Nap vs. Rest

A couple years ago Helen started the "I don't want to take a nap!" thing. So aggrivatiing. I mean, she would stay in her bed (this is the girl that when she moved out of her bed at 18 months would ask us is she could get out of bed in the mornings - if we said no, she would stay in there until we told her she could get out), but it was starting to be a battle to get her to be quiet and actually go to sleep! Eventually it got to where she wouldn't sleep at all, then be cranky later. Finally I got smart - I explained to her the difference between a nap and a rest and gave her the choice. A nap, you have to go to sleep. A rest, you don't sleep, you just lay there, but you have to be quiet and still. Well, you tell a child they don't have to take a nap and they will do anything! And what happens when a three year old lays in her bed and stays quiet and still? She falls asleep, of course!! Worked like a charm. Still does, haha!
I introduced this to Aubree today. She was so excited she didn't have to go to sleep! As I am typing this, she is sound asleep, haha! So if you are experiencing this with your child, try this!

Life With Kids

Life with kids is definetly an adventure. And with three of them, there is never a dull moment. These girls of ours bring so much joy into Chris and my life, sometimes I just sit back in awe and think to myself "Thank you God!" They are truly a blessing. Of course there are times when I just have to go outside for a minute to get a break from the whining and tattling (something we are working on but to no avail, it seems!), but everybody has those. For the most part, we have very happy, loving, silly girls whom we adore. And they are definetly crazy! If you have been to my house, then you know what I am talking about. And if they are in a mood - your sides will definetly be hurting! They feed off each other and I love the way they make each other laugh. Helen makes Aubree laugh SO hard, like nobody else can. Last night, we had to run to the grocery store for some milk after girl scouts and they all three squeezed into one of those buggies that has the steering wheels on it - do you know what I'm talking about? It's big enough for two, but they manage to make it big enough for three. It had already been a rough night, the girls didn't get supper before scouts, then I had to search for the keys for 30 minutes so we were late, as soon as we were getting ready to leave scouts, it started pouring down rain....you know, one of those nights. I was not looking forward to going into the grocery store hungry and with three hungry little girls, cold from the rain. But they never cease to amaze me. They did very well, a little loud, but at least it was from laughing and not crying! They really didn't ask for too much and they know if I say no, then that is the end of it. And Helen knows if it isn't on sale, we aren't getting it. Teaching her young, haha! Anyways, we got a few looks, but they were smiles instead of those why-can't-you-control-your-kids looks. (which thankfully, we haven't had too many of, but they are inevitable every now and then) We did end up wth a little more than milk though ;) We are very blessed in that they love each other so much and I love that. They squabble every now and then of course, but for the most part, they don't fight. Haha, they know better! They are so close now and I hope they grow up and are still very close. These girls never run out of energy and are always wanting to go somewhere! God has blessed us incredibly with these girls and I can't wait for August to add one more. Aubree always wants to see the baby and when I lift my shirt up, she says "Wow! She's getting big!" Umm...thanks Aubree, haha. And then Allisyn will run up and kiss my belly. I love it! When Aubree prays, she always remembers to thank God for our baby and that our baby is a girl! I love these little girls so much and can't imagine my life without them and I pray I never have to!

Helen's First Ball Game!!

Today is the day Chris has been waiting for since we first found out I was pregnant with Helen - her first ball game. He always played sports growing up and of course, he wants our kids to do the same. We tried to get Helen to play last year but she really didn't want to, so of course we didn't make her. This year, she was very excited to play. Chris's aunt and uncle are the coaches and Chris is helping so he can take over next year. She is playing coach pitched softball.

Haha, "warming up". No, Uncle Mike was telling them something :)Warming up with ChrisThe team in the dugout.Standing on first base. She went 3 for 4.Excited to be playing!They are allowed to have two coaches in the outfield during the game to help the players. Chris just happened to be standing by Helen. Here she is asking him if she can have some M&M's! Way to stay focused Helen :)Up to bat!The team!Chris and HelenLove this picture!The league we are in is noncompetitive. You can only score 5 runs in an inning and the fifth run counts as the final out. We scored 5 runs every inning and eight the last! One little boy hit a grand slam to end it!! All the kids did great - they all played great and more importantly, they all had good attitudes and good sportsmanship!

