My kids are completely rockstar beautiful, as always, but today they just seem extra gorgeous. I have found that our new house has windows in just the perfect places, and I have recently pulled out our camera again. Not that the iPhone doesn’t have a decent camera, because it does! But our point and shoot camera is pretty close to unbeatable.

It just about pains me to only post the pictures that are currently loading, and there are ten!! But I had to pick and choose because another factor that comes with camera pictures vs phone pictures is that they take way longer to load, haha! Ain’t nobody got time for that!

Before I post their beautiful faces, I’ll admit that Dekker was still sleeping when I was snapping pictures this morning, so the ones with him are from a couple of days ago. But they still count 🙂

Behold!

Just try and tell me this kid and I look nothing alike. Sure, he definitely looks like his dad’s side of the family, but I’m seeing some serious resemblance here, even if its just mannerisms. Two of a kind.

Yes. His face is as soft as it looks.

Breakfast was cute.

Post-breakfast playtime was also pretty much adorable. Maybe seeing their faces over and over again is just one of those “something only a mother would love” things, but so be it!

My favorite part of this morning was taking band photos, or at least what could be band photos!

Ro is looking pretty hardcore in the last one, hahaha!!

I’ll leave you with a bright eyed picture of Solly, because one says enough.

“Hello, everyone. I border on flawless.”

True fact.

I’m so very happy that today was exactly what it was. Brady and I stayed in bed a little bit longer, and had coffee and muffins for breakfast. We got the kids up for breakfast, bathed them, dressed them, and headed to my parents for the afternoon. We rocked a quiet, relaxed day there. My mom and I ducked out quickly to Costco for one simple purchase, but otherwise, we were home and fairly restful all day.

Its not a secret that our family has fallen out of the habit of going to church. While I honestly would say that we have lots of good reasons, with all of the busyness of our life, it boils down to it being really really hard to get back in the habit! Today we were feeling good in the morning, and thinking we should really make an effort to go today. But I’m SO glad we didn’t, because Rowan is cutting teeth and is SO screamy and weepy and out of sorts, poor kid. There would have been no way to have him in church, even remotely quiet.

Another silly thing that made me feel content about having a quiet day is my silly pain. I’ve been fighting with this epigastric pain for a month now, and now, over the last few days, I’m having a lot of cramping as well. The cramping isn’t anything special, or over the top painful. I’ve had cramps a thousand times in my life. But with the amount of pain medication that I’m taking these days, I can’t help but wonder whats going on in there, and how its managing to get its way past my meds. What kind of shape would I be in if I weren’t on my medication?? I’ve often heard it said that if there is a real problem, pain medication won’t cut it. I’m starting to wonder if we’re there.

Tomorrow morning, I’ll go for an ultrasound, in hopes of getting some answers. I don’t know what it could all be, but I know of a few small possibilities anyway. I’m honestly hoping they find something in there, so I can have a direction to go in to find recovery. I suppose, if they don’t find anything, we’ll have at least ruled a few things out. Either way, I’m greatly anticipating my scan, and hopefully getting some results in the next day or two. I feel like, in the last yearish, I’ve had an incredibly painful pregnancy, and an incredibly painful month postpartum. Its also as though Solomon’s delivery was the easiest, most comfortable part! Time for some more of that comfort.

So because of those few factors, I’m so thankful that today was relaxed, and quiet, in good company. It seems I can do very little that doesn’t upset my muscle, or whatever is getting upset in there. Spending the day with my feet up is really nice when there are extra people around to chase the kids 🙂 So thanks, family, for all you do!

Lately, when people come over and see our house, they comment on how “together” it is already. I’ll admit, I agree that we’ve done a pretty good job of making the main living area look nice. I sure love it! It is lived in, but looks good, and the few new-to-us pieces that we’ve added have really topped it off nicely. It looks like we’ve always lived there…

Except that every single room still has boxes stacked waaay up! It is SO far from being done! I know, we’ve lived here for less than a month. I’m not worried about it being perfect right away, or even for quite some time! But I want the boxes taken care of, and its proving to be difficult to get that done! Consider this. Yesterday was a great day of relaxing and visiting. The SINGLE THING I did that wasn’t my usual daily living was moving some clothes around in my closet. And by the end of the day, I was SORE. That stupid abdominal muscle (or whatever is going on in there) is really giving me a run for my money. I do not push it around here, because even the tiniest amount of work I do sets me back. So while I would love to be working on boxes, and I have all the motivation to do it, I can’t 🙁 Merp. Its pretty frustrating, to be honest.

