Conversations with a 4 year old

Blythe told me the other day she wanted to be 5 forever. So I reminded her she was 4 and not 5, to which she reminded me that she will be 5 in January.

So I told her if she's 5 forever, she'll never be 6. So she decided she wanted to be 6 forever. But then I told her if she's 6 forever, she'll never be 7. So then it was 7 that she wanted to be. This went on a few more rounds until she finally decided on 9. She wants to be 9 forever.

She also wants to be a mom when she grows up. Except she doesn't want to change her baby's diaper. She also doesn't want to feed her baby. So I'm not quite sure she would be "mom" material. And apparently she wants to be an unwed mom, as she insists she NEVER wants to get married. I really don't know why. With our cabinet project, we took all our photo albums out and she has loved looking through those. She especially loves the pictures from our wedding. But she wants no part of a wedding for herself.

Speaking of cabinet project...I'm SO ready for it to be done. But it just keeps going. We can now add tiling to our list of things we can do. Not grouting yet though. So there's still no guarantee it will work out, but we're getting there. I really need to get this done though as I envision my workload at work will be getting really tough very soon. My company laid off 30% of my team today, including my boss. So it was a rough day on the workfront.

3 months!

Okay, so Brynn was actually 3 months old yesterday, but I forgot to get her picture in the bath.

She loves her bath! She was actually VERY tired and VERY hungry, but you'd never know it when you put her in the bath. Getting her out...another story. Anyway, let's see what she's up to these days:

• She started day care this week and had a rough couple of days to start, but today she did great! She ate from her bottle, took 2 naps (one was 2 hours and the other was almost 3!), and even pooped a couple times (better there than at home!)
• Still sleeping about 11-12 hours at night and usually takes 3 naps a day
• She's still in 3-6 month clothes, but the shirts are getting a little snug. Wearing size 2 diapers.
• She started laughing this month. She laughed for Daddy a cute set of giggles. She has not done that for me though I have tried and tried. When Gommy came last week, she had Brynn giggling within an hour of her arrival. I guess I'm just not that funny.
• She still likes playing with her playgym. She really likes the lights on the star from her old playgym. She also still likes the bubbles on her bouncy seat.
• She has never liked the swing at home, but likes it at day care. Go figure.
• Her hair is falling out and she has a nice big bald spot on the back of her head where she sleeps on it.
• She's starting to have more interest in her brother and sister. I can sit her on my lap and she is sometimes entertained just by watching them. I think she's cautious of her brother (because he's likely to be too rough around her) and maybe still a little annoyed with her sister (because she likes to touch and kiss Brynn ALL the time, even when she's eating).
• Now that she's 3 months, that means Mommy had to go back to work and I miss my baby girl during the day. She was my little sidekick all summer. She was my walking buddy, my pool buddy, my grocery buddy, and sometimes (rarely) my nap-on-the-couch buddy. I've gone up to the day care each day though to feed her and visit with her. Hopefully I can keep that up for a while.

First day of day care

Yesterday was Brynn's first day. Her perfectly happy days of spending all day with mom and sleeping in a quiet room and eating straight from the source, were terribly interrupted by this thing called "day care" because mom has to do this thing called "work".

She didn't have the best day, but it also could have been worse. Mainly, she didn't want to eat from the bottle. So basically she didn't. They said she was pretty happy and didn't cry unless you tried to feed her, then she would cry. She took a couple of naps, about 40 minutes each. For day care, that's not bad. But compared to the amount she was sleeping at home, that made her quite tired. I ended up picking her up at 3:00pm and at that point she was SO tired and SO hungry. Apparently more tired than hungry as she fell asleep in my arms almost as soon as I took her out of her car seat. About 45 minutes later she woke up and was VERY hungry.

So I'm hoping for a better day today. I'm trying different bottles today so maybe that will help. She was smiling when I dropped her off so that helped me feel better today. I struggled yesterday to keep it together until I got to the car (where I then burst into tears). It was exactly the same way I felt after Ethan's first day, so it doesn't get any easier the more times you do it. But it has to be done, and she's in good hands there.

If you build it, they won't come

So we need to include them in the building process because, let's face it, we can't build it ourselves. I'm talking about Gommy and Poppa. Seems like we put them to work every time they come and this visit was certainly no exception. We just bought some cabinets to put in our family room and in our basement rec room. But who wants to pay like, a thousand dollars when you can do it yourself? Didn't seem like THAT hard of a project. So they were supposed to come on Thursday and leave maybe Friday evening. Well, they actually left Saturday evening and we still have more work to do. Here's a pic of Gommy and Poppa with the kiddos. They don't look that tired in this picture, but they were!

