I really think next year we may just move Bennett’s birthday. Or maybe I’ll better be able to cope with it by then. January isn’t a good month to have a party anyway, it’s mid-RSV/flu/ugly bug season. It was SO HARD to be excited about his birthday when the memories of his birth are not all warm and fuzzy. The other kids’ birthdays we can watch their birth videos and look at pictures and tell them the story and show them homecoming outfits and it’s a really neat, fun, great recollection. Bennett’s birthday memories - not so pretty. The outcome is great, the actual week was traumatic, like Post Traumatic Stress Disorder Traumatic. I want to celebrate his birthday, but I want to have HAPPY memories and as the years go by and we have more birthday memories maybe those will overshadow the actual birth day memories.

However, now that we’re coming up on the anniversary of when Bennett came HOME, I’m so excited! Baylor hosts a NICU reunion celebration every other year and the last one was the week Bennett came home. We took the older two kids to attend and they had a blast and it’s next weekend that we’ll go again. Bennett should have shown up around May 30th so developmentally it’s closer to where he should be. It’s also my sister’s birthday (and that would be the saint of a sister that moved in with us for months on end and mothered my children when I couldn’t sit up.) We had so very many incredible, selfless friends and family that stepped in and helped every single day and I still tear up thinking about how blessed we were to have this network of loving support. And we just learned Jenny and Sean are planning to fly in for that weekend (of her birthday and when Bennett was due) so LOTS of exciting fun stuff to enjoy.

Here is the photo Rebecca took of me two years ago - she lives in Fort Worth and came to the hospital in Dallas and took the most beautiful NICU pictures I’ve ever seen. Even though Bennett had an IV in his head and was still on the ventilator, she made it so peaceful and gorgeous. You can see some of those shots here.

But this is also the woman that made me look good in LABOR, as you can see from this shot of me looking all peaceful and relaxed an hour before Emiline was born. Yep, she’s that good. I was impressed she made bedrest look endurable (she took that shot the day I moved into Baylor on bedrest, I delivered Bennett that week.) Then with Emiline she took pregnancy portraits that I think are works of art. Okay, I’m utterly biased, but those shots are really beautiful!!

Here’s one of the Emy shots, I’m 32 weeks or so?

This is Jenny holding Bennett on CPAP, and she just told the kids she’s coming to visit. Which means we’re now in obsessive count down mode until Jenny and Sean arrive and fights over whose bed they will sleep in (and I warned them, good chance they will wake up with three kids in bed with them.) But they’re such good sports & they’ll be incredible parents. Jenny helped raise my kids and if that’s not a trial by fire than I don’t know what is.

Then this was just cute - I’ve talked before about Bennett’s doctor coming for his final exam and Ben was getting a breathing treatment, so the doctor sat down with Moira and fed her pie while he waited. This is Moira licking the remains of the whipped cream on the “Baylor pie” on the day of Bennett’s homecoming.

And if you want to laugh so hard you’re going to snort (put down anything you’re drinking) then you can read this post from when Bennett came home. I called him “mellow” - the child that is now in my lap trying to help me type this and now (pause) I’m having to snatch back Daddy’s power book that “mellow” boy just found unsupervised. MELLOW?? It was only because he was on oxygen, that tube came off and he took off crawling. Here he is that week of November 2005:

I love how he looks all wide eyed and innocent, like, “What, did I completely scare you to death for months on end and now I’m acting all cute while secretly shoving everything in my mouth while your back is turned?”

So, random memories from happy days two years ago.

Awhile back I heard about this book from a friend and I mentioned it to our local librarian. She bought it (because they are SO cool like that. She also picked up a $100 art history book when I said we were hoping to get a good reference for the kids. Oh, and a new version of a reading book I heard was good, because they had the older version. How nice are they?) Anyway, the book talks about community, how our society now is set up that most of us are really disconnected from each other. Do we live near extended family like generations before us did? Do we grow up on the same street? Do we even know our neighbors? Our local businesses? If there was any sort of emergency, who would we reach out to? Who do we help, do we volunteer, do we know the names of our local elected officials, our firefighters, our cashier, our mailman? We sure don’t.

