We're Back Outside!

Hooray! It's finally starting to get nice here. We've been spending as much time as we can outside soaking up the sunshine and vitamin D.

The twins were ecstatic to get the bubbles out again. They've also enjoyed climbing on the shrinking mountain of snow in front of the house. When my mom was here, the snow was almost all the way up to the lowest branches. As you can see in this photo, some melting has occured. Its been almost a week since I took the photo and the snow has melted even lower!

Hannah's enjoyed outside time too.

She gets to hang out in her stroller.

She'd get cold quickly despite all the blankets so we took this sleeper that Joy gave her and use it as a snowsuit. It keeps Hannah warm and then she can nap away in the stroller.

We are looking forward to more warm days outside to play.

We love to be outside!

Life is Good

Seriously, does it get much better than this?

Laying on the floor with your nukie.

If only the picture could show how she attacks that nuk!

She loves that thing!

Character Change

Carter has always enjoyed dressing up as Belle. However, he has recently made a switch and enjoys being Mulan now. Here he is dressed as Mulan when she is on her way to meet the matchmaker. I think this dress of Ellie's made him think of Mulan because her dress has a sash and this dress has strings for a bow in back.


Ava is a princess. She doesn't need a character as she likes to just be a general princess. My multiples group has its big spring sale this weekend. I will look for boy dress-up clothes but even if I find some, I make no guarantees that Carter will wear them!

Genuises

Recent examples of the IQ levels running our household:

Alissa
Yesterday I was driving home from dropping the twins off at their preschool and running errands with Hannah. As I turned onto our street, the oil light came on, the van did a lurch, and then refused to accelerate. I luckily was able to coast the entire way down our street, which is long, and into our driveway. After shutting the car off, I tried to restart it several times to no avail.

In a full-on panic mode since the twins needed to be picked up in a little over two hours, I tried to troubleshoot. The van had gone almost 5,000 miles since its last oil change and I figured that's what had to be the problem. However, I didn't want to pay a tow truck if it just needed a little oil. Rich was able to leave work and pick up the twins since Jake had taken the bus to work so when he dropped them off, we checked the oil level in the car. Nearly bone dry.

Figuring that to be the problem, Rich stopped back after work with some oil. We put it in the engine, waited a few minutes, and tried to start the van. Nothing.

Rich asked me to explain what the van had done again. Then he asked how much gas I had.

Ooops. Knew I should have filled up on my way home instead of waiting.

(the van does work now that it has gas in it. and i took it in for an oil change today just to get it all taken care of)

Jake
Tonight Jake asked why the house felt so cold. Then he remembered that he had shut the heat off today since it was a balmy 40-something out.

"I was trying to save energy" he said to me as he turned it back on.

I looked around the house. The lights were on upstairs along with the computer that was playing music. Downstairs nearly all the lights were all on. The tv was running, the portable dvd player was on, and he had just powered up the radio.

Yep, bet that saved a lot of energy!


Please pray for our children that they might have a chance to succeed in life!

One Month Old

It's hard to believe our little Hannah Jade is already one month old. That first month of life just flew right on by. I was actually a little sad on her one month birthday as I realized she is already 1/12th of a year old. How fast this year will fly by and with her being the last little baby I will go through all this with, I want to relish as much of it as I can.


Since I've been a bad blogger and not put up any photos due to the computer issues, here is a backlog of what was taken in February.


Poor girl's hair sticks straight up. Yet the long, stick-up part doesn't start until halfway to the back of her head. Hope it all figures itself out before she is a teenager and cares how it looks!

Grampy and Hannah enjoying a nap the day we went to visit some of the great-grandparents.

I think this is the first shot of all 4 together.

When Grampy and Grammy were here, we went down for a day to meet the maternal great-grandparents. Here are all 4 with my Grandma Jackie and Poppa (my dad's parents).

Here they are with Grandma Mary (my mom's mother).

Grammy's oldest and youngest grandchildren.

Grampy with two of his girls.

Me, my parents, and the troops. I'm not ashamed of how awful I look in this picture. This was the day my parents left and I had just spent my entire shower sobbing. No baby blues here but after 9 wonderful days with my other other half (yes you read that right. Jake is one other half, my mom is the other. Or would they be thirds?!), I was very sad to see her leave. And my dad. But I really didn't want my mom to go. So I look awful in the one picture I have with all of us. Great.

Otherwise, life is just cruising along here. Hannah got to meet most of the extended Wendorff family this past Saturday. Aside from Uncle Alex in TX and Aunt Holly, Uncle Joel, and cousin Olivia in AZ, the only people she has to meet yet are her paternal maternal great-grandparents. Does that make sense? Or is it easier to say Jake's mom's parents? Ahh, all that lineage business confuses me. Anyway, our children are fortunate enough to have 3 of the 4 sets of great-grandparents alive and we will try to get Miss H and Company down to see the last set in the near future.

Ellie has lost two more teeth. One on the bottom that Jake pulled out while my parents were here but on the night my dad stayed in Wells. I think he was bummed to miss pulling that out as there was nothing more my dad loved than yanking out teeth! The other fell out Tuesday evening as she was watching tv. It's one of the top ones next to the front two. Just fell right out. She's a gummy mess right now and looks pretty similar to Hannah with no teeth! She wanted an apple this morning and it had to be cut up as there is no easy way for Ellie to eat an apple whole.

