Kitchen and Dining

 This is our kitchen. Sorry for the messiness, I was making dinner.  I love this house, but I *do* miss my big kitchens- mainly, having a pantry.  We are going to try to put a pantry-ish cabinet in the formal dining room (which is the room at the end of these pictures).  Also, the fluorescent light has got to go, which should be an easy enough fix. Paint and voila! Nice kitchen :)

Well, when I started this post a few days ago, this was our dining room. We were using the formal dining room as our "office". Once the basement is all finished up, the computer will go down there.  

But, as you can see, the space is a little narrow for our big table, so we moved the table into the formal dining area and computer into this space above. Which kind of pains me, honestly. It is such a beautiful little space, with the windows and the light and the trees.  We had talked about making it a breakfast nook when the desk is moved downstairs, but honestly, that seems overkill. (and I don't want two tables to have to sweep under).  So I think the plan is to make this a little sitting area with a couple of cozy chairs and a little table.  We will see.

I will have to take some more pictures of our new arrangement.  Also, up next, Joe's reconfigured TV cabinet and the girl's painted toy box.

Easter at our house

 It was a little bright. Oh well, at least everyone was clean and respectable looking.

 Checking out Easter baskets after Church.

 Mmmm, candy. On of the two times a year that they get to eat candy in the morning.

 Easter egg hunt.  We had to put Clementine inside after she found one and tried to eat it.

 He got his eggs. Also, flip flops and a sweater- it could become the new style, right?

 Eggs, very exciting.

 I didn't mean to make this one so difficult. It just kinda worked out that way.

All the eggs were found, so into the house to make them into devilled eggs. Because, let's face it, they are better than regular hard-boiled eggs.

Adorable. And ornery.

Our master bedroom is situated so that the sink and vanity are in the bedroom and the toilet/stall shower/bathtub are in a separate room. Adelle has used this fact to get into much mischief lately.  Here she is, after getting into my lipstick. I thought she was taking a nap in her room, but she had sneaked out after she woke up and went into our room to do this.  Earlier this week, I thought she was playing with the kids in her bedroom but she had gone in my room and gotten into my liquid eyeliner. And a small sample bottle of cologne.  She has been bathed several times and her hair still smells kinda manish.

Oh, sweet 7 1/2 month old (alternate title: Sleep woes)

George has never been a particularly good sleeper.  But it was pretty workable. He wanted to nurse most of the night, which we remedied by sleeping together. On occasion, he would unlatch and sleep next to me for an hour, but mostly he would sleep in the crook of my arm. The co-sleeping wasn't great for quality of sleep, but it was something. And with the addition of two cups of coffee a day (don't judge me :P) I could make it through the day relatively easily most days and felt pretty good.

And now, no. He slept kinda bad when he first two teeth were coming in, understandably. Then things got ok again. And then last week, oh my.... I don't know what happened. I thought it was his ears, or maybe his teeth because he wasn't sleeping well during the day, too and he was pretty cranky when he was awake. But now, he really doesn't seem uncomfortable. Just sleeping poorly. Like, in the middle of the night, when he would normally just nurse/sleep, he nurses and then gets all flail-y. Doesn't really want to nurse, doesn't want to be put down, most of the time. Sometimes wants to rock. In the middle of the night. He's been getting up between 4:30 and 5:45 most days, just to play for an hour.

Oy, it is wearing me out.  Last night, I watched the clock every time he got up, out of morbid curiosity. This is how the night went:

• Nursed down pretty easily at 7:30. Slept until 10:40 (I should note that him sleeping all evening is extremely rare. Most of the time, he is up every hour to hour and a half in the evenings.) 
• I nursed him for about 15 minutes in the recliner in his room, he was really restless and didn't make the transfer to his bed.
• Joe, mercifully, put him back to sleep and kept him until 12:20. He nursed and we dozed peacefully in bed until about 1:00, when he got restless. I put him in his crib and he slept until 2:00.
• At 2:00, he nursed for about 15 minutes and then slept in his crib until 3:10.
• At 3:10, I tried to sleep with him, he nursed and was flail-y until I put him down at 3:30, where he slept until 5:00.
• I tried to nurse him back to sleep at 5:00, but no. I tried to rock him back to sleep, also no.
• I took him out to the living room, he played with some toys, pooped and I changed his diaper.
• Nursed him back to sleep at 6:00. He slept till 7:00. 
• The end.