So we resolved to work on that - we want our children to grow up with a sense of community, of accountability and connection to those around them. We want them to feel that they belong to this area and that people know them and that they reach out and serve others. We have a very strong church family, as Kit discussed below. But we realized we’re too quick to let that be the limit of our network and we really want to stretch ourselves a bit. Which is part of what prompted us to start the science co-op with some friends in our old town (all 10 miles away) and to join the craft co-op in our area and for me to join the little local community book club. I’m still trying to meet others at church, I started a cooking group and we’re beginning a play group/project group for moms and kids. But I want to reach out to people beyond church and get to know our neighbors and it’s been a wonderful experience.

Now that life is a bit calmer we’re able to add some things to our lives. Now that we’re out of survival mode.

So community - we walked to the library today and it made us smile to have Christopher greeted by name. (He’s on their website after all.) The greeter at Walmart (whose name I should know by now!) recognizes our kids and pulls out stickers, as does the teller at the bank that gives the kids helium balloons each visit. We know the office staff at the primary school where Moira gets therapy and when Emy was born they all told us they saw her birth announcement and congratulated us.

I love that we can walk to the park and the soccer field, the library, the post office. I love that our town has a Mardi Gras parade that throws candy to the kids. I love that the firefighters are willing to bring their truck to storytime at the library or birthday parties and wave to the kids when we run into them grocery shopping. I love that on the 4th of July we just walk out our fence to the field and watch the fireworks. I love that we can walk around the lake on the new jogging trail and let the kids play on the new city playground because a city of 6,000 residents REALLY needs that 6th huge, brand new playground. I love that in our little cluster of three towns, we’re renting a house from one of the mayors and he’s such a sweet guy and happy to sit there chatting with Christopher while fixing random things around our house. I love that we live in a “small” town but can be at a nationally acclaimed children’s medical center in less than 30 minutes. I love that our kids can go to world famous art museums that are half an hour away and choose from not one but TWO major city zoos, but they can watch horses walk past our back fence because our town is that little. We can drive 20 minutes and catch a non-stop flight to Europe, but we can drive 5 minutes and be camping out on a lake in a secluded park.

And Jenny, Kit says it sounds like I’m trying to recruit. Our intent was not to lure you to our neighborhood, but that would sure be a cool perk.

So, I love our town. I love our friends and our co-ops and our ward. I love feeling like we’re putting down roots.

We found a fun idea in a family magazine - make a guide for your home town. Where are the best parks? Ice cream shop? Historical landmarks? City buildings? Take pictures of the places your kids go, your church, your library, etc. We decided to make that a project and I think it will be a neat memento for the kids - how cool would it be to have that from your own childhood? Photos of your school, your friends, your favorite restaurants, where you played soccer? To show to your own children where you grew up? So we’re going to make one (I already wish I had one for Christopher from where he was born in California.) I want to get pictures of the places the kids were born, too. Where Moira rides ponies. Where Kit and I had our first date. These places are all near by, so I want to snap pictures before we forget or things start changing. Ambitious project to add to my “List of huge projects to complete before the children leave home” right up there with the family history books for them (collecting pictures and stories and details of the lives of their grandparents and great-grandparents. I’m only ambitious enough to do 4 generations, which is still 17 people if we count their 5 grandparents and 10 great grandparents and us. Eeks.) Maybe I’ll post it digitally, then burn it on DVD for the kids instead of making actual albums. That may work…

I’ve discovered if I post some goal here then I feel more accountable to myself for finishing because I’m announcing it. Funny, huh? But it requires some stretching on my part to reach out to others, I feel uncomfortable greeting strangers and asking their name and I need to work on that, because we have such a friendly town. But when you pass strangers, do you smile and wave and say hi? Or avoid eye contact? I’m the avoider. Even walking on college campus, I just raced around getting to class and work and didn’t slow down and smile or say hi to people. I’m working to change that, to make eye contact and greet people. To learn their names.

