unzip

It's community fair time here!  That's both exciting (the boys have so much fun!), and sad (it's the end of summer...).  We made somewhat of a day of it yesterday.  Tuesday is "dollar ride" day, so we went for a couple hours in the afternoon to do a bunch of rides, share an elephant ear, and walk around.  I had been hoping Jackson would just nap in his stroller, and of course he didn't, but thankfully he was at least content the whole time.  It's a little challenging to walk around the fair with four little boys, including a stroller, and on an especially busy day, but for the most part they did really well.  Caleb, Logan, and Levi each had a green shirt on, so that helped me easily spot them.  :)  I love watching them have so much fun and enjoy the rides and everything.

In the evening we went back with Mike so he could do a couple of the bigger rides with the boys.  Caleb and Logan each wanted to go on The Zipper if they were tall enough.  We checked their height earlier in the day and watched the ride for a bit (it's pretty intense...) and they were still determined to go.  This momma wasn't so sure about it...  Mike went with Caleb first.  Caleb loved it and can't wait to go again next year.  Mike wasn't sure about going right away a second time with Logan, but thankfully he's man enough to handle it, because I sure wasn't going to go!  ;)  I could definitely hear Logan's scream throughout the ride.  He got off at the end and says he never wants to do it again, but thankfully he wasn't upset about it or anything and he says he's glad he at least tried it.  We are so proud of our boys for being brave and going on a big ride!  After that we went and got in the loooooong line for the ferris wheel.  This was Levi's first time going!  I stayed on the ground with Jackson.  :)  They enjoyed going up so high and having such a nice view.  We were up a little late, but all four of the boys slept in a bit this morning.

is summer over yet?

I'm not ready for the summer season to be over, but can the kids PLEASE go back to school???  Wow.  We did great through June and July, but August has been a struggle.  Two more weeks to go!  We have most of what we need as far as clothes and school supplies, just a couple things to get.  No surprise, these boys have grown!  All of their pants were too short, and it seems I'm constantly buying footwear for somebody (and I haven't even got Jackson his first pair yet!).  I know this is payback for what Mike and I and all our siblings put our parents through.

We've got poison ivy like the plague over here.  Mike and the big boys have spent a lot of time in the woods and it's coming back to bite us.  Thankfully, Mike is very aware of if he comes in contact with it, and washes immediately (he had a very severe reaction a few years back and we definitely don't want that to happen again).  However, with the boys we didn't find out until it was too late.  Somehow Caleb has stayed clear, but it started with Logan about a week and a half ago.  He had it right around his eye, which made me nervous, and it spread down his cheek, so I took him in to the doctor.  The doctor we saw (not our normal doc) put him on meds, which did help clear him up, but after finishing the meds he was still pretty itchy and with new spots showing up.  We were in to our normal doc today for Jackson's 9-month, and he said he would have prescribed the meds for longer.  No need to go back on the meds this time, though, just take Benadryl for the itching and wait for it to clear up - poison ivy takes a while.  Levi started showing spots towards the end of last week.  He has an area on his arm, and on his face, and quite a large area on his torso.  Mike has sprayed quite a bit around where he's cutting wood with Round-Up, but he'll be going back out there and spraying some more!

Speaking of cutting wood, we've been selling at a stand up on 48th Ave, and Mike can hardly keep up!!  We've got plenty of dead trees to cut, Mike just needs the time.  :)  He doesn't have a whole lot of evening left after he gets home from work, but he tries to work on that when he can.  This winter he'll really have to get a big stockpile so that he can keep up better next year!

We were able to visit a friend's pool again last week and the boys loved it!  I love watching them enjoy swimming.  Jackson enjoyed being in the water for a while, Levi was even brave enough to sit on a raft without his arm floaties on, Logan dove all the way down in the deep end to retrieve goggles he dropped, and Caleb loves the slide.

So, Jackson's 9-month well child visit was this morning, and you might have multiple children if you go to the dr for one child, and spend almost the whole time talking about other things besides that child!  He's nice and healthy and developing normally, so no concerns.  :)  Jackson is 18 lbs 15 oz, which is 31st percentile; and he is 2 ft 5.5 in, which is 82nd percentile.  Long and lean!  :)  He has been a CRANKY PANTS the last couple weeks.  I hope it's just teething, and not just a general crankiness for no reason...  Not napping well at all.  Two Sunday's ago we didn't put him in nursery because of a cough he had, and yesterday I got called to the nursery both in the morning and evening because he was beside himself sobbing and they couldn't calm him down.  I'll be curious to find out in coming weeks if that was because of his crankiness lately, or if we're dealing with separation anxiety (he's fine when I drop him off, though).  Mike and I were supposed to go on our annual canoe trip this past weekend, but didn't due to bad weather, and even though it was disappointing to have it cancelled, I was relieved because I would've been so worried the whole time that Jackson was just crying and crying without me.  Hopefully we'll be past that by next year.  :)

We cancelled the trip a couple days ahead of time based on the forecast of rain and possible severe storms.  We ended up with tornadoes in the area here!  Saturday we all ended up in the basement for a while as it looked like one of the tornadoes was headed straight this way, but then it dissipated and a new one formed a little further east.  So thankful everyone is okay and it's pretty much "just" downed trees and power lines they're dealing with.

