Countdown to summer

Well, it's been another busy month, with an odd feeling of limbo weighing over the parents (wondering when Matthew's surgery will be, when can we get our to do list started/finished, waiting for test results), but the kids are growing and playing full steam ahead as normal! And after ending last month with the boys being sick, Mommy and Daddy caught it the first week of May and while we weren't quite as puny as the boys, it certainly took it's toll on us. The boys were happy to get back to school with friends and back into some semblance of a routine again.

Drew had his last blastball game this month, and had an end of season party at CiCi's (that ended short for use because Drew worked his mind into thinking his tummy was sick...continues to be a weekly issue! He is so wired for worry...:( ). But we were able to make it to Chick Fil A a few weeks later for another team gathering for their medals, so that was fun.

Drew has been ramping up his climbing skills lately, scaling walls at playgrounds, climbing around the edges of our fort and other places that really aren't meant for climbing or playing, but fun to see him expand in that area of physical play and not be too timid.

Both boys are enjoying and playing more with letters/sounds and numbers/counting. So that's been a fun learning opportunity with both of them. Drew is getting pretty good at putting some sounds together into words, but at times just guesses or tries to memorize rather than actually learn. We are planning to go through a "teach your kid to read in 100 days" book this summer to help with that! Noah is recognizing more and more letters and we are matching some sounds. Noah is getting better at counting, both just for the sake of counting, but also pointing and counting the correct number of items...his favorite number is still 5, but he can make it all the way to 20 now! :)

The boys' preschool hosted Muffins with Mom for the first time this year and I was happy it worked out with my work schedule that I was able to go and be late for work. It was fun to see the boys, have some snacks, and catch up with some of the other Moms. It was very well attended, so crowded and noisy - perfect! Noah ate a ton and surprisingly, Drew was the one that had a hard time saying goodbye when it was time for me to go. But a fun morning for sure.

It has been a busy month of us trying to get as many things accomplished as we can without over straining either one of us and we've been pretty to-do list driven, making for short/busy evenings. But thankfully there have been a few evenings where we have slowed down to really enjoy our time with the boys, and there's nothing better than hearing their squeals and laughs of pure joy and thrills. Whether it be Tickle Monster, playing in the tanning ledge/swimming pool, running around in the front yard, playing in the sprinklers (or sprinkles, as Noah calls it) - it is still one of THE best sounds in this world!

Two of the Saturdays this month were dedicated to some time consuming tasks...a huge yard sale and planting flowers in the 4 large flowerbeds around the pool. The yard sale was a huge success thanks much to the help of several Palmer family members, especially Joyce and Dennis that stayed most of the day. We had people from 7a-4p! It was crazy! We sold a ton, very happy with our return, but promised to never do it again! :) The following weekend we worked in the yard almost all day as well. I bring this up because it was by God's mercy that the boys played so well together with so little supervision or parental interaction 2 weekends in a row! They did quite well together once they got in a groove. For the yard sale, they stayed inside most of the day, but the following weekend they were outside almost the whole time playing on the patio on the OTHER side of the pool fence.

We had a WONDERFUL Mother's Day this year. It was very quiet and calm, which is just what we needed. We were able to go out to dinner with Grandma Saturday evening, leaving Sunday to be just the 4 of us. The boys were especially sweet to Mommy and super excited to share their gifts with me. We spent the afternoon outside with Mommy getting in the pool for the first time - it was still a little chilly, but fun, and then dinner outside. Nothing extravagant, just simple and quality time as a family. I am truly blessed!

The boys have discovered the joys of wrestling even more this month...it is a very common occurrence now and reaching a new level of intensity, and therefore fun! :) Noah is actually the one who starts/asks for it more than half the time and the boys just love it - rolling around, punching each other, grabbing necks - all good healthy boy play! It's funny how different it is when they are play wrestling how they really are just having fun and both seem to realize to not do anything to really hurt the other vs. how they act when they are mad at each other and do really want to hurt the other one...I guess it's a good thing they can tell the difference already! Anyway, we expect to see much more of this for years to come, but it cracks us up to watch them - very amusing!

