Picture stories

I was able to take some fun pictures this last week that require stories to explain them so that's how this entry will go.

First, although the calendar says that it's spring, the season of spring has definitely NOT arrived here in Wisconsin.  Today we had one of our first days where the temperatures were above 30 degrees.  There's still plenty of snow on the ground and more snow in the forecast.  So we make do with the outside snow activities when we can.  Since it's lighter later now, Matt has taken the girls outside after dinner sometimes to slide them down the ice path in the ditch.  They are full of giggles during these evenings :)

They also had a good old fashioned snowball fight.

Before our most recent batch of snow, we got out the bikes.  Anna wanted to try hers without training wheels; this is going to be the summer of learning to ride a bike for her!

We also still have lots of indoor fun.  Here's a good shot of "pile on top of Daddy".

On Monday, Kate, Ethan, and I had a playdate cancelled due to a friend's illness so we decided to make it a special day and visit Anna for lunch at school.  Kate even got to have hot lunch with Anna at school!  Kate sat on the rug with Anna and her classmates before lunch dismissal, lined up with Anna, went through the lunch line, ate lunch at the kindergarten table, and played with Anna and her friends at recess.  It was a fun event :)

On Thursday, the Valpo basketball team played in the NCAA tournament (and lost to Michigan State :(, but Ethan and I were sporting our VU gear, at least until both my sweatshirt and his onsie were coated with his spit-up.

On Friday after school, I dropped Ethan off at GE with Matt and drove the girls to meet up with my mom so she could drive them the rest of the way to their place.  Matt, Ethan, and I will join everyone sometime on Sunday afternoon.  Today Matt and I have enjoyed having some time just with Ethan, and a chance to do things together with one another (cleaning, laundry, pruning fruit trees, running errands, and even watching a movie!).  We're looking forward to having a mini-vacation up north with the rest of the family, too.

Updates

Once upon a time I was much better about updating this blog once a week.  I usually had a nice spot in my weekly routine when I could sit still for a few minutes and jot down some ideas.  Life as a family of five has changed that a bit :)  So here are a few updates about the people in our family.

Anna - I don't know if I mentioned this or not yet on this blog, but sometime during the past couple of months, Anna has really hit some kind of plateau.  Her whole mind and body has just settled a bit.  She seems to have finally adjusted to the all day everyday kindergarten routine and is simply a really cool kid right now.  She's not as tired or overwhelmed at the end of the day and is usually a very kind, pleasant, responsible and funny kid.  All of the work we've done with her during the past few years has finally seemed to pay off!

We had her parent-teacher conference last week and everything sounds good from that end, too.  According to her teacher, Anna is a kind, responsible kid who works hard to do her best.  She can be very particular about some things, but is a great kid who is learning a lot in kindergarten :)

Kate - Kate is definitely the middle child right now.  I've been being conscious about making sure she has a few playdates each week with kids her age because I'm certainly not the best playmate for her these days.  If we're at home, I'm usually trying to get something done ... food prep, dishes, laundry, picking up, etc.  She's actually been very upset when I come to pick her up from a playdate because she says "but who will I play with at home?"  Granted, we have our special time together, too, but I know she likes kid playmates more than momma as a playmate right now.

The time change seems to have been good for Kate.  She was finally able to sleep in for a few mornings and got over some of the crankiness that was creeping up last week.  Though she can dig her heels in sometimes about certain things, Kate still has a pretty laid back personality and just likes to have fun.

She's officially signed up for preschool for next year, the same preK class that Anna did, but with a different teacher.  We opted out of 4K for several reasons, 5 days a week and large classes being a couple of them.

Ethan - Ethan falls into the "third child" category pretty accurately.  He gets dragged around a lot of places and has just had to learn how to be flexible.  He loves places that provide him with lots of stimulation and seems to prefer being around others.  If he's left in a room by himself for more than a minute or two, he lets us know :)  I can't wait to get this boy outside.  I think he's just going to love all of the different sights, sounds, and smells that the out of doors has to offer.

Ethan has been trying to suck on his hands or fingers or thumb pretty consciously the last week or so, but hasn't had much success.  At this point we'd rather have a pacifier kid than another thumb sucker, but whatever will be will be.

Ethan has also discovered this week that he can reach for and grab things with his hands.  It's funny to watch the concentration on his face when he's really trying to touch something.

He's also started laughing :)  I love baby giggles.  We can usually get some good laughs out of him a few times a day; Matt and Anna finally got to hear some good ones last night.  The best way to get him to laugh right now is to sing songs or say rhymes that involve his hands and arms and then be really over-the-top with his movements.

Like our other children, Ethan is also very strong.  He can handle 10-15 minutes at a time in the excersaucer these days and also enjoys the upright position of the Bumbo.  However, both of these activities usually produce lots of nasty spit-ups so we don't do them right after he's eaten.

Matt - He got to ride his bike to work once last week and once this week ... hooray!  Maybe we can get a good routine going where he gets to do it twice a week again.  Work is okay these days for him - some good and some not so good.  We're just very thankful for his job.


