Portrait of a young girl

The kidlet, kid3 and I have been occasionally taking the hub a lunch while he’s out in the field or down at the farm. This from one of those days last week.

It was a lovely day out – sunny but with a bit of a wind. She’s a tad overdressed for farmwork, but she had a blast taking daddy his lunch and having a “picnic”.

Here she and the hub are watching Papa (my dad) load seed onto a flatbed so it could be treated and then put in a wagon to be transferred to the bean drill for planting (did you follow all that?).

We’ve taken the hub his lunch a few more times since then, and she’s just as excited each time. The hub’s almost done with planting, though, and she’ll be a little disappointed we don’t get to have picnics out by the fields anymore.

He’s happy to announce his first attempt at farming [mostly] by himself is a success, so far.

They’re hard to see, but there are little baby corn plants popping out of the ground. Hopefully the weather will cooperate (we could actually use some rain) and they keep growing all summer.

Six Months!!

Kid3 turned six months old last Friday. Six months!! Wasn’t he just born like, yesterday?

He’s a great little guy – happy, smiley and generally easygoing, He loves to watch his older brother and sister run around (and they, in turn, like to play with his toys), sits well unassisted, gets in and out of a sitting position with ease, is starting to crawl (!) and is even attempting to pull to stand (!!).

Sleeping is still not the greatest – his naps only average about 30-40 minutes and he’s usually up at least 2-3 times during the night – but we’re managing with what we do get.

He has two teeth through on the bottom and four that are working their way through on the top. His favorite teething toy seems to be my shoulder (yeouch!). At his 6m well baby visit yesterday, he weighed in at a healthy 20lb 11oz and measured 28.5″, very close to what his older brother was when he was 6 months old. The Dr. proclaimed him “sturdy.” With the hub’s and my genes, it’s really all our children will ever be. Sorry kids, no lithe, willowy builds in this family, we are hearty, sturdy and statuesque.

Love my third little red-headed snuggle bug to pieces.

Too fast

Kid3 is growing up way too fast for my liking. His milestones seem to be coming fast and furious now. He figured out how to roll over from belly to back around four months, and a few weeks later mastered back to belly.

Now he’s sitting rather well unassisted, see?

He still topples over occasionally due to the weight of his massive head (the hub and I quote lines from “So I Married an Axe Murderer” at him sometimes. I know, we’re mean.) but he’s doing really well.

And a few days after he perfected that skill, he started getting up on hands and knees and rocking back and forth.

See the space and shadow under his belly? And don’t mind the drool, as if sitting and getting on hands and knees wasn’t enough, he’s added teething to the mix. And our kids don’t just do the normal two-teeth-at-a-time deal, they go 6 all at once. The bottom two are already through and you can see the bumps of the top four, ready to push out soon.

He’s always had strong legs and loves to stand and jump. He’s still two weeks away from being 6 months!! Yikes!

Having him hit some of these gross motor skills so early is new territory. The kiddo was on the late edge of everything besides rolling – he didn’t walk until 16 months. The kiddo was more in line with average, but even she wasn’t crawling until 8-9 months. When we took kid3 into his 4m checkup, our ped said not to be surprised if he walked on the early side given how strong his legs are and the fact he has two older siblings to watch and mimic.

Guess its a good thing the hub dug the baby gate out of the garage this weekend, we’ll probably need to put it up sooner than later.

My favorite onesie

Kid3 turned five months old this week. He’s growing so big and is entering the fun baby stage of smiles, laughs, raspberries and really loud, ear-piercing screeches. So maybe the last one isn’t so fun (that ranks right up there with the hair-pulling) but I do enjoy seeing him learn all the fun things he can do.

He’s also growing out of all his little baby clothes, which makes me a little teary knowing he’s almost certainly our last child.

I have one favorite onesie the hub and I bought on a trip to London nearly seven years ago. We booked the trip months in advance, before I’d even gotten pregnant with the kiddo. It was supposed to be our last big, fun trip together before we started trying to have kids. Instead, I got pregnant with the kiddo two months after booking it which meant I spent our “fun” vacation waddling around London in late December, 30 weeks pregnant. (Hint: massively pregnant, achy and hormonal does not a good travel partner make.)

The trip wasn’t without its moments, though. Spending New Year’s Eve in Trafalgar Square, watching the fireworks over the Thames, showing the hub some of the sights from when I did a work study program one summer in college, and buying this onesie for our future kiddo.

