A few more of the house

After tidying up tonight, I figured I ought to take a few pictures of my house.  

Here we are looking at the dining room, and living room from the top of the stairs.

The pretty flowers are from my visiting teacher because my grandma passed away. So sweet.

I really love this kitchen set up. So many cupboards and enough counter space that I haven't had to use my table once while preparing food!!! I love the Corian counter tops as well.

Our front entrance

The living room that I'm not finished decorating...

The drapes came with the house. A little fancier and more formal than something I would have picked, but still neutral enough that I'll keep them.

Edward 6 month stats

We went to Edward's 6 mo. check up a few days after we moved in. Most things looked great.  The only anomaly was the weird red, hard, hairy patch of skin on his ankle that's been there from birth but has become more prominent as he gets bigger.  We have an appointment to see a pediatric dermatologist in Oct. to make sure there's nothing wrong.

Weight: 19 lb. 13 oz. (79%)
Length: 28.5 (94%)
H Circumferance: 17" (25%)

He's eating tons of food. More than my other kids ate for sure. After we moved in here, I had only been nursing him because I didn't really have stuff for his "food" (we'd only really been feeding him food at dinner anyway, so I didn't think he'd miss it all that much), but he was crying and screaming more than I've ever heard him for 2 days before I realized he was just plain hungry.  Oops. I started feeding him lunch and dinner in addition to nursing as much as ever. I honestly should probably get him something at breakfast too, but he hasn't been complaining about it yet.  The doctor said he could eat soft table foods, so in addition to purees that I've been making, he's also been getting stuff we eat. He ate an entire black bean and quinoa burger the other night! That was more than both Dean and Walter put together!  Most of these pictures are from August since I didn't blog at all that month. 

I absolutely love this picture of both of them. Cracks me up.

Dog pile on the baby!

He has some faces that nearly live up to Dean's crazy baby faces.

He does this funny face when he wait for a bite of food.

Personality wise, he's still pretty content and easy going, though he doesn't like being left in a room by himself. If he's in a room with the boys, he's usually just fine as long as no one is squishing him or he's not stuck. No one can get a smile or laugh out of him quite as easily Dean, though Walter has started trying to get him to laugh and smile and he responds pretty well.  We moved him into the full size crib and started sleep training him after moving in here. He now goes to bed around 7, I feed him around 4-5 am and then he sleeps again till about 7am. I could probably cut out that 1 feeding, but it works out pretty nicely so I can go running without being too full of milk.  He usually naps 2 times, but poor kid's schedule isn't nearly as rigid as Dean's was since we have to work around preschool pick drop off and pick up schedules not to mention errands.

This kid is trying his darndest to keep up with his brothers. He does a mix of army and regular crawl and can go quite quickly across a room. He gets stuck under tables and chairs. He will pull himself up onto his knees holding onto something. He does a stink bug move where he's essentially in down dog. Great. Already trying to stand. ;) I just love this little guy.

Dean's first day of preschool

Dean started preschool again. It has been fantastic for everyone. Dean loves to learn and do crafts and play with toys that are not our own. I love having a schedule, and it's really been nice to have some one on one time with Walter since everyone knows the middle child often gets the time shaft.

We gave the boys haircuts on Monday night.  I'm always amazed at how much hair we cut off since we let it grow pretty shaggy before we cut it.

Dean's in the older preschool class at Little Saints where all the kids (14!) JUST miss the kindergarten cut off (or make it but their parents want to wait to start them).  I think it will be great for him. They'll work on reading, science, writing, etc.  It's 4 days a week for 3 hours. I was a little sad at first that he wasn't old enough for kindergarten since he's so ready for it, but I think this will be a better transition. It's kind of like half day kindergarten.  They do whole day here, and I think this will help get him read for that much time away from home.  Since we're in Melissa now, it means 10 min. extra to the drive, but it's still not bad.