Somewhat related, we’re also working to buy local (farmer’s market or Sprouts) but that’s more than just the building community so probably another post. We’ve been horrendously lazing about recycling so we found our community recycling center this week. We’re setting some goals in that area, I’ll have to share them later because this rambling post has grown ridiculously long…

So those goals would be working on community, making an “Our Town” album and the family history book. Remind me, okay?

I missed last year’s talent show. I honestly can’t remember if Critter performed for it or not, but be sure that when the signup for this year’s show went up at church, Critter was one of the first in line. He was determined right at the very start to perform cartwheels as his talent. We didn’t even know he could do cartwheels, and in fact he couldn’t. But he practiced and finally got pretty good. Good enough to dazzle the audience in any case. Mo decided she would play the harmonica. Daddy helped. She froze, but pulled it through. A few bars into the song, you can’t hear a thing because the audience starts cheering so enthusiasticaly for her, and when she was all done, she was just beaming.

Primary Talent Show ‘07.

Heidi and I were talking about this experience in the car on the way home. We were both marvelling at the community we’re raising our kids into. For example, when C was getting ready to do his thing, another father watching said to me, “You think Christopher’s going to be nervous?” Then we both started laughing at his joke because he knew full well how ridiculous his statement was. When Mo was done, you could hear everybody calling out her name, cheering her on. This sort of unconditional love where everybody knows all the kids names is pretty normal for our ward.

The talent show itself was something else, too. We’ve seen single adult and young adult talent shows and let’s be honest here: they can be painful. But in the primary, these kids are full of desire and potential and a lot of really unpolished talent. There’s no pretense there — just kids who want to do whatever silly little thing their heart desires. The families are all there to support each other, and the entire thing is heartwarming. I’m glad we went.

Bennett’s been feeling fragile this morning, really clingy and cuddly. He went down for a nap early and when he woke up he was crying and crawling on top of nursing Emy to get into my lap. After I laid her down I was changing Bennett’s diaper and he was still acting unhappy, saying, “Uh-oh” and looking scared for some reason. Then I saw Emy crawling across the floor and that worried me, I wondered if she was going to start pulling his hair (she’s done that) or pull on his glasses (her new favorite chew toy.) She slowed as she got close to him and she was coming from above his head so he couldn’t see her and it looked like she was about to kiss him! I thought, “Oh, how sweet,” and watched as she very slowly leaned down to Bennett’s head - and LICKED HIM! I burst out laughing and she obviously didn’t enjoy the taste and crawled off and poor Bennett, not sure what just got him, starts saying again, “Uh-oh, uh-oh!” while holding his wet head. Poor kid.

This drives home Christopher’s mantra - he likes to spell, “N-O L-I-C-K the baby.” One of the first words he could spell. And now we know why.

Last month we were studying food groups for our health topic - Kit asked Christopher if he could name them and he said, “Um… sugar, vegetables, and fat.” Kit says that about sums it up. We had been discussing protein, sugars, fat, fiber, etc.

Rambling thoughts on feeding - what I guess it boils down to is back off. Make sure you provide healthy food choices, have specific meal and snack times throughout the day and don’t let them graze in between, and respect their right to decline. Look at their consumption as a weekly thing, not a daily (don’t panic if they refuse all produce one day because another day they may gorge on fruit - like Moira, wanting nothing to do with stuff yesterday and turning up her nose at the salad but this morning she just consumed a huge tangelo.) Oh, and let them eat as much as they want at those meal/snack times. Don’t attach value to food - the author of the food book I’m reading suggests offering a small part of dessert for the kids with the meal. How is that for going against everything we’ve ever heard about “You can’t have dessert unless you eat your veggies first!” but that makes veggies a punishment and dessert a reward. If you offer a small piece of dessert, maybe carrot cake, WITH the meal they probably will eat it first but they’ll still be hungry (if the piece is small) and they’ll eat the other food and they won’t grow up attaching too much value to sweets and believing healthy food is torture.