21 Weeks

Here is the blog I promised for yesterday, only a day late :) As of yesterday (Friday), I am 21 weeks pregnant. I am finally feeling much better. It was a rough start to my pregnancy. I had pretty bad nausea - never actually threw up, but there were plenty of times I wanted to! Also had extreme exhaustion - could that be because I was chasing around 3 kids all day? Haha! And I had some pretty bad headaches. This pregnancy has been the worst by far of the four. I think this one has been worse than all the other three together! There were some days I went to bed as soon as Chris got home from work. But I have a super awesome husband and he would handle supper, 3 girls, and kept up the house! God has definetly blessed me with an amazing man for a husband for me and daddy for my kids!!
The nausea finally lingered off around 16 weeks, but the headaches kept up until about 19 weeks. Finally felt good enough to do some walking and the eleptical. For about a week. Then my mouth started hurting. Ugghhh!!! I had a wisdom tooth coming in causing LOTS of pain! So I got that taken out this past Monday and my mouth is still a little tender. But hopefully it will be back to normal in the next few days and the rest of this pregnancy will be uneventful!
Weight gain is a weird thing in pregnancy. For women to know they have to gain weight is a pretty tough thing. We know we have to for the health of our baby, but we still don't like that. With Helen I gained right at 20 lbs I think, Aubree was 14, and Allisyn was 33 (!). So we shall see with this one. So far, I haven't gotten back to my starting weight yet. I made my midwife feel better at my last appointment by gaining 3 lbs in 4 weeks, but I'm still half a pound under. I'm sure I will make up for it though! I'm still not sure how this is possible - I know I'm not any smaller than I was before I got pregnant, but I know at least my belly is alot bigger! Like I said, weight gain in pregnancy is crazy!
I have to say that, so far, Allisyn has been my favorite pregnancy. Just because she moved all.the.time! I mean, she was constantly moving! I think if you ask any woman that has ever been pregnant, feeling your baby move inside you is the best part of it! This one moves around a little, not as much as Allie yet, though. I feel her most at night when I lay down. Maybe I move so much during the day? Chris felt her moving around for the first time the other night. There's nothing like it!
No picture this week, I will try and have one for next week!

Easter

I am putting everything Easter into this one post so I will be caught up and maybe tomorrow I can do an update on my pregnancy. We had a lot of festivities going on of course, I didn't feel good for half of it, otherwise there would be more pictures.

Helen at her school party, about to hunt eggs.

Aubree done hunting eggs at the church egg hunt.

This is the day I started feeling really bad so there aren't nearly as many pictures as I would like, but what do you do? I woke up Saturday (before Easter) with a headache. We were having a yard sale that morning with Chris's parents and one of his sisters. Also, we had our egg hunt with the church that morning, which Chris and I were in charge of. Then, after that, we were going to color eggs at Chris's parents house with the family. AND I still had to make the girls' Easter dresses. Helen was insistent. Besides, as a little girl, you've gotta have a new dress for Easter morning, right? So startng the day off with a headache was NOT on the list of things to do that day! Well, I just went downhill from there. The egg hunt was at 11 and I wasn't feeling too badly at this point. We were doing lunch first. I started feeling worse and worse. I'm told I was kinda short with some people and I am very sorry, I didn't mean to be. I tried to sit down most of the time, but it didn't really help. At the end, my wonderful husband and some of the other great people there cleaned everything up. By now, I was feeling pretty nauseated, had a horrible headache, rough cough, my back and mouth and throat were hurting - I was in bad shape. I was on the way to the bathroom and walked past the room where the communion is prepared and I noticed the trays were still empty. I was thinking "somebody hasn't done it yet." Then I realized that someone was me. Helen and I were supposed to do it. I went and grabbed her and we got busy. Thankfully, and I don't know who it was but I was so very thankful, someone had already done half of the juice and had all the cups in the trays. HUGE time saver. Helen started the doilies for the bread and I started filling cups. When she finished, she took over the juice and I put my head down. We finished in record time! I tried to sleep when we got home, but it was just too noisy. I felt so bad, I thought I was coming down with the flu. I felt even worse now. I decided I was going to skip the egg coloring and rest in quiet. I finally got enough tylenol in me I felt a tiny bit better and decided I better get started on their dresses. Yes, I know I shouldn't have waited til last minute, but that's just how I do sometimes! It took my WAY longer than it should have to finish those dresses and they were definetly NOT my best work, but the girls were happy with them and that is all that mattered.

Easter morning.Their new bathing suits. We are missing a tote with summer clothes and so they had been swimming in shorts and shirts.I never did get a really good picture of their dresses yet, but here they are.Silly girls!I love this picture of Helen - she looks like a model in the middle of the woods!
Her hair is starting to get so curly! Remind you of anyone?

The whole clan!

I hope everyone had a happy Easter!!