This afternoon, Brady and I decided to try to at least make some progress on our master bedroom. I don’t know about your bedrooms, but ours is always the dumping ground for things that don’t have a home. Its the land of “We’ll put this here so we remember to do something about it later” and then it seems to just snuggle in and overstay its welcome. A few weeks ago, we started tidying it up, and the pile got smaller, which made us feel good. But it stopped there. So today, we gave it a go, and we did pretty good!

A few tubs belonged downstairs, so those got carried down. A handful of things got thrown out. A few boxes got consolidated. Some stuff moved onto the top shelves in our closet. We didn’t do tons, but we did enough to know what we still have to deal with. Here’s the main list.

A dresser. Brady and I NEED a dresser. We have a couple of old beater dressers downstairs, so if we don’t find what we’re ideally looking for soon, we’ll likely drag one up and use it. I have a big tub of bottoms that fit me at all different times – pregnant pants and shorts, non-pregnant pants and shorts, freshly postpartum pants and shorts, sweats and comfies, etc. So. Many. We we have a couple tubs of clothes that need to find a home. That should finish off our closet/clothing.

Bathroom products. I have SO many of those, whether its makeup, hand soaps, lotion, bubble bath, you name it, I have too much of it. What I really need is to be able to dump those boxes out, see how much I have of everything, and organize it. It wouldn’t be the most productive to go one box at a time, because its just all mixed up. Its going to be a huge job.

The white tubs. *sigh* Those stinking white tubs. When we started renting, none of the places we ended up in had a junk drawer, or room for one. So we ended up just chucking all of our random junk/papers/everything ugly into these little while tubs from Dollarama. Now, we have probably eight of them, just full of crap. Those all need to be sorted through, and the stuff needs to be re-homed. Also a huge job.

Last huge job to do is the kids clothes. Again, since we moved from our previous house, all of the kids have sized up at least once. But we’ve been living in disorder, and all of the clothes they’ve grown out of have all just been dumped into tubs, willy nilly. Not order. We have tubs of clothing that the kids have grown out of in the past, and the right sizes need to go into the right tubs. Which means I have probably four big tubs of clothing to fold, pile up in the correct piles, and then try to locate the right tub in the basement somewhere to add them to.

Don’t even get my started on the state of the basement…

SO! While its all a bit overwhelming, it was actually a good day, full of discussion and planning and basically putting it all on the table. Our clothing will be taken care of when we buy a dresser, so that’ll be easy. All of the bathroom products have moved up into our room now, and that will eventually be my job. I’ll likely sort through the kids clothes too, but those tubs still look ok, so they’re still stacked up int he kids rooms. Brady is going to take on the organization of the white tubs, which I HUGELY appreciate! That will be more legwork, whereas my jobs will be more sitting on the floor while I sort.

There is obviously still work to be done, but those are on our radar right now as priorities. We planned out a laundry hamper rack for the basement (just wait until you see it! Eek!) so Brady will likely buy the materials and build that for me soon, and that will make doing laundry SO much nicer!! We also made some plans for a few purchases we’d like to make in the near future for the house. When we ordered our kitchen from Ikea, we got some money back in gift cards, thanks to the kitchen event being on at the right time!! So we are very excited to use that money towards some nice things for our new home. But you’ll find out more about that all soon enough, I hope. I think a quick road trip to Edmonton is going to look a little bit different now, haha!, but we’ll try!

All things in, its been a really nice day 🙂 A morning outing to Costco, followed by some good planning and organization. Solly is having some awake time now, and its just about suppertime. I hope you’re all enjoying your long weekend 🙂

We had a great Canada Day! Not that we did anything patriotic, but we really had a wonderful day 🙂 It began with a bit of a later wake up, which is always a win. Then, Brady and I moseyed our way down to get the kids up. With the promise of waffles, they happily played while we puttered away with dishes and kitchen stuff. My parents arrived around 9:45, and we cracked out the waffle stuff.

