An Update

Sorry I've been absent for so long!  Having all the kids around all the time (and often having a friend or four of theirs galloping around the house, too) has been on the insane side.  I'm getting more and more excited for school to start-- to get my own kids out of the house and all the neighborhood kids, too!  It will be nice to have it just be me, Colton, and Camille for a few hours each day.  That sounds so...  peaceful!  (Oh, man, if present me could visit past me when I was pregnant with Kendra and stressing about how difficult it must be having two kids!  What a joke!)

Anyway, I feel like I'm very far behind on this blog, so for now, we'll just do a quick update on each person.  And then I'll hit other stuff in a new post (hopefully soon?  but maybe when school starts in a couple weeks...)...

Craig is enjoying his new job.  He leaves early and comes home early, which thrills me-- last year, he kept trying to do that and, without fail, his evil boss would always corner him and talk to him from about 3:30 until 5:30 or 6.  It drove me crazy because I could never figure out when to have dinner.  And trying to cook with five hungry, whiny children under-foot is not easy or particularly fun.  Craig came home one day and announced that in the meeting he'd been in, he'd said something and someone else had said, "Good idea!" and he realized it had been a year since he'd enjoyed such a pleasant meeting.  (This both pleases me and makes me want to weep for everything he went through last year.)  He's a little nervous for when school starts, all 2,000 students show up, and his job really kicks into high gear, but I have great confidence that this will be a great year for him!

Bentley continues to harass me to let him play more video games.  We have found an uneasy compromise in the form of Pokemon Go.  I love that it gets him outside and walking around!  And he's got a friend a few streets away who goes Pokemon hunting with him, so that's great.  We're letting him use Craig's old cell phone (which already has a small crack on the screen), so this works well, I think.  He's loving comic books (like, the funny pages, not graphic novels) and I absolutely love talking about Calvin & Hobbes, Foxtrot, and Pearls Before Swine with him.  He's a boy after my own heart.  He's also pretty bored-- it will be really good for Bentley to be back in school and busy again.

Kendra has also been a bit bored, but in her case it's because all of her neighborhood friends have been off at various camps all summer!  So she's missing her playmates.  But she's very good at playing with her toys in her room.  And we go to the library frequently to get books for her (and Bentley, and everyone else).  She also gave us a scare by having our first food allergy-- we think it was a raspberry that caused it, but she had hives for three days, so I'm too scared to give her another to confirm our theory!  I guess in the scheme of things raspberries are pretty easy to avoid, but this was still very new (scary) territory for me to wade through.  We went through a LOT of benadryl that week...

Ryder has apparently turned feral this summer.  Maybe I've been letting him watch too many violent cartoons?  It's like all of a sudden he's absolutely crazy.  I've vowed to be more careful with what he watches-- more "Chuggington" and less "Justice League"-- maybe that will help?  And hopefully his kindergarten teacher will know how to calm him down?  (Poor lady!)  We've been having him practice writing his name before kindergarten starts, something he's very happy to do with candy as a bribe.  As much as I worry about how crazy he is, I have to admit that it's pretty funny to watch him run in place (cartoon style) building up "speed" before he takes off!  That kid can make me laugh like no other...

Colton has been following in Ryder's footsteps, I'm afraid, and is also crazy.  I've always maintained that 3-year-olds are incredibly difficult*, and it's like this last month Colton's age finally caught up with him.  Where I used to have to beg and plead with Ryder to get his shoes on, now it's Colton running around ignoring me (or actively fighting against me) while Camille sits patiently waiting for her shoes to be put on.  I have high hopes that getting a little more attention from me once the kids start school will help calm him down a little.  That and turning four next spring...  Colton also managed to fall down the stairs this week (first time anyone's done that in this house-- let's hope it's the last time, too), so that was awful.  Yes, there's a baby gate at the top of the stairs.  He pulled the entire thing down and they tumbled down together.  No serious injury, just a few bruises on his back, so I guess we were lucky.  Also, I'm gearing myself up mentally for potty training.  I'm thinking we'll start in September.  I hate potty training more than just about anything in the world (except maybe house centipedes), but I think it's about time...

Camille has been progressing by leaps and bounds.  Did I ever blog about the fact that she learned to walk?  Well, she was walking at 14 months (which was VERY early, for our family-- Kendra, Ryder and Colton all walked at 16 months!  Only Bentley walked earlier, at 13 months).  She quickly moved on to running, and it still cracks me up to watch her try to balance with her shoulders and half-run, half-fall whichever direction she heads.  These last few weeks she's been really working on talking.  She can say binkie and bottle (bah-doh), yeah and no (usually while waving her hand away as if she's disgusted with whatever she's saying no to), nose and ear (said while either pointing to her own, or grabbing yours), "gah" for her giraffe...  And she understands a LOT more, of course.  It's very fun to see her learning so much.  She likes to laugh along with whatever we're laughing at, and tries her hardest to copy Colton (heaven save us!).  She loves Ryder's Big Bear and will run and flop down on him whenever she gets a chance.  She loves to give kisses and hugs to everyone, usually by inclining her heads towards you and then making a kissing noise.  Or, as Craig put it when she did this to me from across the room, "She's blowing you a hug!"  As much as she is so sweet loving on everyone, she's also still incredibly opinionated-- she loves to beg me for things and then be mad at me when I give them to her.  It's super fun, especially this last week when she had a cold and was very whiny.  But I sure love my strong-will little baby!

And me...  Well, I've been reading a lot.  It's my happy thing.  (I'm a little bit jealous of those people who enjoy doing projects or working out-- they must have so much more to show for their happy time than I do!  But this is one of those things where I'm happier accepting who I am than trying to change myself.  And while it would be nice to be incredibly fit or to have amazing projects I could show off, I still don't see "excessive reading" as a flaw in need of fixing!)  I've also finally been writing in my journal-- which is probably part of the reason my blogging has dropped off.  A woman in church quoted extensively from a graduation speech given by Sheryl Sandberg** and one of the parts that really struck me was when Sandberg said that she would "write down three moments of joy before I go to bed each night. This simple practice has changed my life. Because no matter what happens each day, I go to sleep thinking of something cheerful."  I absolutely loved this idea, and vowed to do the same thing.  Over the weeks, it's morphed into just writing down three things of significance from each day (if I ever find myself trying to cope with a major tragedy, I will definitely try to get back to writing specifically about joyful things), but it feels nice to finally be consistent about writing in my journal (not that I didn't view keeping up with this blog as a form of that, but a personal journal is good to keep, too).  I guess the real question will be if I can manage both?!  So, yes, mostly I've been reading and writing.  And trying to keep up with the craziness that is my family!

Ironically, since I'm talking about Sheryl Sandberg, I've also been severely restricting my facebook time again.  It seems I can't look at it without being subject to everyone's political opinions, and the whole election right now depresses me so much, I'd rather try to ignore it for a few more months.  (I'm pretty sure Virginia is in Hilary's pocket anyway, with Tim Kaine as her running mate, so I don't think my vote-- whoever I decide to vote for-- will mean much.)  It's kind of amazing how many more books I read when I don't look at facebook!

Anyway, there's a lot more I could say about all of these things, but this post is getting pretty long and I can always spout off on my opinion some other day!

More soon-- I promise!




*From Jim Gaffigan: I bet whoever coined the phrase "terrible twos" felt pretty stupid when their kid turned three.

**I can't even tell you how happy it made me that someone at church was quoting Sheryl Sandberg.  I nearly squealed in delight!