Those Other Kids of Mine

Yes, I do have some big kids too, not just the three little ones!

Isaac has been enjoying the fall baseball season, his first machine pitch season.  He has also become an expert tree climber and can't wait to buy himself a scooter with some of his saved up money.  He's reading the Redwall series right now.

My other readers are sitting on our loveseat before we sold it.  The girls just finished up golf for the fall just in time for our move.  The girls have been soaking up all the friend time they can before saying good bye.  They have been making rapid improvements in their German studies.  They understand a lot, but are still a little slow to speak.  I am hopeful that will improve once we are there.

Moving, Moving, Moving!

It's really happening!  All our stuff is gone and we've been living in an almost empty house for over a week.  We leave Tuesday, but just barely.  Monday night we head to the airport.

Passports came in the nick of time.

Living out of suitcases while they are packing us up has been a challenge.  Some munchkins have been dragging things out.  Go figure!

Judah's wearing Isaac's old Germany shirt.  Judah is just a few months older than Isaac was when we moved from Germany into this house.

 Judah actually was a little bothered by the fact that all his stuff in his room was gradually disappearing.  He went to put his water on the bookshelf like he always does and it was gone.  He said, "Oh no!  They took my bookshelf!"  I tried to explain what was going on but he seemed distressed that his crib wold be taken away.  He adjusted to the pack-n-play just fine in the end.

There was about four days where we had packers and movers in our house the entire day.  Bobby takes a lot of naps so he couldn't very well skip them like Judah could once his stuff was gone or being packed up.  So, Bobby slept in his Moses basket on the floor of the basement bathroom most of those days.  This is nothing new for him which I'll explain in another post.  However, what I didn't anticipate was a moving guy walking into a bathroom that had the door shut.  I tried to catch him, but he already shut the door and turned on the light before realizing there was a baby in there sleeping.  I really don't think he ever would have noticed if the video monitor wasn't sitting on the toilet lid.  Right away I labeled the bathroom as having a baby sleeping and I went ahead and labeled the bathroom the cat was in too even though that one we locked from the inside since we know how to open it.

These guys will totally fit in one of these boxes.  Should I ship them ahead?  Sure would make my life easier.

Watch out Germany, because here we come!

Bobby at 3 months

Seriously, two to three months has been Bobby's "Angel Baby" phase.  I don't know if he'll be this chilled for the duration or not, but I have loved it so far!

First off he finally got this falling asleep on his back thing down with minimal to no crying depending on the day.  Then he started napping better.  Basically, he'll nap well for several days and then appear to be all caught up on sleep and go back to short naps (but even the short naps are longer...45-60 minutes...than he was doing...10-20 minutes) for a few days.  Then we repeat. Sometimes the cycles are longer or shorter, but you get the gist of it.  The most important thing to me is that the babies are happy in between naps and will go to sleep relatively easily.  He is fitting that bill this month for sure.  I can lay him down for his awake time, and he is good to go until he is getting sleepy or just wants to be moved somewhere else.

This is my regularly scheduled baby in the laundry basket photo because how else do you get a basket of clean laundry and a baby up the stairs?

Second, he is only my second baby to be sleeping between 5 and 8 hours at night in a row this young.  Genevieve was the first, and like Genevieve, Bobby is a short napper most of the time so this seems to make sense.  They've got to sleep sometime, right?

He just moved into size 3 diapers and he is almost out of his 3-6 month clothes.  I think he's about 16 lbs, and he may be my smallest boy yet if so.  He's still a little chunk though.  Look at those cheeks!

He is also grasping toys that are hanging right in front of him and putting them in his mouth.  He can hold onto the ring type toys pretty well, but he is getting to the point where he gets a little frustrated when he drops them whereas before he didn't care too much.

Bobby is not easily upset by noises or much of anything unless he is over due for a nap and then he gets more sensitive.  When he does start to make a face like he is going to cry after getting startled, if you smile, his face will quickly turn into a smile as well most of the time.  Seriously, an angel.  

At the beginning of this month he started laughing.  In fact, it is only fitting that his very first real and repeated laugh was for my good friend who was there when he came into the world, Ann, and her daughter, Bridget.  His laughs are to die for.  A very unique thing about the Bobster is that he loves his vitamin D drops.  Each night before I read him his poem before bed I give him his drops and he giggles away at me in between sips.  He smiles in response to almost anyone's smiles.  His dimples are killing me, of course.  He has a really amazing smile.  I can prove it.  Scroll down and enjoy the wonderfulness of Bobby!

