I have been saying in the back of my head lately that I have got to get back to my blog!! There has been some things that I have wanted to record about the kids and just random thoughts and just have not been able to make time to actually sit down and thoughtfully write things out!
I am hoping to get two posts done this morning but we'll see what happens!
My kids have really been on my mind lately. Obviously, they are always on my mind because I am home with them 24 hours a day but in the past few weeks, I've really been appreciating them and feeling blessed that God has given them to me to take care of, and blessed that they are healthy.
You know how the saying goes that we don't appreciate what we have till it's gone? Or even till something goes wrong and we worry at the thought of loss or suffering?
That's kinda what I've been going through. We tend to take our kids and their health for advantage, we look at our kids as more of a chore sometimes then a blessing. Some days I think to myself, I wish I just had some time to myself! I wish they'd just go play, or wonder why I am homeschooling, or when I'm trying to do something they have to "bother" me, or they are so needy! All selfish thoughts on my part. Of course there are days when I just feel like loving on them or spending time with them, but I admit, I have many days where I think selfishly.
That all can come to a halt when an illness strikes and you think about that child suffering or even dying from an illness.
Recently Gracie has been sick with fevers, it was a good 6 days with fevers, some days higher then others, 3 trips to the doc and they couldn't figure it out. It has then been followed by her being pale, tired, and cold skin, which was scary to me and got my anxiety going, what if she has something bad? What if it's cancer? I can't bare to see her suffer. She had to get blood work done one day and it took four of us to hold a three year old down for blood work. 3 pokes later she was done. It was horrible. She was crying so hard she was shaking. Really made me think about the moms that watch their children go through so much suffering for illness. Really made me think about what ifs. As a Christian, I shouldn't think that way, I shouldn't be all anxious about something happening to her, but as a mother, I couldn't help it. I worried, and my anxiety got the best of me. But these last few weeks have also brought me back to reality, that these kids are blessings and I would hate to live my life without them. It brought me back to how much I love these kids, all four of them in their own way, how much I appreciate them. I have been doing much more snuggling and much less getting mad at them for stupid things. Trying not to get annoyed with them so easy and let things slide.
This morning I was reading a friends caring bridge page about her daughter and she wrote something in there that touched me, I've seen her write it before, but this time it meant more to me. It was this ~
"So if you have a little one, hug them tight, smooch them, play with them and be patient with them"
Jennifer knows the feeling that I've been having real well, as she has a daughter who has had cancer and experiences the thoughts of what if we lose her in real life.
Boy, this has turned out to be much more then I had planned to write, I sure am a rambler!
My entire point was to jot down a few things that my kids have been doing so I can remember and read them later! Jeez!
Since I have been writing about Gracie, I will start with her! My title "bagels and pickles" has been her choice for breakfast recently, which I think is pretty funny. She has really taken a liking to pickles, so when I make her breakfast, she asks to have pickles with it and that's usually the first thing she eats and will ask for more. I just think that's cute. Pickles for breakfast?!
She is at such a cute age, she just turned 3. Her vocabulary is as good as everyone Else's, she's amazing with how she talks and relates, she acts like she's 5. But she doesn't say her "S's" at the beginning of words, and it makes us all giggle with some of the words she uses. My new favorite is snuggle. When we lay together at night, I ask her if she wants to snuggle with me, and she calls it "nuggle". I just think it's so cute, so now when I ask her, I say, do you want to nuggle with mommy?
Some other words that she says that make us laugh are noman, (snowman) and miley (smilely) . She's a character right now I tell you. She gets into a lot of things for a 3yr old girl, and can be pretty demanding. She loves to color and cut with scissors, and use lots and lots of Elmers glue. Cute yes, but very messy!!
One more funny thing about Grace, the first week of her fevers she was complaining that her "pee pee" hurts. The doctor told us to give her a bath in baking soda, so when I was putting it in her bath she got concerned and I told her, it's just baking soda, it won't hurt you, I put it in our cookies when I make them, and she looked at me and said, " I don't want cookies in my pee pee! Oh, I could have just died laughing.
Ben has been interesting lately too. He just had his 5th birthday two days ago, yesterday we spent a good three hours at the ER because crazy Ben was being a monster upstairs in the tent and cracked his head a good one on the wood by our stairs, I have never seen so much blood pour out of a kids body before! I don't think I did a very good job at keeping him calm! Amazingly he only needed three stitches, and he was such a trooper through the entire hospital visit. He did great, better then I would have done if it were my head!
