Good Golly Miss Molly!!!!

Good grief it has been a ridiculous amount of time since I updated this blog. It looks like another epic mega post is in order to get you all up to speed in my life.

It has been an insane several months with a lot of twists and turns.

Here's where you left off.......

February......Sunshine's 6th birthday.

She decided that she wanted to do a cupcake decorating party. So we had all her besties over for some sugar fueled sticky fun.

We decorated cupcakes....

Then came the pinata. Which let me just say right now that little girls wielding a bat hopped up on a sugar rush was a sort of ill thought out plan, but we made it work.When it broke ,the girls all screeched and descended on this poor thing like a pack of vultures. It happened so fast I forgot that I was no longer watching dainty little girls but sugared up fiends delighting in the prospect of candy that was surely waiting for them if only they could strike down this paper mache animal on a rope.
Then just to drive fear into the hearts of her enemies, she felt she needed to wear her victim around for a while. Have I mentioned lately how awesomely weird my kids are ? :)Through it all they all had a great time.

Next we move on to Bug's 9th birthday party in April.

He wanted to have a small party at home but take some friends over to the aquatic park for the day. I like a man with a plan. Simple and defined. I can do that.We opened presents. Then off to the water park we went.It's hard to see, but that streak of lightning coming down the slide there is Bug.
Him hitting the water.Then we came on back and had some root beer float cake. By his request of course.
Moving right along, also in April my friend Erin and I trained for and did a half marathon. It was sort of to round out our Biggest loser challenge we were doing for our gym. We walked it, but still that's a 13.1 mile walk. It was tough to say the least. But because we are who we are we felt compelled to not only do it , but do it in a tu-tu. Because really, why wouldn't you?To read more about my race and see more pictures go here to my other blog. Just so as I am not repeating myself.

Ok....so moving right along we are now into May.

My awesome Rockstar husband took on a huge project through his school. On top of being a straight A student he felt he needed to push himself even more and take on a project for NASA. Yes, that NASA. I'd give you the whole story, but he wrote it all out so nicely in his blog that I'll let him give you the whole back story of it. Go check it out over here. It's ok....I'll wait.

What he didn't mention on his blog is that he was interviewed by a couple different publications and made all kinds of news here at home. Here are a couple pictures from his photo shoot.


We are ridiculously proud of what he has done.

Ok now that you are up to speed as to why he was there, I'll just throw out there that I went with him for (a mini vacation) moral support. So while you got to see the inside of the space center in his blog, I'll show you what I saw that weekend.
This is the outside of the space center where Jason spent the majority of his weekend. I just got to drive past it and get some pictures. In fact, I spent a lot of time just driving around and taking in Texas. I had never been and wanted to see what all it had.
I went through downtown Houston. Nice, but about the same as any downtown of any given city.
I drove down to Galveston and played in the warm 82 degree gulf of Mexico. It was almost too warm. Don't get me wrong here, I am in no way complaining, I loved the warm ocean, it was just so odd seeing that I am so used to the frigid Oregon ocean. It was awfully nice though to get in and play.I saw a whole bunch of oil refineries driving around. That's something you don't get to see here.
But here is where I spent the majority of my time away from my life......Either in my hotel room reading a grown up book uninterrupted with no pictures.
Or here..... choking in the crazy Texas humidity.I spent most of my time alternating between the two. It was a fun 4 days away, but I was more than ready to come home when the time came.

Once we got home, we dove head long into baseball season. Bug was playing on the farm division of little league. He had to try out and was placed on a team where he was one of the best players to sort of stack the team. It did wonders for his self esteem. He had a really good year.Moving along to the year end of Sunshine's ballet and her spring recital. They did a big production of the story of Esther. She was an angel. She had a lot of fun and did a great job. She also loved the backstage environment of getting ready with hair and make-up. It was almost alarming to see these little girls (some 3 and 4 years old) tarted up in full stage make up. Here are a few pictures from that.
So here we are almost ready to wrap up our school year (and this incredibly long blog post) but before we do, we need to properly Graduate Sunshine from her kindergarten class. It has been a fun year but the time has come to move up to all day "big kid" classes.
So that pretty much brings you up to speed. I now see the need to keep on top of updating this as I have spent the better part of my day getting this post up and ready to go.
Also, I did notice that this post is very Bug and Sunshine heavy. Peanut was feeling a little left out so here is a cute picture of him just to level the field.

Peanut turns 3 !

I know I am late getting this one up. This is the plight of the third child sad to say. But his birthday was last Monday and we had all the back to school chaos this week. It's not that I love him less or didn't want to put his slide show together, I was just crazy busy.

We had a nice cake and opened presents earlier this week.

I think this one was one of my hardest to do because he still seems like a fragile little baby, but I guess they all grow up sometime. So he turned 3 and is hardly even fragile anymore :) He still likes to cuddle though, so we are still good.

Boy scout field trip

So on Saturday my mom and I took the boys out to the military base by the airport for a boy scout field trip. It was "young American day" and so they let all the kids check out all the fighter jets and military gadgets. Also there were firefighters and police there to answer questions and let the kids touch and try on all their gear.

Bug and Peanut has a great time. Bug got to try on Kevlar and hold a missile launcher. (The highlight of his day) But the big highlight of our day was that it was in fact right on the runway of the airport so we were literally 300 yards or so from airplanes taking off and landing. Plus the base had fighter jets in the air doing fly-bys. My mom and I were practically chasing down the runway pumping our fist in the air. It was very exciting to say the least. Bug was a little off put by the extreme volume of the jets. My mom and I couldn't help but spend the rest of our day doing Top gun quotes and peeking around corners in hopes to find a sweaty volleyball game in progress somewhere. But to no avail.

