I'm Supermom!

Okay, I'm nowhere near Supermom. If I were Supermom, I wouldn't be falling over completely exhausted before 8:30pm. But lately, partially out of boredom, partially out of avoiding packing, and partially out of guilt for not doing much with the kids while I was pregnant because I felt either really sick or really tired, I've been taking them to "fun places."

On Saturday afternoon, I decided I needed to get out of the house. I wasn't really up for a lot of activity, so I thought a movie would be fun. I packed up the 3 kids and we went to see Space Chimps. Not a bad movie, really. And the kids were great. Sam and Tevin had a little spat about which straw was which, but Cadence slept through the whole movie in the Snugli on my front. Tevin made it the whole movie without having to go potty (which would have necessitated dragging all 4 of us to the restrooms...shudder). We got home and I was feeling pretty proud of myself. I'd taken all 3 kids out. By myself. And we survived! I must try this again.

Sunday, I tempted fate and took them to the Childrens' Museum. We have a year membership which we paid $125 for back in March. I took Tevin to the museum once, and we used our membership to get into the St. Paul museum. But other than that, we hadn't used it. I figured it might be a good idea to do that. First, we went to eat at Tumbleweed. It sounded good to me and we don't have much food in the house (must go grocery shopping, we do have to live here another 3 weeks). The kids were wonderful at Tumbleweed. Then the museum. It was great for about the first hour. Then Cadence needed to eat. Now, I'm all for the rights of women to breastfeed in public. But my comfort level certainly doesn't include nursing where anyone can see. I'm pretty self-conscious and try to be as inconspicuous as possible. I was able to find a little area where the kids could play and I could sit in a corner and nurse her without anyone really being able to see. She was fed and we went to other areas. The kids were having disagreements about what they wanted to do. Then Cadence started to get fussy again. My back was killing me from carrying her around in the Snugli for 2 hours. I announced that we were going to leave. I promised that if they were good, we'd come back again sometime this week. Tuesday or Wednesday, I said. Reluctantly, the children followed me out the door. Not as complete of a success as the movie, but we all did survive.

Monday we laid around the house. Nights have been difficult around here, to say the least. Tevin's having a lot of reactions lately. I suspect he's getting a lot of hidden red dyes. In any case, he's been getting up at night. Not necessarily waking up. We think he sleepwalks. That's a story for another day, though. In addition to Tevin waking up, Cadence is doing what a 5 week old is supposed to do. She's been up at night also. So Monday was a sit around day. A much needed lazy day. Yesterday, my parents came over to help us around the house. Dad and Matt fixed the front door so it shuts easier and then put in the new storm door. My mom worked on sanding the ceiling of Cadence's room. I fed Cadence. Okay, not all day. I did some dishes and I made dinner. But a good portion of the day was spent feeding the baby. At least I was resting.

Today, there was very little rest. The children were very quick to remind me that it's Wednesday. And I promised them we'd go to the Childrens' Museum Tuesday or Wednesday. Since Tuesday had passed, that only left Wednesday. Today. Get up and go right now, MOM. After feeding Cadence well and showering, we made a trip to the bank to make a deposit and then grabbed lunch at the Hardee's Drive thru and headed to the museum. Another 2 hours of "fun". Sam volunteered for everything during the science demonstration. It was cute. They painted pictures, weaved a bit, played with Kinex, and then Cadence got hungry. Seeing a theme? "Cadence ruins all our fun! Why do babies have to eat all the time?" It seemed rather futile to point out that bigger children, especially mine, eat at least as often as the baby. The difference, of course, being that I don't have to expose my breast for them to eat. I found a corner where I was mostly secluded and let the children play with the wooden train set while I fed Cadence. Unfortunately, that didn't pacify her for long. When she was finished eating, she wanted to sleep. Which meant either I had to hold her (back hurt a lot by that point) or we had to go to the car and get moving. This time I was a bit more intelligent and didn't make any promises as to when specifically we'd come back. I just said that in the next 3 weeks while Daddy is gone to Michigan we'd definitely go back.

I guess the bright side is that we all came out alive from each outing. The downside is that right now it's nearly impossible to even raise my arm to pet my 3 year old "kitty Tevin". We really do have to get back to more reasonable bedtimes soon. School will be starting and we'll all have to adjust to it being an hour earlier there. For now, though, putting them to bed is more effort than I can muster.