It was a DELICIOUS brunch, I’ve got to say! They brought the fruit salad, and we provided waffles, breakfast sausage, and coffee. It was super yummy, and I think I can say everyone agreed on that. The kids love waffle brunch, so it was an easy sell there, and I think the rest of us just really enjoyed the company! (As well as the waffles) Once brunch was over, we sat in the living room for a little while and discussed our plans for the day. They had a bunch of house cleaning on the agenda, while Brady and I had pretty much forgotten that today was a holiday (sorry, Canada) so we had nothing significant planned. I said that we might try to get more done around the house, but that a day to just not do anything was good too.

They left shortly after 1:00 and we opted to watch a movie as a family, minus Ro, who had whined pretty hard through brunch and needed to nap. Laela sat on the couch with Brady, I held Solly, and Dekker stood beside my chair through almost the entire movie, just so he could reach out every couple of minutes, and hug Solly and touch his cheeks. “Solly, buddy, I love you. He’s so soft, mommy.” I melt for these kids.

Once the movie ended and the afternoon continued, we decided to do just a few little things around the house. We did some dishes. Brady took all of the boxes in our room that belonged in storage, and moved them downstairs. I organized the closet a bit. We finally packed up my pregnancy pillow. I took out the garbage. Things like that. Really, we didn’t do a ton, and there is still a pile of boxes in our bedroom, but its just that much smaller of a pile, which helps. Slowly but surely, we’re getting there.

For supper, we ate tortellini with alfredo, grilled sun-dried tomato chicken, and steamed veggies. I ate SO much! I am positively overloaded right now, but it was SO worth it. The kids liked it too, and ate lots! Always nice not to have to argue through a meal. The skepticism of the noodles being different colors was quashed pretty quickly when they finally realized they all tasted the same. What is it with kids and green food??

The evening consisted of a few more little jobs. Nothing major at all. Bringing some laundry up from the basement. Tidying toys. All little, easy stuff.

Then it was their bedtime, which was pretty cute. How old does Rowan look??

Lots of prayers, hugs, and kisses later, the big kids were tucked in, and I was upstairs with Solly. I was trying to sort through a few of the open boxes in our room, and just put a handful of things where they belonged, like hanging my purses behind our mirror, putting backpacks on the high shelf in the closet, etc. I had Solly up on a nursing pillow, and he finally calmed down a bit when I turned some music on for him.

He seemed pretty restless today, so it was nice to get him to finally take a soother, stare out the window, and relax. My goodness, he’s changing, though! Eek! Where is my one month old??

Now everyone is in bed, but they’re talking and loud and completely wired from the day, haha! I can’t blame them. It was a really really nice day. I’m so thankful we had Brady home today, and that we were able to just be a family. I felt like we found that nice balance between work and play, which isn’t always easy. Success!!

I couldn’t fall asleep until 4:00am last night/this morning, so needless to say, it was a bit of a rough morning, trying to get up with the kids and do the day. But I worked really hard to keep positive and not let my fatigue and irritability show. The kids were pretty grouchy when I got them up, which isn’t normal for them at all, but breakfast helped with that.

I was wiped out enough that I didn’t want to even make the effort to brew coffee, so leftover fountain pop replaced it this one time. Not quite as satisfying or comforting, but it worked.

We kept the day fairly quiet, and I was SO happy after talking with my mom, because I convinced her to come visit! I know she’s had a super busy week, and I was tired from the night, but we missed each other!!! So it was just about PERFECT! She arrived shortly after lunch, and the kids were positively thrilled at her presence! It was wonderful to visit the afternoon away with her, and also a nice distraction that helped me forget how tired I was. She brought the kids each a little gift, and held Solly a bunch. It felt normal, and really nice.