The desktop is still not fixed but I finally decided that the blog needed updating and that it really is ok to put the same pictures on two different computers. I've much to randomly report on that I decided to just get over one of my neuroses and start posting. The husband of one of my fellow multiples board members is going to look at the desktop for me and get it up and running properly. Sadly, they live just down the same large county road as us with about a 7 minute drive. It's such a trek that I just can't seem to grab the dang hard drive and hop in the car and get it over there. Maybe that will be tomorrow's goal....

Still Here

We are still here. Life hasn't swallowed us whole with all of its twists and turns. Yet.

Our long break from blogging was primarily due to having Grammy Sara here for 9 fantastic days. She flew in on the 18th and left on the 27th. Grampy came in on the 23rd and flew out with Grammy.

Having that extra set of hands for over a week was wonderful. My mom definitely spoiled us by getting all the laundry from the floor to the washer and into drawers, taking on dishwasher duty, cleaning up the kitchen every night, taking the troops outside to play (she really loved coming from the 70 degree weather to below freezing!), and helping out at night so I really only had to get up once. As Jake and I looked at each other last night over the mound of toys on the floor, the mountain of laundry that popped up shortly after the airport drop-off, and the disaster that erupted in the kitchen, we realized that reality is here. We now have to figure out a new routine with our newest addition. I can tell you that the new routine will not include Jake making a milk run while the twins are in the tub because that didn't work out very well last night. One bloody nose (Ava - think she picked it a little too hard. Eew), a crying baby, and one tired mommy trying to regulate it all just didn't work.

I'm working on accepting the fact that life just isn't going to be normal for awhile. Chances are it will never again be the normal of old. We'll probably just end up settling into a new "normal". And while my OCD self hates having to let things go, life is such at the moment that mess will abound, clutter will grow, and walking through the house while weaving around all the projects going on is just the way it's going to be. The four large totes sitting in the loft with old clothing to be sold at my multiples sale will likely continue to sit there until the sale in 3.5 weeks. The wall in our bedroom that my dad taped and finished along with the wall that he attempted to fix in the twins' room (apparently my drywall work was so bad that he was unable to leave it be!) will probably sit in their current states until the end of the month when I finally find the time to slap on a coat of primer and two coats of paint. It will feel like we live in the South, where everything moves at a slower pace. But persevere we will and eventually my house will reachieve my standard of cleanliness, the baby will sleep through the night, and maybe, just maybe, we won't have to continuously remind Carter to be gentle with the baby.

As it is, everything is going well. Sweet baby Hannah is still getting up only two or three times at night. She was weighed again last week and clocked in at a whooping 8 lbs 6 oz. The baby just keeps on growing bigger! Ellie lost another tooth this weekend and Ava & Carter are doing fabulous as well.

I will try to post again later this week with photos. The desktop is having issues so I'll see if I can get it fixed and running properly. Thank goodness for the old laptop, which while a pile of crap, has come to the rescue so we have a connection with the outside world!

Welcome to the Mad House

Where life is as crazy as can be. Yesterday was another one of those Manic Mondays. It was Jake's last day off before returning to work. Ellie had school and a Valentine's Day/100th Day of School celebration to prepare for. Ava and Carter had school. Hannah had her newborn check-up. And life just ran its course through our house. With all the running around, when Jake, Hannah, and I got home around lunch, the kitchen looked like this.

I've actually been doing a really good job of keeping up with things around the house. However, Monday mornings involve making lunches for kids, packing toddler backpacks with extra clothes, cramming a bite of breakfast down several throats, and the new added task of packing a diaper bag again with diapers, wipes, bottles, formula, spare clothes, and hunting down one of the pacifiers that Ava has hijacked as her new toys. Preschool starts at 9:30 and Hannah's appointment was at 10 so there was no time for one of us to do drop-off and the other to pick up the house first. Add to this mess the fact that I hadn't hauled out my Sunday paper and other recycling, needed to unload the dishwasher, wash bottles and other non-dishwasher items and the kitchen was a ground zero for household disaster.

Of course, there is also the mess of the living room. While this is just one container of Littlest Pet Shop toys, this is the result of what happens when Mom and Dad tell you for the millionth time to leave the baby alone. If your name is Carter, you don't handle scolding well and tend to get destructive before running off to the downstairs bathroom where you shut the door and hide out until you are no longer mad that you were scolded.

How Jake and I have wished we could have spent the last week much like this little baby has. Sleep she does, nearly all she does. And Miss Hannah weighed in at 7 lbs 9 oz at her newborn check-up. She has surpassed her birth weight and is growing well. Poor baby does have a cold though, the unfortunate result of being sneezed on by her adoring brother when only 7 hours old. Which is why my hospital stay was supposed to be my solitary honeymoon and older children were only supposed to be allowed to visit when I decided I missed them (which likely would have been several days after I had returned home!). But alas, it is over and done and if there is one thing to be said, it is that Hannah will have a very strong immune system as she grows.

The weekend was a busy one, including Hannah's first trip to Target. She slept the entire time we picked up groceries. But it was still a wonderful bonding moment between Mother and Daughter, specifically because it was nice and quiet for both of us!

We also entertained Joy and Tonester on Saturday. Zoey came with as well and succeeded in ruining a few more toys and licking the baby's face. Note to self: remember what a pest she was when kids start talking about wanting a pet. Ava and Joy danced together while Daddy and Tonester grilled and Carter ran in and out of the house checking on everyone.

And while there was nothing I wanted more yesterday when getting home than to take a nap for a few hours before the twins came home and Jake returned from the gym, I decided to leave the sleeping to the babe.

I redeemed myself and decontaminated the kitchen. Social services need not be called now as it has been sterilized and scrubbed down.

Now to keep it like this for more than 10 minutes!