There's nothing better

than a baby laughing....

Flu shots

Took the kids to get flu shots today (well, not Brynn...she has to be 6 months so will get hers next week).

Braden had already gotten his, but I had not, so I got one too. It had been a LONG time since Blythe has had a shot. Last year she just got the H1N1 nasal mist thing, so I guess it was 2 years ago, when she was 2 that she got a flu shot. Ethan got an H1N1 shot last year, but he didn't remember. So when I asked them this morning, "Who wants to get a shot this morning!?!?!', they both said, "ME!". Ha! Maybe Ethan remembered a little because then he said, "It's just a little tiny shot, right?". Right. Here was my plan:

Mommy goes first (and acts like I can hardly feel anything)
Blythe goes second (and I make sure to tell her to be brave and not cry so Ethan doesn't get freaked out)
Ethan goes last (because he's definitely going to cry)

This plan did not work out as nicely as it had played out in my head.

Blythe completely lost it when she got a shot. She just kept crying and making sad faces and just couldn't believe we had let those nurses do that to her. This did little to calm any fears Ethan had. So he started crying when they wiped the area with an alcohol swab. And then of course screamed when they gave him the shot.

But he got over it quickly. Blythe did not.

Prior to the shot I had told her about getting shots when she turns 5. So at the doctors office after the shot she said, "I don't want any more shots until I'm 5". So I agreed. No more shots until she's 5. Later in the car she said, "Mom, I thought about it and I decided I don't want any more shots until I'm 6". Unfortunately I had to inform her of the horrific news that shots are required before she goes to kindergarten.

I also found out at the doctors office that Ethan never had his flu shot booster. I now remember forgetting to bring him back when he was a baby. Then last year because of the H1N1 crap, the kids didn't get regular flu shots because no one had them. So great, now I get to bring him back to the doctor in a month for a shot again. And now that he's almost 3, he's going to remember and it's not going to be fun.

Deep Thoughts....

My mother had 3 kids. Growing up I thought for sure she couldn't love me, my brother, and my sister all equally. She clearly loved me the most. No, actually Doug because he was the baby. Okay, actually Laura because she was the oldest (why else would she have gotten to do all the stuff I wanted to do..."because she's the oldest"...that's lame). Okay, so clearly she did a pretty good job of hiding who her favorite was. But I always knew she had a favorite (even if I didn't know who that person was).

But now that I have 3 kids I know that she didn't have a favorite. And she loved us all equally. Before Ethan was born I was so worried because I couldn't imagine splitting the love I had for Blythe in 2. That's not how it works though. And I loved Ethan just as much as I loved Blythe. Yet I still worried again before I had Brynn. But again I see how love is complicated and unexplainable. All I know is there is NOTHING I wouldn't do for any of my children.

But just because I love Blythe and Ethan a lot doesn't mean I don't feel guilty for spending the time I need to spend with Brynn. I need to feed Brynn and hold her and nurture her. And I LOVE doing it. But I wish I could also spend more time with Blythe and Ethan. And I know that time will come. In the meantime I wish things would slow down. I wish life wasn't so stressful and things were just simpler.

But things aren't going to slow down and life won't get any simpler. So I will settle on enjoying the little things and taking a few moments each day to feel grateful for all that I have. Happy Friday!

Family Room Before and After

Yahoo! We FINALLY finished our cabinet projects. Yes, I know people build houses in less time than it took us to finish this project, but whatever.

Here are the before and after pics of our family room. I may have left in the "clutter" (dog beds, baby swing, etc) in the before pic and removed it in the after pic for an extra dramatic effect. But still, look how much bigger and neater our family room looks now.

I need to hang a picture before I take the "after" picture of the basement, so I know the suspense is killing you, but you'll just have to wait longer for those pictures.

My baby got baptized

First of all - a refrigerator update. The repairman FINALLY came at 7:15 on Friday night. Holy crap, I was in panic mode. As I suspected, it was the motherboard, which is normally a $285 part. But since it was so late, he only charged me $100 and now my refrigerator is as good as new. Phew!

Braden's parents came in town on Friday early evening and then my parents, sister, brother, sister-in-law, and niece came on Saturday morning. It was really cold here (but fortunately the chance of snow didn't produce), so we headed to the new indoor pool. Blythe went down the slide "like a hundred times" and even yours truly went down the slide (it really was a lot of fun). Brynn liked the pool until she started getting splashed (and tired), so then she liked sleeping at the pool.