Brady got home at a good time, and my mom headed home fairly soon after that. We were planning to feed the kids supper a bit early, because Jerilee was coming for the evening to catch up on the Bachelorette, and we often eat supper while we watch 🙂 The kids ate SO MUCH FOOD!!! They love perogies. It was a big win. They were in great moods when Jerilee arrived. By “great moods,” I mean they were super wound up, and Dekker and Laela were out instantly after we put them down. Rowan is working on an eye tooth so he had some tears and medicine and was down soon after. Solomon wasn’t buying bedtime this evening, but as a result of that, he drank a ton! So hopefully he’ll sleep a nice stretch with that. Once everyone was down and settled, we ate perogies and sausage, and watched the two episodes that we were behind. We had cream puffs and chocolate sauce for dessert. It was all super yummy. Really hit the spot for me today, anyway.

Jerilee is on her way home right now, and Brady and I are fading fast, so I’m proud of myself for getting this post up at all! However, four years in, and I haven’t missed a post, so today is not the day to mess that up! But for now, I am of to bed! Sleep deep, all! Have a GREAT long weekend!

The kids and I had a nice relaxed morning today. They woke up in shifts, so I got some good face time with everyone somewhat separately over breakfast. Rowan ate forever, but I couldn’t resist his newfound “Mo?” when he was still hungry.

When everyone was awake and fed, they played hard. Dekker is maintaining and incredible attitude over the last few days, and it is a real treat to witness and be around. He is playful with his siblings, and when he isn’t feeling it, he communicates it to them very clearly. He’s stern (which is kind of adorable) but polite, which is just great. He likes to help me too, and is always asking if I miss him, or telling me he doesn’t want me to be alone. I think he’s happy for all of the crazy hubbub to be over, and for us to just be settling in. He and I both!

Rowan napped after lunch, and I eventually had to lull him awake so we could get on the road to a chiro appointment. And he was PISSED.

Apparently 2.5 hours was not enough of a nap this afternoon, haha! Brady made it home just as Ro was getting up, and got himself ready while I picked clothes for the kids. We got everyone dressed and out the door right on schedule.

Our first stop was to pick up a tv stand from a local thrift shop. That went fairly seamlessly. Another nice furniture purchase for a ridiculously good price! After that, we headed to our chiropractic office for some adjustments.

Brady, Solly, and I all needed to see Dr. Mike today. Brady needs to go regularly, just with his work and the amount he puts his body through, but he also ticked his back off the other day hauling our furniture around. Our new buffet is solid wood, and with my silly pain, I’m not allowed to do anything, or so it feels, so he was on his own for that, as well as moving our old dining table (also solid wood and tile) down the stairs. Both are things he can lift the weight of, no problem, but were awkward to try to move around, especially when we’re SO aware of dinging the walls up too much. So he did something funny to his left side, and needed help. Solly has been in decent shape, but for just a couple of days in the last week, he has suddenly been really unsettled and has been projectile vomiting. I’m not scared of a little barf, but its not common for him to throw up so much. Dekker was a barfer, plain and simple. We’ve been there. Solly isn’t a barfer. All of our babies get a little bit twisted, and part of that is because they’re so long, and when they sleep up on my chest for a nap, they’re longer than my upper body is. So they scrunch. I try really hard to maintain him in a taller way, and to carry/hold him on both sides, etc., but he just needed some extra help. And me! I needed to see Dr. Mike again. My attempt to bring my medication dose down by juuust a little bit was an epic fail. Basically, I wanted to know what Dr. Mike thought, if he noticed any difference from the last time he treated me, and if he had an exercises or suggestions for me.

The highlight of going to Dr. Mikes – drawing in the waiting room! These things are the cats pyjamas!

