this adorable habit.  I L-O-V-E this guy!

See you were smiling too, weren't you?

Drew is not a snuggler, but lately his momentary cuddles have been a bit more frequent.  I have to cherish the moment because it usually doesn't last long until he off again...in search of trouble.

Drew is on his knees a lot and this is just a very typical pose for him.  He chases balls around the house and gets on his knees to throw them.

Downward Dog pose.  He really doesn't do the regular crawl much it is either the one legged crawl (kind of in the half sitting position) or the bear crawl.  Boy, he is fast though!  Notice the drool from his mouth to the floor.  This is also typical these days.  There must be a new tooth on its way.  My dad nicknamed him Drewling because of it.

I finally got around to getting him standing on camera too.  He's been doing this for a long time, but he doesn't stand still for long since he is literally always on the go until we sit down in the rocking chair before bed time.  Then he crashes immediately.  This facial expression of his is also typical Drew.  Can you tell what he was saying?  I can guarantee you it was "Wow" or "Oh."

More handmade baby gifts

There has been a string of baby boys among my friends and family, but finally we have a girl on the way.  I heard this baby girl is destined to wear cloth diapers.  So I made her an embellished burp cloth (not shown) and a diaper cover that I found here.  This is specifically to cover cloth diapers and provide extra absorption.  The outside is made of felted wool for this purpose.  The inside is soft fabric matching with the appliqued cupcake. (The lone cupcake on the bum looks a little like a tree unfortunately.)  Drew modeled it for me to make sure it was functional.  I didn't tell him it was for  a girl.

 You can't see the Velcro band in the front very well in these pictures, but I made it adjustable so it will fit her sooner than 10 months.

Siblings in the Summer

Many people tell me they could never home-school their kids because they would drive them nuts with the arguing between siblings.  I think I have figured out why.  These people only have their kids home full time during the summer when there is a lack of routine.  When there is a lack of structure to the day, children tend to get into more trouble and siblings argue more.  This summer I have seen this in my own kids.  I guess it goes back to the saying, "Idle hands are the devil's workshop."  

I just finished (minus a few small details) reorganizing the unfinished part of the basement, and have started lesson plans for the school year.  This is keeping me busy and leaving the children idle too much.  I have resorted to doling out cleaning jobs when I get tired of the arguing and tattling.  The other day Genna and Isaac were having a silly argument, and I gave them an assignment as a sort of consequence instead.  Isaac had to draw something he loves about his sister, and Genna was supposed to write a sentence about something she loves about Isaac.  

 Genna wrote, "Isaac is nice and he shares his toys."  Isaac tried to draw a picture of him kissing his sister, but he said it didn't work.  So then he was drawing Genna helping him up when he fell.  Then he changed it again to the two of them posing for a picture together.

This is a typical Isaac look.  He was explaining what he was drawing.

Reunited at last!

Our really good friends from Germany have just moved here!  We are very happy to have them around again. 

 Here are all the kids, minus the two babies.

We had them over for dinner last weekend and the kids had a blast.  Their four year old daughter, Emma (in the middle of the picture,) has leukemia and just started her treatments one and a half months ago when they first got here.  I ask that you pray for her and the whole family.  This has been such a life overhaul for all of them. Although it is heartbreaking and extremely difficult for the whole family, our wonderful friends are trusting fully in Jesus.  They are such great examples of the light of Christ, praying for all the souls they meet because of Emma's illness.

Drew at 10 months and 1 week

Drew is a speedy crawler.  As you can see he is practicing the walking thing. He took one single step on Friday without holding on to anything.  Drew is my earliest to do this, by far.

However, he is the slowest on talking.  All three of the big kids had at least 20 words when they turned one year old.  I will be surprised if he is saying that many words by a year since he only has two months to go.  A list of Drew's words to date:

Mama

Dada

Up pronounced "Pah" (when he wants to be picked up)

Oh (he says this constantly and with all different level of inflection, and I love it)

Wow (when you hand him a new or favorite toy)

Ball pronounced "Bah"

Drew loves to eat and gets very excited and impatient when he sees food unless there is a social fun activity going on in which case he is more excited about the social scene than the food.  He has been know to eat breakfast twice because he eats before the big kids get up and then he sees them eating and wants what they have too.  His favorites, if I had to choose a few, would be watermelon, banana, yogurt, chicken, carrots, hummus, avocado, and all Mexican food.  The only thing he sometimes rejects is spinach or lettuce and it just depends on how it is prepared or what dressing is on it.  He is feeding himself mostly.  He is starting to get the pincher grasper thing down now.  I help with spoon foods like yogurt, applesauce, and hummus.  He is my earliest to feed himself also.