So I am feeling kind of tired.  And I wish I knew what was going on, so I could help him (and me and Joe) sleep better.  Developmentally, he has done a lot in the last month.  He cut his first two teeth, started crawling, and sitting unassisted within a weeks time.  He is also pulling himself up a lot more these days.  He started eating solids, which he seems to like- no reactions, his poop is still pretty much the same, no rashes or anything.

I don't expect the answers or anything. I know this will pass. My 9,7,5 and almost 3 year old sleep mostly without our assistance every night.  But man, when you are in the thick of it, it sure seems like it will never end, doesn't it?

Follow up thoughts about this day is what I make of it

It is funny, because (of course) the days following this post have been more challenging. George is uncomfortable in some capacity (teeth? ears?) and has been sleeping poorly, so it adds sleep deprivation to dealing with a grumpy baby. And dealing with challenging situations when I have not had enough sleep is my waterloo.  I haven't done too poorly, I suppose, but that is mainly because Joe was around this weekend to help. We will see how this week goes.

I am fairly certain that I can't do it under my own power. Under normal circumstances, maybe. Like, one whiny kid at a time, I have had a perfect night's sleep? Sure, I think I can keep a positive attitude.  Poor sleep, grumpy baby, whiny toddler, all the challenging things piled on at once? I don't know. Perhaps God would like me to rely on him more in this endeavor? How? More prayer? Much to muddle through...

Also in the comments section of the last post, Mary Elizabeth brought up a good point. She said, (I hope you don't mind me quoting you, I can take it down if you wish) "On the same lines, it kills me that the more I do nice things for them - go out of my way to plan something extra special, or give them a special treat - are they GRATEFUL!?!? Maybe they say thank you, I will give you that, but OFTEN they turn into little terrors, DEMANDING more!! It makes me want to be strict and "no fun" all the time, just so they behave better and don't whine! (Cause most of the time, "you get what you get and you don't throw a fit!" :))"

Yes, we have had that scenario play out in this house. The weekend before Joe left for Wisconsin while we were staying in Kansas, we decided to have a fun, family night. Pizza for dinner, movie night, special treat. And a child (who shall remain nameless) had the nerve to throw a fit that he wanted to do MORE! FUN! THINGS! when the night had come to a close and it was time to go to bed.  I admit, I was seriously irritated. I mean, come on, Kid, what more do you want?

It makes me think about how many times I have been this way with God. He has given me more than I deserve (much, much more. And that is still an understatement.) and still I ask for more.  Actually, many of the unsavory behaviors my children exhibit (lack of self-discipline, selfishness, unkindness) are just reflections of me. I ask them to be patient, to be kind and feel exasperated with them when they are not. But I am sometimes unkind and often impatient. Sooo... yeah. I apparently need to hold myself to the same standards I hold them. If I do, perhaps I would find that they naturally follow?

This day is what I make of it

I have five small children. Or semi- small, at least; a nine, seven, five, and two-year-old and a seven-month-old.  And this morning, I had an epiphany in the shower. I do my best thinking in the shower. I am alone-ish and it is mostly quiet (Delle often showers with me, but usually plays at my feet with her tea cups and a few little plastic dollies. I know where she is, it keeps her out of trouble, I can take my time. Win, win, win.)

Sorry, I digress. I realized that all this time, I have been judging whether my days were going well based on how cheerful the kids were, how compliant, whether they were bickering. And if they were crabby, defiant or antagonistic with each other, it could ruin my whole day. The baby was crabby and not napping? Bad day. The toddler whined about you putting the purple shoes on her instead of the black ones? Bad day. I had to tell the kids to use their indoor voices 7 or 8 times in a 30 minute time period? Bad day.

I have been approaching it all wrong. All wrong. They are kids. There are five of them. That seriously ups the chance that someone is going to be unpleasant about something at least a little bit every day.

Maybe this is simple and everyone else has figured it out already, but I realized that the only thing I can control is my reaction. Defiant children, whiny toddlers and non-napping babies don't automatically mean I am having a bad day. Challenging, perhaps, but not bad. I can still be cheerful in the face of whininess, I can still be patient with my non-napper, positive with my defiant ones.

I will not let my children's behavior dictate my own.

I am not saying I won't have bad days. They happen. But it feels freeing to know that I can turn our challenging days around. I am, after all, the mother :)

Well, it had to happen eventually...

Here are pictures of my sweet, adorable children. Hopefully, they will make up for the whining that follows.