What'd I tell you?  Exhibit #1

Exhibit #2

Exhibit #3

Since I wrote this post a while back when he actually turned 3 months old, I should say that he caught the cough that the rest of the family had and promptly stopped sleeping through the night.  He's still a doll baby though!  What does it matter?  This move overseas is going to mess everybody up anyway.

An Early Birthday Party Before the Move

Hannah was most distraught over the realization that her birthday would come so quickly after getting to Germany and she wouldn't have any friends yet.  So we offered her to option to celebrate it early with her friends here in the states.  She jumped on that!

We brainstormed ideas for an easy party since I have a newborn and an overseas move going on here.  A friend of mine suggested Buffalo Wild Wings on a Wednesday night when they have 99 cent kid's meals.  Well, here we struck gold!  It was so cheap, and she had 13 girls come to the party.  I was able to buy a couple of moms dinner to help me transport them back to our house afterwards for dessert and a movie.  I even bought extra wings for everybody, and still it was the cheapest party ever!

For dessert, Hannah wanted brownies with whipped cream.  I threw in some sprinkles and let everyone make their own.  Easy!

Best of all, my Hannah was blessed by her friends...just a little early.  ;)

Storing my sewing machine! Gasp!

Never fear though, I'm going to get one in Germany.  But before I stored my favorite sewing machine in the whole world in long term storage, I finished some mending and a few lingering projects.

This is a hooded towel for Felicity, my cousin's new baby girl.

The biggie was finishing all the hand stitching on Bobby's quilt and then putting it all together with top stitching and edging and all.

You can really not tell in the photos, but the backing is navy with "Twinkle, twinkle little star" written all over it.

I think he likes it!

By the way, happy three month old birthday to you, Bobby, my sweet angel baby!

Guess who can write his name?

 Drew!  Finally!  He really had no interest in this, but I told him we would start practicing it in his new binder with different activities in it.  Now that he can do it, I catch him trying to write it on his own time.  In fact, just the other day, I caught him writing it with marker on a paper while sitting on my new rug.  Upon closer inspection before he had started that endeavor, he first drew on my rug with blue marker, not Sharpie, but not washable either.  I did, however, get the stain out with baking soda and vinegar.  Now, guess who is grounded from all  markers until further notice?  Yes, same person.  Drew!

The Child that Loves Hats

Judah has taken a liking to hats lately.  He's even tried to wear his new Superman hat to bed, but he will now admit that doesn't work very well.

He won't even let me take off his hoodies when it warms up in the afternoon or even for naps.  Once it goes on it stays one all day.  Apparently, even balloons with do for a hat in a pinch.

He is a silly boy for sure and loves to laugh.

On the day I am writing this post, he actually fell down the basement stairs from the very top.  I didn't see it, but he told me he stepped on the the tin cover of Brain Quest that someone had not put away.  It was on the third step from the top.  He only hurt his upper lip as far as we can tell.  He complained about it for the rest of the evening.  Poor guy!  I am thankful he is okay and am going to have to restrict his stair use once we are in Germany since they have tile stairs there that give me nightmares.

Instead of Breakfast with Tiffany...

We had breakfast with Poppy!  Poppy was able to make one more trip to see us before we move.  He was here just for the weekend (quite a busy weekend,) and he took us for breakfast at Panera after Mass on Sunday.

Somebody's getting chubby cheeks!

Somebody just couldn't wake up!

I love this picture!  I didn't even realize how close their hair color is until this.

Brian took some group pictures, but I am thinking these were a fail since the kids were acting too goofy.

Somebody cooperated though!

The Last Church Picnic

I say "last," but I should say first and last because every year we've ended up not going for one reason or another, usually naps.  Yes, I am a nap Nazi.  This year Brian wouldn't let me out of it.  It was going to be the last chance, so I conceded.  I am glad we went even though naps did get messed up a bit.  We had a really lovely time and saw some people that we don't see often because we go to different masses.

There was a very cool and funny clown making the kids balloon "animals."  He could make almost anything.  Isaac got a sword.  Genevieve got a kitty.  Judah got Elmo.  Hannah got an Octopus.  Drew got an airplane.  We stayed longer than we had planned just to do this, and it was worth it.  It brought the kids so much joy.