Me - I'm ready for some more normal sleep and some warmer weather.  I think those two things may go hand in hand.  Some days I feel a bit overwhelmed with the daily tasks while other days Kate and I have too much time on our hands.  Overall, I'm doing my best to enjoy little moments each day :)

Stories to remember

I've been keeping a running list the last few weeks of things Matt and I want to remember about this stage of our life.  Here it goes ...

Anna and Kate think everything tastes better with butter and brown sugar.  The other day Anna suggested those additions to some popcorn we made as a snack and it was delicious :)

One morning while Kate was sitting on the toilet, she said her feet were going to sleep.  She looked down and said "See, their eyes are closed."  Sure enough, her footie pajamas had bunnies on the feet and their eyes were closed.

A Saturday morning activity a few weeks back was to decorate Ethan with stickers.

I've given up on the long-sleeve battle with Kate.  No matter the temperature outside, she insists on short sleeves.  She claims that if she wears long sleeves it will make her fall asleep (huh?).

A few weeks ago Ethan gave me the sweetest coos and smiles right before I'd put him down for a nap or in the morning when he was supposed to be eating.  It seems like he already knows that these are the special "Ethan-Mommy" times and so he wants to make sure he makes the most of them :)

Who needs toys when you have a big box to play in?

Our girls have an uncanny ability to know when a book is being read out loud anywhere in our house.  As soon as Matt or I start reading to Ethan or one of the girls, their "book sense" starts tingling, they stop what they are doing, and flock to wherever we are to listen to the rest of the story.

Ethan LOVES his mobile right now.  If I need 5-10 minutes to get ready to leave the house or to stall him before a nap, it almost never fails to lay him in his crib and turn the mobile on.  As with Kate when she was an infant, we call the animals on the mobile his "friends".

Last week Anna confided to me that her container of strawberries spilled right at the beginning of her lunch period.  She said her friend, Lauren, went to get a teacher right away and they all worked together to clean it up.  I asked Anna if she was upset about this and her reply was "Mom, I'm in Kindergarten now.  I can handle it when those kinds of things happen!"

And since I failed to note it last week, Ethan is three months old and officially out of the fourth trimester!  Hooray!  I had a rough time getting a clear picture of him smiling so here are a couple that might show how he's growing and changing.  And yes, he has the big Mischnick baby cheeks and multiple chins.

Family Getaway!

Anna didn't have school on Monday and Tuesday so we decided to do a mini-vacation and give our girls a much needed break from home.  Since Ethan's been born, we've done a lot of things in and around Madison, but nothing too extravagant for the sake of an infant.  We thought it was about time to do something more.

Sunday after church we headed up to the Wisconsin Dells to spend the night at Mt. Olympus (this was the same place we went last year).  We met my mom up there so we could have some help with the kiddos, since neither girl is big enough to do waterslides on their own yet, and Ethan was going to need someone else with him anyway.  We had a great time.

The girls did fabulously; it's amazing the difference a year can make!  They both jumped right in (literally) to the different water activities, both the kiddie waterslides as well as the big ones that they went down with an adult on a raft.  Anna loved the tallest waterslide whereas Kate would say "Can we do it AGAIN?" every time she made it down the medium slide.  They both enjoyed the lazy river, as did Mom and Dad after climbing those stairs over and over again.

The girls stayed with my mom in a room next door to Matt and me and Ethan.  These sleeping arrangements worked out great, since no one else had their sleep disrupted by sweet Ethan.

Speaking of Ethan, he was a little overwhelmed by the sensory overload of the indoor waterpark and so after the first try of us all being in the waterpark together, he had some quality time with Grandma in the hotel room while the rest of us played.

This little getaway gave us a nice break from the wintery weather here in Wisconsin.

Wishful Thinking

I suppose it was wishful thinking to think that Kate's cold wouldn't spread, or that I would continue my run of not getting sick this winter.  Alas, Kate, Ethan, and I appear to be trading viruses back and forth these days.  Thankfully, none of them are too bad, and certainly not as bad as the one that went through the kids in January, but it's a pain nonetheless.

I suppose it is also wishful thinking to hope that spring is just around the corner.  This winter seems to be lasting forever.  The few days that I've had a chance to get outdoors with one or both girls (or by myself!) have been great and I've felt much better for the rest of the day because of it.  However, it's just been SO cold that I don't feel comfortable taking Ethan outside for more than the walk to the garage to get in the van.  I guess Jimmy the Groundhog was wrong this year.  We'll just have to keep trying to enjoy the cold wintery weather for awhile yet

Valentine's Day was nice here for us.  We all exchanged cards in the morning and had heart pizzas for dinner and pumpkin cake (frosted with pink cream cheese frosting) for dessert.  Anna was excited to open up all of her valentines from school and she did a nice job of sharing some of the treats with Kate.