It happened. My brain finally realized that I am indeed not on an extended vacation. This is life. The friends, the family, everyone except for my 6 most special people (at least I have them, right?) are about 750 miles away.  And I miss them. The funny thing is, I really like it here. I think once we are here for a while, it will be great. I will find friends. The house and land are beautiful.

But for now, I am just lonely. I just want to go sit on my sister's couch jump up to tend to the toddler's whims and drink coffee with my sister. See my nieces and nephews. Let my littles go to playdates with Grammie. Go to knitting night.

So yeah. That is all.

Girl's Dresser

Satin nickel knobs and pulls

It is my first Pinterest- inspired project.  We inherited this dresser from Joe's parents, I believe. The hardware, especially, had seen better days. Some new hardware and some paint, per this tutorial on All Things Thrifty and ta da! pretty new dresser for my sweet girlies.

School days, school days...

So. These are my babies before their unofficial first day of go-to-school School. Yes, life is a-changin' around here.

Next school year, Issy and Isaac are going to be going to our teeny-tiny little parish school.  As far as school goes, it seems to be a very good fit.  It is grades 1-6, and there are only about 25? kids in the whole school.  They have had the opportunity to spend a few days in their future classrooms, meeting the other kids, the teachers, working on some learning things. The school has been very very accommodating- the administrator suggested that they come for a day every couple of weeks for the remainder of the year just to acclimate.

The kids love it. So much. I know that some of that is the novelty of it and it will wear off (for example, they did standardized testing with the other kids so that we could have a gauge of where they are at, information-wise. When I asked them how the testing was they said, it was "Great!" and "Awesome!" And they weren't joking.) But they loved being around other kids their age, they seemed to like the structure.

Even though I know it is the right decision for them at this time, I would be lying to say that I am not a bit, hmmm, not sad... but wistful?  Perhaps more than any other decision, this changes things. We have moved, we have added babies, Joe has changed jobs, but homeschooling was the one constant.  And I wouldn't have had it any other way- we needed that. Now that we are settling, the dynamic has changed, other things will be the constant, so sending them to school won't rock our family the way it might have in the past.

We always said that we would go year by year and child by child with this decision.  And we have decided that, for now, we will continue to homeschool Liam.  The school starts at first grade and while he will technically be old enough by next year, he just isn't ready for it, maturity-wise. He is plenty smart, but we need at least another year to work on how to deal with frustration, how to win well and lose well and just to establish a connection. He gets middle- childed a lot.  It is one of the challenges of a large family, I suppose. You try to be fair and divide your time equally, but sometimes, it is just not fair.  The few days the older ones have spent at school it has been nice to just focus on working with him while the littler ones play quietly.

This school only goes up to 6th grade currently, so there may be some more homeschooling in the future, which would be fine with me. We will just keep the year by year and child by child policy :) 

 

Enjoying the weather

All the ones above are from an afternoon of playing in the woods and sitting on a blanket reading a book together.

And these are from the other evening, when we had our first fire in the fire pit.  Issy took the bottom two pictures :)

It has been super duper fantastically beautiful here, for the most part, since our arrival. Spring came early to Wisconsin, which I very much appreciate, and it has made the transition so much easier. The kiddos have had a lot of outside time, playing in the sandbox, collecting sticks for our firepit, soaking up the sunshine.  Life isn't perfect, but I think it might be as close as it gets :)

Pics from Issy's birthday

Doing her schoolwork in the morning.

She picked out a boxed cake and wanted to make it herself. Such a big girl!

I decorated it. It was quite the pink and purple creation (cake decorating is not a talent of mine) but she really really seemed to like it.  She asked for fairies, but we forgot them at the store (they were even on the list!) so she got princesses on her cake instead. This was an acceptable substitution.

Among other things, she got a American Girl doll comb for her dollies from Grammie and Grandpa. I included this picture to show the joy. She has wanted that comb for a long time.

My big girl, her homemade crown, doll (with freshly combed hair) and her cake.

First project

I am excited about our house. It has a good layout, for the most part and there is a lot of potential. But as with most not-designed-or-decorated-by-you houses and since it was built almost 20 years ago, there is some updating that needs to be done.  First things first- the light in the entry way. We took down the old one (top picture- I was holding it because I forgot to take a picture before Joe took it down.) and replaced it with this neutral one (or at least I think it is pretty neutral now. I am sure it'll look dated in 20 years.) And this is the beginning of making this house our own...

Around the house...