We got some decent pictures out of the day though.

Why -O Why -O Why -O did I ever leave Ohio?!

So if you notice the time stamp on this here post, you will notice that it is ridiculously early. Just a little after 6 AM to be exact. Why am I up and blogging this early you may ask. Because I am apparently a glutton for punishment. Here's my dilemma.

Last week Peanut discovered how to climb out of his crib. Something they all eventually figure out how to do. Once this skill comes into play, it time to get them out of the crib and into a real bed. I learned this lesson when Bug first learned how to climb out because it almost always invites an injury. The rail to the crib is chest high on me. So they have to be able to swing their pudgy little leg over that and jump (from chest high) to the floor. And pray that there are no sharp or pokey toys in their landing area. (Which is hardly ever the case) It usually ends badly.

So when Peanut hit this milestone, I thought "great time to ditch the crib and make the transition". So taking baby steps into this transition I took the front part of his crib off. So basically he just had a toddler bed that he could get in and out of. Then we put a little rail up so that he does not just fall out in the night. There was about 6 inches at the foot of his bed that he could get in and out of. This seemed like a great plan.... in theory.

Boy was I wrong.

Wrong! Wrong! Wrong!!!

We have had this set up for 3 nights now. He manages to still fall out of bed 3 or 4 times a night. Then wakes up confused as to how he ended up on the floor.

But the biggest flaw in this great plan is that he now has the freedom to get in and out of bed at will. This means when it's time to go to bed he needs to know it is bedtime time and that he needs to be quiet and go to bed. Unfortunately I am expecting rational logic from a 2 year old. That's my problem. Another flaw in this plan....he shares a room with Bug. So between the two of them they sit up and chatter like a couple of sorority sisters half the night.

I have asked, I have pleaded, I have threatened, I have begged...."please ,please be quiet and go to sleep!!!" (insert your own "or ______ will happen/you won't be able to do __/___will end up at the Goodwill/there will be no birthday this year!")

Over the years this issue has never really given me a lot grief. Bedtime has always been strictly enforced. There has never been wiggle room. It was absolute. But then came Peanut and the need to share a room. Bedtime is still enforced, but with him contained in the crib it really was not all that big of an issue. He and Bug would chatter and talk for about a half an hour and then crash. But now he has the freedom to get out and play. Which keeps Bug up far longer than he likes. Bug wants to quiet down and go to sleep and Peanut is not letting him. This is a major problem. Bug does not have to luxury to take a nap in the middle of the day like Peanut. So he is starting to act up in school mainly because he's not getting enough sleep at night.

But the biggest problem as of recent is not getting to bed. It's getting up at freakish hours and playing. Kids by nature are early risers. I am fine with that (mostly) as I am a morning person myself. But this morning Peanut woke up at 4:30 (yes AM) and decided he was bored so he woke up Bug to have someone to play with. Poor Bug just can't fall back asleep. Once he is up, he's up. I was able to shut their door and try to get back and catch just a couple more ZZZ's myself. But no go. Somewhere around 5, an argument broke out over a toy dispute (which in turn woke Sunshine up) so in order to save face (and at least let my husband sleep) I had to take everyone downstairs. Not happy.

So now I am faced with a dilemma.......How do other people do this whole room sharing thing? I feel terrible for Bug that he can never get to sleep through the night without being pestered by his siblings. I know each child having their own room is a luxury many kids don't know. Do you just put up with a couple years of sleep deprivation (by the whole family) and motor through it much like the newborn phase?

Also should I put the crib back together and hope Peanut has a major injury climbing in and out? I know that seems odd to take away a freedom that has been granted, but for the sanity of the rest of the family.

Any thoughts? Suggestion? Mind numbing drugs?

So for now I am just going to get the kids off to school and spend the rest of my day (drinking) beating my head against the wall.

I never thought this day would come....

So with some cooler weather and the start of school, we had the first illness creep it's way through our house. First it was Sunshine, then Bug started to get it. Then last but always the worst, Peanut got it. Poor little Peanut with his asthmatic lungs just can't handle the common cold very well without it really bothering him. So tonight we had to drag out the old nebulizer that has been dormant for most of the summer. We were sort of dreading it because the last couple of times we used it, he really fought us on it. He didn't want to sit in our lap and take the medicine. He got so worked up that the event of a treatment was almost as bad as the actual asthma attack.

So when we heard him wheezing this afternoon, we started to get that little bit of panic of what we should do. We knew that we needed to give him his treatment, but that it probably wouldn't be pleasant. So we got all situated and both Rockstar and I in place to fight the good fight and hold him down kicking and screaming if we had to.

We fired up the nebulizer and he just grabbed it and decided he was fine with the whole idea of it, as long as he got to do it himself. So he sat there and held his own nebulizer just like a big kid. We also had a spare mask for his bear "Boo Boo". That helped and kept him occupied. I don't know why I didn't think of the "I do it myself" idea sooner.

 

Funny thing is, he knew exactly what to do. We have done these treatments hundreds of times before (sadly, that really isn't an exaggerated number) so aside from doing his own dosing, he just hopped right up there and breathed deeply for a 10 minute treatment.

I guess I never really saw an end in sight of not having to sit down and help him with these. It never occurred to me that the day would come when he no longer needed my assistance.

Ok I am now going to go and cry on my big pillow.

:(