As for sleeping, after all the time zone changes, I now know that he has a harder time adjusting to even one hour time difference than my other kids, but it only lasts a day or two.  He had no problem sleeping in different houses for our whole vacation though.  His naps have gotten, sadly, shorter than they were one moth ago.  About a month ago he started taking 30-45 minute long naps.  During this time we went back and forth on having a third nap depending on the day.  After deciding this might not be just a phase, I tried extending his wake time in the morning.  I moved naptime from 9 to 9:30am and he started sleeping for 1 1/2 hours for both naps.  This is still not the two 2 hour naps that he was doing before we left for vacation and the first couple of weeks of vacation, but it is way better than the 30 minute naps.  You take what you get.  Occasionally, he will still wake up after 30 minutes but many times he will go back to sleep within 20 minutes of letting him cry/fuss undisturbed.  I have NEVER had a baby fall back asleep after waking early from a nap...EVER, and I tried with all of them.  More proof that Drewy is a one of a kind!  His schedule doesn't look nice and Babywised, but it is what it is and he is mostly a happy guy.  So, here is the schedule for my awake-way-too-much baby Drew...

Wake @ 6am

Nap @ 9:30-11am

Nap @ 2-3:30pm

Bed @ 7:30pm

The only other notable thing, besides him getting cuter by the day, is that for the last month he has started chilling out during our bedtime routine.  He will sit and look at the book (He is pointing to things in the book that interest him now, mostly balls!) or at the wall, and then turn around and cuddle me while I pray and sing with him.  It still only takes 5-7 minutes to do the whole thing, but he is letting me enjoy those minutes instead of wrestle to keep him in my arms.  That said, he does dive out of my arms into the crib the minute I stand up form his rocking chair.

**Later this same day Drew learned to crawl up stairs.  He made it almost to the top before someone noticed!  Oops!  

It's so nice to be home again!

 We finally made it back to the east coast and are home at last.  My poor husband had to drive from Colorado back to Red River, New Mexico on Saturday.  Then Sunday he drove back to Dallas, Texas.  Then early Monday morning we left to head home.  We stopped in Tennessee overnight to visit one more time with cousin Sophie.  Tuesday we drove to Roanoke, Virginia to have lunch with Brian's aunt and uncle.  We finished that day, finally, arriving at home in Maryland at 7pm.  The neighborhood welcomed us as we stretched our legs and unpacked only the necessities for the night.  One neighbor brought over a giant box of our mail for Brian and I to go through when the kids were in bed.  We survived the trip, and now we have hit the ground running with unpacking and household projects that need to be accomplished before the official school year gets started.  Here are some pictures from the last week.

The girls made Drew this "cage" with cushions and pillows at my parent's house.  He liked it and played in it until he didn't, at which point he scaled the walls and escaped.

Here is the promised picture of Drewy in his football onesie I made him.  He's so cute I could throw him!

The girls were thrilled to see their cousin again, and even more excited to have a sleepover on the living room floor.

 On Wednesday, we had to unpack the 12 passenger rental van, vacuum it out, reinstall the car seats and boosters in our van, return the rental van, go to the grocery store twice because brain-dead mommy forgot the milk the first time!), and then complete project number one on my summer list...

This was my first project to tackle...painting and organizing the kitchen pantry.  I painted the kitchen right when I found out I was pregnant with Drew, 1 1/2 years ago, and left the pantry for later.  Well, later came and went and I still hadn't found the time to do it.  So since it was nearly empty (due to our long absence) and it was on my summer project list, I decided this was a good day to do it despite the task of unpacking looming over my head and under our feet. 

I should have taken a "before" picture.  The shelves had plaid contact paper plastered on it from the previous owners.  It looks so nice and crisp now.  I keep opening it for no other reason than to peek at the orderliness of it all.