It’s simple, just the symbol for the London Underground.

But the backside makes me chuckle every time I see it.

Sadly, it’s already almost too small for kid3 to squeeze into, so it’ll soon get packed away with the other too-small clothes. But, whenever I finally get the motivation in a few years to sort through all the kids’ stuff and have a garage sale, it’ll be one of the things I keep. Maybe I’ll give it to whichever kid has a baby first. Maybe I’ll make a keepsake quilt out of it and other baby clothes from the kids. Maybe it’ll just stay stored in a box and I can get it out every so often and marvel at how small my kids were at one time.

He doesn’t know either.

Man I love this kid. He’s so easy going. Must be a third child thing.

He’s good at entertaining himself, most of the time. Whee, Feet!!

But when he’s done, he lets you know.

Loudly.

May in March

The weather has been unbelievably gorgeous this past week. Temperatures in the 70s, sunshine and a nice breeze. It’s like it’s May, but in March. Crazy!

The kids have been loving it, too. No heavy winter coats! No clunky snow boots! No soggy snowpants! Kid3, the kidlet and I even walked down to pick up the kiddo from school a few afternoons last week and then stayed to play with some other kids afterwards. We hadn’t been able to do that since sometime in October.

Then, when we got home, the kiddos continued to play outside, sometimes the neighbor kids would wander over and they’d all play – on the slide, in the mud, in the tree – wherever!

The kiddo got some practice in climbing the (short) crab apple tree in our yard.

While the kidlet enjoyed digging in the dirt and making a “campfire”.

She said she’ll be able to climb the tree when she turns four.

It’s supposed to rain early next week, which is fine – we desperately need the moisture. But it’s been so nice to have windows open and air the house out. I just hope we’re not in for a big surprise in April, like a massive blizzard or a bad storm like they’ve had in the South. In another month or so, the hub will be out in the field, starting the work for planting!

Happy Birthday kiddo!

Yesterday was the kiddo’s sixth birthday. He started the morning bright and early, getting out of bed sometime before 7am (that’s early for us).

We’ve begun a birthday tradition in our house – birthday breakfast donuts from the really good little bakery in town. So the hub went and got those while I distracted the kiddo until he got back. He was appropriately surprised. Wish I would have thought to put a candle in it before he dove in. Oh well, there’s always next year.

(I don’t know what the bakery puts in their donuts – especially the donut holes, those little suckers are addictive, they’re so good – but we hope they never close.)

He got to bring birthday treats for his Kindergarten class (has to be pre-packaged, so I got Rice Krispie treats, which I thought were fairly innocuous. He then informs me he doesn’t like them. That was news to me!). I also went to school and ate lunch with him and then hung around for the post-lunch recess. When he got home, he had a brand new lego set to open and put together (with dad’s help).

This weekend we’re having a party for his [boy] classmates on Saturday and then family on Sunday. Man, I never realized how much time and money go into class birthday parties until I started planning them. The kiddo loves doing art projects, so he’s having an “arty birthday party” at a local kid’s store that has a back party room. He also doesn’t like cake with frosting (seriously, who is this kid? He certainly isn’t mine. Though, we do have a nice arrangement: he gives me his frosting and eats the plain cake) so we’re doing cookies and ice cream. Not quite sure how I’m going to get a “6″ candle in a scoop of ice cream, but I guess I’ll figure that out when the time comes.

Despite being at a challenging age (dawdling, not listening, being silly when he’s not supposed to, did I mention the dawdling?), he’s a super, super kid. He’s extremely thoughtful and is a big pleaser. He wants everyone to like him and likes making people laugh (hence the being silly, sometimes when he’s not supposed to be). He’s doing great with his reading and writing, enjoys math and picks up concepts very quickly. The million and one questions can get tiresome at times, but we love that he’s so curious. He’s extremely detail-oriented – almost to a fault – and can get upset easily when he doesn’t do things “right” the first time. We’re working on that. He’s better than I am about staying in the lines when he colors, and even won a coloring contest at his school. It’s been fun watching him grow from this:

to this:

Happy Birthday, kiddo! We love you lots.

Time flies when you have three kids

And before you know it, it’s been almost a month since my last post.

The winter that wasn’t continues with unseasonably warm temps and less than average snowfall. Of course, we had a slight cold snap this past week where the temps were in the teens for a few days, but for the most part it’s been warm for this time of year. The kids (and the hub) miss playing in the snow. And I wouldn’t mind a little more, to tell you the truth.

