For reals

I'm pretty much myself on this blog, so it's not like titling this post "for reals" means that I'm revealing anything I haven't revealed before...except it kind of does.

Here's a picture of my house today (again, posting on my mobile, to see the picture in full just click on it)

It's CHAOS today.  Plus Elle tried to wake up the house at 5:40, and succeeded 20 minutes later, then had numerous tantrums before the clock struck 9. Thea was a bit grumpy and didn't want to take very long naps.  Finn was talking back like it was no bodies business.

It was a fine fine morning *insert eye roll*

Anyways, back to the pictures.

Top left: living room explosion - but the boxes are all some creation of Finns...a bunny house I think.  I eventually got him to move it to the spare room so I could at least get to the change table

Top right: The craft table. It ALWAYS looks like this.  I mainly just leave it, and try to tidy up the floor around it at night!

Bottom: kitchen counters.  I eventually got those breakfast dishes done at about 11:45.  Then Thea woke up and I made lunch, so the counter looks the same, just different dishes!

It's a mad house - and normally it doesn't bother me so much, but I dunno, today it's driving me nuts!  I think if there are other things are going on, like the kids all being grumpy, and I didn't get around to much on the weekend as we were out watching the footy finals on Saturday and then catching up on sleep on Sunday - I just obsess over it.

Oh well - I'll try to get to some of it tonight.  Someone else commented on that picture saying that their house is always like that to, and if it's not its because they neglected the kids all day by sending them outside or turning in the TV (to which I admit to doing both this morning!)...and I'll add that then after it's clean I become a monster mommy that freaks out if they touch anything since I just cleaned it all up.  So I guess a messy house is better than that!

Finn: before & after

Cutting Finns hair has always been torture.  I was so happy when my mother-in-law cut it a couple times!

The last few times we thought it would be faster if we just used electric clippers, but it was still torture - Finn crying and screaming, snot and tears mixing with falling hair.  And we thought giving him a snack while we did it would be good...but then the snot and tears and hair would just end up in his mouth with the snack...awful!

But he REALLY needed a hair cut.  I cut Conor's hair a few days ago, so we talked about that with him.  And I realized that the noise of the clippers was probably what was setting him off, so I asked him if I should use scissors or clippers and he said scissors - so we finally just bit the bullet tonight and did it! He did soooo good.  He got a little worried a few times, but he got to watch Pokoyo so that distracted him ;)

Tada!

Getting back to blogging

The Mac is broken (well the display is broken, if I plug it into the TV I can use it that way, but that doesn't really work with kids around!)

The other laptop is a total dud, hardly good for anything. Pretty much every other time I open it up, I have to restart it...plus I never upload my pictures onto it.

It's hard to type big entries on my iPhone (like I'm doing right now).

These are all of my excuses for not blogging so much...most of all I've just been lazy and don't feel like much has been happening!

But I really want to write more, about the kids, put up pictures...document life, the good, the bad, and the boring!

Soooo I just bought a new Mac online.  Once it's here and all set up, I'll transfer pics from my camera and iPhone and hopefully get back to blogging.

Random stories like this...

Yesterday the kids and I went grocery shopping. I did an awful job of wrapping Thea and she kept trying to twist around, and I was so tired because I had a hard time sleeping the night before because it was sooo hot (Conor says it wasn't, but I was in a t-shirt and still had to sleep without blankets on!)

When we got to the checkout, the guy looked at me before ringing anything in and said "can I just say, I think you're doing a really great job.  I see moms in here with 1 kid they can't handle, and you've got three and they're all happy and well behaved!"

Now, he saw a less-than-20 minute snippet of my life, but that totally made my day!  The kids were happy, and they were well-behaved.  Are they always? HA! (We went to the post office afterwards, and I made the mistake of letting Elle walk in instead of sit in the buggey... There was a tantrum over a toy, a book, a few packs of gum, and a couple of lollipops!)

But that's life!

*Elle and Thea in the morning yesterday - Thea's expression just cracks me up!

