Random Things

This was a note from my Phone called 'To Blog About' - just random things I'd write down that I didn't want to be forgotten! Pardon the broken-up format, but the info is there! Grettas adorable crackly singing voice She'll just make up songs and randomly sing about things She talks about a 'made up' friend named Donny She's such a great early talker that she'll use bad grammar (like e.g.: "I messed up it" 😍😍) She says flushel for the word shuffle Gretta mixing songs - singing part of one and then right into another (intentionally, to be silly 😍) Gretta really observant with places Georgie really observant too Georgie exploded into reading so great and sounding out words so easily Savoring Johnnie being my last - I try to not get on my phone when putting him to bed (while nursing) - I sing to him instead: silent night, away in a manger, Jesus loves me, you are my sunshine, and dream of angels as they play (text from the blanket Amy's mom Lavelle made me - I sang this to all three kids ☺😢) I'm just going to voice text as much as I can think of to blog about right now – and then I will copy and paste all of this into my blog. Greta is not fast to do anything! She moves pretty slow – and it's just really not in a hurry to do anything ever. She is often one of the reasons why we are late, that and she comes from her mom and dad who are late people :-) you have to take your time with her with everything – bedtime, dropping her off at ??? Mops, church, Thursday Bible school etc. – there is no just dropping her off and going. She requires easing into things. She is also the slowest eater known to man. She will have not taken one bite when all the other siblings and cousins are already finished eating their dinners. She is just never in a hurry to do anything! She prefers to snack all day rather than eat meals. Geordie is in coach pitch baseball right now and he is doing really good. He really loves it, and hits the ball almost every time within the first two patches. He doesn't hit it superhard, but he seems to have really good eye and coordination and does usually always have it. He is still learning the rules of the rest of the game and being in the outfield, but he really does like it. Riana is in 👥 Teeball, and that is a different story! We are making her stick with it because it's good for her and it's good to learn team sports, but she doesn't really seem that interested in it! I have to ease her into it and walk with her out on the field at the beginning of the games before I can leave her. And when she's in the outfield she just stands there and looks around and sometimes plays. She hits the ball OK – I'm just not sure that it's her thing – at least yet! She does like dance though and she does well with it. She's definitely started to get more into princesses and girly things, although she really is not a huge early girl, and still likes the boyish things that her brother likes. She's not terribly early, though she does like all the girly things and loves pink and purple. They both go to bed around 8 o'clock is what we strive for, and it is always a fair bit of a battle. Mornings are pretty rushed because George takes 30 to school at 7:50 and we do try to sit down and have breakfast as a family if we can. Danny wakes up anytime between seven and 730 usually. He usually goes to bed around between seven and eight. He has finally finally finally started doing a little bit longer of naps – usually his Second nap is at least around an hour and a half up to 2 1/2 hours. It's so amazing! None of my kids really did this except Greta for a short stent. Johnny has gotten happier and happier the older he's gotten. He really is a sweet baby with lots of smiles – especially when you got him up in the morning and get him up from naps that they are the best! I would say he was a slightly difficult baby – similar to Georgie. He was just kind of fussy in general – not colicky but just a little fussy. He was night and day from Americe who was the easiest most sweetest baby who hardly ever fast. He's just kind of particular and finicky, although he definitely seems to be outgrowing a lot of that. I tried to put updates on his Facebook month updates about how he's doing. I started doing that around five months and will continue. Up until then, I'm trying to think of noteworthy things about him to blog about. He did 3 to 5 short naps for a long time – just like Georgie. He is the third baby so he has had to be extremely flexible. He was a good car seat nap her for a long time but has recently stopped being so good at that. There's been many times when I've had to keep them up because I have an activity to run to, like grass dance, T-ball and baseball games, picking up Jordan from school, gymnastics, and just all the other every day errands that need run. I'm definitely more relaxed with him, although I do still get stressed out about his sleep and napping sometimes. He is probably the worst night sleep or out of the three. He was waking up every 2 to 3 hours for a while, around when he was 4 to 5 months I think, but we finally moved him into his own crap and his own room around five months I believe, and that really did help a fair bit. I try to go to bed around 9 o'clock, and George stays up and if Johnny cries out before 11 he will try to get him to go back to sleep. He is sometimes successful that sometimes not. Johnny usually wakes between three and four hours after he goes to bed, and we usually resort to me having to feed him. But at least he's been doing 3 to 4 hour stretches for the most part, and since I'm so tired it's pretty easy for me to go back to sleep between feedings, which is actually really nice. His three night feedings also keep my milk supply strong, since that is when