Some fun things we've done this month include another trip to the zoo, our first snow cones of the season, more water gun fun, playing with water table, playing at the park (where they discovered and played with sticks more than anything!), lots of dinners outside, Nighttime Ninja, and buying toys with their own piggy bank money. But our big event of the month was a family day at Six Flags! It was Noah's first time, and Drew's third! Mommy couldn't ride anything but the train around the park and the Yosemite Sam river adventure (which both of those said to not ride if pregnant, but driving is bumpier than those rides! sheesh!) but they boys had a great time and Noah keeps asking when we are going back! Drew shied away from the bigger rides this time, but that worked in our favor since Mommy couldn't ride anything with Noah...so we had a great time! It was a long day for all of us, at the park from 10-4:30, but great weather and not that crowded, so it was a blast!

We are thinking/hoping Noah is going through/about to go through a growth spurt because he went about 2 or 3 weeks of seemingly eating everything in sight...just couldn't fill his belly enough! He is also more obsessed with cars lately, always wanting to have some specific ones around - usually more 'bad guys' than 'good guys'...hmm!

A funny thing Noah said this month...we had the garage sale stuff in the garage for about 5 days prior as we were trying to get ready and they found all the toys we were going to try and sell - one of which was a huge Hot Wheels set that we'd never actually played with, but was a hand me down and had more pieces than either of us wanted to deal with, but Noah bee-lined for every time we went through the garage. He came out several times that day and asked where it was...thankfully it sold by the end of the day and I was able to honestly tell him it was gone! When it was all over he asked "where our party go?!" and when I said it was all gone you were very sad that all the toys were gone as well...but thankfully relatively easily re-directed by one of hundreds of toys we had inside! :)

Time is flying

This month was an absolute whirlwind. Lots going on keeping up with the boys, some fun news about our baby, Easter, and some unexpected events as well. So, here I am writing this a month late again...

Drew has kept us busy with Blastball practice and games this month. They are all usually during the week vs. the weekends which makes for some more than normal hectic evenings (and lots of eating out), but keeps the weekends open for other things, so that's nice at least. He is mostly enjoying it, though it's hard to keep his attention during all the down time. But I'm glad he's had this chance to learn some of the basics of the game and try something different. The season will be over mid-May.

This is the result of 'quiet time'...quite the mess!

Mommy was able to join Drew on his Safari Adventure at the nearby Putt-Putt with his class at the beginning of the month, and that was sure fun! It was funny to see the class interact and play and see all of their personalities! Some of the kids have been together for several years, so it's neat to see how they've grown. Hard to believe they'll all be splitting up after this year.

Drew is now wearing 5T or some 4-5 boys sized clothes, and size 12 shoes! He's working on letters and sounds more and more, though sometimes he just guesses instead of thinking about it...we are hoping to use the summer to work on that quite a bit with him.

Easter party at school

We also had some fun trips to the zoo this month - taking advantage of our zoo membership before it expires and before the weather just gets too blazing hot! There's a Gigantabugs 'event' going on right now that we all enjoyed. There are very large mechanical bugs spread out all over the zoo to spot, some that move, make noise, one even squirts water! So that has been a fun and different thing to enjoy. We even got to go with Daddy once this month - a very rare chance that we were home on Daddy's Friday off, so we took advantage of that! They boys had fun showing him around the zoo! And another time Grandma was there with her class, but she was able to spend the day with us - a true treat!

We had a fun visit from Uncle Kevin, Grandpa and Nana at the beginning of the month - it was a short visit, but good times were had by all. The boys keep asking when they are going to come back!

The boys keep taking advantage of any 'almost warm enough' days to get in the pool. still too cold for Mommy, but the 3 boys have been in several times. Drew loves playing with all the water toys we have and Noah is getting more and more comfortable/dare-devilish with jumping in, so we have to keep a close eye on him! He just can't help but want to jump off the diving board. And even when it's too cold, he'll get back in, with purple lips quivering, just not able to get enough!

