pictures are in!

Well here are the pictures from my picture fun post- I hope you enjoy!

I think I forgot to mention in that post, that before we even left for the place, I had to wrestle both kids into their outfits. Charlotte was pulling one arm out of her shirt and screaming while I tried to put her other arm in. This went on for awhile, I was beginning to think I was dressing a spider! James cried about not wanting to get dressed, which is iroonic since on the days when we stay in pjs all day he always says he wants to get dressed and go somewhere!!

When I look at these pictures I am just happy that we got some half way decent shots.I dont think there is one where everyone is smiling or happy at the same time, but at least they were not screaming. I did not have a good photographer either and almost asked them to pay me for the pictures because I had done so much work!

Bitter sweet times

This week marks the anniversary of my oldest brothers death and it is hitting me harder this year as I am so emotionally torn in missing him and being so blessed with my complete family.

I can still remember standing at the front of the church with my parents and brother Peter, with Rick's casket right in front of us and my father saying- "this is the last time the five of us will be together." It breaks my heart to think this, muchless write this.

I have always been apart of a family of 5, but it got harder after he passed, because when you meet new people they ask if you have siblings and it was so hard to decide if I say I had 2 brothers, then when they ask where they are, I have to get into too much detail and sadness. If I leave him out of the conversation, my heart hurts and I feel terrible for acting like he never existed. I still miss him teribly and am so sad that he is not here to meet my husband or torment my children like he did to me when I was little.

This year Sophia joined us to complete our family, and though I will never forget any of the members of my orginal family of 5, it is bitter sweet that God has answered my prayers with my own family with 3 precious children. I am incredibly blessed and happy to be a complete family of 5. Right now, I am still getting used to saying that comfortably, but I am hoping that over time I will be able to say it without thinking about all that saying means to me, but to say it proudly knowing that he knows he has not been forgotten or replaced.

I wish I could post an old school photo of what I am calling the original 5 of us, but I do not even own a picture of all 5 of us. I will have to steal a copy of one next time I am at my parents house. Even though my kids do not like organized pictures I will take as many as I can of my family of 5 because every one of them is so precious to me. I will drag them kicking and screaming to get photos of us as a family so that if anything should happen to them, I will always have those moments to look back on. (Please note the second picture above is me dragging the two older kids to the picture location while relatives laughed at me, I won't mention who was laughing the most, but her name rhymes with weather) Unfortunately, in most of our family photos, not all of us look as happy to be a part of this family! Good luck to me convincing everyone else in this family how to smile in a picture!

picture fun!

Today I ventured out to get pictures take of the kids together for a holiday card/ announcement of sophia! Wow, was that a lot of work. First I had to pick out what each kid was going to wear- which is not easy for me. I finally found the outfits for us to wear, then I had to get each kid in their outfit. As soon as I mentioned it was for pictures, they were not very willing to let me get them dressed!!

I had a 10:50 appointment time, which I made at 9:15 am so I had about one hour to get everyone, including me dressed and in the car! We pulled in the parking lot at 10:47 am which is not too bad and only had to wait about 10 minutes to start getting photographed. The guy who was taking our pictures was not that great with kids and seemed frustrated with us before the first picture. he maybe needs to look into another profession because we were his first clients of the day and other than not smiling much and not sitting where he wanted them to my kids were not that bad. No one really screamed which was nice, but it seemed to take forever to get them to get in position.

Then I had to load up all 3 kids, run over to Wendy's to get them lunch, go back, unload all 3 kids and set up a picnic lunch on the floor so I could sit with the photographer and do picture selection. Surprisingly it went pretty well since both kids were occupied with lunch until the fought over the frosty.

Luckily we were able to find a few pictures that would work. I then had to reload everyone and get them home for naps and organize pictures. I decided to send out some Christmas cards to get them out to everyone. I will post them on here and on facebook after people get them in the mail- I dont want to ruin the surprise for those who are getting them in the mail.

Before Sophia, it had only been a couple months of be being used to managing 2 kids and now I have 3! Sophia is not a problem other than being one more thing to carry and one more kid to feed! It is hard to hold hands with the other 2 when carrying the baby carrier and diaper bag which I had pretty much started leaving in the car since these two dont really need to be changed very often.

Luckily I only do the portrait innovations thing 2ce a year, I am already looking forward to the next time.

My Life with 3 under 3

My life with 3 kids 3 and under – a normal day, well there are no normal days. It is not that any one thing is terrible, but the combination of things makes me feel like I almost constantly live in the middle of a tornado. So today for example, this morning Brian brings James downstairs and Sophia is in our room, but Charlotte was not yet quite awake. I was happy to only have to fix one kid breakfast so James and I head into the kitchen, just as I am getting So by started Charlotte begins crying upstairs and the baby is crying in my room. I pick up the baby, give her a paci and set her into the swing. As I pass thru the kitchen James is yelling that he is hungry, but I tell him to wait and go up and get Charlotte so I can fix breakfast for them both at the same time. As soon as I get upstairs the baby starts crying again, as soon as I get back downstairs, put Charlotte down so I can pick up the baby, Charlotte is not in the mood to walk and starts crying that she wants me to pick her up. This whole time James is still yelling that he is hungry.