Scooter

For the last few days Thea's afternoon naps have been getting shorter and shorter.

Thankfully it's Sat so Conor took her for me while I had a little nap.  When I got up Finn was out of his room and it was just about time to wake up Elle, and for once it wasn't rainy in the afternoon! (Normally one of two things happens: Thea wakes up early but if it isn't raining already, it starts raining around 4, or it's a beautiful sunny afternoon...and Thea naps until 5!)

So the whole family went to the park!  I didn't bring my phone/camera and kind of regret it, kind of don't (still *trying*, not always successfully, to not be attatched to it).  For the first time ever we convinced Finn to bring his scooter with him.

He's such a cautious little guy.  I was so excited that he actually wanted to ride it outside!  At first he just walked with it down the court so I wondered if he would get on it at all.  There was one little fall, which I was anticipating but just wasn't able to get to him in time...otherwise he had a lot of fun riding it!

I don't think this will be very exciting to many moms of almost 5 year olds, but it was for me! (Especially since Elle was throwing fits because SHE wanted to - but I wanted to keep letting Finn use it since he was doing do well.

Pain in my back

I woke up this morning with a sore back. I usually don't take medicine, but I could sense it getting worse, so I took some ibuprofen.

Conor went on his way to work.  Kids and I played.  I put Thea down for her nap, and about 5 minutes later it started feeling a bit spasm-y, not too bad, but I grabbed the cool gel pack out of the freezer to get it to warm up so I could turn it into a heat pack.  

Then a minute later Finn took the camera from Elle so I went over to him, bent over to get the camera back...and crumpled on the floor in pain!

Spasms - not cool!  My iPhone was plugged in my room updating to iOS7 (which I'm not loving yet, to be honest), but he quietly went and got it without waking Thea, and it was done updating, so I called my loving husband to come rescue me!

I made it to the couch, Finn got me the gel pack and happily turned on the TV for himself and Elle.

Hoping this doesn't last long (and that Thea doesn't wake up before Conor gets home)!

Experimenting

I'm experimenting on ways to spend less time on the internet (ironic, as I write this! haha).

When I am on, I want it to be more meaningful than just sitting there trying to think of things to look at.

I'm starting with 2 things.

1.  I've "hide" A LOT of people from my feed.  I don't like deleting people because I feel there's really no reason to, and this way if I ever in the future want/need to get in touch with them, I'm still friends with them on facebook.  But now when I go onto facebook, instead of seeing 400+ peoples random updates, I will only see family and close-ish friends (basically if it's someone that I would actually "like" or comment on a post or picture of theirs, then they are still on my feed).  I also went through and set a lot of restrictions.  Like I said, I don't see the need to delete people from my facebook forever, but I've set a lot of random people as "restricted" so they basically can see my profile picture, or private message me, and that's it.  If I decide I want to connect a bit more with them again, I can just take them off restricted.

2.  Keeping my phone away from myself.  This is a hard one because I like taking pictures, and I like to put those pictures online to keep all of our family updated... but then I find after I take a picture, I just "quickly" check facebook, oh, I'll look at twitter too... might as well check out IG... and you see how it goes.  I'm thinking of going back to the good old days where I take pictures with an actual camera! haha, that just causes a bit more challenges for having to take the time to put the pictures on the computer and update my facebook albums, but we'll see how it goes. The other thing is if the kids are playing nicely, and I'm feeding Thea, then it's nice to be able to check facebook and stuff then... but I think I have to go a bit more cold turkey... I'm not going to die if I don't check facebook 5 times a day :)

Already just hiding everyone from my feed has changed my use of the iphone a lot.  When I feed Thea in the night, I could feasibly do all my facebook stalking since the feed is so small and then not have to check facebook all day (except Conor and I communicate a lot during the day on facebook).

Anyways, we'll see how it goes.

Thea - Four Months Old

Yup, a little behind again - but I'll forgive myself :)

Thea is 4 months old - it's ridiculous!