my milk is the highest anyway and that promotes milk production to be nursing in the night especially. So I don't really mind him waking this much. It is so so nice to have our room back to ourselves – as it was with all the babies! It's really nice because his room is really dark and fairly far away from the family room, so I don't have to worry as much like I did with the other two kids in our old house. My milk seems OK. It's definitely not great, but it seems to be enough for him. We gave him solids around five months to see if that would help him sleep longer stretches in the night. It didn't really help but he took to eating really well right away. He used to eat quite a bit, but then he started getting kind of stopped up from the food, and also from my milk slowing down a little bit probably due to the solid food eating. So I've always been a little bit nervous that he's maybe a little dehydrated, but I asked the doctor about it yesterday at his six-month appointment and she didn't seem worried at all. He has really go to weight gain and he's happy. So, unlike my other babies, I'm really just trying to trust that my milk is enough for him. He can also have water now, so will start giving him more and more. I'm going to nurse her as long as I can, but I'm not going to get myself a hard time if I don't make it to a year. My milk actually seems fairly OK because of the night feedings and I really think that that helps my milk supply. I've been slowing down with feeding him solids a little bit in the last three weeks, just to try to get the system working and get rid of the constipation. I need to start giving him problems and prunes and pears. I do have a lot of milk stored up in the freezer, which will be nice that I can give that to him when my milk really does start declining. Right now his nap schedule has been a short little cat nap about 2 1/2 to 3 hours after he wakes up in the morning, and then about an hour and a half to two hours after that he'll do his longer nap. And then he'll usually do a little cat nap around four or five to make it to bedtime. It's definitely been a little stressful with a baseball and T-ball games, with the bad times, and Geordie is always so exhausted from school that he falls asleep when his head hits the pillow. Both kids are really really enjoy riding their bikes, and we tried BMX about three weeks ago and George he really liked it. So we're going to probably try to continue with that. Greta learned to write her pedal bike a couple weeks ago too and she is just hit the ground running and taking off with it. She loves riding around on our back patio in circles over and over and over! She has really been pretty good lately about playing by herself and entertaining herself well. Both kids do definitely argue, but they also adore each other and play together a really good one George is not at school. We've been loving taking walks in the evenings and it's been gorgeous and we love our new neighborhood it's so peaceful. And the kids ride their bikes. Johnny can face front in the stroller now which is really nice. Jordan he still loves his gymnastics too, although we decided to take a break for a couple months while he does baseball because we just had too much going on. We have so many house projects to do, and yet George is in his busiest season at the bike store, which is awesome, but projects are slow going and I've just learned to except and try to live in the moment and feel as though I have arrived, even though I'm constantly thinking about all the things that I still want to do. I'm trying to settle down into our family routine, and make routines and structure and traditions starting now, now that we have all of our kids and were in our long time raising a family home. There's so much I want to do to decorate our house etc. and so many other routines and traditions I want to implement with our family, but it is pretty overwhelming having three kids six and under, with a six-month-old being one of them. But we're getting to do that more and more lately and I'm striving to just do it now and remember that I will never be completely caught up on everything in that everything will ever be completely done. It's so cliché and I know this in my head, but I'm really trying to live it! Going to cost to Thursday Bible school and it's a little bit of a struggle but she still goes. She cries sometimes when I leave and it's horribly horribly awful. I don't know why my kids are so very clingy to me when I drop them off at things, and in some ways I get a little frustrated, but in some ways it is so completely endearing, and I just love them so much and I'm so glad that they love their mom so much! It's really the sweetest thing and makes me feel good that they would rather be at home with me then almost anywhere else :-) life can be pretty hard and tempers can run high with George and I, but our marriage is surviving just fine, and though I am sleep deprived, only shower once every 3 to 4 days sometimes, our house is messy often, and I often feel like I'm drowning, it is still the best season of my life and I wouldn't trade it and my family for absolutely anything. And we been trying to prepare for our vacation rental as well. Trying to get that set up during George's busiest season has been a challenge. Will get it set up eventually but it's definitely taking longer than we had hoped. There's just so much to do between getting the house painted and thoroughly cleaned and doing lots of small projects there including outside stuff, as well as getting the notebook ready and the listing on Verbo etc. I need to go now, but hopefully got that got a little bit caught up on the kids and their activities and our life right now. I will try to voice blog more soon.