Finally spring???

Maybe, just maybe, spring is finally here.  Monday was sunny and I think the temperature even hit 70 degrees for a little while.  Today has been sunny, though only 50 degrees, but it's supposed to stay dry now for a little while.  Maybe, just maybe, we'll be able to till the garden this weekend and actually plant something!  I hope so :)  The grass is green and starting to grow, but we need some leaves on these poor trees, too.

Kate, Ethan, and I did a walk to the park on Monday and then again today.  The outdoors really seems to tire Ethan out; there's so much to take in.  Today, unfortunately, Kate had a major wipe-out on the way to the park.  She skinned her hand and her knees pretty badly, but wanted to play at the park for awhile anyway.  She's quite a tough kid.

Here's a fun story to share.  This past Friday Anna didn't have school so some friends came over to play for the morning.  This is the same family who came last fall when I canned spaghetti sauce.  Again, we didn't hear anything out of the kids for hours at a time.  At one point, all four kids were piled on the couch passing books back and forth to one another ...

...so we decided to extend the playdate and have lunch together, too :)  Although Anna and Anika don't do much together at school, our families really seem to click when we take the time to get together.

Here's a few random pictures of our silly little family.

Kate loves to climb on top of and rough-house with Matt.

Anna has done a great job working on her nightly homework.  Each night she practices her sight words by writing two original sentences using the word.  Lately she's been trying to come up with longer, more creative sentences.

I need to work on getting more pictures of me and Ethan.  The poor kid had some rougher times last week and just wanted me to carry him around in the Moby.

These two are so sweet together (most of the time).

Our crazy, inconsistent baby sleeper has actually given me two nights in the past week during which he slept through the night.  In fact, last night he slept from 8 until 6!  I doubt it will happen again tonight since the previous night he was up 4 or 5 times, but I'll take it when I can get it.  Actually, last night was probably the first time that all three kids slept all night long on the same night.  The few other times Ethan slept through, someone else was up ... bathroom trip, bad dream, crazy cat, etc.  When he finally is consistent with sleeping through, I'm guessing it's going to take me awhile to catch up on my year-plus of disrupted sleep, but this guy has been worth it :)

Ugh.

We've had one sunny day in the last week.  Ugh.  Snow was almost better than this.  At least we could go outside and play in the snow.  Cold and wet is not fun for anyone.  Oh, well.  We'll enjoy the sun when we can get it and try to embrace a few more weeks of indoor activities.

Last Friday Anna didn't have school so I took the kids across town to an open gym at a gymnastics facility.  (We coupled this trip with picking up the last of our seeds to plant along with 40 lbs. of strawberries that were on sale for $1/lb.  More on that later ...)  The girls had a great time and it was very, very good for them to have this activity in the middle of the day after a long, rainy week.  I think Kate had more fun since Anna was along.  Anna had no reservations, but Kate was a little shy when we first got there.  She didn't stick to Anna the whole time, though, and chose to do her own activities while we were there.

Regarding strawberries ... Each spring for the last few years, the Aldi stores around here have a great deal on strawberries.  $1/lb.!  We can't even pick them that cheap in June!  We usually buy a bunch and freeze them or make some jam.  Matt was not looking forward to cutting up strawberries all weekend, so I decided to put the girls to work.  I'd wash and hull the berries and the girls would slice them into halves or quarters.  They did great!  Everyone emerged with all ten fingers, no cuts, and a desire to help again.  In fact, they helped for about 40 minutes on Friday, then did another 40 minute bit on Saturday morning and again on Saturday afternoon.  It gave me hope for the gardening season :)

Yesterday was the only sunny day we've had, so after school I wouldn't let the girls come inside to play.  They stayed outdoors until dinner time.  Ethan and I joined them for a little while on the swingset, as well.  I think it was the first time all three kiddos were on the set at the same time.  I think we need to upgrade soon; the swings are a little close together ...

Anna's still doing well.  She enjoys school, continues to improve on her reading and her math thinking skills.  The few nice days we've had, she's been a little reluctant to come inside at bedtime, but she doesn't fight it too much.

Kate's doing well, too.  I try my best to get her playmates during the week because I'm not much of a playmate for her right now.  Any time that Ethan is sleeping or playing on his own, I feel like I need to be doing some kind of work around the house.  Kate expresses her frustration with me in a variety of different ways :(

Ethan's doing well, too.  I just wish this boy would sleep a bit better.  He's such a big guy with his dad's metabolism, so it's obvious that he needs to eat at night still, but he's been waking up besides that these days.  This mama's ready for some sleep.  I can't complain too much, though.  He goes right back to sleep usually and in general he's a happy, healthy guy.

This week's events

A few quick things from the Mischnick home ...

First, spring is almost here!  Last week and over the weekend we had some nice, "warm", sunny days.  In fact, Sunday was sunny and almost 60 degrees ... woohoo!  The girls didn't want to head outside after lunch, but we kicked them out of the house and once they were outside, they didn't want to come back in :)

Ethan has even gotten more and more time outside in the past week ... hooray!  We've done a few trips down to a neighborhood park as well as played in the backyard.