Here’s the breakdown of how we did. Brady had definitely done something to anger his left side, and he cracked like crazy. I asked him after the appointment how he was feeling and he said his shoulders were tingling. Solomon needed quite a bit of adjusting, which made me feel a bit sad that my efforts weren’t paying off, but he slept through his entire treatment, so he obviously wasn’t uncomfortable being put back into place. (For those of you wondering, no, he doesn’t get cracked or treated roughly at all. Its all about massaging around his spine in the right places, and using a little clicker tool where its too small to get into. No pain, no soreness.) I told Dr. Mike the efforts I was making, and he just told me to keep at it. He’s a big boy, and there is only so much I can do. For myself, he asked lots of questions, and seemed pretty bothered by the fact that my attempt to get off of even three pills was a fail. At four weeks out, I should be showing some improvement. He asked if any position made it better, and I told him I had yet to find one. There was a pause in the conversation as he jotted something down in my chart, and I mentioned that I had a requisition for an ultrasound, but I hadn’t called because I didn’t want to waste a resource unnecessarily. He instantly looked up and said he was just going to say I needed an ultrasound. We can’t know much, because I’m always on pain medication, but he’s suspicious that its beyond just a muscular thing. He said, if it were muscular, I’d be able to improve it by being in certain positions. He gave me a short list of the non-scary things it could be, and said I needed to try to get in asap. My req is with a clinic that claims to be able to get people in within a couple of days, but he suggested even trying a different clinic out of the city, so I’ll have to do some calling tomorrow. The sooner the better. Even if we don’t find out the exact issue from a scan, it could rule out a few things anyway. I’m game!

I felt good after the appointment. Brady was all loosened up, Solly was still asleep, and I had a direction to go in. We got ourselves some supper and hit up Walmart for a couple of things. Nothing too crazy, but we did finally find a bike helmet for Laela! Of course she wouldn’t let us hold the tag out of the way for the picture, lol! Goof.

She has a trike at home but always goes to this one when we’re at Walmart. We have virtually the same one, but its just red, not red and pink. I think she’ll live. But she’s cute!

We decided not to push our luck like last night, and headed home after Walmart rather than hitting that one last store we were going to duck into. Its always that last one that kills ya. We still made it home an hour later than the kids usual bedtime, so they just went down to bed when we arrived. Now the house is quiet, and Brady and I are just about to set up the new tv stand with our new (to us) tv!!! Always fun to make trades with friends 😀 Once that is done, its off to soak in the tub and have a snack with my hubs.

Today was SUCH a successful day, and because of its general busyness, I apologize for missing pictures of certain important things. Don’t judge. I did my best, it was just an awesome day and some parts got away on me. It happens 😉

Brady had today off, which was a HUGE treat, since he hasn’t day a weekday off in a while. We had a few plans, but nothing too crazy. However, his day did start off pretty early. We woke up around 6:30am with Solly, and he headed out shortly thereafter to run a few errands. He had emptied his work van the night before so he could go gather the last couple of things we had left in our storage container and haul them off to the dump. He swept the container out, and it has been hauled away. The last shred of our move is officially done 🙂 Awesome! I had found a lovely buffet for our dining room on kijiji the other day, and the couple had agreed to hold onto it until today, so he went to pick that up as well. After those errands, he picked up breakfast and came home. We ate fairly quickly, eager to carry in our new purchase, and see how it fit in. Turns out, it was better than we expected. Solid wood, VERY sturdy, in great condition. Huge win for a great price.

Poor Brady. Shortly after we had eaten, I found yet another kijiji purchase that we couldn’t refuse! No, we are not always this kijiji-happy, but I have been keeping an eye out for very specific things, and when they finally came along, I jumped. That is how Brady ended up heading right back into the city and picking up a large dining table and nine chairs! When he brought them home and set them up, they were also WAY better than we expected! Everything was sturdy, in fabulous condition, seemingly untouched. Once again, we had struck gold! Huge wins.

Once all of the hubbub of pick ups and set ups, we took a load off so Brady could shower and I could humanize a little bit before yet another outing!

The most fun part of the drive in today was this.

We switched Rowan to forward facing, and it made this possible!!! Ok, it may have been possible before, but regardless, this set up is SO much nicer than the last one, even! And the kids loved being side by side. We loved it too. It was such a cute sight to look back on.

Dekker has been asking for a haircut recently, which is completely out of character for him! He has previously hated having his hair cut, but since he was asking, and it was more of his idea than anyone else’s, we jumped at it. I booked an appointment for today for Brady and Dekker. It couldn’t have really worked out better, honestly. My hair girl works towards the back of the salon and today, the the four chairs around her were empty!! So she welcomed us to bring our cartload of kids back there, and they took turns sitting in the different stylists chairs, making faces in the mirror, and watching Brady get his haircut.

