Survival mode

Alright, I'll admit we haven't taken to 4 children as gracefully as I had hoped.  I have lots of friends with 4 kids and they don't all seem ready to lose it at any second.  I even had a night full of dreams of how out of control I am - forgetting the baby and leaving him at the mall, driving the kids around without car seats, forgetting to pick up Cash (he's in tears if I'm ever a minute late) and having him never talk to me again, and then waking up to find my husband had gone over the deep end and chopped up all the furniture in the house to make bunk beds for the kids and I had to just smile and say it looked great because I knew the stress of his life had finally made him go crazy.  :)

Currently we're all sick, I'm going in for another MRI this week, spinal injections again next week, and every night seems impossibly worse than the last.  The baby won't go to sleep before 12 or 1am (which means neither Ryan or I either), and then last night there were periods of time when something was happening every 20 minutes. The baby was miserable and crying (he's sick too), the twins were having nightmares, and then Ryan's pager (he's on call) was going off all the time until he finally got called in at 3am.  Phew.  And next week Ryan leaves for Ethiopia for two weeks. At least he'll get a vacation from the chaos.  Thankfully my mom is coming to the rescue again - I don't think I've had more than 5 hours of sleep a night since she's left. And my house hasn't been cleaned since my sister left 2 weeks after the baby was born.  :)

This isn't really a cry for help or anything, we're doing the best we can. I'm trying to at least find someone to come clean the house or something, and I'm trying to eliminate any non-necessities right now.  I guess I'm just writing to have something to look back at someday when my kids are old and I miss these days.  :)  And then remember that I might not miss everything about these days. 

But I will miss this cute face!.

Anyhow, here's when your brother's try to play with you (I walked in the room and panicked for a minute when I couldn't find the baby!):

 

At least some things are making it worth it all.

Random snapshots

Every so often I have to laugh at the things you never thought you would hear or say before you were a parent.  Like overhearing myself at the park saying "Don't wipe boogers on your brother." Or "Stop shoving money in the cracks of the dishwasher." Or today, Phoenix came out of the bathroom and needed a bum wipe. As I was hurrying to get a wipe, I see him leaning his backside against the couch and yelled out a big, "No! Don't lean on the couch!" Sure enough as he steps away we all notice poop smeared on the couch.  So then I have to laugh as Ashton runs to get a wipe to clean his brother's poop off the couch (how sweet) and then I see him wagging his finger in Phoenix's face saying in his deliberate manner of speaking, "Nee-nik (his form of Phoenix), don't put your poop on da couch.  Nee-nik.  Don't. Put. Poop. On. Da. Couch!"
 
Then as I was in the other room I hear the front door shut. Oh no, I think to myself. I run to the door and look out in the hall.  Sure enough I overhear three little boys trying to coordinate actions to figure out how to open the door and then maneuver the trash chute open so they can throw away the diapers.  While it is helpful that they've taken the job of throwing out the baby's diapers upon themselves, I usually have to brace myself.  Not only are the three stooges barefoot and parent-less roaming the hallway, but, as I suspected, Cash has nothing but underwear on and Ashton has absolutely no underwear on at all.  Thank heavens for the sake of the other tenants that at least Phoenix was decent. But really, three very small, very naked boys trying to throw out a bunch of poopy diapers (which had fallen out and were all over the hallway floor) by themselves must have been a pretty funny sight to come upon.

Or like last night Phoenix was eating dinner bare-bummed.  At one point he was standing up on his chair to reach something and when he pulled back off the table his cup of milk came sliding off.  Luckily he was able to catch the cup at the last second - right between his bare legs, his little boy parts sitting right in the top of the cup. It was such a sight that we hardly knew how to react.  Good catch? Why in the world don't you have any stinking pants on at dinner?!  Thank you for not spilling your milk on the floor like someone does at least once a meal! Or just WHY ON EARTH AM I SITTING AT THE DINNER TABLE LOOKING AT YOUR LITTLE WIENER IN A GLASS OF MILK?!?!?

Ugh. Sorry for all the potty talk, but I realize the problem is that I'm always sitting around nursing and these boys aren't the most adept at putting their pants back on after they go to the bathroom, or they just don't like to.  Which makes for a lot of naked incidents.  But seriously, as there was one random thing after another yesterday, I thought, man if you just captured all these random snapshots of our day on film, you could have a pretty good gag reel.

Time flies

At about 4 weeks I realized why is it that the last 4 weeks of pregnancy seem to last an eternity and the first 4 weeks after the baby is born seem to fly? This baby is growing way to fast!  It doesn't help that he's also my biggest baby and is bigger at this point than any of my other babies were.  He was 11lbs at his 4 week visit and was like 97th percentile for height and weight.  Slow down baby! I feel like I'm getting robbed of this baby stage! 

These next pictures pretty much sum up the rest of the household - crazy and full of personality.

(This is Phoenix and his preferred mode of transportation around our house. Seriously, even if you tell him to go to the bathroom he'll go get his scooter and ride it into the bathroom):












Although I have to say these guys are so much fun right now and say the funniest things. I don't know if it's just that I'm sitting around nursing so much that I get to observe them playing together more, but they are playing together so well and it's so funny to hear the things they come up with.  It's been a huge blessing.  Of course they fight and clobber each other the other half of the time, but at least there are good moments.
 
The other night when we put the kids to bed there were the million demands and complaints as usual. I guess Cash got sick of being ignored so we finally hear a very stern, growling yell from him-  "HERE'S THE DEAL: I JUST WANT MY BLANKETS!!!!!!!"  I don't know where he gets these funny phrases like "here's the deal" and then yesterday he was showing our neighbor all the cool stuff on his Leapster and while trying to add to the awesomeness of what he was about to show him, he pulled out a trendy version of "Wait for it....wait for it...."  which had our neighbor busting up (as I'm sure he was already dying to see yet another trick on the Leapster....)  I don't know where he comes up with these things.

Sometimes we even manage to get some brotherly love among these three.



And so I have to laugh that while it is virtually impossible to pull off a cute, posed, look at the camera and smile picture in this family, I finally realized - and am trying to embrace the fact that at least we have pretty accurate depictions of how life really is here. These crazies really are a lot of fun.