When he came home from school the other day he said, "mom, do I give the best hugs in the family?"  I told him he gave good hugs, but that other people were good huggers too. "We graphed it today. Two of us said we gave the best hugs in our families. Everyone else said their moms did." Hahahahaha. Yes, he does have a high opinion of his abilities and virtues.  Confident.

 

I found my way out of the boxes...

Woowee. Moving was/is time consuming! I feel like I've been moving boxes non-stop for 2 weeks now!  I have unloaded some of them, but let's not even talk about organization! My main goal has been to get boxes to the general location they will reside permanently and THEN unload them. I have found all of the essentials and most of the boxes left are the random hodge podge boxes that I just don't want to deal with because I don't really have a good place for anything in them. I'm getting there though.

The first three are actually pre-move. Don't I just have the cutest boys ever???

The boy's room right before we packed it up.

Closing on our house had us on pins and needles. The underwriters waited till the veeeerrrrryyy last second to approve our loan for our new house and we weren't sure it was going to all get processed in time for us to move in over the weekend. BUT, all was well and went according to plan. We picked up our uhaul at 7am on August 25.  We had a good turn out from our old ward (the Mormon Moving Co. as my aunt called it) to help us load and clean. I had people lined up from 9 am -4pm to watch Dean and Walt. It worked out really well. It rained all morning long. Seriously. The air was so thick and humid it felt like we were in Houston.

We got the uhaul loaded totally full and still had quite a few big things we needed to load.  Luckily one of the guys Matt home teaches, Eric C., volunteered to drive up with Matt and help him partially unload.  They unloaded half the truck by themselves and then Matt drove back and loaded it back to full again all by himself. Needless to say, by the time he got to Melissa by 3 for the new ward to help us move in, he was totally spent.  We had a handful of guys unload and by the end of the truck our living and dining rooms were totally buried. We worked and worked that day.

Julie, A &A

 We got up and went to church at our new ward at 9am the next day. It will be a great ward. After church we all went back to the old house and got all the loose ends and cleaned everything.  It took us another 4 hours or so. Entertaining kids for 4 hours while you're trying to work and have no toys around...kinda tough. Enter my awesome friend Julie who lived right next door.  She came over after we'd been there about 2 hours and took all 3 boys back to play with her kids for about 2 hours!  It was a lifesaver because the boys had just about hit their limits. They were tired and hungry and we were too busy to really do anything about it. She was great.

It rained a bit more while we were there, and when we were getting ready to leave for the night, we looked out and saw a rainbow. It seemed fitting. I got a little teary a couple times while we were cleaning and again as Matt started taking a video of our empty house. It was our first house. The house we took 3 babies home to. We had put a lot of hard work into that house, and it was bitter-sweet leaving. This was us saying goodbye for the last time.

 Hello new house!  We love our new house. Sure it has a few little glitches, but overall it is beautiful and great. Our neighborhood is beautiful and I love the community. Our particular street is kind of retirement-row, but that's fine too. Lots nice, nice people.

 We were outside picking some of the crab grass that had gone to seed and these were the pics we came out with. I took a few and Dean took some.

This is the only room that is totally put together. I'll probably put some additional storage in the room, but it looks fine as is. I started 2 new students yesterday and I am excited! I am also going to have one of my McKinney students and one of her friends start back with me in Oct.  I am so happy that she's decided to stick with me and make the 12 min. drive. It made me feel validated as a teacher. =)

I am happy. The neighborhood pool is going to be a great asset next summer!! The boys have already biked while I walked with Edward to it 3 or 4 times since they're open till Oct. and it's still triple digits here. Soooo awesome. I love the pool itself. It's exciting. More pics of the house to come when it's actually put together.

On the move

It is moving week! We're down to the wire people. This week we finish up packing, close on 2 houses, and move out by Saturday. I'm excited and scared all at the same time.