The beauty of those nice days has made the last couple of overcast rainy ones particularly hard.  But, as Kate reminds me, all the rain will help the trees and flowers to grow.  And, at least it's not snow!

Saturday night we had an eventful night on our street.  As I was tucking Kate into bed, we heard a really loud pop/bang outside and then all of the lights went out.  Hmmm ...  So much for bedtime.  Anyway, we looked outside to where the sound originated and saw that the top of the electric poll was burning.  Not a lot, but still burning.  Matt called the electric company, but couldn't do anything more than leave a message there so he tried the non-emergency number at the local fire department.  No one answered.  So then Matt got to make his first 911 call!  He made sure to explain that it wasn't an emergency, but they sent out the firetruck with lights flashing anyway to hold down the fort until the electric company showed up.  Remember, this all started when Kate was supposed to be going to bed.  Anyway, we managed to get the kids to bed and asleep without any power, then Matt stayed up until the lights came back on so that he could go around and turn the lights off.  Memories, memories.

Anna and I had a Mommy-daughter morning on Saturday going grocery shopping and running some other errands.  She was a joy.  I don't often get time just with Anna these days, so this was really nice.  Plus, Kate got to have Matt just to herself (well, along with Ethan) for awhile and I know she enjoyed that.

I also took both girls swimming on Saturday afternoon.  We had a bunch of fun together while Ethan and Matt had some father-son time.

And finally, Mr. Ethan had his 4 month check-up today.  He weighs 16 lbs. 8 oz. (59%), is 25.5 inches long (50%), and has a head circumference of 43 cm (77%).  He was rediculously social and smiley with both the nurse and the doctor this afternoon and seems to be weathering his shots a bit better than last time.  We'll have to see how tonight goes, though.  The only thing the poor kid is struggling with is a recurring neck rash due to his continued spitting-up.  So we've got a cream that should help get rid of it and hopefully when he's sitting up more, his neck will be able to stay drier so it doesn't get so nasty.

Spring Break

The rest of Anna's spring break last week was great.  There were quite a few "firsts" for me that gave me some hope for the summer, as well as some confidence that it can actually work.

First, I managed a big grocery shopping trip with all three kids.  Having Anna along certainly made things more eventful and energetic.  I also did my first trip to Olbrich Gardens with all three kids, although a neighbor and her daughter came along for that one.  I had to do bedtime for everyone by myself on Thursday night since Matt was lay minister at the Maundy Thursday service at church.  (We didn't even try to take the kids to any Lenten services this year; maybe someday, but not right now.)  Plus, I had four full days with all kids at home and Matt at work, and three of those days Matt biked to work.


Probably the best part of the break for the girls was being able to play together and imagine all day long.  Sure, we had some reason to get out of the house each day, and I had a few ideas to redirect our energies when they needed a break from each other, but they had so much fun together.

A few of their creative ideas were to build a dam across their doorway so the flood wouldn't come in, to have their babies do "Baby Gymnastics" using furniture in the kitchen, to pretend that each room in the house was a different state (or country) and then to visit one another, to make up a "storm" dance to a song from one of my classical music CD's, and to use sticks to "churn the butter" out in the drying out pool sand area.

There was also a lot of practice reading and writing.  Here's what Anna chose to do during the Easter Sunday worship service.

Another thing that helped was being able to get outdoors just about every day.  Spring is FINALLY on it's way to Wisconsin.  The snow is gone for the most part from our yard and after a few days last week of being confined to the driveway, I finally let the girls roam free in the yard on Monday and they LOVED it.  Before things dried out, though, I had several days of extra laundry as just about anything they did outside resulted in clothes being covered in mud.  See the video for an example of why this happened :)

4 months!

Ethan turned 4 months old last Wednesday.  Where has the time gone?!?!  He doesn't have his check-up until next week, but we're pretty sure he's a fairly happy, healthy 4-month-old.

Where's Ethan at with life?  Well, he doesn't really roll yet, but we think it won't be too long.  He seems to have the strength and the mechanics, just not the coordination or the motivation.  He loves being entertained.  He enjoys new places and new faces.  He is getting better at grabbing things and pulling them to his mouth.  He likes the exersaucer and the doorway jumper.  He's working on sitting up, but doesn't get a lot of practice with that because it usually results in lots of gooey spit up.  He's starting to have more time outside, and those experiences seem to tire him out.

He doesn't like being left alone.  He still spits up all the time.  He's not sleeping through the night.  On "good" nights (probably about 80%) of the time, he just gets up once between about 8 p.m. and 6 p.m.  I've decided I can handle that, as long as I can get back to sleep easily.  On "bad" nights, it's more than that :(

I love the above picture.  As a friend put it, Ethan's expression is worth a thousand words :)

And, unfortunately, he's come down with his second real cold.  Hopefully this one goes through his system quickly and without too many sleep disruptions ...