Road Trip Part 7: The Final Chapter...I Think

Brian had a work conference after New Mexico.  My dad stayed in Red River,  So my mom, my brother, the kids, and I made the 12 hour drive (10 hours of actual driving, and two hours worth of stops for gas, nursing, bathroom trips, and food) back to my parent's home in Texas.  The drive was relatively uneventful if you don't count Drew getting car sick at the very beginning when we were in the mountains and he was eating Cheerios.  That was kind of gross, but a change of clothes and we were off again.  

This is what we came back to when we rolled into town.

This rainbow is the best I've ever seen!

Aminal Sightings

The kids love animals!  I mentioned in my other post how much of their play in New Mexico revolved around bugs.  They were thrilled when the first night we got there Daddy led them to their bedroom window to show them our first visitor, a doe.

 

 

 

See the deer right above Batman's head!

The next day they found a grouse and her babies.  They followed them up to the road and across it.

The mother grouse was trying to distract us from her babies by making these beautiful sounds as the babies scattered.

There were tons of butterflies.  The kids chased them with butterfly nets.  I am thankful they never caught any because they would surely have injured it like the millions of poor moths they caught.

A butterfly

The family of ducks are in the river swimming upstream.  They are right under the tree in the picture.

Road Trip Part 6: Fourth of July in Red River

We spent our Fourth of July in Red River, New Mexico this year.  There was a burn ban due to the wildfires in Colorado and the dry weather in those parts.  So no fireworks this year, but they had a great parade.

 

The big kids watched the parade and awaited the throwing of candy.  It really was a big parade considering how small the town is.

I have never seen horses in a parade before.  You know Genna loved that!

Look at the beautiful scenery.  America the beautiful!

Mimi hung out with a sleeping Drew for the first part of the parade, but then switched with me.

I have also never seen a man with a bottle of Moonshine and a rifle in a parade before.  Only in the south!

Drewy woke up just in time to see the last of the parade.

Road Trip Part 5: Red River, NM

This is the road trip that never ends.  It just goes on and on, my friends...

The next leg of our trip was heading to my favorite childhood vacation spots.  We used to go to Red River, New Mexico almost every summer.  I used to fish with my dad, go on walks, shop with my mom, play canasta with the family, play in the icy river, pick flowers, find rocks, and all kinds of other outdoor activities.  I have always wanted to take Brian there since he loves fishing and the outdoors.  It was great to see the big kids playing and loving it there.  Drew...well, he was another story.

Look at the beautiful area!  I took pictures of the kids by the river next to our cabin.  They had fun finding animals and bugs.  They even had a funeral for Bobby the caterpillar, who was not actually dead, just lost.  They played with the plethora of moths and built homes for all the insects they could catch. 

Our cabin was called Bear Bait.  When I was a kid my family all stayed with my parent's friends who owned a cabin up there, but we have such a big family of littles that we rented a cabin and my parents and brother stayed with our family friends in their cabin.

Brian mostly fished.  I barely saw him except for dinner and Canasta when the kids went to bed.  Early in the morning he sat out and read Pathology journals with his coffee before he headed out with the guys to fish all day.  They did take the big kids one afternoon to fish with them.

Now back to Drew, this guy managed to make my vacation a lot of work.  You know how I mentioned how obedient he is normally before, well when it comes to eating dirt, pine cones, and other junk on the ground he is a little more stubborn.  I could literally not look away from him for more than 2 seconds at a time.  He bit off pieces of bark and pine cones and got a mouthful of dirt on many occasions.  Gross!  And exhausting!

There are  remnants of dirt around his mouth in this picture.

Cute, dirty bottom bear crawling in the dirt around the cabin.

"Look, Mom!  I found another pine cone to taste!"

A big highlight of the trip for Isaac was the free gun fight show in town.  Before the gun fight was Indian dancing.  I really enjoyed this part.  They were real Indian dances performed by Native Americans.

The gun fight was all for Isaac, although Drew seemed to like it as well.  He is not at all frightened by loud noises like Isaac was when he was a baby.  So the gun shots didn't bother him at all.  I jumped more than he did.

The only thing I regret was not getting more hiking and walking in.  Unfortunately, I have done a poor job of teaching my kids to walk even when they are tired.  In the high altitude it is even more tiring and the mountains make their poor legs wear out quickly.  I love to walk though when the weather is so nice!  Isaac is the biggest wuss of them all.  He usually doesn't make it past the corner in our own neighborhood.