Okay, I can’t explain it well, go read the book. It’s been really thought provoking. Parents are in charge of bringing healthy food into the house, providing structure meal/snack time with the assurance that the child can eat as much as they want at those time, and setting guidelines for where we eat and when. Kids are in charge of what they eat (from those choices) and how much. Don’t force it.

BUT if we want them to eat healthy food they MUST see us eating and enjoying it and we must be careful of what we bring into the home. Don’t bring in chips if you don’t want your kid to eat them. And don’t force veggies that are unappetizing, that you wouldn’t like either. Make food enjoyable and varied and healthy. Be the good example. Be the good example for moderation, too. Don’t forbid certain foods, just let them know some foods are good in smaller amounts. If you make some food taboo or some food reward, the kid will have distorted ideas of food and values and why we eat.

I’m surprised to see how much Christopher LOVES having the structure of set meal and snack times. I’m a grazer, I often skip breakfast, get distracted during lunch and feed the kids but not me, I’m pretty good about having a healthy dinner for us to all sit down to together, then the kids to got bed and I keep grazing all night. Bad example. So Kit and I wrote up a snack and lunch menu (we do dinner menus already) and posted it on the fridge. We have a bigger schedule for our whole day now and included the snack/meal times. So we’ll do a lesson, snack, lesson, playtime, lunch, quiet time or specials, snack, outside play, lesson, dinner prep & dinner, etc. I should post the whole day schedule sometime. It’s pretty fluid but it gives us a loose outline. Anyway, Christopher LOVES having a set snack time and so do I. We prep the snack in the morning, we usually do two choices and he knows in advance what it will be. GREAT for kids that like routine and need transitions and warning and since I have all these “spirited kids” it really helps!

So today the snack was fruit and lunch is tuna sandwiches. They can pick any fruit they want and they can do tuna with crackers, sandwich or wrap and sides. We all sit down together, we talk and we snack, then we clean up. It’s been GREAT. I didn’t think I was capable of this type of consistency and structure but the kids thrive on that sense of routine - it’s not at any set time, sometimes snacks are 9am or sometimes they’re 10am, it depends on lessons and when we woke up and what our activities have been. But knowing every morning they get a snack and can eat as much as they want, then no more snacks until meal times. They are eating healthier, they aren’t grazing all day, they’re hungry for meal times and eating a better variety because they are hungry. Funny, that it’s less than 2 hours between each of their meals and snacks but it’s enough time for them to feel hungry again. I love it.

Plus it’s better for me because I’m sitting down and eating with them, we’re planning to make sure the food over the course of the day is varied and healthy, and knowing in advance we can prep stuff - Thursdays we do muffins or homemade granola bars, so we make them a couple days earlier. Kit helps prep stuff before he goes to work. I’m not snacking on unhealthy stuff all day long because I’ve skipped meals.

Funny how organized we are getting! I guess with four kids 5 years old and under getting organized is necessary to survive. Well, or I could just keep grazing and letting them eat junk but this way I feel like I’m setting a good example for them and we’re all eating better. I hope it’s an investment in our health, for all of us. Other perks include I don’t constantly have someone whining, “Mommy, I’m hungry!” when I just finished cleaning up from a snack for another kid, they’re not always climbing into the fridge and cabinets making messes trying to find snacks, I don’t have food getting ground into the carpet from kids wandering around with snacks (well, except Bennett but he’s 2 and that’s pretty standard.) I’m surprised at how much more peaceful my day is when I can say, “It’s snacktime soon,” and that is a satisfactory answer to their asking for food. No more begging for snacks because they are bored or didn’t eat enough at meals, because now they ARE eating more at meals.

Maybe this is one of those “Ah-ha!” things for me that everyone else figured out years ago and I’m just now catching on to, which is probably the case. Gee, you mean kids thrive on structure and set meal times and healthy food choices? No way!

