Abbie’s 8th Birthday Party

We decided to get a bouncy house for Abbie’s 8th birthday party and have it at home.  We baked a pork shoulder and had pulled pork sandwiched and cake.  It was pretty low key and fun for the kids to have a bouncy house that took up the whole yard!  Low key birthdays are the best!

And then there were 4

Having 4 kids isn’t for the faint of heart and quite honestly, the thought of Mark going back to work tomorrow terrifies me and makes me cry just thinking about it.  We’ve gotten off to a rough start with our little Josie girl, but the big kids all love her and so do we.

 

Jamison was most interested in her when we brought her home.  He points and her and says “baby” every time he sees her and now (at 12 days old for her) he’s also saying Josie.  He cried a few times when she cried in the beginning but he’s over it now.  He loves to try to help with her by handing us wipes and he loves pointing to her and looking at her when we hold her or she’s in the swing or bouncer.  Hopefully he will always been this gentle with her.  He really is a sweet boy so I think he’ll be a good big brother.

Ben actually wanted to hold her right away, which surprised me.  He loves to talk about how cute she is and he’s said multiple times “I want to keep her.”  Or he asks if we can keep her or get to keep her.  He always wants to make sure she’s going with us when we leave and he asks to touch her a lot too.  It’s a lot different from when Jamison was born as he didn’t want to touch Jamison for a few days and it took like a week or two before he’d hold J.

Abbie is a natural of course.  She asks to hold Josie ALL the time, and I try to let her as much as possible, but Abbie has also had a cold recently so I’m trying to keep her away from the baby.  All the kids know they need to wash their hands before they get near her and also use hand sanitizer and Abbie changes her shirts when she gets home from school.  Yes, I’m being anal, but no, I don’t want a newborn to get whatever crud is going around and land in the hospital.  Again.

 

The house is pure chaos right now.  The boys run around and make as much noise as possible.  Abbie is constantly talking about something or other or doing her crafts that make huge messes.  The baby is held pretty much all day by either Mark or myself.  She cries when we put her down.  I am able to wear her some, which helps.  She isn’t nursing great at all because we’ve been bottle feeding her and supplementing her.  I try to pump as often as possible, but in the chaos of everything I don’t have a lot of time.  And when I do have time, I just want to sleep and not pump.  I can get her to latch occasionally, but she almost always falls asleep on me immediately, so her nursing sessions last about 3 mins.  She’s a lot easier to keep awake with a bottle.

Our adventure as 6 begins.  I’m excited and terrified at the same time, and I’m not sure which one is more prevalent right now.  Hopefully we’ll get into a routine soon and I’ll get the hang of managing 4 kids all day by myself and we won’t have so much to worry about with Josie.  Thank God I’m in this with Mark.  He’s a God send in more ways than one.

First days of school 2016

 

 

 

Abbie was so excited for school to start, as usual.  I’m so glad she’s my little adventurous kiddo who loves school and anything social.  She had the first day of school jitters, but she handled them like a champ, as usual.  Mark wasn’t able to go with us as he had a training he had to attend that morning, so I wasn’t looking forward to dropping her off without his support, but we managed.  The thing I hate about Abbie’s school (well one of the many) is that their “back to school” night is 2 weeks AFTER school starts.  They don’t even tell you which teacher you have until 5pm the night before school starts.  So there’s no meeting the teacher or seeing your room before school starts to make you feel more comfortable.  The kids are just kind of thrown into it.  Last year it was really nerve wracking for us since we had no clue where anything was at the school.  It’s really a dumb concept, but whatever.

I briefly met her teacher and we got her situated in her class room and then I was off!  Abbie was fine, but after I took the picture of her waving I lost it a little bit.  I should have worn my sun glasses there.  Too bad they’re prescription and I can’t just wear them on top of my head like everyone else.  I managed to pull it together, but it’s always hard for me to drop Abbie off for the first day of school, even if there is a sense of relief too.  As a side note, I LOVE her teacher this year.  Ms. Wilson is great!  She’s new to this district, but she seems fun and energetic and she knows how to handle and challenge Abbie.  I think it’s going to be a great school year for her!

 

 

 

I wasn’t going to put Benji into preschool this year.  I’ve been trying to get him into the TK program at Abbie’s school, but he missed the birthday cut off by 6 days so he wasn’t accepted.  I didn’t want to pay $325/month for 3 half days again this year, so I was just going to keep him home.  However, once Abbie started school, Ben kept asking every day multiple times a day when he got to go back to school.  He LOVES school, which I am super happy about, I just didn’t want to pay for it.  And since I’d cancelled his enrollment at the school he went to last year before I knew that he didn’t get in to Abbie’s school, we were kind of SOL.  I saw Little Sprouts Preschool mentioned on a mom page on FB so I contacted Mrs. Tina, the owner and asked if she had room.  She did, so we got Ben into preschool with her.  He goes M,W and F from 8:30-12:30 and it’s $200/month.

 

Ben had zero hesitation to go to preschool also.  He went with me when we interviewed with Mrs. Tina so he knew where he was going and he’d already picked out a favorite toy.  So he’d been asking for a few days when he got to go back and play with it.  But he still loves it.  And Mark and I love it too.  The teachers Ben and Tina seem great and they have a private FB group that they post pictures and updates in daily.  They do a daily summary of everything they did in class that day and it’s all very educational based vs play based, which I like and which is what Ben needs.  We are really excited about Ben’s year with them as well!

Abbie’s first dance recital

 

Abbie has been taking a jazz dance class all year and had her recital early June.  They did a cute little dance to “Cotton-Eyed Joe” and she did really well.  Her heart isn’t really in dance (yet?) though so we’re not going to have her take classes next year.  It’s kind of a pain getting her to lessons around dinner time on the other side of town and if she’s not loving it, we’re going to save our money.  But here are the pictures of her recital.  She did a great job!