We're hoping to be done maybe next weekend, but we'll see. So far, they look GREAT, but sorry, no before and after shots yet until it's all done. We all worked hard though, especially my dad and Braden. I realized late on Saturday that I hadn't even gotten the mail since Wednesday!

So things have been super hectic since we got back from vacation. I started back to work, but Brynn was still home with me and then the cabinet project. Tomorrow things start to go back to normal. Brynn will start day care (and I will be really sad), but I need to actually do some work to earn a paycheck, so it must be done. Cheers to "normalcy".

One Tough Cookie

Brynn is a tough one to get to laugh. Both Blythe and Ethan laughed for the first time when they were 10 weeks old. And they were real belly laughs. I remember it still being hard to make them laugh after that for a while, but we would succeed at least once daily.

Brynn finally laughed for the first time last week, when she was 11 weeks old. It was Braden who got her to laugh. I didn't see it, so I'm not sure if it was a real belly laugh. But I did succeed in getting her to laugh ONCE this week. And it was weak. More of a "he he he". Kind of like she was mocking me or something. Basically telling me I'm not funny, but obliging nonetheless.

She sure does smile at lot though. So at least she's happy, even though she doesn't think we're very funny people.

Please help!

We can't stop adding members to our family! Our newest member is Dorothy (like Elmo's fish).

This is Ethan's fish (so he named her). Blythe still has Sally, her fish she got at Vacation Bible School. And since she's been living in a cup for the last 2 months, we decided to get a more permanent home for them too.

Maybe there's a support group or something for people like us???

All Caught Up!

Back from vacation so I've finally been able to upload my blog posts. Read the previous 5, starting with "We are one with nature". Enjoy!

A Misty Day

The Cashiers area gets lots of rain. There usually is at least one rainy day when we visit and today was that day. Fortunately, it wasn’t raining hard and was mostly just misty during parts of the day. So we started the day by going to a Crafts Show at the resort. Braden told Blythe and Ethan he would buy them each one thing. They could pick anything they wanted…lucky kids! I had noticed they had adoptions from the Humane Society so I joked that hopefully that wouldn’t be their pick. We did contemplate trying to bring Bogie to maybe trade for another dog. But then we thought maybe they wouldn’t let us do that.

Anyway, Ethan picked out a little wooden truck and Blythe picked out a flower headband. The lady took a picture of Blythe for their website and so Blythe has now made her modeling debut.

In the afternoon, we headed to the town park where they have a really cool big wooden playground, some big sculptures, and a few trails to meander through. Emily brought her good camera so we could get some family shots. Will post those when I get them.

We also went out to eat at a great restaurant (that was great for kids too!). Brynn stayed awake through the whole dinner and just chilled and was so good.

Going out to eat that night was our big expenditure of the week. The vacation was very inexpensive for us, but we really had a great time. Thanks again to my in-laws for letting us stay there on short notice!

Emilance comes to visit

My friend Emily came to visit today. Ethan calls her “Emilance”…kind of a cross between “Emily” and “Ambulance”. It was a really nice day, so we spent the first part of the day down at the beach at the lake, where the kids swam out to a floating dock and jumped off that for a while. Later Braden rented a kayak they could all go on, so he and Blythe and Ethan went exploring the lake (while I got to RELAX in the sun with Emily and Brynn (though Brynn was sleeping in the shade). Here they are on their kayak.

Blythe and I shared a short kayak trip together before I turned the boat in. We did a lot of floating and not a lot of paddling (that paddling stuff is hard work and who wants to exercise on vacation?).

Later in the day, we went back to Sliding Rock so Emily and I could try it out and so Ethan could collect some rocks (he came prepared this time with his bucket). To our complete shock, the water was flowing SO much faster than the day before. You might think it might be too dangerous for a 2 year old, but we were living on the wild side. I think he still liked it.

Unfortunately, the water in the wading area was so turned up, Ethan couldn’t see any rocks to collect. Plus wading in the area that was completely still only the day before was quite difficult.

The day before we were able to see that there were lots of holes in the rocks of the waterfall and most of them were really deep. Today, we couldn’t see them, but knew they were there. Here is some footage of Braden and Emily hanging out in their “river Jacuzzi”. Pretty neat.