Toys and games that keep the boys entertained these days: super heroes! Hot Wheels, castle toys, trains, legos, random games from our game closet and general going back and forth boy/brother play! It feels like we play "I Spy" every time we are in the car and at the dinner table...it's getting a little old for us, but the boys love it!

Bedtime continues to be an adventure - some nights they quiet down pretty quickly, other nights they talk for an hour at least, and other nights are just wild and we are intervening a ton and they are jumping from one bed to the other, turning the lights on, playing with flashlights...you get the picture.

We ended the month with a week of the worst stomach bug ever! Noah started showing signs the last Saturday of the month, and didn't fully recover and able to return to school until a full 8 days later - the next Monday. Which was right about the time Mommy and Daddy started feeling sick as well! I have never done so much laundry in one week without getting any clothes washed...one night Mommy and the boys slept out in the living room because I was so concerned about them and we had about 3.5-4 days of literally just lying around the house, watching back to back movies...they were absolutely pitiful! They had NO energy, no desire to DO anything. Poor Noah wanted to eat, but couldn't keep ANYTHING in his tummy for days...but he just kept asking for pizza! Poor thing! Drew handled most of it well, but had some fits about some of the symptoms that were a bit unfamiliar to him...I won't go into the details, but it was surprising what bothered him! Drew was VERY cautious about his eating - we really had to talk him into continuing to try and drink and eat a few things - he did NOT like what happened, so he didn't want to ingest anything that would make it happen again...understandable, but the amount of anxiety was also surprising! So we got them healthy after a week and then we got it! Ugh! Matthew recovered pretty quickly and was able to try normal foods pretty soon, but I couldn't tolerate more than chicken broth and bland mashed potatoes for several days and just felt awful. I tried to go back to work, but ended up leaving early one day, had to cancel more days (had already cancelled so many when the boys were sick) and couldn't eat hardly anything for several days. Man, it was a MESS! I felt like we needed to be in quarantine for weeks - I just didn't want to share that horrible virus with anyone - NO ONE deserves that! Drew still is anxious about it happening again and will every now and then work himself up into a tizzy that his belly is sick and will refuse to eat...sigh!

Started with beanbags as sufficient

Then went to full floor mode with nap mats

Just pitiful...:(

Took too much energy to sit and eat...:(

Now to Noah...what a trip he is! A few random things that come up a lot with Noah these days...his favorite number is 5, so he always asks for 5 of anything - food, toys, whatever. He has started going up and down the stairs by himself/with Drew in the mornings or to get toys and so far, no accidents! He figured out how to climb UP slides and does it pretty well as long as he has shoes on and it's not too big/steep. And when we are out in public particularly, he asks lots of questions about people: "that a boy/gwirl?"..."who that boy?", etc., things along those lines. My response is either to answer the gender and then say I don't know who they are, but you can ask them, so we are working on introductions: "what you name?" - pretty cute stuff!

Some Major Bed-Head!

Drew's baseball games are at a large park that has a huge playground, so anytime we talk about baseball, Noah talks about "I go to my park!" One parent is on the field with Drew and the other is on the playground with Noah - he will not sit and watch the game, so we take turns and the boys are happy! We've certainly enjoyed being outside more and more and it's been warm enough to enjoy not only the pool every now and then, but also the "sprinkles" - what Noah calls the sprinklers. He LOVES running through the sprinklers and just gets absolutely soaked! It is hilarious! Drew loves it too, but there's something about Noah's approach to the whole thing...he just cracks us up!

Oh, Noah can be quite content at times playing by himself...when he's in the right mood/mind for it, he can play with puzzles, trains, or books for seemingly forever and we won't hear a peep from him! He's getting really good at puzzles, which we love! He has started to build his own train track (yay!) and can really get into books when he's in the right mind for it. It's so funny to see this side of him, knowing he's such a wild and crazy boy...he's really quite the little instigator and never seems to stop moving, but every now and then...so funny how God created these boys!

