I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season! Ours was packed full of family and fun. We’ve had various family (some all the way from South Africa) staying with us for the last week, which has been nice. From the week of Halloween through this week, it has just felt like one thing after another. Lot’s of fun and so little sleep, LOL. Sickness has also taken its toll at times, from sinus infections to stomach bugs (that I actually think may have been Salmonella, but hard to know for sure). All 3 kids are in school this year (preschool for McKenzie), so we had school parties to organize. I did Halloween in McKenzie’s class, Thanksgiving in Brooks’ class and Christmas in Ashton’s class. It was a lot to do back-to-back along with holidays, work and everything, but we got it all done. We also had McKenzie’s birthday and unicorn party in November, and my birthday on Christmas. And of course the holidays, which we usually host and have between 15 and 18 people. Now, the hubs’ birthday is next week and I have to get ready for the boys to turn 6 next month. The hubs and I had a little chat back at the beginning of November where he expressed that he’d really love for things to settle down and I looked at the calendar and said, “Well, that won’t happen until March. And by then, I’m sure there will be more.” So far, March is looking good, but we’ll see. 🙂

So last week McKenzie turned two and the boys will be 5 in February. I feel like we are getting into some fun ages. They’ve already been fun, of course, but getting them all so that they are potty trained and maybe even not napping is something we are looking forward to. McKenzie still naps once a day, but I feel like she will naturally get rid of that before too long. She could probably go down to just a catnap at this point, but we heaven’t made the leap. I simultaneously look forward to being able to do more with our time without naps, and also will miss naps (and the sweet ages they go along with).

McKenzie Update

Since McKenzie just had her birthday, we’ll talk about her first. It’s hard to know how to sum up a year, but the bottom line is she has grown so much, as most one years olds do. She has gone from a cute little waddle and just starting to walk, to full on running and either chasing her brothers around or being chased. Regardless of which it is, they all love that particular activity.

Anyhow, life marches on and McKenzie is doing great. She is such a happy, sweet baby with lots of personality. She’s really independent and will totally just play on her own a good bit of the time. But when she wants your attention, she lets you know. She’s not afraid to give you a little scream when she’s unhappy and she’s definitely not afraid of her older brothers, LOL. In fact, last night Ashton started to pitch a little fit when I gave him crackers instead of chips (gotta love 3 year olds) and when he turned to run away from me, he ran right into her and knocked her down. She wasn’t hurt, but she was not happy that he knocked her down. She grabbed onto his legs, started shaking them (as much as she could given her small size) and yelling. I literally had to pry her off of him. He just stood there and looked at me like, “What do I do?” It certainly stopped his fit, LOL.

Speaking of her and her brothers, they really are pretty good with her. They definitely are learning about being gentle with her and sometimes like to do things like pour a box of toys right over her head, but there are lots and lots of times when they really love to play nicely with her. One of the best times is in the mornings. They love having her sit on the couch with them and they take turns snuggling with her and giving her hugs and kisses. They really try very hard to be sweet and gentle with her. It’s pretty sweet. So regardless of the normal kid stuff where they love each other sometimes and hate each other sometimes, you can tell they all love each other and already are forming pretty cool relationships. Considering how close Ashton and Brooks are given that they are twins and total best friends, it’s really awesome to see how much they love and enjoy their sister too. And my gosh, she thinks they are the most amazing things.

So the last update was when I was 36 weeks and it’s hard to believe it wasn’t longer ago. It feels like so much has happened in a short time! The next few weeks went along fine, as far as the pregnancy. My main focus in those couple of weeks was still fine tuning the boys sleeping and schedule situation. I mentioned in the previous update that we were working on getting the boys back into some good sleep habits after moving them to toddler beds and one of the things that FINALLY clicked into place just before McKenzie was born was their mornings.

As you may recall, they were waking up super early and mornings were very unpredictable. In a final effort to get them to stay in their rooms until a more reasonable time, I bought a Hatch light. It’s technically a nightlight/white noise machine, but the primary reason I got it was the “time to rise” light. Basically you can set it from your phone to be one color when they should stay in their room and then change to another color when they can “wake” and come out of their room.

In addition to the light (because I was desperate for quick results), I created a “treasure box”. My sister-in-law had one with her girls when they were young and it worked perfectly for her with getting her one daughter to stay in bed, so I added that in the mix too. To make the treasure box, I just got a big plastic container and went to the dollar store and added some fun little toys and things to it.

The night we tried it for the first time, I showed the boys the treasure chest and let them get a little excited about the toys in there and then explained the light. I changed the colors with my phone to show them how it worked. It would be red when they woke up in the morning and red meant to stay in bed. When it turned green, they could come out of their room and get something from the treasure box. If they came out when it was red, then no treasure box. It took about 3 days of learning and one of those days they came out on red and in order to teach them, we didn’t do treasure box that day. But ever since then, they have caught on perfectly. They literally come running out of their room saying “green light, green light” and can’t wait to show us and then get into the treasure box. It’s been a hit and I’m a fan. We even recently started it with nap time and it’s amazing. So all that happened the week or so before McKenzie was born.

I’d like a VBAC, please

As I mentioned in the last post, I’d really been hoping for a VBAC. Starting at 38 weeks, I was hoping and praying to go into labor, since my doctor said I had to go into labor on my own. He ended up telling me that sweeping my membranes was an option and that they could induce me if I dilated a couple centimeters, but my body and the baby would not cooperate. (more…)