Blythe and Ethan could have swum for hours probably (and Ada too), but we didn't want to push nap time TOO much.

Then on Sunday, my baby was baptized. Isn't she beautiful in her christening dress?

The rest of us didn't look too bad either.

And here's the star with her godparents (and aunt and uncle) Doug and Lynette:

Brynn did great with the baptism even though she was SO tired (and fell asleep not 5 minutes later). Ethan TRIED to steal her thunder by making faces at the crowd during the baptism. He's always trying to make people laugh, that silly boy.

Anyway, it was a very, very nice weekend and we all had a good time. Here's a few more pics from the weekend.

Save the milk!

Our refrigerator has been making a clicking noise off and on for the past week. Kind of annoying, but it stops after a few minutes, so whatever. Then last night it wouldn't stop. Just kept clicking. And clicking. And clicking. And clicking. I couldn't take it anymore! It sounds like someone left their turn signal on. Forever.

So I got online to research. Bad news. This means that we are going to need a new motherboard. And that the refrigerator and freezer will likely stop working very soon. Wow, great timing. Brynn's getting baptized this weekend so we have all our family coming into town and I had just bought craploads of food from Walmart yesterday. Fortunately, there is an online repairman scheduling tool so I was able to schedule someone to come out this afternoon (sometime in a 5 hour block of time).

UNFORTUNATELY - the refrigerator and freezer stopped working sometime over night. Yes, I have a crapload of food in there that I don't want to go bad. But I have frozen breast milk in the freezer people! I.must.save.the.breast.milk. Got me a cooler out this morning and filled it with the already-melting ice and the breast milk. So we should be safe there. I likely let out all traces of cold air left while I was doing that though (because bad motherboard also took down my ice dispenser).

Please get here soon refrigerator repairman! What if he doesn't have a new motherboard? What if I have to wait longer? Supposed to be 23 degrees tonight, so I guess I could put all the frozen stuff outside. And tomorrow's high is 41, so we'll be good for a day or so.

In the meantime, the damn clicking noise continues. And it's driving me CRRAAAAAZZZYYY!

Halloween

Despite Braden's goal to make at least 10 kids cry in terror on Halloween, I think he only made 1 kid cry. Ethan. Poor kid is just scared of everything. Even though he would watch Braden put his mask on, he still was petrified of Braden in costume. And the fog. Screetching like a little girl every time our fog machine came on.

That's right - we have a fog machine. Definitely added to the spooky atmosphere.

That's Braden in costume and Blythe dressed up as Ariel. Nice hair, huh? I was a little worried she'd have pink hair for a week (and Blythe was hoping she would), but it came out after just 2 shampoos. Braden was pretty scary looking. Notice his Freddy Krueger hand with the knives. Yikes!

Although Ethan was scared at our house, he did enjoy trick or treating around the neighborhood. He was slow compared to his sister RUNNING from house to house. Good thing his friend Luke went slow with him.

Blythe was really into the whole Halloween experience. After she finished trick or treating around the neighborhood, she wanted to sit on our porch and hand out the candy. Later we found out she liked doing that because she was eating the candy she was supposed to be passing out. Oh well. We ran out at one point and then just started using hers anyway.

Brynn made it through a short bit of trick or treating. She didn't get any candy, but looked cute in her ladybug costume.

Overall, it was a really good and really fun Halloween. How about one more pic of the 3 kiddos in costume.

Tombstone Wars

Here are the 2 tombstones Braden had originally created for our awesome Halloween decorations.

We came home from church today and found someone had added to our collection.

Since that someone went to Davidson College, we've now expanded our graveyard by another.

Ah, how we love Halloween.

Otherwise today has been a pretty typical Halloween. "If you don't eat all your lunch, then you must be too full for candy." "If you don't take a nap, you can't go trick or treating." "If you guys fight, there's no trick or treating."

Everyone ate their lunches, and now all 3 kids are napping. Ah, how I love Halloween.

Bubble Time!

Blythe and Ethan probably won't be bathing together much longer. Once Brynn moves into the bath seat and into the big bath tub, they'll probably alternate who bathes with her (but 3 would be a crowd!).

So might as well make the most of these last times with some bubbles!