I may not be Supermom, but I am Mom. That must count for something.

Hi, I'm Cadence

Hi, I'm Cadence! I'm 4 weeks old. My likes include eating, snuggling, and being nice and warm. My dislikes include waiting for food, sleeping in my bassinette, and being alone. I sleep lots, eat lots, and poop lots.

When I'm trying to eat Daddy's shirt, I open really wide. Like this:

My family loves me and agrees that I'm a keeper. :)

Time flies

Cadence is already 4 weeks old! Really, where does the time go? It feels like just yesterday I was taking a pregnancy test. And now she's been here for 4 weeks already. When I take a minute to think about it, I get really sad. I look at my children and I'm so proud of what they've become and are becoming. But I'm sad because I know the next time I blink, they'll be completely grown. Lately I find myself getting mad when I hear someone (usually Matt) say "grow up and act your age" or something of the sorts. I don't want them to grow up. I want them to stop growing up. I want them to stop learning about the horrors of the world. To be able to go back to trusting and knowing that there will always be someone to take care of them. Realistically, I know they have to grow up. That doesn't mean I have to like it, though. Or that I have to force them to grow up quicker. I really have to remind myself that time is precious and goes way too fast. I *can* wait until they're older. I just wish I could wait a little longer.

Quick funny

see more pwn and owned pictures

Changes

This summer is the summer of changes for us. We're making probably the biggest changes possible. We've lost a "family member", we've added a family member, Matt's work schedule changed, Matt's job is going to change, and we're moving out of the state. These changes are affecting the family in very different ways.

Backing up, I'll clarify some of our changes. The "family member" we lost was our dog, Sage. Thankfully, she didn't pass away, but rather, we had to find a new home for her. Sage was our German Shepherd. In October of 2005, we got her from a family that couldn't keep her. They were getting a divorce and having a very large dog with so many unknowns in their lives just wasn't working for them. She has been an excellent companion to our other dog, Casey, for nearly 3 years. They loved to play together: wrestling, tugging, running around the neighborhood, eating garbage...all the things dogs love to do. She's a gorgeous, obedient, lovable 110 pound dog. The only problem we had with her is that she was kind of jumpy. Not jumpy in the sense that she would jump on people, although she occasionally did that, too. Imagine 110 pounds of huge beast jumping at you. Frightening and funny at the same time. What I mean is that although a very gentle and loving dog, she got scared easily and her instincts kicked in. Once a few months ago, Tevin came in to the living room crying that Sage had bit him. He had a scratch on his forehead. I didn't know if he was being completely truthful or even knew what happened. It looked more like a scratch from claws than from teeth. We were more cautious after that, but still couldn't watch him all the time. Then, right before Memorial Day, he was playing dinosaurs. He was walking up to Sage making growling dinosaur sounds. What I speculate happened was that he stepped on her tail or paw, because she yipped and then nipped at him. This time, she got his nose. That was the point that we could no longer deny that she needed to find a new home. I cried SO much in those few days. It was so difficult knowing that we had to get rid of her, but we knew it had to be done. Thankfully, the story does have a happy ending. The people we got her from had gone through their divorce. I had kind of stayed in touch with Lori, the "mom". Her daughter is the same age as Samantha. When I told her that we had to find a new home for Sage, she said that now that things have settled down, she might be able to take her back. The following week, after a visit with the new roommate and dogs, Sage went back to her first home. It was bittersweet. I had always kind of felt like Sage was their dog in a way. Giving her back to people that I knew would take care of her and love her and accept her quirks was much easier than giving her to strangers. The last I heard, Sage was happy in her new/old home. And we're down to just 2 fuzzballs...Casey and Shasta. I think Shasta's happy to not be chased around the house anymore. And, although Casey is lonely sometimes, he does like the benefit of being the only dog getting pet. And the only dog eating the dog food. He's gained quite a bit of weight in the last couple months. Hopefully, after we move and I'm recovered a bit more from childbirth, we'll add more walks into our routine.