I managed to solo mom it for three days/nights at the end of January while the hub was gone on a work trip. The kiddo was up, fed, dressed and to school on time every morning the hub was gone. The rest of us probably looked a sight, but we made it. Showers are overrated, anyway. It’s all about the spit-up stains, baby!

Kid3 still has me trapped on the chair at night. Even though I’m in a constant state of sleep deprivation (and probably will be for the next, oh, 18 years), I think it’s the only thing that’s been keeping the breastfeeding going. I’m not exclusively nursing – my body just doesn’t seem to want to work that way – but I’ve made it farther than I did with the other two (mostly because I had to go back to work at 6-8 weeks with them, and it was downhill from there) and I’m not willing to give that up yet. Who cares if I haven’t slept in my own bed since October, when I was too massively pregnant to be comfortable sleeping flat on my back. The sleep deprivation and sore behind is worth it when I get rewarded with smiles like this:

We made a decision on what to do with our living room furniture and ordered our sectional at the end of January. It should be here by Friday. Unfortunately, the built-ins the hub is putting in around the fireplace aren’t nearly ready to be installed. And I still need to finalize and order the wallpaper that’s going behind those shelves. Like every home project we work on, we start out with lofty goals and deadlines, and eventually finish at least three months later. It’ll get done when it gets done, I guess. I’m not the one doing the work, so I can’t complain too much. Unless it’s to egg the hub on to actually doing some work.

We’re one step closer to farming on our own. The hub bought a (used) planter last week. It’s our first official piece of machinery, and it only took four months to come to fruition. If this process is any indication, buying a tractor will take us a few years. He’s also been working with various seed dealers and has all the seed and fertilizer bought for next year. Whee! Seed corn caps for everyone!

I’ve been doing okay on my New Year’s resolutions. I’ve managed to get around 30 minutes of exercise 5 days a week since the beginning of the year and have made good headway on my weight loss. As far as taking the time to enjoy and appreciate my family, some days are easier than others, but I am trying. I’ve been enjoying the kidlet a lot lately, with her funny stories and imagination. The kiddo is tougher as he’s a typical 5-year-old who is prone to not listening. But we are awfully proud of his work in school. The hub and I are planning a getaway to Mexico at the end of May for the wedding of one of my good friends from college. I have a feeling that will be some much-needed time together, sans kids, to relax and reconnect. I don’t know if the babysitters watching the three crazy redheads will get much rest and relaxation, however (thank you in advance mom and dad and MIL/FIL!).

That’s the state of us. I really only have time at the computer when kid3 is napping, and usually that “free” time is spent doing things like exercising, showering, cleaning the house, folding laundry or playing with the kidlet, so blogging has taken a spot on the back burner for a moment. Hopefully I’ll be able to pick it up more frequently as the weather gets warmer and kid3 gets older.

Boredom baking – oatmeal butterscotch toffee cookies

It’s really cold out today – actual temps barely above zero with wind chills in the negative teens and twenties. I don’t think I’ve ventured outside the house since I went grocery shopping on Monday.

So I’m getting a little stir-crazy and bored. The littlest one is nestled in his wrap, snoozing away while the older two are miraculously playing nicely together downstairs. With the threat of a snowstorm tonight and tomorrow, I decided to do a little boredom baking.

The recipe is something I threw together using half bags of leftover baking chips and bits and pieces of other cookie recipes. They’re all basically the same, aren’t they?

Oatmeal Butterscotch Toffee cookies
1/2 c (1 stick) butter, softened
1 c brown sugar
1 c sugar
1 t vanilla
3 eggs
2 to 2 1/2 c flour (I ended up using about 2 1/3)
1 t baking soda
1 t salt
3 c oats
1 c butterscotch chips (approximately half a bag)
1 c butter toffee bits (approximately half a bag)
1/2 c chopped pecans (I would have used more, but that’s all I had left)

Preheat oven to 350. Blend butter and sugars together. Add vanilla and eggs, mixing well. Add flour, baking soda and salt, mixing well. Stir in oats, baking chips and pecans. Drop by cookie scoop onto cookie sheets lined with parchment paper. Bake for 11-12 minutes, until lightly golden brown.

They’re a nice alternative to oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. Don’t get me wrong, I love my chocolate, but sometimes it’s nice to switch it up a little. The hub and the kids seem to like them, at least. And I ate enough cookie dough that I basically used up the rest of my allotment of calories for the day. Oh well, one day over isn’t going to derail my goal of losing the baby weight.