I was up with Jackson at 3am this morning, so I acutally got to see Mike before he went to work!  Kinda nice since I probably won't see him until around 7pm.  Crazy - I don't know how he does it!

wave

Jackson started waving!  It's been just over a week, and we've tested it several times so we know it's legit.  :)  And, of course it's one of the cutest things ever.  Also a week ago he dropped a feeding and is now eating 3x/day like a normal person.  So crazy to think back to the early months...

Last week Caleb and Logan went to VBS at Jamestown Baptist Church and really enjoyed it!  Levi, Jackson, and I enjoyed our mornings together, and even though the summer has been going really well, we are looking forward to school starting in a month.  :)

On Tuesday we drove down with some of my family to spend some time in Shipshewana, IN.  It was a fun day!  HOT, but fun.  Certainly not something I would attempt to do alone with the kids, but with enough other people to help it was doable, and I enjoyed taking a little "trip" with the kids since we're not able to take a summer vacation.  Caleb and Logan enjoyed riding with Boden and Heidi in Aunt Lea Anne's car; and I enjoyed the peace and quiet in my van with just Levi, Jackson, and my niece Katie on the way down.  First we went to E & S, which is a grocery store with wholesale items (spices, flour, pasta, candy, etc., etc., etc.) - Lea Anne and I could have spent a bunch more time (and money!) there, so we may have to go back with just us sometime.  :)  After lunch at the Essenhaus (yum!) we headed over to the flea market.  Phew!  Hot, hot, hot!  We walked around for a bit, but didn't nearly cover all the territory.  It was fun to look around some, but we were ready to quit after a while.  Thankfully, Jackson did great through all of this.  Slept some in the car, rode nice in his stroller at the flea market.  Would certainly have been miserable with a cranky baby.

Wednesday evening we had Tera and Luke over for supper to say good-bye before they headed back to Kenya on Saturday.  The silver lining to them being here longer than expected due to Luke's health complications was getting to spend extra time with them.

Saturday was another nice day at the cottage.  Alyssa, Caleb, and Logan are now diving off the pontoon, Jackson enjoyed his time in the water, Levi went for a tube ride with Mike, and later he fell of the end of the dock when fishing...  I felt really bad for him because I knew he would be upset, but it was still pretty cute.  He just was casting so good that the momentum took him right in!  A good reminder of why the kids wear life jackets on the dock!!

Not only has Mike been very busy at work (as expected), he's been working hard at splitting wood to sell.  It's been selling like hotcakes and he can barely keep up!  The boys have been good helpers with loading and unloading the wood, now they just need to get old enough to help do the cutting and splitting.  :)

hot hot hot!

Last weekend was pretty toasty, and it was the perfect day for us to be at the cottage!  We spent as much time as we could in the water, and it was wonderful.  With all the warm weather the water temp is great, and Jackson loved being in the water, too.  Each of my boys did great in the water, and we had such a fun day!  Levi kept wanting to swim out to the raft, and Logan and Caleb got into jumping off the pontoon boat in the middle of the lake.  (Levi swam out there with us, but didn't want to jump off the boat.)  Logan was brave enough for jumping right away, but it took Caleb a while to work up the courage.  It was pretty funny: we were about to all get on the boat and get going back to shore, when Caleb all of the sudden said, "Alright, I have one more thing to do..." and it jumped right in!  Then there was no stopping him.  And then Alyssa decided she wanted to jump in, too, so the kids really got going and had a good time.  It was even hot enough that I was jumping in - I know, imagine that!  ;)  It was so much fun that the kids begged to do it again after supper, and so we just had to go back out.

It's been a busy week here just managing day to day life.  Tending the garden, mowing the lawn, cooking, laundry, getting groceries, keeping a teething baby happy...  On Wednesday I got an oil change in van.  It's been overdue, and I hate doing it, but finally decided I shouldn't wait any longer.  I purposely chose Wednesday, so that we could walk across the street to the farmer's market.  The boys had fun walking around a bit, and for the most part things went fine.  The whole thing took almost two hours, and we were getting a little antsy at the end.

Looking forward to a fun weekend as my sister is in town and we've got lots of family activities planned!

keeping busy

We are enjoying summer, but it does seem to be going by somewhat quickly.  Mike has been having a pretty good harvest season so far.  The usual ups and downs, breakdowns, employees coming and going, and lots of after-hours phone calls in Spanish.  :)  Yesterday he got home an hour earlier than normal and it was so unexpected it had me flustered!  Getting through the long days with four little boys is a huge mental battle for me, and I've got myself pretty well conditioned for his normal arrival time.

Last week Caleb was able to attend soccer camp at Unity Christian and he loved it!  The first day was cancelled due to storms, and the next few days were quite warm and humid, but that didn't seem to slow him down.  I have no idea if he's any good or not, but he sure plays hard and I love to see that.  He seems to always have a great attitude (not getting upset when his team loses, or when he can't do something), and that is going to serve him well.

