One Week

How Cute am I?

It has been one week since the baby was born. Things are going pretty well. Almost all the aches and pains of labor etc are gone, I am no longer painfully contemplating bottle feeding and I wore a pair of non-maternity pants today. A miracle considering what I looked like when I left the hospital. My mom came into town Wednesday night. The girls have been having fun with her and the house has been amazingly clean!

Kate (or whatever we might or might not change her name to) is a good baby. She eats, sleeps, hiccups and burps well. Though why she takes a 5 hour nap when I am up and wakes up every hour when I lay down to nap, I don't know. She has also taken to pee-ing when her diaper is being changed. Once a day for the last three days. Uck! She has a really strong head and will hold it up and look around. We wondered if her hair would stay dark but I think it is lightening up like the other kids'.

She went on her first outing yesterday. Brian and I went to the bank to open a bank account and get about a million papers notarized (Augh!) because our house sold! (Yeah!) We will have to sign about a million more later on but the worst is over.

The girls are adjusting well to having Kate here. Yesterday Colleen came to get me twice when Kate woke up and started fussing. So cute. She would say, "Baby! Baby!", make a shhh-ing sound and pull my hand to get me up.

Emily is taking the whole thing stoicly and Aleah wonders why I don't remember every detail of when she was a baby. We will get out her baby calender and pictures tomorrow and look at it. Maybe I will even start Kate's baby calendar.

Please, Mom! No more Pictures!
PS: Mom made the quilt she is laying on. Love it!

Aleah

Aleah wrote this story and drew a picture for Ellie. The picture is either Aleah and Ellie with dolls or it is robots and a dog.


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Some Pictures of the House

The Front of the House

The Corner Entry

Small Tool Shed in the Back

Garage and Workshop

Play Set

Living Room

Living Room

Side Entry with Hooks!
More Later

My Designer Bassinet

For all of my other kids I have borrowed a bassinet to put in our room while they are still waking up a ton during the night. I have never wanted to buy something we will only use for about 3 months. Especially at this point where this might be our last I don't want to go out and buy something and the crib is too big for our room. Plus Colleen is still sleeping in it. I was going to transition her out of it but she has had a HARD time going to bed since we moved here.

So, with no one to borrow from and a horror of buying something, I made my own. BTW, I don't want to hear any comments about how it is not safe. I will not keep her in it if I think there is any chance of her rolling, wiggling or pulling herself out etc.

Step One: Find a storage container
for the base and the top.
It works best if the bottom storage container is filled
with things like out of season/pre-maternity clothing.
You want it to be stable.


Step Two: Tape the top unit to the lid.
This way you can still access your clothes
(hopefully they will still fit you...)


Step Three: Tape your children's mouths shut.
Somehow it didn't make them any quieter.


Step Four: Tape fabric around
the bottom of the base.
You can tape little pleats into it to make it a little ruffly. Don't skimp on the tape.


Step Five: Put another piece of fabric
over the top.
Add a folded blanket for extra padding and you are done!

So cute!

The Secret of Eating

Since we moved here I have been having the girls help more with cooking. I think it makes it easier since the kitchen is twice as big and we don't get in each others way. Friday, Emily wanted to make a "special" meal all by herself. She made us tortillas with mozzarella cheese, cottage cheese and seasonings on them then heated up in the microwave. She was running out of cottage cheese by the time she got to Brian and I's, so we got to have beans on ours too. Mmmm...
Aleah wanted to make a meal too. I told her she could choose out something to make Saturday. She choose popcorn dipped in cheese sauce. We negotiated it to broccoli dipped in cheese sauce and cheese sauce with potatoes.
I have NEVER seen the kids fight over broccoli before. They will usually eat a piece or two without complaints but there was actual, "Hey, I want more, she got the last piece" going on. Plus it has been requested multiple times since. I bought lots of broccoli, cauliflower and cheese at the store yesterday and it is on the menu for this week again.
(Side note: I loved the store. I have NEVER had such a good bagger. Plus they walk you out and unload the groceries - for everyone, not just overwhelmed pregnant ladies with 3 kids in tow. Plus there is a real butcher who wraps up your meat for you. No prepackaged stuff. I like it a lot. Bye-bye Walmart.)

Today we had breakfast for dinner with bacon, eggs, pancakes, strawberries and whipped cream. The whipped cream had the same effect as the cheese sauce. I have never seen a plate of pancakes disappear so fast.

Moral of the story, if you serve it with fat, they will come... and eat it too. Or maybe I am just a great cook. :)

PS: I fixed my comment stuff so you can leave comments now. Also I added an anonymous button so if you don't have a blog account, you can select that and leave a comment. Just sign your name at the bottom of your comment so we know who you are! :)

The Big Move

We are here in Iowa! Everything went really well. It was great having the movers come and pack everything and the girls had a blast playing in and around all of the boxes. Colleen and I just lounged around. Seriously, I took a nap while they were packing.


We planned to spend the night with the Cooks Friday and leave early Saturday morning but events worked against us and we ended up driving to Iowa Sunday. Ask Brian for the details. Anyway, it was nice because it gave us more time to hang out with our "Indiana Family" as we have decided to call the Cooks.

Back row: Brian, Tara and Doug
Front "row": Harry, Aleah, Colleen, Leila, Kenna, Ellie, Emily and Zoe

We had a close call with National, the cat. We were planning on picking her up at our place on the way out of town but when we got there National was nowhere to be found. We were at our place at 10am and put a noon time limit for looking for her. After many prayers Brian did a last sweep of the property at 11:50. At 12:30 he came walking toward the car holding National. I teared up. I don't know what Emily would have done if we had had to leave her cat.

Sunday night Brian and Emily decided to spend the night at our new house - without pillows or blankets (crazy) - and Aleah, Colleen and I checked into a hotel (so nice). It is amazing how much larger and calmer a hotel room feels with two less people. After our free continental breakfast we came over to the house and they were already unloading. All of the boxes were unloaded by noon and by the end of the day the living room, library and kitchen were unpacked. By the end of Tuesday all of the boxes were out of the house. There are still boxes of tools etc to be unpacked in the garage but that is it! It was all Brian. He totally unpacked everything.

I love our house and will take and post pictures later. I want it to be clean when I take pictures and somehow we haven't gotten to that point yet. The weirdest thing the first two days was being around other people. Hearing other kids playing. Other cars driving by. Having to close your blinds. Seeing other houses. People could just stop by if they wanted. No privacy. I didn't realize how use I had gotten to living in the middle of nowhere. It is feeling more normal now. Aleah thinks our yard is tiny.

Brian has gone back to work. It was sooo nice having him at home for the last two weeks. If only he could find a way to earn money by hanging out at home with the kids and I. I'll post more pictures later.