This is how they do it on HGTV, right?

The hub and I are getting new furniture for our living room.

The sofa and chair/ottoman we have is around eight years old and has definitely seen its better days. With two rambunctious kids, a dog who likes to perch on cushions (and shed all over them) and a good-sized hub, they’ve endured a lot of wear and tear.

This should be exciting, right? I mean, I watch a lot of HGTV (a lot, the hub would agree) and it always looks so easy when Genevieve or Candace redoes a room.

But it’s not.

Our living room is long and narrow, with two open doorways, a largeish brick fireplace and a huge honking window that takes up a good chunk of the north wall. Trying to find furniture that both the hub and I like, is comfortable and within our price range is proving more difficult than we anticipated.

He likes the idea of a sectional. I think he likes it because the corner piece of a sectional would make for an excellent place to sit after the kids are in bed and play his xBox. I’m afraid it’ll break the room up and look awkward.

In order to help me visualize what it could look like, I measured the room (to the best of my abilities, it’s really long) including the doorways, window and fireplace and then plotted that (roughly to scale) on a piece of graph paper. Then I cut out pieces of furniture (also, roughly to scale) to arrange and rearrange in my paper version of the room.

It kind of works, see?

Option 1,with an L-shaped sectional.

Option 2, a regular sofa and two chairs

Option 3, a sectional with chaises at either end

Some things, like the piano and fireplace (obviously) aren’t moving. Others, like the TV console, side table and lamps, are movable depending on what we decide to get.

I always thought I’d like to be an interior designer, but this stuff is hard! I’m no closer to deciding which layout I prefer. I wish someone from HGTV would just come an do this for me. And while they’re at it, redo my kitchen as well. That’s the next project in line for our house – but not until the summer.

Resolute

I’ve been a member of an online community out in cyberspace for nearly seven years. As always happens around this time of year, my friends there post their past year’s resolutions, how they managed them and what their resolutions are for the new year.

They’re good to read because it makes me think about my own plans for the new year. I don’t usually do many specific resolutions because, knowing me, I’d forget about them halfway through February. Or if I do, I make them extremely specific, with a plan and an end date – like the time I wanted to run in our previous city’s annual 4th of July 5k, despite never having run more than a few hundred feet before.

So here are my resolutions for 2012:

Get Healthy.

In my mind, this means losing the 40 lbs I gained in my pregnancy with kid3. Getting back to better eating habits. Exercising 5 days a week and, when it gets warmer, doing the Couch to 5k program again (I train outside because we don’t have a treadmill and I am too much of a weenie to run in 10- and 20-degree weather) and running at least three 5ks with my sister. Ideally, it also means fitting into my pre-pregnancy skinny jeans by kid3′s first birthday (or the end of the year at the very latest), but I don’t want to set my goals too high.

I’ve already started by keeping track of what I eat on my iPod Touch and slowly getting back into exercising. Currently I’m working on the 30-day Shred with Jillian Michaels (who I’m convinced is the devil in dri-wick at times). I’ve done a variation of this resolution pretty much every year, and it’s one I do manage to keep fairly well.

Enjoy My Family.

With being pregnant the better part of all last year, and living in the post-pregnancy fog that comes with sleep deprivation and handling the needs of a newborn, I feel that the rest of my family can sometimes get pushed to the background. I have two other wonderful children in the kiddo and kidlet. Kids with huge imaginations and funny personalities. I have a fantastic husband who has more than stepped up as a parent and taken over some of the “mom” duties with the other two while I’m stuck on the chair with kid3. I don’t want to take them for granted or miss out on this time in their lives, because it won’t last long. And I also want to enjoy what’s most likely our last baby. I’m already bemoaning the fact that kid3 is quickly growing out of his sweet little newborn clothes.

So I’ll try not to get annoyed with the kiddo when he asks his three millionth question or doesn’t follow our directions rightthissecond. I’ll try to stay patient with the kidlet as we work on potty training and deal with her tantrums. I’ll make time for the hub and not feel like I have to get something done because Huzzah! kid3 is napping and I can actually take a shower now. And I’ll snuggle with kid3 as much as possible and drink in that sweet baby scent because, before too long, he’ll be a wobbly toddler running around after his big brother and sister.

Those are my goals for 2012. What are yours?