Adding the new family member, I've talked about. Miss Cadence will be 3 weeks tomorrow and is doing pretty well. She still loves to eat. She's having a bit more awake time lately, although she still wants to eat whenever she's awake. She sleeps well, although she likes to snuggle up with us more than she likes to be alone in her bassinette. When we're tired at night, I usually just give up and let her sleep with us. Thankfully, it seems Matt and I were both built for co-sleeping. He's generally acutely aware of where everyone/everything is in the bed with us even when he's in deep sleep. I don't move a muscle when my children are little and sleeping in bed with us. I toss and turn like crazy any other time, but when we're co-sleeping I'm very still. To the point where I wake up stiff and sore every morning. But I guess it's better than being awake all night with a baby that won't sleep because she doesn't want to be alone. Her bilirubin also started dropping when she was a week old. We had to have her heel pricked one more time last week, but all is good and we're done with that. Her skin is looking a more healthy color and the whites of her eyes are very nearly back to white from the yellow they've always been. We're not sure on the color of her irises yet. Some days they look like they may change to brown, others they look like they may stay blue. I'm not so secretly hoping that they stay blue. Sam has brown eyes, Tevin has blue. Matt has brown eyes and I have blue. I'd like a blue eyed girl and for our fourth child I'm ordering a brown eyed boy. lol It doesn't work that way? Oh, well, I can hope, right?

Matt went back to days last week. It's been an interesting week. I think I'm handling it much better than expected. We are generally 5-10 minutes late every morning, but I don't think that has anything to do with the third child. It's more just my nature. I'm a procrastinator, so I wait until the last possible minute and then invariably the older kids dawdle and we don't get out the door on time. Tonight he's covering one night for the overnight manager. It will be interesting not having him around for the first night since Cadence was born. I just hope Tevin doesn't wake up. That's the challenge. I can't feed her and comfort him at the same time. I'm sure we'll live, though.

We're going to Michigan tomorrow to look at houses and get aquainted with the area. I really hope we find a house. We can't afford the time nor the money to go there again before we move. And in 3 weeks, Matt will officially be a co-manager in Michigan. Yikes!

Tevin isn't taking the life changes well. I guess I'm not sure if it's the stress or the age, but he's been SO sassy lately. He's talking back to everyone, not listening, hitting Samantha...blah. But then he'll turn it off and he's my sweet boy again, apologizing for being naughty. I hope when life settles a bit he gets better. Sam has actually been better for the most part. It really makes me consider homeschooling her. I guess we'll see what area we move to. If we move to a crummy school district, I very well might look into homeschooling. One step at a time, though.

It's a good thing this baby was born in the summer. She loves to be warm. Really warm. At night she cuddles up to me so close that I wake up in a full body sweat every single morning. If her feet are cold, she cries. However, she won't keep a blanket on. She kicks out of even the best swaddles. She's still drowning in the vast majority of her clothes, so she has lots of space to move around and get all knotted up in them. She wiggles all the time. Looking at her, I can see from the outside exactly what she was doing to my insides. And probably the most amazing thing is that she wasn't even due until 3 days ago. I could very well have still been pregnant with her. Amazing.

Tevin loved to be warm. Sam hated getting too warm. They're still that way. Sam will wear shorts whenever we let her. It hits 40 degrees in the spring and she's pulling out the tank tops. Tevin wears jeans in 80 degree weather. I guess when you have children who are night and day, your third is bound to have some characteristics of the other 2.

On pins and needles

AKA: More moving stress

Today Matt *officially* officially accepted the position. As in, got the salary verified and they are sending paperwork for him to sign and send back. They wanted him to start on July 19. haha His market can't release him until August 2, though, so that's when he'll start there. They're apparently still trying to work something out to get us out there for a week so I can look for houses and he can "gain a presence in the store" whatever that means.

I'm currently waiting by the phone/computer for word back from the mortgage lender. I called the corporate relocation lender and put in an application yesterday. She had to send it through underwriting and said she'd put a rush on it. I just called a little while ago and she said that the underwriter has is now and is working on it. She said she'd call or e-mail me when it's finished. This is what our house hunting is hinging on. We need to make sure we can get another mortgage over there. If we can't, then we'll have to start looking for a place to rent. Not easy with a big moose of a dog.

Besides that, Cadence is being rather clingy today and if I try to lay her down somewhere and get up, she starts crying. She's also not to fond of the sling. So we're laying in bed alternating between me just being very close to her and nursing her. Which, of course, means that I'm not getting any packing done. I'm having visions of the last 6 times we moved, where someone else just shoved things in boxes and I never did get them all unpacked.

