Judah's Big Day: Coming Soon

 Judah's getting baptized on Saturday with his two little buddies.  I'm busy with Thanksgiving and his baptism reception this week.

My three boys!  Judah sat in his Bumbo for the first time, but he isn't quite steady enough for it yet.

Here are some sleeping baby comparison photos... 

Judah

Judah

Hannah

Genna

Isaac

Drew

 Then I found this one that really looks like Judah.  It's Drew.

Drew

And for comparison, a sneak peak of Judah in his baptismal gown...

Drew's Chugging Along on the Potty Train

Every time I stand him in front of the potty he actually goes.  This could be good or bad.  Hannah was like that from an early age, but she was the most difficult to potty train in the end.  I am chalking that up to my inexperience though.  Here is Drew right after another potty success...

What a hyper mess!  If you've met our other children, but not yet had the pleasure of meeting this monster, you would wonder where in the world he came from.  We do!  His personality is cute and he is my best sleeper, so I'm not complaining. 

Arty Party

 Hannah's 9th birthday party was Sunday afternoon.  I really didn't do a good job on pictures because it was a very hands on party for me.  I had 15 little girls that I had to keep busy and contained in the garage.  Since it was an art party and was bound to be messy, I set up tables in the garage.  I was rushing to get the party set up after Mass.  Between chasing Drew around and everything I totally forgot to take "before" pictures.  Drew ended up in toddler "jail" AKA his highchair so I could get stuff done since my equally perfectionist husband suddenly had to rake leaves in the front yard.

It was a simple spread...the ever popular cheese balls, grapes, and a veggie tray.  Juice boxes and a pallet cake too!

These are paint brush rice crispy treats for favors.  Bad pic, because I was rushing.  The paint brushes had red, blue, green, and purple "paint" on them.

These aprons were also favors.

Face painting

 Face painting was first with free painting while they waited their turn.  I had a wonderful mommy help me with this.  I wish I had gotten a picture of all the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Immaculate Hearts of Mary that we painted.  I drew a bunch of samples on a page and let them choose.  Those were the most popular.

Next project was to finish a half drawing.  

Hannah's

Genna's

Then we did the Blindfolded Masterpiece Game.  Everyone took turns being blindfolded and drew a piece of the picture of Hannah.  For example, someone drew a nose, next an ear.  The girls got quite a kick out of it.  Lots of high pitch squealing.

Blindfolded Masterpiece

Then we had snacks, divided into teams, and played Pictionary.  After that was cake time!

Then I got the question.  "Mrs. Smith, are we going to be in the garage the whole time?"  I thought making it to 1 hour and 45 minutes was pretty good to keep them busy enough to stay in the garage.  Present time!

I am so happy that my daughters are so blessed to have such great friends.  Every gift was so thoughtful and she was so grateful for the gifts.  She even got a new pair of fuzzy pajama pants to replace the high water ones she wears constantly.

Compare all five at about 3 months old

Hannah

Hannah

Genna

Genna

Isaac

Isaac

Drew

Drew

Judah

Judah

Who do you think he looks the most like?  These pictures have reminded me how gigantic Isaac was compared to all the rest.  He was a chubby, chubby monster.

Judah is 3 months old today.

I can't believe this guy is already 3 months old, and yet at the same time  it seems he's always been with us. I have not been posting weekly about him like I did with Drew.  This is because I am just too busy.  Busy with five kids?  What?  I know.  Every once in a while I have a daydream about putting my kids in school, and I think about how clean my house would be and how much more time I would have.  Then I snap out of it and remember that teaching their hearts and heads is much more lasting than a clean house and some free time.

Anyway, back to my boy.  He is just as cute as ever.  He's rolled from tummy to back a couple of times, but it is still very accidental.  For the last month he has been more of a 45 minute napper than not.  I am doing everything right and yet still he persists with mostly short naps.  So I am resigned to this behavior.  You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him sleep drink.  He is not doing that great at night anymore.  Before the ridiculous time change he was waking consistently between 3 and 4am, but now he is all over the place.  To top it all off he is having trouble going back to sleep after that nursing.  By having trouble, I mean screaming for 45 minutes until I cave and reinsert the pacifier.   BUT on the bright side he is a wonderfully pleasant baby.  He is happy most of the time just hanging out.  I can definitely tell he is happier when the kids are around than when they disappear for reading or playing outside.  I catch him often with his thumb, fingers, or fist in his mouth.  He still likes the pacifier, but can't keep it in or put it in himself which would really be helpful.  He likes his play gym and bouncy seat the best right now.  His bassinet must be too lonely for him now.  He doesn't last long in there.  He's in 6-9 month clothes mostly and just moved to a size 3 diaper because of his fatso tummy that I love.

Not super great at holding up his head.  It might be my fault since I have been forgetting tummy time some days.

My Grandmother

My grandmother holding a 3 month old Hannah, her first great-grandchild..