Dan Nicholas Park

Last weekend Braden headed to State College, PA for a meet against Penn State. So while he was there, I packed up the 3 kids and 2 dogs and headed to Gommy and Poppa's house. My godparents, Mike and Marcia, were there visiting as well. So as usual, a packed house!

I had thought about going to the Carolina BalloonFest, which is an annual hot air balloon festival in Statesville, NC. However, in reading about it, the balloons are only in the air 8am-9am and 4:30pm-5:30pm. Seeing as how it's an hour drive to get there, 8am was WAY too early. And 4:30 would mean we'd need to leave by 3:30 and that just wasn't meshing well with our schedules (esp. Ethan's nap schedule). So instead we opted to hit up Dan Nicholas Park in Salisbury. It was a BEAUTIFUL Fall day, and there was no way we were spending it inside!

So we did the playgrounds, rode the carousel, rode the train (which was temporarily the "spooky" train), mined for gems, and had a picnic. The gem mining was fun and a good activity for everyone to participate in. Blythe got some amethyst, onyx, fool's gold, quartz, and a bunch of other gems I don't know anything about. So it was a fun, fun day! Gommy took a bunch of pics, and I took none.

I think Ethan was little bummed about not seeing any hot air balloons, but he still had a good time. I had some TIRED kiddos on the drive home on Sunday, so the drive was pretty easy. Yay!

5 months!

Brynn was 5 months old yesterday! She's still a super GREAT baby, very chill and

go-with-the-flow. She can be happy just sitting on someone's lap (usually mine) for a long, long, time. Here's what she's up to:

• I weighed her on our super-unreliable bathroom scale and she is approx. 16 pounds. Length - have no idea
• Wearing size 2 diapers and officially out of anything 3-6 month or 6 month sized. Now into the 6-9 month and 6-12 month (though these are usually a little big).
• She started with rice cereal this month. Went okay for about a week and then it was yucky. So she has also tried banana, applesauce, and peaches baby food mixed in with the cereal. She's also tried oatmeal baby cereal. She may also have tried a bite of my chocolate frosty from Wendy's (bad mom!). Yesterday she tried applesauce by itself. Overall, I'd say she's not the biggest fan of food.
• This month she rolled over! Only once as far as I can tell (unless she did it again at day care late last week).
• Loves her feet and trying to eat her toes
• I think she might be working on a tooth. She makes a fish face all the time now like she's trying to feel her bottom gum. That and she has her fingers in her mouth all the time.
• I thought she'd be out of her baby bathtub by now, but she's not. I tried it once in the big bathtub with the bath seat and had Blythe in there too. She screamed the whole time. I think she was cold because I fill up her baby bathtub so even her shoulders are under water. Hmm.
• She's probably ready to sit in a high chair at a restaurant, but these days we only do drive-thrus. Usually Brynn is too tired at dinner time to even attempt sitting in an establishment (even if it is Taco Bell usually).
• Speaking of that, the past few days she's been so tired at about 6 o'clock in the evening, that she has to take a 30 minute nap (while someone is holding her). Then I bathe her and feed her and then she hangs out for about 45 minutes before going to bed. This helps avoid a 6am wake up, but kind of makes fixing dinner difficult.
• She can sit without support for a few seconds before falling over. She's good with a boppy around her.
• If I put her on her tummy with my leg under her or a small pillow under her, she tries to crawl, but I don't think she's all that close to actually crawling.

So anyway, that's about it. Another month went by way too fast!

Talon comes to visit

This past weekend we had some visitors from across the state. Tommy and Angie and their new baby Talon came to visit from Newport News, VA. Talon was born July 3, so he's not too much younger than Brynn. Big boy though! He seems to weigh just about the same as what Brynn weighs.

I think they had fun laying on their backs on the floor together. Brynn was trying so hard over the weekend to roll over and she seemed to try even harder if she had no diaper on, so there was one time when she showed Talon her lady parts in kind of an inappropriate way, but I'm pretty sure he won't remember.

Anyhoo, we jam packed our Saturday with as much as could fit in a day as possible. VT had their first swim meet of the season and the first one at the new pool at 9 in the morning that day, so I took the 3 kids to the meet where we watched for a couple of hours. Oh how nice it was to be at the new pool with plenty of seating (NOT on deck) so they could run around as much as they wanted. From there, I took the 3 of them to the parade on Main St. for VT homecoming. We got there late and Ethan had to potty, so we didn't see much of it, but the kids got a few pieces of candy and Ethan got freaked out by the weird-hokie bird-on-stilts-people, so that's pretty much what I had expected to get out of the parade.