A funny Noah and Daddy story...he can be a bit picky at meal times sometimes, but still overall a pretty average eater. Well, one night, you didn't want to eat your rice. So Daddy told you "No Noah, don't eat your rice, it will give you super powers....no, don't eat it!" Well, I've never seen Noah open his mouth so big for a bite of anything! It was hilarious! So then he wanted Daddy to keep doing it, so Daddy had to say "No, no, no, don't eat it" or some version of that for Noah to take another bite! It was quite amusing and still comes up every now and then at dinner, usually prompted by Noah to get us to play the game!

The boys had lots of 'picture' days this month...baseball, bluebonnets (thank you Mrs. Mueller!), and school pics! So, we'll end with these...

Easter, baby news and health update

The week before Easter, Matthew ended up in the hospital with perforated diverticulitis...a small area of his intestine poked through where it shouldn't and then popped open, letting free air into the abdomen - a very bad thing! He spent Tuesday evening through Friday afternoon in the hospital so he could receive IV antibiotics. He slept horrible and every time the Doctor came in, he kept reminding us of the threat of surgery with a colostomy bag (what Matthew now calls the 'fun bag') and so we were pretty on edge for several days. I couldn't have made it through that week without the amazing help and support of the Palmer family! They completely rose up and took care of me and the boys...especially Papa and Grandma! I would have been a much bigger mess than I was if hadn't been for them - they helped me juggle the boys and Matthew so much in those few days, it was a HUGE blessing! Lynne, Taron, Julia, Matthew and Josh all helped with random tasks (including laundry, bringing food to me in the hospital when the cafeteria was closed) and helping get the house ready to host for Easter. They have been a blessing to me since before we were married, but the love they showed me that week was just incredible - I have the BEST in-laws for family!!! Matthew recovered well, hated his bland diet, lost 15 pounds (gained some back when he got to eat food with flavor again!) and confirmed his disgust for hospitals. We are now in a seemingly long limbo waiting period where we are thinking surgery is likely, but not sure when. But for now, he is being careful, healing, letting the inflammation and tissues get back to normal before we know what and when anything else will happen next.

Matthew got home from the hospital Friday evening before Easter. The Palmers helped out to an amazing extent getting our house prepped for the family to come over on Sunday. Lynne's family was a life saver. Matthew and I laughed that of all the years, with Matthew out of commission, and the help of Lynne's family, we were more prepared for the family gathering this year, than any other year we've hosted! :)

We had a wonderful day of worship (though Matthew stayed home to rest) and the boys were the best they've ever been in church - they were almost completely silent! Amazing! The family got to the house right on schedule and we had a delicious spread as usual. The Easter egg hunt for the boys was massive and they brought in quite the catch from the very generous Easter bunny, AKA Grandma and Papa. There were literally hundreds of eggs for 5 boys age 6 and under!

On Easter we were able to reveal Baby #3's gender to the Palmer family and publicly! IT'S A GIRL!!! We had Easter eggs with pink jelly beans inside for everyone to open and the reaction was perfect! The overall consensus from family to friends is very much excited for us to be blessed by a girl this time. To be honest, we went into the whole, let's try for a 3rd, was very much motivated by the thought maybe we would get a girl. And then a funny thing happened over the last 20 weeks...we realized how much easier it would be to have another boy! :) But we are truly ecstatic and terrified about our little girl! Kate Emily is her name and she will turn our world upside down, no doubt! She's already made me cry more in the last 5 months than I've cried in the last 5 years with my boys...I'm sure just a glimpse of what is to come! :) But really, we are so happy and are praying for a happy, healthy (easy!) baby! Matthew has jokingly said that if she isn't a red-head, he has some serious questions for me...as if! Nana thinks she'll have dark hair like I did when I was born...only time will tell! We can't wait to meet her...but...wait a bit, ok Kate! :)

Our appointment to find out the gender was the same day Matthew ended up in the hospital. So needless to say, our plans to tell the boys the gender that evening changed...I refused to share the news in such a panicked way. Both Moms however, tried to get it out of me early! Shame on them! Poor Drew was so disappointed to not find out for several more days until Daddy was able to be home with us. Here's the video of our reveal to the boys...Drew's reaction is just as expected, Noah is ridiculous!