When it was Dekker’s turn, I hiked him up onto the booster on Carlinna’s chair, and he didn’t bat an eye. She put the cape around him, and I took his glasses off. All three of these things have previously made him scream and cry. We discussed what we wanted for his haircut. Just out of his eyes. Pretty much what he already had, but just a bit shorter and out of his eyes. People can think that I let my kids get overgrown because I’m lazy, thats fine. But Dekker likes shaggy hair. When I show him pictures of little boys haircuts, he likes the longer styles. So we discussed, she began, and he started talking with her. They talked about kindergarten and Paw Patrol. Thank goodness she’s watched it! Haha! It was SO nice how smoothly it went!

While they chatted and she worked away, Laela spun me in a nearby chair. She was SO sweet, and seemed pretty relieved that she wasn’t up for a haircut, lol!

The end result…..

I think he looks awesome 🙂 We always do a treat after a haircut, since it used to be such a debacle, so we walked the mall to Booster Juice and everyone got a snack sized Scary Berry. If you haven’t tried it, I highly recommend it.

(This is me apologizing for not taking pictures of the rest of my family, haha! Rowan and Solly were so well behaved and quiet, I just missed them! Whoops!)

Everyone was on a roll, so we decided to hit Superstore for just a couple of things that we couldn’t find or forgot when we were shopping on Sunday. Unfortunately, we clearly pushed our luck, and Laela wailed the entire walk back to the van. But we got most of what we came for, so that was a win. We drove home from there, and put everyone to bed. It has been an incredibly successful and fun day! I feel completely content with how everything went, and my strained muscle hurts SO much, hahaha! But it was totally worth it 😀 Its that good “I did a lot of awesome things today” kind of pain.

Now off to soak in the tub and eat something delicious. Have a great evening, all!

Facebook was generous to inform me, this morning, that I have been in the daily blogging game for FOUR YEARS! Maybe that doesn’t seem like a ton, but it feels like a pretty sizeable accomplishment to me! When I began writing my blog, Dekker wasn’t quite a year old, and now he’s coming up on five! A lot has gone down since then, but I think it would be fun to just briefly recap on the last year, 2015/2016.

I had to do a bit of looking back, but if you remember, when we listed our past house, we switched realtors halfway through. Two months with our first realtor before we switched to the second one. So at this point last year, we were one month in with our first realtor. Our house was on the market, but hadn’t been for long. And since then, SO MUCH HAS HAPPENED!! I’m positive a lot of you remember this whole thing, but for my own fun, let’s recap.

The first half of the blog year was the second half of 2015. We spent it with our house on the market, so most of what we did revolved around the sale of our house. We worked like dogs to keep it clean and tidy, yet we sweated and panicked over every showing. We stressed out about it a lot. In the midst of everything, we conceived and lost a little one. Sad days. I won’t delve too deep into that, but it is a VERY notable event that could not be excluded. Shortly after our loss, we were blessed to discover that we were expecting once again!

We made our pregnancy public on the same day that we were FINALLY able to announce that our house had sold! The very end of November was an exciting time! At that point, however, we had no plans for what would happen after we moved. We had nothing concrete saying we could build, and we didn’t want to buy somewhere, only to try to build a year down the road. So we began looking for a place to rent. Our house was officially sold as of November 30th, and we had to be out by January 7th.

The Christmas season was nuts. We basically moved into my parents house for the holiday days that family was out, and just didn’t go back. Well, we returned to pack and organize and make trips to our storage container and back, but we spent very few nights at our house after that. In the final days, we paid someone to come clean the place, left the next owners a bath bomb beside the soaker tub, and bailed, no looking back. It was awesome.

We were blessed to find our first rental easily, through people that we knew from before. They let us move into their acreage on January 4th, so after a few choppy days moving our stuff over and around, we had a new place to call home. While living at the acreage, we did a bunch of calculating, and basically did our taxes uncharacteristically early. We took our final numbers to our mortgage broker, and she confirmed how much of a mortgage we would qualify for. Very quickly, our dream to build became a reality. We spent a lot of time in January in and out of meetings with our builder, making plans and getting our ducks in a row. A few wrenches were thrown into the home build mix over the weeks, but thank goodness, they were all errors made by others, not us!! It helps SO MUCH when its not your mistake.