The Water Fell

Ethan has been dying to see a waterfall since we got here (or as he says, a “waterfell”). Braden and I have seen many in the previous years we have been to visit Cashiers. Some you have to hike a ways to see, others you can even see right off the road. So we looked up where we could see some that you don’t have to hike much to and that weren’t very far away (since we only have about 2 hour windows to work with). Anyway, we decided on Bridal Veil Falls and Dry Falls. They are about 30 minutes away and are both right near each other. Bridal Veil falls isn’t much to see, but the cool thing about that one is that you can drive right under it. The cooler one is Dry Falls, where “Last of the Mohicans” filmed the scene where they were behind the waterfall. You only hike about a quarter mile for that one. The kids were quite impressed and we even got someone to take a family pic, where you will notice EVERYONE is looking at the camera. Crazy!

A stop for ice cream in the very quaint town of Highlands, NC and we were back in time for naptime.

Our late afternoon activity today was a trip to Sliding Rock just outside of Cashiers. It’s a little waterfall that goes over some slick rocks and into a pool below that turns into a wading area. Both kids did the “slide” and I think they liked it, but weren’t big fans of the cold mountain river water. So I think they really preferred the wading area. Ethan LOVED looking for rocks and then throwing them. I swear he could have done that all day. We’re thinking of going back tomorrow so Mommy can have a chance to go down the slides (I was carrying Brynn in the front carrier today). Sure looked like a lot of fun!

The Making of a Golf Legend

Well, apparently I won’t be able to upload any blog posts during this trip, so I’ll have to save them all for when we get home. I tried connecting to the free Wi-Fi at the Rec Center today, but apparently my computer hates me. I was unable to connect even though I was surrounding by about 6 people happily surfing the internet. Brynn was also screaming (interrupting their happy/peaceful/quiet surfing), so I didn’t have time to mess with it. Oh well.

Anyhoo, due to the timing of Brynn napping and eating and Ethan napping and then early bedtimes, we have about 2 hours in the morning for an activity and then about 2 hours in the late afternoon. The rest of the time is spent at the condo (where we’re “roughing it” kind of like camping…okay, not really). So our morning activity today was another trip down to the beach at the lake. This time we drove so we could lug all our crap. And this time Braden and I were prepared in our swimsuits. Blythe and Ethan had a blast again. They loved getting dirty in the sand and watching the fish/trying to catch the fish.

Lunch/nap break at the condo and then we were ready for the afternoon activity, which was putt-putt and swimming at the pool. I’ve blogged several times about Ethan’s golfing skills (he’s quite good with a sand wedge), but looks like we have an expert putter on our hands as well. Definitely a golf legend in the making.


Because we were trying to teach Blythe how to hit the golf ball properly (and because she didn’t nap today or yesterday), she decided she was too good for the game of golf and opted to sit out. Whatever.

Braden claimed he was playing with a handicap.

As if not being able to bend over or see your ball are actually handicaps. I think he was just making excuses for losing.

After putt-putt, we swam around a bit. Even Brynn got in and enjoyed herself (hey, she never cried so I take that as she was having a ball). We finished up in the game room before heading back. Braden made a campfire (because we’re camping..duh), but then it rained and it went out (not to worry…he got it going again). We decided to wait on cooking our dinner until after the kids went to bed so we could actually enjoy it and a glass or 2 of wine. Good idea on our part…those chicken fajitas were tasty!

We Are One With Nature

For our vacation this year, we are one with nature. Yep, it’s just nature and the Holloways. It’s almost like we’re camping, except with a 4 bedroom condo with air conditioning and an oven. To cook pizza in. That’s about as close to camping as I get (as I’m drinking my second glass of chilled wine).

We are in Cashiers, NC in the mountains. Way up in the mountains. We were supposed to go to the beach, but we basically got screwed at the last minute on the condo we were planning to stay at. Thankfully (so thankfully), Braden’s parents have a vacation condo in Cashiers, NC so we were able to make a “Plan B” vacation that will still be lots of fun.

We drove here today and it went pretty well. We actually didn’t stop at all for the first 4 hours (until we were only about 45 minutes away). No potty breaks for Ethan during that time which was AMAZING. So we made pretty good time. We got here and it was raining (only briefly) and we had a mix up with the keys, but once we got everything settled, we were able to unpack and relax. NOT. One thing that’s for sure is that this vacation will not be a relaxing vacation. Wouldn’t have been at the beach either. We have a 4 year old, a 2 year old, and a zero year old for goodness sake. There is no relaxing until at least 9 at night and we need to make sure we have things to do at every waking hour or the kids will go crazy with the 3 toys we brought for them. Fortunately there is plenty to do.