Ben is a crazy wild man of a boy. He is rougher and tougher then he thinks he is. He loves to wrestle with his big brother Jake, always getting hurt and hurting others. Sometimes I don't think he even means to hurt people, he's just stronger then he thinks he is. He said something note worthy a few weeks ago, something Kevin and I thought we should write down. We have been half jokingly talking about what it would be like to have another baby in this house, due to my baby fever, and Autumn always having baby dolls around and pretending they are real babies, we were talking about having a baby one day and Ben said, " I want a baby brother, so when he's three I can fight him!" lol. That is how Ben thinks. It's all about fighting, being a power ranger, or transformer, or something that beats people up. Kinda funny that was his thought about having another baby.
He loves to play video games and I can not wait till it's warm out again to get that child away from the TV and outside to play!
One last thing about Ben, when he prays at night, he always says the same prayer, it's short, simple and to the point.
"Dear God, I love you. I love Jesus, hate the devil. In Jesus name, Amen".
Love it.
Autumn is a sweet girl. I like to call her my little helper, she likes to help out, she will go as far as getting on her hands and knees and drying the floors behind me when I wash them and that's a big job. Not many 6 year olds like to do something like that! But lately, that's about all the cleaning she likes to do. She loves to make messes and always says she will clean up when she's done, but never does.
She likes to spend time in the kitchen sink, playing in the water, sometimes getting dishes clean, most times, just making a big water mess around the sink area. She likes to make pictures and cards for people, do art with her little sister and make big messes with glitter.
I am hoping to get two posts done this morning but we'll see what happens!
My kids have really been on my mind lately. Obviously, they are always on my mind because I am home with them 24 hours a day but in the past few weeks, I've really been appreciating them and feeling blessed that God has given them to me to take care of, and blessed that they are healthy.
You know how the saying goes that we don't appreciate what we have till it's gone? Or even till something goes wrong and we worry at the thought of loss or suffering?
That's kinda what I've been going through. We tend to take our kids and their health for advantage, we look at our kids as more of a chore sometimes then a blessing. Some days I think to myself, I wish I just had some time to myself! I wish they'd just go play, or wonder why I am homeschooling, or when I'm trying to do something they have to "bother" me, or they are so needy! All selfish thoughts on my part. Of course there are days when I just feel like loving on them or spending time with them, but I admit, I have many days where I think selfishly.
That all can come to a halt when an illness strikes and you think about that child suffering or even dying from an illness.
Recently Gracie has been sick with fevers, it was a good 6 days with fevers, some days higher then others, 3 trips to the doc and they couldn't figure it out. It has then been followed by her being pale, tired, and cold skin, which was scary to me and got my anxiety going, what if she has something bad? What if it's cancer? I can't bare to see her suffer. She had to get blood work done one day and it took four of us to hold a three year old down for blood work. 3 pokes later she was done. It was horrible. She was crying so hard she was shaking. Really made me think about the moms that watch their children go through so much suffering for illness. Really made me think about what ifs. As a Christian, I shouldn't think that way, I shouldn't be all anxious about something happening to her, but as a mother, I couldn't help it. I worried, and my anxiety got the best of me. But these last few weeks have also brought me back to reality, that these kids are blessings and I would hate to live my life without them. It brought me back to how much I love these kids, all four of them in their own way, how much I appreciate them. I have been doing much more snuggling and much less getting mad at them for stupid things. Trying not to get annoyed with them so easy and let things slide.
This morning I was reading a friends caring bridge page about her daughter and she wrote something in there that touched me, I've seen her write it before, but this time it meant more to me. It was this ~
"So if you have a little one, hug them tight, smooch them, play with them and be patient with them"
Jennifer knows the feeling that I've been having real well, as she has a daughter who has had cancer and experiences the thoughts of what if we lose her in real life.
Boy, this has turned out to be much more then I had planned to write, I sure am a rambler!
My entire point was to jot down a few things that my kids have been doing so I can remember and read them later! Jeez!
Since I have been writing about Gracie, I will start with her! My title "bagels and pickles" has been her choice for breakfast recently, which I think is pretty funny. She has really taken a liking to pickles, so when I make her breakfast, she asks to have pickles with it and that's usually the first thing she eats and will ask for more. I just think that's cute. Pickles for breakfast?!
She is at such a cute age, she just turned 3. Her vocabulary is as good as everyone Else's, she's amazing with how she talks and relates, she acts like she's 5. But she doesn't say her "S's" at the beginning of words, and it makes us all giggle with some of the words she uses. My new favorite is snuggle. When we lay together at night, I ask her if she wants to snuggle with me, and she calls it "nuggle". I just think it's so cute, so now when I ask her, I say, do you want to nuggle with mommy?