She is now 6.688 kg (14 pounds 11 ounces) and 64 cms long (25.2 inches)

Last month I ended the post saying that I felt she was close to rolling over from her back to her front - and two days later she did!  I was at playgroup and put her on a blanket on the floor while I helped Finn with craft time, turned around, and she had rolled over!

For the new couple weeks she rolled over a few more times, but in the last week or two now she's just none stop rolling over - and she is so quick at it!  For the most part she then enjoys a bit of tummy time, but sometimes she wants to be on her back but rolls over and can't roll back - so then I just roll up blankets on either side of her so I can put her on her back and she won't roll onto her tummy again.

Elle loves to just lay beside Thea and let Thea touch her - she thinks it's so funny (unless I haven't cut Thea's nails and she gets scratched, then it's not so funny!)

She's really becoming aware of her hands now - looking at them, grabbing things, sucking on things that she can get in her hand and to her mouth, sucking on her thumb (unfortunately she loves to do this WHILE nursing, which can be annoying sometimes!)

I love her eyes!
I pulled out the teething necklace I got her to see if that helped after a few rough nights - don't know if it's really doing anything, or if she's even teething, but it sure looks cute!

Unfortunately nights aren't as good as they had been before - but they could be a lot worse.  A few weeks ago she got a cold which turned into bronchiolitis (thankfully very mild) and had a couple REALLY rough nights (one where I slept with her on the couch all night! and one where she was up every hour to eat).  She then I think she's only had one night where she only woke once to eat - on average now she's waking up twice, sometimes three times.  But she usually falls asleep pretty much right afterwards.  She getting to that age where she still wants to be swaddled, but gets her arms out - so just trying to figure out what to do!  When she gets her arms out, I actually think she WOULD be fine, if she would stop being so silly and pulling her soother out!

Big kids are watching the guy mow the lawns in the backyard, while I get some smiles out of Thea during tummy time

Nursing is still good - except also a new development - distractions!  In these 4 months of nursing her, pretty much NOTHING could distract her from the breast - now if it's not the kids yelling or running around, it's her thumb making its way into her mouth (not really ideal for feeding!). Anyways, I wonder if maybe thats why she's waking more to eat - because she's not getting as much during the day.  I might experiment this week with giving her an extra feed or two during the day and seeing what happens.

She's just such a sweet baby though.  So smily and giggly.  She's starting to "talk" a lot louder too, usually if she's cooing, as she gets bored or frustrated, the volume will increase - but also if she's really happy and talking it will get louder.  Elle loves it, she starts laughing and yelling "talking" whenever Thea is cooing.

Both kids still love her to bits, and she loves them as well.  I was worried that Elle was starting to get a bit possessive of toys though, because Thea is starting to enjoy looking at toys now, so I'll sit and shake the rattle at her, or some other toy - but then Elle would yell "mine" and take it away.  BUT it wasn't so that she could HAVE the toy, it was so that SHE could shake it for Thea - which I find super sweet.  Both kids, if the moment is right, like to be my "helpers": either taking a diaper to the garbage (not Finn haha, but Elle will occasionally do this), if Thea is upset one or the other will try to give her the binky, or show her a toy.

She still LOVES bathtime... its awkward for me though.  With the other kids, by this point, I had a bath that when into the big bath that propped them up so I didn't have to hold them - then when they could sit up I had a bath ring.  Well I have a bathring, but I haven't found something for this stage (at least not for a price that I'm willing to spend on something that will be used for a couple months only) so I get tired pretty fast having to hold her in the water - I'm sure she would stay in a lot longer if I didn't get tired of holding her in there!

Oh, and she's not liking car rides these days - boo!  I spend most of the drive, anywhere, popping her binky back in, letting her hold my hand (which is VERY awkward from the front seat!) or shaking her little rattle toy thats on her carseat (also quite awkward and uncomfortable for me!)

Anyways, I love this little girl - she so perfectly fits into our family, I can't even imagine what life would be like without her (although I do sometimes imagine how much cleaner the house would be, and how much easier it would be to do dishes and hang laundry! haha)