Monday

Meatloaf, roasted potato wedges, broccoli

Tuesday

Spaghetti with meatballs and garlic bread

Wednesday

My birthday–I don’t care what we have so long as I don’t have to cook it.

Thursday

Crock Pot Pulled Pork Sandwiches and Coleslaw

Friday

Pizza and Salad

Saturday

Clean out the fridge night

True, I’m a day late posting this, but there just wasn’t time yesterday, and I needed to gather my thoughts anyhow.

Yesterday, Cutie turned one.  It’s been a wild ride and I found her birthday to be bittersweet.  I had to keep my focus on NOW, because whenever I think about her birth I want to cry.   Both because her birth was so scary and stressful, but also because of how far she’s come.  She spent her first 5 weeks in the NICU, and I worried that she wasn’t ever going to be able to eat at all, and that she’d never bond with me.  But God is good.  She’s a healthy, happy sweet baby.  She can eat, she’s active and extremely mobile, and she definitely knows her Mama.

So here is a tribute in photo’s of Cutie’s first year.

The first time I got to hold her.

1 month old

2 months old - Baptism

3 months

4 months

5 months

6 months

7 months

8 months

9 months

10 months

11 months

12 months -- Happy Birthday!

Enjoying the gorgeous weather.

Shopping at the library book sale and the used book store. 

Going to the girl scouts Mother Daughter Tea.

We’ve been a bit busy lately.  I do have things to blog about.  Like our homeschool plans for next year, what we’ve just discovered for nature study, a book review…it’s all coming.  But first we need to get ready for First Communion interviews this week and Cutie’s 1st birthday on Saturday .  I’m still in denial.  My baby can’t possibly be turing 1 already.   And just to show how grown up she thinks she is–here she is eating pizza, one of the few foods she’s willing to eat.

See mom? I'm not a baby! I can eat pizza!

Sigh…they do grow up too fast.

FOR TODAY  Sunday, March 7, 2010

Outside my window… It’s spring!!  Or it is at least starting to look like spring.  I can see green shoots coming up in the side garden, the snow is almost completely gone…this is my favorite time of year–there’s just such hope in the coming spring.

I am thinking… about getting the invitations for Cutie’s 1st birthday in the mail, and then getting everything ready for the big shindig.  I love 1st birthdays–it’s the only party I get to have total control over.
I am thankful for… Cutie finally started eating this week!!!   I suppose she just needed to do it in her own time, but she’ll finally let me spoon feed her, which means she’s eating more than just Gerber puffs and yogurt melts.  She’s eating really well too–3-4oz of baby food 3 times a day.  Now if I could just get her to stay asleep at night, I’d be all set!

From the learning rooms… We’re going to be diving into the American Revolution this month.  I decided to go easy on myself, and I ordered the Time Traveler’s Kit from Homeschool in the Woods.  I think the kids are going to enjoy all the hands on projects, and I’m thrilled that I don’t have to do all the planning.  But I think it’s going to take us more than one month to finish.
 

From the kitchen… I somehow have a house full of junk food!  I don’t know what happened…first we had lots of girl scout cookies from Annie — which we’re getting more of today since this is the last opportunity to buy them.  Then Rob came home with a cake, candy bar, 2 cartons of ice cream and doritos from the grocery store.  Then today after Mass, there was an eagle scout having a bake sale, so of course we had to buy a few goodies, but then a friend hands us half a huge sheet cake cause he thought the kids might like it.   I think by the end of the month–between all those goodies, plus Cuties and my birthdays…I’m going to gain 10lbs.  :P

I am wearing… jeans and a green button down top

I am creating… organization…between the power outage and sickness, our house has fallen apart.  I’m still working on cleaning up.

I am going… to start planning our garden–with the weather this nice, it’s hard not to start thinking of growing things.

I am reading… The No-Cry Sleep Solution: Gentle Ways to Help Your Baby Sleep Through the Night

                                 The Burning Land: A Novel (Saxon Tales)

                                We Pray, Living in God’s Presence

     
I am hoping… that we continue to have such gorgeous weather, that we can make it to church this week while they’re having the Confess-a-thon, that I can get caught up on laundry…

I am hearing… quiet, which is quite a rare thing around here, so I’m trying to enjoy it.  

One of my favorite things… knowing that I’ve completed a task–I’ll have the b-day invitations in the mail tomorrow morning.   I’ve had them staring at me on the bakers rack for a week now, so I’m glad I’ll finally have that checked off my to-do list.

A few plans for the rest of the week: Besides the usual, we’ve got the Confess-a-thon at church, the twins have cub scouts, Annie has a girl scout field trip to the hospital maternity ward,  and I’m hoping to spend some time outside this week while the weather is so nice.

Here is picture for thought I am sharing…

Dinoboy won 2nd place in the whole pack at the Pinewood Derby

 

It  took way longer than I anticipated, but the dolls are done (except for the coat of sealer that I want to put on them, but the kids part is finished).

Aren't they cute?

 I gave each of them their doll(s) and told them to make it something about themselves–something that when I look at it, I’d know exactly who painted that doll.

My kids are so predictable.  Dinoboy painted a T-Rex, Gamerboy painted Mario, and Annie painted Annie and Sandy.  They asked me to paint the tiniest, and they all wanted it to be a ladybug–for good luck.