Some other words that she says that make us laugh are noman, (snowman) and miley (smilely) . She's a character right now I tell you. She gets into a lot of things for a 3yr old girl, and can be pretty demanding. She loves to color and cut with scissors, and use lots and lots of Elmers glue. Cute yes, but very messy!!
One more funny thing about Grace, the first week of her fevers she was complaining that her "pee pee" hurts. The doctor told us to give her a bath in baking soda, so when I was putting it in her bath she got concerned and I told her, it's just baking soda, it won't hurt you, I put it in our cookies when I make them, and she looked at me and said, " I don't want cookies in my pee pee! Oh, I could have just died laughing.
Ben has been interesting lately too. He just had his 5th birthday two days ago, yesterday we spent a good three hours at the ER because crazy Ben was being a monster upstairs in the tent and cracked his head a good one on the wood by our stairs, I have never seen so much blood pour out of a kids body before! I don't think I did a very good job at keeping him calm! Amazingly he only needed three stitches, and he was such a trooper through the entire hospital visit. He did great, better then I would have done if it were my head!
Ben is a crazy wild man of a boy. He is rougher and tougher then he thinks he is. He loves to wrestle with his big brother Jake, always getting hurt and hurting others. Sometimes I don't think he even means to hurt people, he's just stronger then he thinks he is. He said something note worthy a few weeks ago, something Kevin and I thought we should write down. We have been half jokingly talking about what it would be like to have another baby in this house, due to my baby fever, and Autumn always having baby dolls around and pretending they are real babies, we were talking about having a baby one day and Ben said, " I want a baby brother, so when he's three I can fight him!" lol. That is how Ben thinks. It's all about fighting, being a power ranger, or transformer, or something that beats people up. Kinda funny that was his thought about having another baby.
He loves to play video games and I can not wait till it's warm out again to get that child away from the TV and outside to play!
One last thing about Ben, when he prays at night, he always says the same prayer, it's short, simple and to the point.
"Dear God, I love you. I love Jesus, hate the devil. In Jesus name, Amen".
Love it.
Autumn is a sweet girl. I like to call her my little helper, she likes to help out, she will go as far as getting on her hands and knees and drying the floors behind me when I wash them and that's a big job. Not many 6 year olds like to do something like that! But lately, that's about all the cleaning she likes to do. She loves to make messes and always says she will clean up when she's done, but never does.
She likes to spend time in the kitchen sink, playing in the water, sometimes getting dishes clean, most times, just making a big water mess around the sink area. She likes to make pictures and cards for people, do art with her little sister and make big messes with glitter.
she loves her daddy.
Autumn is also really into being a mommy with her baby dolls. Autumn really wants to get married and be a mommy that stays home when she grows up. I can't wait. She already has plans for me of babysitting her babies and taking them to Mcdonalds. I pray I am blessed to live that long and be healthy enough to do that for her!!
She is doing well with her first year of homeschooling. Some days are better then others, there are days it's really hard to motivate her to do school, and other days she wants to do extra work! I love having her home and can't imagine sending her back to school. Her and Ben became best friends again this year which makes me smile to see. Last year when she was in school they kinda lost that closeness they had before, now they are buds again.
Jake is an amazing kid. He's turning into such a great young man. He's a caring guy, thankfully for a teen, he still loves his momma and I am grateful for that. Of course, there are some days he won't give me a kiss goodbye if friends are around, but he'll still say "love you" when he leaves me. I hope he is never to "cool" to do that.
Things that stand out in my mind about Jake right now are that he is taking on a liking to cooking now. He just recently started a class at school where he is learning to cook and he is enjoying it. Last night he made choc chip cookies. Funny thing is, I ran to the store to get choc chips while he was getting the dough ready, when I came home, he was just throwing everything in one bowl, instead of separating in two, and mixing the butter and sugar first, then adding the flour last, he was just going down the ingredients list and throwing it all in one bowl. The first thing out of my mouth was , "oh no! What did you do here?" lol. I was a little concerned they were not going to turn out. The dough was a real weird lumpy consistency, so we just kept mixing and mixing, in my mind, trying to "fix" it. Well, let me tell you, these cookies not only turned out, but they are better then mine! When I told Kevin last night that Jake's are better then mine and he didn't follow the directions Kevin said, that's because he did it "the MAN'S way" ! Too funny! I learned something though, don't always have to follow the directions for something to turn out yummy!
He also made us pancakes for supper one day, just got everything out and started cooking! I can get used to this!