Allisyn's 2nd Birthday

I will have to do a post on Allisyn's 2nd birthday later since all the pictures were taken on my mom's camera and I haven't gottnen them yet. But this is what happened a couple days later. I was waiting outside with Helen for the school bus and Allisyn went inside and it was a while before I realized she never came back out. I started the search, getting no response when I called her name. I walked into the kitchen and found this! She pulled the whole thing off of the counter, somehow got the top off and helped herself!!

It's a Girl!

So we have girl number four on the way! I'm not going to lie - up until the car ride on the way to the ultrasound I thought this was a boy. I told Chris on the way there I was pretty sure it was a boy until now. I don't know if it was because we were about to find out or what, but the doubt crept in. I guess maybe because this pregnancy has been so much rougher than all the other 3 combined I thought it was a boy. My mom and my sister were convinced it was a boy too. And who knows, on our next ultrasound, they may say it's a boy. But for right now, we are trying to think of girl names we like.
We asked the tech not to announce the sex out loud, just to write it on the screen so Helen could read it. Now Helen has been wanting a baby brother forever. So she was a tad disappointed when she read "girl". I was kinda in shock, I think because I was sure it was going to say boy. Chris has been saying the whole time it was a girl (I think he is trying reverse psychology, haha!) and Aubree was happy as can be because she "wants a bunch of sisters!" Alliysn just wants a baby, haha!
The shock has worn off and I can't wait to get out all my little girl clothes out!! Helen is excited and every time Aubree prays, she says"Thank you for our baby and thank you for the baby being a girl"! I love it!
We want a little boy, but we are perfectly happy with another little girl at the same time! We know we are incredibly blessed with the three healthy, sweet, loving beautiful girls we already have and who wouldn't want to add another one to that list?

Girl's First Disney Trip!!!

Monday was Disney day. And since we took such a long and late nap Sunday, it was late to bed and early to rise again as you will see in the first few pictures haha! Since we wanted the trip to be a surprise, we didn't build Disney up very much. We threw bits and pieces out there every now and then, but not too much. Helen is very observant and hangs onto every word and the meaning so we didn't want to give too much away. A couple nights before we left, she, out of the blue, started talking about how she wanted to go back to Orlando and by the time we were done talking about it, she was pretty much convinced that was where we were going. So we had to throw some distractions out there - could be the beach, Atlanta, Gramma's.....then she wasn't so sure. Anyway, so when it was actually time to go to Disney, of course Helen and Aubree were excited, but Allisyn had no idea what was going on. I wish we had prepared her more for it.

Aubree's excited face! Love it!!Here we are!!In the parking lot, on the way in. Notice the three sets of ears.Here start the "grumpy" pictures. "The sun is bright!" "I'm cold!" Boohoo ;)On the ferryboat ride over to the park. Notice only 2 sets of ears. At this point we discovered we had ALREADY lost a set of ears, a hairbow(we found that later in the van, though), and a shoe. Yes, a SHOE!!! How does that happen without us noticing?!!? So, first stop, had to find Aubree a new pair of shoes. We had to pay $15 for a pair of flip flops and honestly, that is probably the most we have ever paid for a pair of shoes for any of the girls!! Anyway, of course, they loved the boat ride.........and finally seeing the castle for the first time!!Attempt at getting each of their pictures in front of the castle....they weren't having it and I forgot to get it later so this is what we have, lol!!Family pic in front of the castle.Aubree's awe face on the ride "It's a Small World". They loved it!!One of the girls set her ears on my belly and it was just getting big enough, they stayed!! If this turns out to be a boy though, I'm sure he won't appreciate it haha!This is why Aubree wasn't in the previous picture.This is the little girl Helen made in line. You know Helen has NEVER met a stranger and this was no different. She took a picture of her and her daddy too, haha! Then she had this little girl be our photographer for a little while!Another famliy pic, thanks to our new photographer!Watching the show, the witch from Snow White was on stage. I like how all three of them look scared! Aubree really was, she kept wanting to leave.All they wanted to see were the princesses so this is the most we saw of Mickey and Minnie. Maybe next trip we can focus more on those characters!Playing while waiting in line.On the ferryboat ride out. Amazingly, we didn't lose anything else during the day!!Not the best picture, but it was so pretty lit up!At the end of the trip, we asked the girls which they liked better, Sea World or Disney. Both said Sea World. I think it's because we mostly waited in line at Disney and at Sea World, they got to watch the shows and stuff. Plus, they are very into the sea creatures right now. Dolphin Tale and Free Willy are in constant demand at our house!