I’m seeing a resemblance. This is why we too often clump them as wave one and wave two. First shot was spring 2004, latter was spring 2007.

Not a lot of pictures of the last couple weeks, sick kids are cute but mostly lay around being lethargic. Here is our newest album. And here is Kit being cuddled by the kids:

Starting with the youngest - Emiline’s two teeth are very visible and when she laughs, that top one sticking out makes me laugh, she’s a little Jack-o-lantern. She’s very, very focused (gee, does that sound familiar?) on getting into things. One of her favorite hobbies is pulling out mine or Kit’s laptop power cords and sucking on the end. When the older kids are playing Wii Sports she pulls up on their leg or the tv and watches intently, or sits there happily bouncing in place. She’s enjoying solids immensely (we went for the suggestion of continuing to offer but NOT forcing it at all and letting her show us when she’s ready, suggested in this book. WHAT A DIFFERENCE! No more forcing food between tightly clenched lips - she leans forward and devours it and we simply hold the spoon. When she’s tired she stops reaching. Why did I not learn this with my first kid?? More on feeding kids later…

Bennett is napping for me! When he’s irrationally cranky I have to stop whatever I’m doing, make my lap available, and he falls asleep. If Kit’s home then one of us takes him to his bed to fall asleep, but if it’s me and the kids I can’t leave them for long. But he naps! I love it! He’s so much FUN when he’s had sleep! Yesterday while changing his diaper I handed him a toy car to hold and I say words for him to mimic, if he wants. It’s usually farm animal sounds or songs, just to keep hid distracted during diaper changes. He said “cah” (car) and “Beep Beep!” Hooray!

Moira has therapy now three days a week - speech Tuesdays, occupational therapy Weds and horseback riding Thursdays. Today her therapist invited me to bring all the kids to OT and they had a blast, pulling themselves around on their stomachs on little scooters, doing an obstacle course, building towers. Even Bennett joined in with the fun - this will be his therapist when he turns 3 and she seemed to enjoy getting to know him, and threw him in the ball pit to play while she did some stuff with the older kids. Moira is VERY excited about turning 4 years old next week and I can hardly believe my little girl is growing up so fast. She’s doing GREAT with speech and can do all the phonics sounds (I say the letter, she tells me the sound) which is even more impressive consider her significant speech struggles. Except “j” which she says “d” and “sh” and “ch” but how cool that she knows all the others and can properly pronounce them! Her speech therapist and I are very impressed.

Christopher continues to crack us all up on a daily basis with his constant narration of life and the universe. He’s working on his reading skills, spelling (he’s learned to spell one through six) and is doing addition right now. His handwriting truly astonishes me, I’m really excited by how well he’s doing writing even very small sized letters. Those are the areas we cover daily - spelling, writing, reading, and math. Then we do our weekly subjects - art, piano (he’s almost done with his first piano lesson book!) science and social studies. In the fall we’ll start a more structured coverage of things but for now it’s pretty eclectic. Some recycling, plants, community awareness, bugs, solar system, energy & responsible consumption, etc.

Us in a nutshell! Today we’re making a trip to Sprouts, our favorite local farmer’s market type grocery store (buy local whenever they can, lots of organic.) It’s the kids’ favorite, the samples are hard to beat. This summer we’re hoping to take them to the farmers’ market up in Denton so they can buy some produce from the people that actually grew it, I think they’ll enjoy that. We’re trying to buy local whenever possible, it’s part of our new goals. More on that later, too.

I was packing up the older two kids as we headed out for our homeschool craft co-op (we meet weekly) and Bennett was asleep but Emy was playing. As I walked over to kiss her good-bye this feeling washed over me - I was going to miss her! Really miss playing with her and cuddling and seeing that cute face. It was a strange feeling, but I realized I am almost ALWAYS with the ones I love. All day long, except for the few hours Kit’s at the office or Mo’s at therapy. I leave fairly often in the evenings for cooking & book club, homeschool group, moms’ time out, enrichment, scrap night, etc. But then the kids are already asleep so it’s different and most of the time I take Emy - she nurses, and it’s hard on Kit to get her down with the other three kids. During the day I only leave the kids if I’m running an errand (less than an hour normally) or the weekly co-op thing, but often I take Emy to that with the older kids. This time I was in charge and we were painting so I needed to focus on the older kids.