Moving stress

Matt has been applying and interviewing for his promotion since last March. Nearly 16 months after beginning, he was offered a position. This turned last week into the most hectic week of my life. Baby, anniversary, job...my head is spinning.

I'm not worried about moving. I'm actually kind of excited for a fresh start. I feel really trapped in this house, and every spare second we've had has gone into doing some kind of remodeling or home improvement. It's tiring. I'm excited to have time to unpack things and put them where I want them...for the next 2 years. After 2 years, we will move on and Matt will get his own store. I really want to get into a home that we don't have to put quite so much work into. Best of all, we're moving very close to Amy Johnson, an awesome person and the most extraordinary photographer in the world!

But this is a huge whirlwind. We have to sell this house, but listing it is impossible until we actually get some of the in progress projects done. We have to find a new home. There's lots of foreclosures in that area, so finding a relatively cheap house should be easy enough. But our credit sucks, so getting the mortgage is really questionable. I'm not sure how we're going to swing that one. Matt's going to be starting there relatively soon. We need to move before school starts, obviously, and I don't want to be paying for a hotel room for him to live in. I'd like to just move into the home we're going to live in before he starts working. It seems like all the people he needs to talk to at work are taking vacations, and we don't even have the formal written offer.

I know it will all work out. It has to. We won't be homeless. We'll figure something out. But I hate living with all the unknowns.

The difference between children

Today I was realizing how parenthood is different from one child to the next. Samantha was pretty sheltered as a baby and toddler. She didn't get to go to Chuck E Cheese until she was 2 or 3. She was 6 1/2 when we went to Disney World for the first time. She was allowed much less TV and didn't really get out much.

Tevin was 1 1/2 when we went to Disney World. At a month and a half old, he went to a movie in the movie theater (Sam wanted to go see Shark Tale for her birthday and I was nursing Tevin, so he came with). I'm sure he went to Chuck E Cheese while he was still in his infant carrier. Even on the way home from the hospital, we stopped at Toys R Us to quick pick something up.

And then there's Cadence. She's been to Wal-Mart about 6 times in her 9 day life so far. She's eaten approximately 10 of her meals in the car, been fed in 2 changing rooms, slept through 2 meals at restaurants, and made the full loop around the outlet mall. Today we went to the zoo and rode on the little train. And a little girl walked up and asked to touch her on the arm. I didn't even blink an eye, just said yes, but to please not touch her with the stick that was in the little girl's hand. I hardly think twice about where we need to go. It's just a given that at this point, she'll come along. If she needs to eat, I'll sit in the car or find somewhere to feed her. I'm more comfortable nursing where people can't see me. Perhaps that will get better as time goes on. With Samantha, there's no way I would have fed her in a changing room or the car, and Tevin ate exactly once in a secluded booth at a Perkins restaurant. I was paranoid that people were watching the entire time. Now I just make sure that I'm covered to my comfort level and smile when people stare. I do draw the line when Tevin tries to take pictures of Cadence while she's nursing. I never thought I'd have to say "don't take a picture of my boob", but I say it probably 5-10 times a day.

I think the trade-off for dragging the poor second and third children around is that I appreciate them more. The times when I can just sit and snuggle or feed Cadence are so precious, whereas with Sam I just sat and thought about what other things I could be doing. With Tevin, I tried to get him to sleep in his bassinette so he didn't get used to sleeping in my arms. The only reason Cadence gets put down is because I get so darn warm holding her. I realize that I may never be blessed with another baby, so I have to cherish the moments I get with the ones I have. But I wouldn't limit my increased appreciation to just the baby. I'm also learning that stages are so short. I'm learning and trying to get Matt to learn that we need to lighten up. So the ice cream is going to make them sticky and get everything messy...it will clean. They got shaving cream all over the bathroom while doing their shaving cream pictures...it will wipe up. The used 5 sheets of paper to make a card just to tell us how much they love us...a bit wasteful, but I'd rather have them express that love than to make them think we don't care. We're getting better. Last night Matt was going to get ice cream from the ice cream truck. That's something I have never done because it's so expensive. But why not? What's a couple bucks to see the joy on the kids' faces? (we didn't get any because the truck never came down our block...booo) Samantha stayed up until midnight the other night watching a movie with us.

It's okay to treat our children differently, because they are different. Hopefully they'll realize someday that we weren't playing favorites, just doing what we thought was best at the time.