On February 9th, we broke ground. It was an epic, surreal, emotional day.

As it tend to happen, some unexpected things came up, and we left the acreage. (No love lost whatsoever ;)) My parents graciously took us in, when we had no other plans or direction. We began a desperate search for another rental, this time even shorter term. We needed April, May, and June. That was it. We found lots of short term rental options, but they were all tiny two bedrooms, which was not going to be functional for our soon-to-be family of six. God provided for us yet again, and within a week or two of searching, we were signed on to a lease in the north end of the city, in a quiet cul de sac, for exactly those three months. The cabin, we called it. If you ever saw it, you know why. It was perfect for us. We really settled in and felt at home.

In those months, January through to May, we were busy. We were at countless doctors appointments, we were sick SO regularly, and we were walking through/touring the house that was being built for us a ton. Beyond that, Brady was working, I was in a lot of physical pain, and the kids were struggling with all of the moving and constant uprooting. These were challenging months!! I am so very thrilled to be able to say that we had so much support and love from those around us, though. We fell out of the groove of going to church, not because we lost faith, but because it was HARD. And we were TIRED. Yet our friends from church didn’t forget about us. Our family didn’t forget. Our friends that we knew from outside of our church didn’t forget. People really kept a close eye on us. It was amazing. When we had absolutely NOTHING to give, people stuck around. I love you guys. You all know who you are.

After all of those insane months, we embarked on the craziest week of our lives. We were given the amazing gift of our fourth baby, Solomon Brady, and days later, we were moving into our palace.

Its been 3.5 weeks since we moved here, and 4 weeks since Solly was born. What a year. In the past twelve months, we’ve moved four times, conceived two babies, lost one and delivered another, had a house built, all the while maintaining Brady’s business and raising three kids. It has been NUTS. But I wouldn’t trade it 🙂 Its been an incredible year! And for those of you who have been along for the entire ride, I’m SO glad to have you looking in on our life. I like to secretly think that lots of you are rooting for us, even if I don’t know you read, or don’t know you at all, and its nice to have a cheering section when things get crazy. And this has been the definition of “crazy.”

So! Thanks for sticking it out for yet another year!! I keep wondering how long I’ll keep this up, and I truly have no idea, but I’m still enjoying it, and it appears that I have a handful of you who have stuck around, so I want to hesitantly raise my glass and say “cheers” to another year!! *clink*

I’d like to give Dekker a serious attaboy today. I know him better than anyone else does, and I can vouch that he is an exceptional person. He tends to be standoffish with new people, or really any people, though, and it sends a different message. I think a lot of people who don’t know him and see him in passing think he’s misbehaved, and he is not. He is sensitive, and gentle, and very loving. Today was one of those amazing days where it seems he’s forgotten to be grouchy, and he just rocks at all of those skills, first try. It was refreshing for everyone, even himself, and it showed as he did better and better as the day wore on.

We had waffles for brunch, and took it easy in the morning and early afternoon. We decided to make a trip to the city in the afternoon, not because we needed a lot of things, but the few things that we needed were important. Basically, one of my medications ran out, and I can’t be without it :/ So we made a quick plan and headed in.

We grabbed lunch at KFC and went to Superstore first. It was there that we snagged a new hoodie for Dekker that just happened to be very similar to the shirt I was wearing today – white with navy blue stripes. From that moment on, that kid was mine. He opted to forgo riding on the front of the cart, and instead he wanted to walk with me. He’d grab my hand, rub his cheek on it, and kiss it. If I had to let go of him for one reason or another, he’d very obviously smile at me and say “Ok mommy,” let me go, but then grab my hand back the moment it was free and ask “Did you miss me when you were away?” It was SO sweet! I tried to take a picture of us with our matching shirts, but he didn’t want to take selfies. He just wanted to snuggle.