So I missed my baby. It’s not often that I have that feeling, of missing someone. Last time I remember it was after my sister, Emily, went back to college and I had these waves of missing her - missing having her around to talk to and run out and get snacks with and scrapbook and sit up late talking. I was sad to see her go and really missed her. I miss Kit when he’s at the office but we’re on instant messenger the whole time, typing back and forth. Mo’s gone for 2 hours on Tuesdays for speech and the house feels empty with just three kids - Christopher wanders around having to come up with things to do minus his playmate. It’s hard on him to have her gone, though I think it’s great in that they appreciate each other more when they are reunited (all two hours later!) and Moira often comes in eager to tell him what she did and bringing a treat (she always insists that she have something to share with him, reports her therapist.) Bennett’s being so cute lately that he’ll nap for a good two hours and when he gets up he’s adorable and smilie and comes out yelling, “MAMA!” or “DADA!” and reaching for hugs and I realize I miss him when he’s asleep. Well, so long as he was being cute when he went down and not being a wild monkey.

We’ll continue to send them off to do their own activities, to give them time with friends and away from siblings. But I must say, I feel very blessed to have my family around me all day. Because I really miss them when they are gone!

Speaking of missing things, Emy has the funniest habit. When she’s nursing and zonked out (because she can sleep nurse like you wouldn’t believe) I sometimes switch sides (since this kid can go for a good half hour on one side.) She keeps her eyes closed when I’m switching sides but does this frantic mouthing thing, like a fish with mouth wide open, desperately searching for something to latch onto - it cracks me up, and tonight I was taking too long to get her readjusted and she shoved her blanket in her mouth and started sucking on it. I had to pull it out of her mouth to latch her on to keep nursing. She cracks me up.

I don’t know why this has taken me so long to get posted. It’s been done for a month. I guess it’s just one of those things that slip through the cracks. Anyway, here’s big movie of Mo with her pony, Snowflake, as well as a few pictures of her on my boss’s horse, Approach. This is all shot in 2006.

Moira Presents: How to Ride a Pony

I’m sitting on my bed holding a very sad, pathetic & sick Emy and Christopher joins us. He’s snuggled up against me and asks, “When will you want another baby?” I told him I don’t know, and asked when would he like another one. With a finger against his chin he pauses and thoughtfully says, “Um… tomorrow.” I remind him that babies take 9 months to grow (or 5.5 months, if you’re Bennett) and Christopher says, “I know, but you could ask Heavenly Father tomorrow to send one.”

I told him I think we should wait, since we have a baby already. He says, “But they would have fun together! Emy needs someone to play with.” Because apparently the three older kids are just not enough playmates?

Really it made me smile, I’m grateful that Christopher enjoys his siblings so much that he wants more.

Christopher has a little prism toy that casts neat rainbows. Christopher was trying to explain it to Moira and says, “Go find a sunbeam - not a kid Sunbeam, but a proper light sunbeam.”

To explain that - Kit told him there’s direct light and indirect and you need to catch the proper one for the rainbow. And in our church, a Sunbeam is a 3 year old in the youngest class in primary - usually very wiggly and a bit loud and pretty amusing to watch, since they don’t sit still very well. Moira is a sunbeam this year.

Today we learned Emiline has sprouted two teeth (top and bottom right ones, I’m guessing the left ones are close behind) AND she likes Kix cereal. We can credit Bennett with the latter discovery, he spilled a cup next to her and they sat there happily sharing the stash. I kept a close eye on her to make sure she didn’t gag/choke on them but she did great. Wow, teeth and solids all in one day.

We missed the march - I’m actually the most sick now. Emy woke up with a fever, and everyone is coughing. So much for the virus season being past…