My grandmother passed away on Monday, one day after her 90th birthday.  She was my last living grandparent.  As a child she was my favorite grandmother because she was a doer.  She took me to the zoo, to the park, on walks, and to the tennis courts.  Grandmother was known by her grandchildren for her water races (to get us to drink more water after playing outside) and for insisting we have the water running while we peed some predetermined number of times per day.  She also always made us back down the stairs to the basement.  I would do it with a chuckle when I was in high school and was still having to back down the stairs.  She taught us how to find doodle bugs and sent us into the backyard with pie tins to collect them in.  

I remember how she loved dessert and always had vanilla ice cream with chocolate syrup for us after dinner.  When I got Chicken Pox in the first grade, she stayed with me telling me not to scratch and piling blankets on me.  When I was in high school, I stayed with her one week out of the year while my dad was out of town.  She would heat up the bathroom for me every morning for my shower and make me breakfast.

When I got married and had children, she would come over to my parent's house when we were in town just to sit and watch my kids play.  She always seemed to really enjoy everything they did.  As they got older, they put on performances for her.  I am so glad that they brought her such joy as she got older and couldn't do as much.

Good-bye, Grandmother.  I know this world had wearied you.  May your soul be at peace with Jesus in heaven.

American Girls

Last Monday, I took the girls to the American Girl store because I owed them a trip and they had a free craft.  However, the free craft was quite lame for the drive.  The girls did have fun and buy an accessory with their money for their dolls.  That's all they could afford.

Hannah was not into this picture thing, but I talked her into one picture.

The News of the Weekend

Our big news of the weekend was that Drew peed in the potty for the first time ever!  It didn't even involve hours sitting on th potty, he stood on my feet and tried for a minute and "Voila!"  We danced and sang and he got a couple of Skittles.  Fun times!  I am a little anxious to get this guy potty trained because I am spending an insane amount of money on diapers, wipes, and pullups.  (I still have one more in night time pullups.)  I know, realistically, that it will be a good while before he is potty trained, but it gives me hope.  All my kids have been right around 2 1/2 years old no matter when they started practicing on the potty though.

Drew's been "reading" to himself suddenly.  This is a new one for this hyper munchkin.  He is also putting full sentences together now, all the words are there, but the funny part is that they usually are not in the correct order.  "Hannah gave me a banana."  would sound like, "Gave me banana Hannah."  It takes some brain power to decipher the really long complicated sentences, which as you may suspect, I don't have right now.

Judah had a first this weekend too.  He slept for 7 hours straight.  He's only done 6 hours once or twice, usually it is closer to 5 hour stretches at night.  I kept waking up and starting to get out of bed, then realizing that he wasn't crying or awake.  Weirdo!  Go to sleep already and enjoy it!  That's what my husband would say.  :)

I started counting my Weight Watchers points again last week and lost 3 lbs.  Yay!  I had plateaued in my after pregnancy weight loss and then even started gaining a few of the pounds back, so I thought it was time.

Don't have a picture of it, but Isaac got kicked in the face this weekend and his nose swelled up on one side.  There is a little bit of a bruise around the eye and on that side, but it does not appear to be broken.  Thank You, God!  Hopefully, he learned his lesson, not to roll around on the ground in the dark with a bunch of kids running around.

Hannah and I went shopping for her winter clothes again.  Nearly everything she tried on was too tight here, too loose there, too itchy, and the clothes better not have seams that you can feel!  Okay, Queen Hannah, here is your hand crafted seamless garment of fuzzy softness.  Yeah right!  It was a mess, and I rolled my eyes on more than one occasion as I was leaving the dressing room to go find a different size and was caught by another mom waiting outside the dressing room.  I suppose it is one of my crosses to bear, having a child that can't be happy in anythin but pajama pants and her daddy's shirt.  Brian is not nearly as frustrated by this because he is holding out hope that this will make her unattractive to the male species when she enters her teens.

This is one of the failed attempts.  She is only smiling because I made her.  Her original expression uglified the dress.  This dress is "too itchy and the collar comes up too high."  I did not buy it, but told her I wanted a picture of her in a cute dress.  She was worried I would make her wear it, but I told her that the last thing I wanted was to fight over her clothes and get her to wear it a couple of miserable times.  She's old enough to pick her own clothes if they are reasonable and appropriate.

An Interview with Drew

You might want to tilt your head slightly to the left for this one.  The worst part is that I thought I was taking it the right direction the whole time.  I know better than this.  Brian has told me a hundred times.  "Sleep deprivation!" she cries.

I was trying to get Drew to do his famous, "huh huh" sound that he makes after almost every Cookie Monster sentence he says, but it was a little forced here and, therefore, not nearly as cute.  Picture, "Me eat.  Huh huh." a million times a day.  We tried to count one day, and the girls and I gave up after 30 times by mid morning that he had said "Huh huh."

Ready. Set. Tilt.

To top it all off...

 Brian took the three big kids to Great Falls on Saturday after German school.  They went with our neighbors.  I stayed home with my two little boys so they could nap and I could recuperate from the week.  I even got a good nap in which is a rare commodity since my mom left.

Here are my littlest boys that kept me company.  Gig'em Aggies!