We did Costco next, and it was relatively the same story. He just wanted to walk with me. He was sad when Solly gave up on his car seat and I had to carry him instead. But he handled his disappointment better than usual. He really wanted to walk with us rather than ride on the cart, and he was very obedient and stayed close. We always hold hands if he’s not on the cart, so this was a bit of an independence thing, and it went well! In both stores we went to, he addressed people who spoke to him politely and without reservation. He was VERY charming and well behaved the entire time!

When we got home, life as usual resumed and the kids played and ran around like always. But Rowan had barely napped at all in the van, and was therefore trashed and emotional and basically a hot mess. Laela wasn’t far behind him, and Solly was in need of some milk and a fresh bum. Usually, in those moments, Dekker cries. Because everyone else is crying, and its overwhelming. But he didn’t.

Me: Dekker, can you do me a favor?
Dekker: Of course!

Me: Dekker, do you think you could help Ro get his water bottle?
Dekker: I’d love to do that?

Laela: Dropped my toy!
Dekker: Want me to help you, little sweetie?

Laela: (wanders outside after my mom as she leaves the house)
Dekker: Honey, I can see you’re getting cold! Do you want to come back inside?

The. Entire. Evening. It was unreal! We praised him up the whole time, telling him how responsible he was being, and how great his attitude was, and it just pumped him up. At the end of the day, I could honestly tell him he had an AMAZING attitude ALL DAY, and I told him I was SO proud of him!! He just glowed with pride, and asked “Are you so proud of me that my shirt is the same color as yours?” I laughed and said I thought it was pretty cool. He suggested we wear our matching shirts forever 🙂

Toys were tidied without complaint, and when Laela got hurt and came to me crying, Dekker initiated a group hug for her. He also couldn’t keep his hands off of Solly, whether he was hugging him, wrapping him in his blanket, or putting his soother nearby. He was on top of the affection today!

Dekker gave me a soft, loving hug and kiss before bed. Not that I don’t love the hugs that are actually wrestling matches. Those are loaded with love too, I am positive. But today was a soft day for me and him. I caught myself once or twice correcting him a bit harder than I needed to, and in those moments, he would say “Oh, thats right, you’re right, I’m sorry. I got mixed up.” But he didn’t get worked up like he does when I get worked up. Funny how we play off of one another, hey? I wonder if we’d have more days like this if I changed my attitude too. Hmmm.

My hopeful plan from yesterday was shot in the foot very early on :/ I don’t know what happened with those doses I missed, but literally, I cut back ONE pill on purpose that afternoon and I could feel it by the next dose. Every four hours, I take medication. Every eight hours, its a bigger dose with a couple extra things in there. With removing ONE pill from the bigger dose, and the next dose being smaller and not as strong, I was in pretty good pain in the night. That paired with Solly not sleeping especially well was enough to knock me back to my original pain plan. I won’t lie. I’m really discouraged. I thought we were really onto something there. But now, I’m back to wondering how I’m going to know when to start weaning off, or when to even consider cutting back to see. Its an awful pain. The second I feel it, I’m a day behind in getting it back under control. Its a HUGE challenge that I was not expecting to have to deal with. Fun surprise.

Thankfully, we had a really nice day planned. We took our time getting up for the day, had cinnamon buns for breakfast, did a load of laundry, and took our time. We spent the afternoon at my parents place celebrating my nephews sixth birthday, which included ice cream cake, presents, a treasure hunt, etc. The kids were completely sugar buzzed for the majority of the day. They found some dance party kids show on Netflix to watch and jump around to, which seemed to wipe everyone out to a degree. We also learned, during the dance party, that Rowan has a pretty good twerk, and that Laela’s hair gets SUPER curly when she’s sweaty. I’d call it a successful day 🙂

Now, our exhausted kids are in bed, except Solly, who is having his wakeful time of the day. He had a really rough night, and then didn’t nap much in the afternoon at all. He fell asleep mid afternoon and slept through supper and into the evening. Now that he’s all caught up, he’ll have some wakeful time, which is actually pretty perfect. Maybe we’ll even get a stretch of sleep longer than two hours! Eek! How spoiled would we be??

Tomorrow is expected to be a quiet day at home. Likely a bit more laundry, maybe planning a bit of house stuff we want to get started on, and not a whole lot else. Quiet, playing, restful. I’m looking forward to it!

Happy weekend!