Ok, I get the baby settled, I get James some eggs and Charlotte some cereal and as soon as I sit down with the baby both big kids want apple sauce- I know for breakfast, but I said they could. So I fix 2 bowls of applesauce while holding the baby in my arms leaning the bottle on my cheek so I can have one hand free. James says he wants to help me and carry his to the table, he says he will be careful. I am a little worried but at the same time Charlotte is chanting “APPLESAUCE!!” and I am still feeding the baby. I watched him almost the whole way- just as he gets to his seat he trips and spills applesauce all over the place, his chair, the wall and of course the floor. Of course that was also the last of the applesauce so he then he cried that there was not any more applesauce!

After cleaning up that mess and then watching a movie with the kids, I put Charlotte up for a nap and James insisted on sleeping with me and Sophia. He fell asleep, Sophia woke up so I left the room to feed her, about 30 minutes later I hear him crying that he had an accident on my bed! Oh great, that is just what I wanted to do wash sheets and bathe him in the middle of the day.

So I get him bathed get Charlotte back down from her nap, try to finish feeding this baby- poor girl hardly ever gets a continuous feeding - and of course everyone is hungry AGAIN!

This time the item we are cleaning up is peanut butter- Charlotte and James managed to get peanut butter all over our dining room and all over themselves claiming they were “sharing peanut butter:” After cleaning that up and heading back into the living room to get them settled and playing with something they were supposed to be playing with, James pees on the living room floor (right after I started writing this entry), so I had to stop what I was doing, throw him in the tub and clean up the floor only for Charlotte to then pee on the bathroom floor while I was bathing James.

I put the baby on the bed and decided to try to finish writing while the kids were in the bathtub, I heard a lot of splashing around and then water hitting the tile floor and went in to see both kids laughing and using cups to pour water out of the tub.

I wish I would have done time stamps of putting this computer down and picking it back up as I wrote this (but who has time for that) because as if I did not already have enough to do, I thought it would be great to do a blog entry to show everyone what a day in my life is like. I started this entry right before fixing them the peanut butter, and was planning to write about my day yesterday, but as I wrote the first sentence and the peanut butter was being wiped on my floor decided it had been a little crazy today so I thought I would use real time activities and my kids did not leave me without anything to write! I have been interrupted writing this with each moment as it happens.. gotten up at least 45 times, sang songs on demand and fed, changed the baby at least 2ce, had 2 separate peeing accidents one with each big kid, baths, cleaned up the bathroom from the splashing and listened to each kid see who can scream louder.

This was all before 4 pm, hopefully our events will taper off for the end of the day. I have to fix dinner and get them to bed and then I will only have one kid to manage into the wee hours of the night. I can barely get the necessities done so when these little “accidents happen I get more and more set back on things that should get done. Plus all of these things add up to complete exhaustion. All of this is written after nights of little or no sleep!! Sophia does not sleep real great due to her gas troubles so she sometimes keeps us up all night long, and sometimes one or both of the other kids get up in the middle of the night due to nightmares or teething or whatever.

Now it is 5:15 and I need to start dinner and get these kids to bed. Lord, please help it go smoothly as I have already had enough activity for the day.

As my neice says, "they are cute kids, but they are A LOT of work!"

Almost a mom of 3!

I can't believe it has been so long since I posted anything on here- but I am not really sure if anyone reads it! Sophia is just a few weeks away and we are slowly getting ready for her arrival! So excited to finally meet her and see how Charlotte is with a new baby sister! I know James is so excited to have a new baby in the house. He has been so great with Charlotte that I just know that he is going to be an even biggger help with Sophia.

2010

It is so hard to believe it is the year 2010! It sounds like a movie title. I was slacking on the blog towards the end of the year last year, but I am back and will hopefully will update a little more now.



This has been a busy year already- the winter in Atlanta has been cold! We had a couple snows this winter. The kids are growing like crazy. Charlotte started crawling in January, soon after started pulling up and his thinking about walking which she will hopefully do before her first birthday which is just right around the corner!



James is talking like crazy, forming sentences and using the right tenses and plurals. It is amazing to see him learning so much stuf this past year! He is potty training, which we have been doing for a year but we are trying hardcore training now. Using underwear and hoping he makes it to the potty in time!



We went to Florida in February in hopes for some warmer weather, but that did not quite happen. The temperature was about the same as Atlanta- COLD! We did get to see Uncle Pete and he met Charlotte for the first time. James oved riding in Poppys corvette.



No big trips planned until June, so we are just going to pray for warmer weather so we can start going to parks and having fun OUTSIDE!