I wrote the month and year on the bottom of the T-Rex, and I plan to display our dolls (nested of course) in my living room.  I’m really glad we did this project–these dolls will be a neat keepsake, and the kids had a blast painting them.

You may have noticed my blog has been very quiet lately.  Let’s see…Wednesday night, Annie and Cutie both started throwing up.  That’s when my panic attacks started.  You see, I have a major vomit phobia.  I don’t want to see/hear/smell anything to do with it, and I absolutely don’t want to be the one vomiting.   You would think with 4 kids, I’d relax a bit about that…not so much.  So anyways, I have 2 girls barfing, and then around midnight, both boys decided it might be fun to join in…can’t leave anyone out, right?   Of course, Dinoboy is sleeping in the top bunk and can’t get down fast enough…we’ve washed his bedding about 6 times now…it’s possible we should just stop and buy him a new set.

Thursday everyone was still feverish, but no throwing up.  I tried to relax, but it was hard because Cutie literally would not let me put her down.  She wouldn’t nap, wouldn’t play, I had to carry her little 18lbs self ALL DAY.  By the end of the day, the boys were feeling almost great, Cutie, while still clingy, wasn’t feverish anymore, however, Annie had refused to eat or drink all day and was becoming dehydrated.  She does this Every. Single. Time.  No amount of cajoling, yelling, force feeding, etc. will get her to just sip some water.  So she took a little longer to recover.  Amazingly, the next day when she talked herself into drinking, she smiled at me after finishing a glass of water and said, “I feel so much better!”  Sometimes all you can do is roll your eyes.

But wait…it gets better!  Thursday night, Rob and I go to bed early because we’re completely exhausted after dealing with sick kids (and Rob was under the weather as well).  We are awakened around 11PM by our pellet stove filling the house with smoke.  There was a major wind storm outside which knocked the power out.  So we had to get up, rush downstairs and air out the house.  The baby woke up, and I had to calm her down, Gamerboy is deathly afraid of the dark and went into panic mode when he realized his nightlight wasn’t on.   We found him a flashlight (which he of course left on the entire night, thereby running out the batteries) and went to bed, praying that the power would be back on in the morning.  

Not so much.  Rob went to work and left me with a cooler full of the ice left in the freezer to keep a few drinks and formula cold for the kids.  We went ahead and did some school work, cause what else are you going to do when the power is out?  I had to bundle everyone up since there was no heat, but thankfully it wasn’t freezing outside.  I had to endure a litany of “I’m bored, there’s nothing to do!” While reminding them that 100 years ago no one had any video games/tv/internet and they got along just fine!

We decided to go sleep over at Rob’s parents since they had a generator (which I’m thinking we really ought to have).  We packed for 2 days just in case (and with a baby, that means we appeared to be moving out of our house we packed so much stuff) and got over there around 5pm.  An hour later their power came back on.  Rob quickly went home (we only live a mile away) to see if ours was back…nope.  So we figured, since we’re so close, it’ll be back in the morning.  Again…no.  

I was supposed to go to the Boston Catholic Woman’s Conference on Saturday.  I had really, really, REALLY been looking forward to a day “off”.  I really needed it after dealing with 4 sick kids.  However, I knew I couldn’t leave Rob with 4 kids at his parents house, which isn’t baby proofed, with a baby who still was anti-nap, and with kids who still didn’t have their video games/books/art supplies.  It just wouldn’t be right.  See, right here I should win the wife of the year award.  So my mother in law went to the conference and I stayed home and didn’t get my day off.  Rather I spent it chasing a baby around and saying no a lot.   I did get to go to Cracker Barrel for breakfast, which was the first real meal I’d eaten since Wednesday.  

So by the end of Saturday we figured, the power HAD to come on by the next morning.  NO.  It didn’t.  Cutie had a speech evaluation scheduled for Monday afternoon.  They come out to your house, which is fantastic, unless you have no power.  I really didn’t want to reschedule, but if the power didn’t come back on soon, we’d have to.  So I kept on praying, and finally around noon, the power returned!  Rob and I went home and cleaned out the fridge…because it reeked and we had to throw out EVERYTHING except some produce.  I now have a sparkly clean fridge and freezer though, so it wasn’t all for naught.  I even managed to clean the melted-then-refrozen Edy’s All Fruit popsicles from last year’s power outage.   So we went back to their house for dinner, and Rob went to the store to restock the kitchen.  We finally go home and breath a sigh of relief.   We were home, we had power, no one was sick, and all was well with the world.

Wait.  Scratch that.  I woke up at 2 in the morning feeling like I was going to die. Crap.   Of course, Cutie woke up about 4 times that night, and I had to go help her, cause she will ONLY go to sleep if I go in…which sucks when you feel like moving will make you vomit.   I am proud to say though, that no matter how much my body might have wanted to, I convinced my stomach to behave itself.   I paid for it though, cause I felt like I’d been hit by a truck and then severely beaten by the truck driver all day yesterday.  But at least I didn’t throw up.  Which means that I had to call and reschedule Cutie’s evaluation anyways.  

But the good news is that today, I’m feeling tons better!  We’re mostly back to normal.  We’re taking this week to finish things up that didn’t happen last week, and clean the house, cause I have about 40 loads of laundry to get done.

And that was my terrible, horrible, no good, very bad long weekend.  If only moving to Australia had been an option…