For today, once Ethan finished napping, we had just about an hour or so to do something. We decided to hike down to the lake and the beach area. It’s a nice hike down there (only about 10 or 15 minutes). The kids were ready in their swim suits (we were not), so they had fun splashing around in the lake for a while to burn off some energy. Tomorrow we’ll be prepared with our suits too.

Activities!

It's that time of year again...activity registration. We've just barely dabbled in it so far, but in the not too distant future these fall activities will run our lives and our schedules. But for now it's all about figuring out what we want to try out and how committed we want to be. In the summer we generally have no activities so we have the freedom to hit the pool in the late afternoon if we want, depending on the weather. But the Fall/Winter we NEED stuff to do. Cabin fever will most certainly set in too early if there is not enough to do.

So for Blythe....do we do swim lessons? Gymnastics? Dance? Soccer? Based on her t-ball games, I personally think she's too lazy to play soccer. I don't think she'll run after the ball. On the bright side - maybe she won't get hurt. But probably she should try it and we can see. I think she'd be good at dance, but so far she says she doesn't want to do it. We had no swim lessons this summer, just play swimming, so I think we'll do at least a month of swim lessons.

And for Ethan...do we do gymnastics? Or.....okay, so that's really the only option for a 2 year old. So we'll do that. Oh, there are "swimming lessons", but they are the "float around in the water with your parent" lessons. And I'm not getting in. So he'll have to wait until he's at least close to being 3.

I can see how things start getting a little nuts when you've got 3 kids who are all at least Blythe's age doing multiple activities. At least by then I won't be paying for 3 kids in day care, so I'll have the money (hopefully), but probably not the time. Sigh.

Mission Impossible

I mean seriously, it is just not possible to get a good picture of my 3 kids together.

I tried bribing with M&M's and this is what I got. I just want a halfway decent picture to replace my blog header for Christ's sake!

Braden is in California this week and so I decided to paint the basement. Almost all 800 square feet or so (including the stairway). Not possible to do all that on my own and take care of 3 kids without losing my mind, so my lovely mother came up and helped me and we knocked it out in 3 days (thank you, thank you, thank you Mom!). Looks great, but I won't be posting any pics for a few weeks since we are also installing some cabinets, so need those in before I show it off.

So I was on my own tonight with the kiddos. Brynn needed a bath upstairs but Blythe and Ethan wanted to play in the basement, so I told them they could as long as they did not go outside. I started to go upstairs, but realized I had left the step stool in the basement and knowing the kids would try to play with that, I went down to the basement first to retrieve it. Blythe got down there milliseconds before I did and I managed to grab it right as she was about to jump on it. Pat on my back for my superior parenting skills. So anyway, a little nervous about having them play where I can't even hear them, but decided to give it a shot.

Brynn had a fairly short bath and instead of feeding her in her room, I headed down to the basement because I just don't trust Blythe and Ethan to play nicely together. I was SO wrong. I walked down there and Blythe had built a nice block tower and Ethan was playing with drums. There was no fighting and nothing was broken and they hadn't even made a mess. They didn't even jump on the guest room bed (like they ALWAYS do). Then of course I had to ruin it by just being present in the room. They were loud and obnoxious and whiny and fighting while I was down there feeding Brynn. Guess that'll show me not to trust them!

Trip to Lowes

What a cold, misty, rainy, yucky weekend! We decided to tackle some house projects. This week I will be painting the basement, so we prepped by moving all of the furniture to the middle of the room. We're also selling the entertainment center, so we emptied that out. Now the kids like to use it as a pretend ice cream stand. They have all sorts of flavors. Chocolate cake flavor, rainbow, pickle. Actually on Friday, the ice cream truck came to the kids day care and everyone got snow cones. Blythe said she had strawberry and Ethan said he had pickle. And Blythe confirmed that Ethan had pickle flavor. I think they just said the green flavor was pickle, but I could be wrong.

Anyway, we also tackled more of our deck project (replacing the boards with Trex boards). And by "we", I mean Braden. After church yesterday, Braden and Ethan hit up Lowes for boards and also painting supplies. They documented their trip in pictures.

Ethan on the 10th of probably 30 tractors he had to sit on:

Ethan as a police officer:

And finishing up their trip with lunch at, where else but, TACO BELL:

So they had fun on that trip. It was a LONG weekend though with the kids mostly cooped up inside. Add to that that NONE of the kids wanted to nap yesterday and we had ourselves some fun times (I mean, if tantrums, crying, fighting, whining, and meltdowns are your idea of fun).