Logan had another craft time at Michael's this morning.  This time we took my niece Alyssa along (and left Caleb and Levi with Harold), and I think he really enjoyed having that special time.  Logan has lost EIGHT teeth now!  (Caleb has lost four.)  A few of his adult teeth are coming in pretty good already, otherwise his mouth would be quite empty.  The other night both Logan and Caleb pulled out a tooth within minutes of each other.  Logan is our thinker and always has questions about something.  Love that he's so observant and inquisitive, but I have a really hard time dealing with all the questions!  SO. MANY. QUESTIONS.  How things work, why things are the way they are, how things were made, etc., etc., etc...

Levi.  My sweetheart.  Did you know it's entirely possible for a child to skip over Terrible Two's and Thunderous Three's, and have Ferocious Four's come in without any warning??  I was so lulled into complacency with his easygoing spirit that this shift has been rather shocking.  I KNOW the sweetheart is still in there, he sneaks out from time to time, it's just hard to find in the midst of the craziness of big brothers being home for the summer, and baby brother requiring lots of my attention.  I gave the boys haircuts last night, and I'm pretty sure Mike wanted Levi's shorter, but I just couldn't bear to cut that beautiful hair off.  He gets the perfect blonde highlights in summer.  I'm pretty jealous of Caleb's hair, too.

Jackson is scooting around a fair bit.  I really need to work on gates for the stairs soon...  He's still very vocal, especially during meal time - we're working on not talking/spitting while he's eating.  He has been sleeping well at night, and mostly doing decent for naptimes.  Last week we had to work on him being okay with Mike putting him to bed, and thankfully it only took one night of lots of crying, and the next night he did much better.  I went to a friend's softball game and Mike said Jackson cried for about an hour at bedtime.  It was Mike's suggestion that he put Jackson to bed again the next night to see if he'd do better.  I couldn't be home and listen to him cry for me, so I went out again, but he went to bed much better!  Love it that he needs me, especially as I know it won't last for long, but I've gotta be free to be separated from him sometimes!

State of Jackson

Jackson recently passed the 8 month mark (wait...what?!), and we are just having too much fun with him!  He is so interactive and vocal, he fits right into this family.  :)  His big brothers can sure get him laughing, and that warms a mothers heart to watch.  (As long as big brothers aren't doing their super annoying baby talk with him...)  He laughs, squeals, squawks, and growls a lot - I can't get enough.

After weeks of struggling, Jackson is finally doing better taking solid foods.  For a long time he just wasn't interested no matter what I tried - he would maybe seem excited before starting, but then barely eat anything.  But now he actually gobbles up what I give him!  We've tried several different fruits and vegetables now, and I think we'll just be careful with the bananas thanks to a not so fun constipation incident.  Poor guy.  :(  Jackson generally nurses four times a day now.  Boy, that's a far cry from the newborn schedule!!!  Hardly seems like anything compared to the first several months.  And, he generally doesn't take as long as he did for the longest time either.  Phew!  Ain't nobody got time for that!  :)

Overall, Jackson is sleeping well.  He almost always sleeps through the night, and there's been some times that he sleeps until 7am, which I much prefer to the 6:15/6:30 wake ups.  :)  Just that little bit of extra time helps my perspective of the day.  Also, the last few days he has taken a solid morning nap, and a solid afternoon nap!  Up until then it had kinda been a morning catnap, decent afternoon nap, and maybe another evening nap.  This morning I put him down for a morning nap around 9:30am, and I had to wake him up at 11:45am to go visit Mike at work - that's completely unheard of for him!
Jackson has been pulling himself forward the last few days.  Watch out!  Baby on the move!  He is ALMOST ready to sit up on his own, so close.  He has two bottom teeth and looks pretty cute when he smiles.  :)  He is mostly in 9 month sized clothes.  He likes being outside, and actually likes laying in the grass.

We sure do love our newest addition, and can't imagine our family any other way!

boy mom

We have lots of everyday adventures around here with four little boys - some have become so normal that I forget about them!  And, when it's always on to the next adventure, it's easy to move on and lose track of past events.  :)

This past week had a bunch of crazy things.  Monday was a day of Levi eating dog food (I've caught him snacking on it different times...); Caleb, Logan, and Levi getting a toad stuck in the spout of my watering can; Caleb and Levi both getting stung by a bee; and Levi cutting his finger pretty bad on a toilet from the cottage that Mike was breaking up to put in the trash...  Rough day for Levi!  Tuesday Logan got bit in the finger by a shrew, and then he and Caleb killed it for me.

On Thursday Logan lost yet another tooth.  His mouth is getting pretty empty!

Friday our nephew, Luke, had open heart surgery.  I was able to spend a little time at the hospital with Tom and Tera while they were waiting.  Then Saturday afternoon Mike and I were able to pay a visit.  He is doing well!  Also, Friday evening Mike and I took the kids out for ice cream for our anniversary.  :)

Today we went up to the cottage for 4th of July activities.  Mike is staying overnight with Caleb, Logan, and Levi, but I came back home with Jackson.  So much I want to get done in the peace and quiet!!  But, sleep is starting to win out...