George started full-on crawling this last weekend. Oh, and there is a little tooth right under his gums. It's been a big week to be a George.

We took moving as an opportunity to make some improvements to the big boy's room. The bunk beds were originally me and my sisters, and then my nephews used them, so they were pretty rough looking- lots of scratches and dings. The boy's room is painted a pretty dark color, so we painted the bunk beds a very bright teal color (which they picked out because Isaac's favorite color is blue and Liam's favorite color is green. Good compromise.) Because there is room for it now, we put the Lego table Joe built last summer into the boy's room. And Joe built legs for it, which he painted the same teal.  We are going to do a Star Wars theme in their room, just need to find some posters and maybe some fabric for curtains?

Also, blogger has been causing me stress. Why will it not let me move my pictures where I want them?! And it won't let me choose certain fonts at times. I am about ready to convert to a wordpress blog :P

Getting used to life here

It was actually a pretty good, full, we are going this alone again, week at our house last week. We started our lessons again, unpacked some boxes, put up some kid's decorations, got the rest of our stuff delivered. It was weirdly normal. Maybe since we have moved so much in the last few years, unpacking and settling in is just part of our lives on a semi-regular basis?

 I really like this house, very much. I haven't taken a lot of indoor pictures yet because there are still quite a few boxes laying around, but soon.  The bedrooms are really generously sized, which is nice since we are putting multiple kiddos in them.  It is nice to be able to put a bed, their clothes and even a few toys in a room without it looking like we really crammed it all in.

The one downside of this house is that the kitchen is kind of small. At least compared with the kitchens I have had recently.  There isn't a pantry and not quite enough cabinet space. But we have been brainstorming ways to put in a pantry, so that will help a ton. And paint! Oh my gosh, I am so excited about the paint. I have found so many wonderful ideas on pinterest (thanks, pinterest!) and I think I want to paint the cabinets white and the walls a robin egg blue. So light and beautiful and cheerful. It has been such a long time since I have gotten to decorate a house the way I want.

The kids have been adjusting to life here, too.  Pretty well, I think. I have started potty training Adelle in full force, which has been, um... interesting?  Not terrible, all things considered, but met with some successes. And some messes. She doesn't seem to much like the idea of pooping in the toilet, which is somewhat unfortunate. Once I figure out what will motivate her to do so, I think things will smooth out. She actually woke up dry this morning, which I don't expect her to do again, but was a nice surprise.

I will try to have pictures soon :)

Little big girl

My baby turns 9 today. 9. I remember turning 9. She has been an amazing introduction into parenthood and I really couldn't ask for a sweeter little girl. Happy birthday to my little peanut.

This was the time I was hoping for...

...during those hectic, crazy days in February when it was me and the kids, packing up the old house, not knowing exactly when we would get to move into the new one.

And here we are. Thank God.

It is funny how God works. When we moved back to Kansas, I knew in my heart that we would not be staying there.  I didn't know how or why or when, but I knew it was only temporary. We rented a house for a year and when our lease was almost up, I started to get that itch. That setting-down-roots itch.  Even though I felt quite certain that Kansas wasn't going to be our setting down roots place.  So we looked into buying a house. And God said no.

I was disappointed. Blessedly, we had the opportunity to rent a beautiful house, 5 minutes from Joe's work, in a quiet neighborhood filled with gorgeous, huge trees, with gigantic windows. It was really perfect.

And when Joe was out of work, I started catch a glimpse of that bigger plan. The reason that we weren't supposed to buy a house in Kansas.  As he was looking, he was free to broaden the search since we weren't burdened with having to sell a house.  Then he found something- in Wisconsin. And we were able to pick and go (well, as easy as it is to pick up and go when you have five little ones).

When he first started corresponding about the position, I looked up real estate in the area, even though I figured we would likely rent again. Because it is what I do. There was one house that stood out- good square footage, good bedroom size, 5 acres. Room for our little family to grow up in. When we came up for him to interview, I remembered the house and it was simple to get to, so I had Joe drive by it. Location was great. But it seemed like long shot.

Joe accepted the job and we began looking for a house to rent. And then we decided to look into buying. God said yes this time. Joe came back up, looked at several houses and, serendipitously, the first house that I had looked at, before he had even interviewed for the job, was indeed a good fit for us.

And now we are here. Setting down roots, settling into our home.  There are hard times to come- adjusting to being without our families and friends. That is just life and how things are. But for now, I am just taking a big, deep, piney- air filled breath and feeling very grateful.