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Long update making up for my prolonged absence.


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My girls are sitting quietly (if singing to themselves can be considered quiet) at the table working on Explode the Code.  Spencer switching between riding his trike around the kitchen and building towers with his blocks (his “code” book left abandoned on the table.  It’s really a coloring book.)  My lawn is being watered.  My trash is being picked up.

Yesterday we spent the morning sorting toys into “the right” rooms.  Making beds and sorting laundry.  Then I spent the afternoon recovering.  I hate feeling like I can’t do anything without being laid out for a week.  This baby is really putting a wrench in my daily life as an active mom.  Especially when anything more than a walk around the block or a putter around the kitchen makes me have to spend three hours in my recliner feeling like my insides are falling out.  But I don’t care.  I’m really hoping to go to the gym tonight after dinner and have another go on those recumbent bikes.  I really enjoy it.  Plus it will be nice to have some time alone.

Things are going well.  The downstairs is almost finished.  I have just one more box to unpack but it’s the hardest box to do.  You know, the one where you toss in everything that doesn’t have a spot yet while your unpacking other things.  We also have an old TV and a TV unit that need to go into the garage, but it’s too heavy for me to help Matt with and we just haven’t had a chance to ask someone else for help.  Other than that, it’s great.

The upstairs is still a disaster, but since no one can see that part of the house, it’s hard to be motivated to change it.

Matt is enjoying his work.  Things are pretty much the same as they were before (he is still a dentist after all), but he doesn’t get as much time off.  We have to keep reminding ourselves that it isn’t normal for people to only work 2 1/2 days a week.  That MOST people work 5 days and that it really is not a big deal.  Especially when he has a really long lunch that he can work out during AND he gets out an hour early once a week for PT (physical training).  He’s been doing a lot of swimming and running and has lost probably 15 lbs in the last few months.  I unfortunately, have found what he’s lost.

I’m looking forward to when I can actually DO something about my weight.  I miss running, I want to swim.  I’m dying to start training for a triathlon.  But I have to keep myself from doing too much too fast.  That is what happened after Spencer.  I REALLY would like to avoid the Prozac this time and since this is my last baby, I don’t want to loose my milk early.  I want to drag it out as long as I can (the baby part, not the pregnant part).

Lucy and Emma love it here.  We’ve only been in the neighborhood for just over a week and already they have found several friends to play with.  They can be found outside every afternoon, when the other kids get home from school and are done with their homework (more often now since it’s spring break).  I love looking outside adn seeing them riding their bikes, playing soccer in the street and doing all sorts of things that kids should do but that they haven’t been able to do where we lived before.  It’s seriously like being back in the 50’s and I love it.  I even feel a little bad every time I have to turn away a friend who comes over to ask if they can play on a Sunday.  But I don’t feel too bad, they can play with their friends 6 days a week and that is 6 more days then they played with them in Maine.

Spencer is loving our new house.  He loves the room he has to run around.  That he can ride his bike all over the downstairs (and we love the sweet tile floor that doesn’t scratch).  For a long time every time he got upset he would ask to go to the car, because that was the only familiar place to him.  I’m happy to say that those requests are becoming few and far between.  Though he still asks to go to Walmart occasionally.

All of the kids have their own room, which is a life saver during quiet time.  Emma especially needs daily alone time and loves being able to play with her animals for a big block of time without being interrupted by little boys who like to take toys and big sisters who like to dictate 100% of the game (including dialog).  Don’t get me wrong.  She’ll play really well with the other kids, but being bossed around can take a toll on someone with as much imagination as she has.  I’ve found that the daily “Special Emma Alone Time” is something she really looks forward to and has almost eliminated her tantrums.

I’m happy to have school back on.  We’re easing back into it with phonics, math and the occasional animal video.  I’m so much happier and get so much more done and waste SO much less time when I do it.  It’s amazing how a prayer and setting the kids up with their stuff is all it takes to get me in the right mode for the day (don’t get me wrong, I’ll STILL need them to have quiet time later, I’m just much nicer during the time that they aren’t in quiet time and school seems to do really well at keeping my meltdowns at bay… that and the brownies I will make later).

Since we temporarily have the Discovery Channel, we’ve been recording this new series called “Life”.  It’s by the same people who did Blue Planet and Earth, both of which we really liked and bought for our collection not too long ago.  We watched the first one on Sunday night and it was really neat.  It talked about how different animals adapt to their environment.  For example there are bottle nose dolphins in the Florida Key’s who hunt for fish in in a unique and amazing way, but they are the only dolphins who hunt that way.  All three of the kids were inthralled and when Spencer woke up in the morning the first thing he asked was “watch movie ’bout animals?”

Yesterday while we were sorting through our vast collection of animal toys and I found one that had been featured on an episode.  So I asked Lucy “What is this?”

“A horned lizard”
“Where does it live?”
“In the desert.”
“What does it do?”
“When snakes come to eat their eggs they chase it and bite it and fight it until it goes away.”
“What else does it do?”
“When a something comes to eat it but not it’s eggs it puffs out it’s belly until it’s flat and round like a frisbee and then plops on it’s back and plays dead.”

They love it.  And to be perfectly honest, so do Matt and I.  He wasn’t happy when he heard we watched an episode without him.

In the interest of full disclosure, the Life series does seem to come from an evolutionist stand point (though I don’t remember seeing that in the other two).  We always explain to our kids that Heavenly Father created everything and we always answer the discrepancies between our beliefs and the theories as best we can.

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