Our weekend was pretty low-key.  We were able to do a bit of cleaning on Saturday, although you can't really tell now :)

I guess for the most part we're just plugging along.  I need to do a better job of jotting down the silly moments and sayings over the course of the week so that I can remember to write them down here.  I'm sure we had some this past week, but I can't think of them right now.  Oh, well.  Maybe it's my cold, or the cold outside.

At least two of our three children are happy and smiling most days (Kate's the one who's been giving us grief lately).  Often we even get all three kiddos in cheerful moods :)

Day by day

I feel like the longer my sleep deprivation continues, the worse my memory and coping skills become.  Oh, well.  I know it won't last forever, but knowing that doesn't necessarily make today any easier.

At least there are many moments in our life that make us smile and laugh.

For example, the other night after dinner there was a disagreement about dessert.  I don't remember all of the details, but it had something to do with Anna wanting a certain piece of candy which belonged to Kate and then Anna started melting down when she couldn't have it.  Kate piped up, quite sweetly I might add, with "Well, if you keep crying then you may not get any candy."  Matt and I, trying very hard not to laugh, told Kate that she wasn't the parent and so those kinds of decisions weren't up to her.  To which she responded "I was just giving you guys an idea."

Anna has been diligently making her valentines for the students in her class.  However, she took a break from those last week and made some for all members of our family.  She'd sneak out of her room right at 6, and spend awhile in the kitchen making her cards and then hide them somewhere until Valentine's Day.  I'm looking forward to seeing what she made :)

In the midst of creating as much laundry as any little baby can, Ethan is often full of smiles and the start of giggles in the morning.  You may think I'm joking about his laundry needs, but his spitting up rivals any that the girls ever did and he probably generates more dirty laundry each day than anyone else in the family.

The girls and I had dentist appointments yesterday after school so I bravely approached the dentist office with all three kids.  The "plan" had been for Ethan to sleep through the whole affair, but he appears to have reached the stage at which new places are more exciting than sleep.  Oh, well.  Our family got several compliments for how well behaved the kids were, but I suppose that's just a perk of not watching much TV in our house.  Each of the hygienist's spaces are equipped with a TV so the girls' eyes were glued to the PBS station.  Ethan, surprisingly, was content to just hang out in his car seat and take everything in.  Of course, as soon as we got in the car, both girls melted down about something and were pretty crabby the whole ride home.

Last Thursday Bible Study was cancelled due to freezing rain and more snow, so Kate and I had some special glamor time in the morning.  She got braids, and painted fingernails and toenails at the Mommy Salon.

Unfortunately, Kate has a cold again.  We will continue to hope that no one else in the family catches this one, especially sweet Ethan.

Pretending

First of all, Ethan had his 2 month check-up last Thursday.  Ethan, like his sisters, is long and lean and with a big head.  He weighed 12 lb. 11 oz. (53%), was 23.5 inches (65%), and had a head circumference registering at the 84%.  He's meeting all of his milestones and even checked out clear in his ears and lungs after his first cold.

He also got his first round of immunizations.  The poor kid (and mom and dad) had a rough evening/night on Thursday.  Ethan was pretty sore and miserable, but perked up again on Friday.

Now for a glimpse into our lives.  Kate, moreso than Anna, is fully immersed in an imaginative stage of life.  For the past year or so, she will latch onto a particular story for a few months and pretend it again and again, with her own variations.  She will also insist on being called a certain character's name and give every member of the family a name from the story as well.  Anna, of course, plays along and will often direct which pretend story they will be playing.

Anyway, the current stories in our home are The Lion King, The Lion King 2, Aladdin, Cinderella, The Little Mermaid, and The Little House on the Prairie.  So Kate's names vary from Kiara to Jasmine to Cinderella to Ariel to Laura.  After Matt and Anna leave in the morning she'll often announce to me "I'm Cinderella.  Who do you want to be?" or "Hi, Ma!"  In reliving a lot of the "classic" Disney fairytales, I've come to realize that there are not a lot of positive adult women, so I choose the fairy godmother over the evil stepmother :)

Since the snow day last week we've had more fresh snow every few days and some slightly warmer temperatures so we've been able to play outdoors a little bit.  It's nice that I can even send Anna and Kate out to play on their own after school some days and be able to stay inside with Ethan.

I love playing outside with them, but when I'm on my own with all three kiddos I can't do it very often.

With Matt home over the weekend, though, the girls and I got to have a couple of Mommy-Daughter dates.  First, we spent Saturday morning doing Kate's make-up music class and then running a few errands.  Then on Sunday afternoon I took the girls swimming for the first time since Ethan was born.  We had lots of fun :)

Perhaps the weekend really tired Kate out because on Monday while I was feeding Ethan, she crawled into bed and fell asleep.  This kid has not taken a nap willingly in her bed in at least a year!  Then she slept in until almost 9 a.m. on Tuesday morning!  We were gearing up for another round of sicknesses, but other than a little bit of congestion and a slight sore throat, Kate seems just fine.  Maybe she just slept this virus off and didn't pass it on to anyone ... let's hope so!  Here's a shot of our sleeping beauty.  (I needed to take a picture to document this rare event.)