Something else about Jake, which I'm not sure at this point if it's a good thing or a bad thing for his future wife, he can not stand mess! I think it could be a great thing, because he does help clean up the house, he will even ask can we clean?? Or he'll come home from school, with that disgusted look on his face at the mess his brother and sisters made, and he will just start cleaning! Those are great traits he has there, I love a man who cleans!! I just hope he's not too hard on his future wife if the house isn't as clean as he would like it to be, especially if they have little ones running around messing up the place behind her!
Jake's a great kid, I love him to pieces. I dread the day he drives a car. I know he's only 13, but the thought of him driving just gives me anxiety! I would like him to stay this age for awhile. Time seems to go by so fast with kids, and I know that it will be too soon that he will be driving, then graduating from high school and off to college. I'd like to hold on to him longer then that. I think to myself, that's only 6 years! and he'll probably leave me! If only I could get him to home school too so I could hog up some more time with him before he's an adult with his own family.
I do wish I could spend more quality time with Jake, with the three younger ones it's hard. But this weekend we are going to a concert together, I look forward to spending that time with Jake.
I should probably bring an end to this, as it is already much longer then I had planned and my neck is getting stiff from sitting here. I am really lovin my kids right now and feeling so blessed that they are healthy!!
As my friend Jennifer says, hug them tight, smooch them, play with them and be patient with them!! Amen to that sister!
Autumn is also really into being a mommy with her baby dolls. Autumn really wants to get married and be a mommy that stays home when she grows up. I can't wait. She already has plans for me of babysitting her babies and taking them to Mcdonalds. I pray I am blessed to live that long and be healthy enough to do that for her!!
She is doing well with her first year of homeschooling. Some days are better then others, there are days it's really hard to motivate her to do school, and other days she wants to do extra work! I love having her home and can't imagine sending her back to school. Her and Ben became best friends again this year which makes me smile to see. Last year when she was in school they kinda lost that closeness they had before, now they are buds again.
Jake is an amazing kid. He's turning into such a great young man. He's a caring guy, thankfully for a teen, he still loves his momma and I am grateful for that. Of course, there are some days he won't give me a kiss goodbye if friends are around, but he'll still say "love you" when he leaves me. I hope he is never to "cool" to do that.
Things that stand out in my mind about Jake right now are that he is taking on a liking to cooking now. He just recently started a class at school where he is learning to cook and he is enjoying it. Last night he made choc chip cookies. Funny thing is, I ran to the store to get choc chips while he was getting the dough ready, when I came home, he was just throwing everything in one bowl, instead of separating in two, and mixing the butter and sugar first, then adding the flour last, he was just going down the ingredients list and throwing it all in one bowl. The first thing out of my mouth was , "oh no! What did you do here?" lol. I was a little concerned they were not going to turn out. The dough was a real weird lumpy consistency, so we just kept mixing and mixing, in my mind, trying to "fix" it. Well, let me tell you, these cookies not only turned out, but they are better then mine! When I told Kevin last night that Jake's are better then mine and he didn't follow the directions Kevin said, that's because he did it "the MAN'S way" ! Too funny! I learned something though, don't always have to follow the directions for something to turn out yummy!
He also made us pancakes for supper one day, just got everything out and started cooking! I can get used to this!
Something else about Jake, which I'm not sure at this point if it's a good thing or a bad thing for his future wife, he can not stand mess! I think it could be a great thing, because he does help clean up the house, he will even ask can we clean?? Or he'll come home from school, with that disgusted look on his face at the mess his brother and sisters made, and he will just start cleaning! Those are great traits he has there, I love a man who cleans!! I just hope he's not too hard on his future wife if the house isn't as clean as he would like it to be, especially if they have little ones running around messing up the place behind her!
Jake's a great kid, I love him to pieces. I dread the day he drives a car. I know he's only 13, but the thought of him driving just gives me anxiety! I would like him to stay this age for awhile. Time seems to go by so fast with kids, and I know that it will be too soon that he will be driving, then graduating from high school and off to college. I'd like to hold on to him longer then that. I think to myself, that's only 6 years! and he'll probably leave me! If only I could get him to home school too so I could hog up some more time with him before he's an adult with his own family.
I do wish I could spend more quality time with Jake, with the three younger ones it's hard. But this weekend we are going to a concert together, I look forward to spending that time with Jake.
I should probably bring an end to this, as it is already much longer then I had planned and my neck is getting stiff from sitting here. I am really lovin my kids right now and feeling so blessed that they are healthy!!
As my friend Jennifer says, hug them tight, smooch them, play with them and be patient with them!! Amen to that sister!