Home for about an hour and then it was off to the tailgate for the football game. And we took ALL the kids to the game (and the tailgate). We went to the game about an hour early to meet up with the swim recruits and take them on the field to watch warmups, then we stayed until halftime (score was 49 to 21 at that point). All the kids did really well considering we had basically no naps that day (Brynn napped some in my arms).

As a side note - Brynn FINALLY did roll over for the first time yesterday afternoon at daycare. Tried to get her to do it again when we got home and she got real close, but she seems quite pleased with herself on her newly developed skill.

Disney on Ice

Last Thursday Blythe and I went to Disney on Ice: Princess Wishes with her friend Ashley and her mom and grandmother. It was a mother/daughter date long overdue! Ashley and Blythe are at the perfect age for something like this and they both dressed up in princess costumes (as did almost every little girl there). Ashley was Belle and Blythe was Ariel.




The show was good - basically had a little "clip" from each of the Disney princess movies (except Princess and the Frog and Pocohontas, which Blythe was a little unnerved about).

Here is a little movie of the dragon scene from the Sleeping Beauty part.

When I showed the clip to Ethan later, he said he wanted the dragon to eat the Fairy Godmothers (or whoever those women with the funny hats are). Nice.

So it was a fun show. I spent money only on the tickets, though Blythe tried to flag down the guy selling cotton candy (for 10 dollars!) and the snow cone guy and she begged for popcorn and for this light-up-spinny-thing (that was 25 dollars). So lucky for us the people sitting in front of us bought ALL of those things so that Blythe could keep on wishing she had just one of them.

As a side note, it was the first night I was not here to put Brynn down for bed. Things went splendid. Okay, so she screamed bloody murder until she was too tired to scream anymore and fell asleep. What can I say? She missed her mommy.

Beware the Holloway home on Halloween!

We're all decorated for Halloween now. Our neighborhood is pretty much the perfect Trick-or-Treating neighborhood. 42 houses, all fairly close together on one well-lit street that is one big circle that's all a one-way street. Takes about an hour and half for little kids to finish our neighborhood. Big kids could probably run through it in under an hour. So we get a lot of trick-or-treaters and we take our Halloween decorating seriously.

We had some left over plywood from our still-not-yet-complete basement cabinet project, so Braden used it to make a coffin. And some more of it to make a tombstone. Then Blythe and Ethan helped him paint blood marks on them with red paint. Actually there are 2 tombstones - one says "Cavaliers" and one says "Heels". He made the coffin big enough so he could fit in it (one of his many ways to scare the prospective trick-or-treaters).

And then there are the lights. Oh the lights. We've been adding to our collection each year (actually I'm pretty sure my mother-in-law has purchased all of them for us). We have: skeletons, candy corn, pumpkins, and now bats. Oh, actually Braden did buy some orange ones that come in a net to put up as well. Throw in a few decorative bats and we're all set.

Ha! Yeah, right...that's not it! On Halloween, we'll add some dry ice inside the coffin so the smoke filters out through the slits Braden left in it. And Braden will dress up in his scary Freddy Krueger costume and sit perfectly still holding the candy (until someone tries to take a piece!). And we'll add the scary Halloween music from the CD Braden already made.

Oh and duh - by Halloween I'm sure we'll have at least 5 pumpkins to carve. For now we just have the one seen in the picture. In exploring the neighborhood the other day, Braden, Ethan, and Blythe found that someone had planted a pumpkin patch in one of the common area flower beds by the front entrance. The nerve! Since they were in the common area, we picked one.

Ready for snow

It was 80 degrees yesterday in Blacksburg, which set a new record high for October 11. Yes, folks it had never been above 79 degrees on that day previously.

But apparently my kids are ready for snow.

This is what Blythe does when she's supposed to be "napping" on weekends. She searches her drawers and closet for things she can put on that she might not normally wear. Then she dressed up Ethan as well. Note that Blythe is actually wearing the snow suit that is sized 3T (and wearing it inside out) and she gave Ethan the 5T ones (that he has on backwards).

Time for snow angels!