However, this post is to show you my baby is on the move. Yes, at 6 months, Edward is crawling. Well, it's more of an army crawl than regular crawl. His legs are constantly on the move but his arms haven't quite figured out how to keep up. He is so cute!  Today he also taught himself how to sit up from laying down and I found him sitting up in his crib after his naps today. I think he will really appreciate the move and having a full size crib to roll around in rather than the mini crib we have him in now. I don't have video editing software, so the best part really is just the first few seconds of him crawling.

108 0473 from Celia Brasfield on Vimeo.

Of course he moved a lot more after I turned off the video, so I snapped this picture. He actually got himself out the door before I picked him up and brought him back.

And on an unrelated note, as a follow up to my last post, I have really been doing well with turning a new leaf in my parenting! Matt has noticed it and we have noticed a big difference in the kids' behavior as well, especially Dean. Definitely a testament to the beam/mote issue. 

There should be a chip for that...

Alcoholics get a sobriety chip periodically to celebrate their sobriety.  I think I need some sort of chip to celebrate my successes over my personal demons as well...

Let's play a little game of 2 truths and a lie.

1. I have never considered myself a yeller or angry person...until I had more than one child.

2. When I had Walter, it was like some sick switch was yanked even though he was a good baby. The transition to 2 was soooo hard, and Dean, not quite 2 years old, had just as hard of a time as I had with the change. It was just so hard not being able to give each child my full attention when they needed it. I got flustered easily and I started getting angry a lot.

3. I have never spanked my children.
 -------------------------

This week has been one of my best as a mother of multiple children, and I'll tell you why.



It has been a real struggle for me the last 3 years to keep my annoyances to a minimum, to keep from yelling when reason doesn't work, and to refrain from spanking. Before I had children I swore I would never spank. I read so many things in child development classes that talked about how destructive spanking was. And yet, I got to a point where I felt like I'd tried everything. Rewards. Talking to them. Reasoning. And then when I felt like I was painted into a corner and had tried every other reasonable measure, I ended up spanking and/or yelling. I definitely didn't spank on a weekly basis, but I don't think I've been "yell free" since just before I had Walter 3 years ago. I'm not constantly yelling, and there are lots and lots of hugs and kisses and praise, but it has been a real source of grief and guilt and I couldn't figure out how to change. Lasting change.

Anyway, when I was at our reunion I was talking to my sister and sister-in-law about the role that parenting books played in their mothering. I told them that I used to read them and ended up just feeling worse about myself and my parenting. When I tried implementing their parenting strategies, what was so great in theory just didn't seem to pan out in reality. I honestly haven't read a parenting book in over 2 years. While talking to my sisters, I felt like, yeah, I needed to start reading again. But this time I wanted to do things differently. With the quote from Boyd K Packer in mind, " True doctrine, understood, changes attitudes and behavior. The study of the doctrines of the Gospel will improve behavior quicker than a study of behavior will improve behavior.", I decided to try to learn to be more Christlike in my parenting rather than try and learn new strategies for dealing with spirited children or whatnot. I bought 5 books on Amazon about Christlike parenting or incorporating Christian principles into parenting, and let me tell you, the first book alone has helped me change my life. It's called Christlike Parenting by Dr. Glenn Lathem.  He's LDS, but he writes to a general Christian audience only using biblical references.

I'm not even half way through the book and I have already gone a full week without yelling in anger once. I am convinced that President Packer's statement is true. I have always read it and thought I needed to teach my children doctrine to help them shape up their behavior since I KNOW the doctrine. While I haven't learned anything earth shattering or that I didn't already know,  it did really help me shift my perspective and has allowed me to really believe and embrace the reality that Christ's atonement could help me become a better person and mother and help in overcoming my personal demons.  I just had to be willing to give it up. It seems strange that I might not want to give up something so horrible, but I think subconsciously I wanted to keep yelling as an option because sometimes nothing else seemed to work. Horrible, I know.

Anyway, it's been liberating, and for the first time in a long time I truly believe Christ can heal and change and help ME. It's not just a theory. It's not just a generalization. Christ can heal me. "let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us,
Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith." Hebrews 12:1-2