My Sister's Baby Shower

My sister is having a baby boy, named Dylan, in August, and the timing worked out well for me to be able to help throw her a shower with my cousin and sister-in-law.  The theme of my sister's nursery is everything sports so we went with that for the theme of the baby shower too.  Give me a theme and you are in trouble!  My sister-in-law is the same way, so get ready for an overdose of sports.

My sister-in-law made this scoreboard for the entryway.

We hung sports clothes in the doorway.

  

This was our sign in table.  My sister-in-law was in charge of this part.  She had a guest book with a bat pen, the invitation framed, a football piggie bank, and accented with baby socks.

 When people came in we gave them a safety pin to play the don't say "baby" game.  My girls made it their personal mission to win this game and did by tricking people into saying "baby" and collecting 11 pins each.

  

My cousin made this adorable diaper baby with personalized clothing.  I don't know if you can see the baseball pacifier, but it is so cute!

 I forgot to take pictures of the table centerpieces that my sister-in-law made.  And my mom helped make advice cards by writing "DYLAN" down the side on scrapbook 5 x5' paper.  Everyone had these at their table to write a piece of advice for the new mom starting with each letter of his name.

Here is my sister, looking stunning, as usual.

Here is a clothesline for extra decoration.  I made her some sports themed clothing items that we hung here.

I got the idea for this football onesie from my sister-in-law who found this website.

This football onesie was easy to make.  So easy, in fact, I made a bigger one for Drew too.  Drew made a brief appearance at the shower to nurse and he wore his football onesie.

I made this football hat using a crochet pattern I found online.  And yes, Drew now has one also.  Although he hates hats so we will see if he wears it this winter or not.  I found this pattern here.

I embellished this burp cloth by sewing on some fabric left over from the quilt I made Dylan.  I appliqued a felt circle and made it a basketball with some stitching.  Then I hand embroidered the "MVP."

Using left over fabric again and some other complimentary fabric, I embellished this burp cloth with fabric and a "D."

I had this football piece in my stash and used the machine to applique it on this embellished burp cloth.  I also used the machine to embroider "Team Wagner" on it.  I was loosing momentum by this time and running out of time.  It is the first time I have ever used the sewing machine for applique or embroidering.  I was pretty pleased with how it turned out.

Saving the best for last, my favorite...the food!  This football field has asparagus as the goal posts, cucumbers, hummus, and carrot slivers as the 50 yard line markers, broccoli as the grass, bell peppers as the lines, carrots and cherry tomatoes as the players.  My brother-in-lay added a cut piece of an avocado as the football.  I got these ideas here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I made this football field out of vegetables and dips. 

Notice the football sippy cut I found at the last minute.

The fruit tray baseball diamond was super easy.  Grapes were the field, strawberries were the lines where you run the bases (whatever those are called!), and containers of strawberry cream cheese dip were the bases.  I saw this on Little Miss Mama's blog.

Baseball Diamond Fruit Tray

 The cake is usually my favorite part, but not this time.  I was frustrated with how it turned out and had to make a lot of changes when things didn't go the way I had planned.  It still turned out fine, but the design I had for it didn't pull through because I didn't have all my stuff from home, tips and dyes, etc.  Anyway, the plan had been to have the corner squares have footballs and baseballs in them, but some malfunctions in the icings didn't allow that.  So I changed it to dots and added the accent footballs on top.  This cake was inspired from two different cakes.  The "quilt" part of the idea came from here.  The sports was brought into it from here.  I wanted it to be a little different from each of those though.

 

The baseball Oreos idea came from Little Miss Mama also.

These baseballs came from Oreos dipped in white chocolate and then piped with red gel icing.  I wished I had been able to find the pre-dipped Oreos, but it didn't end up taking that much longer to dip them.  They were definitely worth the effort and there were none left at the end of the shower.

 

These are some of the 40 cake pops chilling in the fridge before game time.

I made these football pops ahead of time and the only thing I regret is using the white gel icing for the threads because it never hardened.  I was able to keep most of them in tact, but the threads smeared on some.  I should have used melted white chocolate for the threads.

 

Genna posed for me with her cake pop.

Like I said, I go crazy for themes!