The Many Faces of Caeli Rose

Caeli is 6 months old!

Half a year old?  Already?  Stop, time.  Stop passing.  I'm not ready for this one to grow up.

I want to remember this toothless, enthusiastic smile forever.

Every person- seriously, everyone- that we meet comments on how happy she is!  No, she doesn't really cry.  (Well, she's cried a few times, and mostly recently when she's fallen over from a sitting up position.)  She hardly even fusses!  I think we've both been really good at figuring this kid out and getting her down for a nap at the right time (before she's overtired and overstimulated), and I think she has a lot of activity going on to entertain her. ;-)  She doesn't nurse as frequently as the other kids did, and she goes to sleep a lot easier.  In fact, she's still sleeping with us, because she's the first kid who nurses and then rolls over and goes to sleep on her own without touching me.  And she wakes up only two or three times during the night, going back to sleep very quickly.  It's pretty amazing, and I now understand how parents bedshare for such a long time.  It's really pleasant when the baby isn't constantly needing to touch you or nurse all night long!  I remember being so over-stimulated with the other kids and needing to have my space.  It's been quite a different experience this time.

The big question I wonder is why?  Why is she so different? Ryan and I are always looking for the cause... We can speculate all we want but I'm sure we'll never know.  My pregnancy was healthier than with the other kids. Her birth wasn't any different from the boy's births.  Her infancy wasn't any different than Jack's.  She's been wearing her amber necklace since she was about 6 weeks old and she has 3 big siblings to help care for and entertain her.  Maybe I'm less worn out because the other kids are older and I'm a more experienced mom?

First food- a bit of Earth's Best mixed grain cereal mixed with breastmilk  We will be practicing baby-led weaning again, but we decided (based on current research) that she needed to have some gluten before she was 6 months old.

Over all I think it's a combination of who she is and my decision to just let things go.  To toss out the parenting and sleep books and just do what God created me to do.  To trust my experience and mama instinct.  To listen to my heart and not worry about what anyone else thinks I "should" be doing. 

As you can see, there is no shortage of things to play with in our house!

Mentally I'm in such a great place.  In fact, I don't think I've been better, and while I've always been a confident parent I've had many days when I didn't feel like myself.  I guess I was trying to figure out who I was as a mother- and to a certain extent I guess I'll always be trying to discern God's call for us. 

Sleepy baby

"They" said that the fourth kid is easier than the rest, and so far that's truly been absolutely correct!  Having the first was the most difficult for me, adding the second wasn't too bad, adding the third was harder, but the fourth has been a breeze and a joy!

I wonder if the fifth is even easier? :-)

Sitting up and rolling over

Caeli rolled over for the first time while Uncle Matthew was visiting in May- she was 4.5 months!  WHAT?  I really don't remember the other kids rolling over so early- maybe I'm just old and forgetful but that seems kind of early, right?  Well, she's on the move now- she will roll from one side of the room to the other if she wants to get something.

This video is her second time to roll over.  Of course I missed the first time!

I pulled out the bumbo seat for her around then too, and we realized she was already pretty strong.  Right now, at almost 6 months old, she's a very strong sitter and will sit for 15-20 minutes in the play room, tinkering with a toy and watching everyone else play.

I'm so happy she's healthy and strong, but she's growing up too quickly for this mama!

Jack is Four!

Jackson is four!

I call you my "baby" and you quickly correct me and tell me that you're a "big boy."  But as big as you think you are, you were my baby for 3.5 years, and in some ways you will always be my baby!

With you, I learned respect.  I learned how to respect your personal space and give you nothing but unconditional love.  I have been fiercely protective of you, and you never went through "terrible twos" or "trying threes," and I'd like to think that my respect for you helped us bypass those phases.  Or maybe you did go through them, but my approach to parenting you differently helped me realize that you're just a little guy in need of love and respect.  Whatever the case, you are such a unique boy with so much love and giggles to share.

As you turn four, you love to sing!  You get a song stuck in your head and you sing the same lyrics over and over and over again!  You declare almost daily that your favorite songs are "Hello My Name Is" and "Speak Life," then you sing them as quickly as you can!  Of course, you do as all little kids and mix up and change the words up quite a bit. :-)

 

You share a room with your brother now, and you spend some much time drawing with him and you emulate his every move.  You are so blessed to have a big brother and a big sister who dote on you and love you so much.  You guys are all so close, now that the three of you are grown up a bit I can really tell that y'all are buddies and will remain that way for life.

And of course, that little sister of yours.  You dote on her and spoil her with kisses!  Even when she's sleeping and I ask you to leave her alone, you can't help but steal kisses on her little toes.  You're going to be such a good big brother to her!

You love your pets and you steal and eat green tomatoes off our tomato plants.  You always want to "do school" when Beth is learning and I think you're going to be reading early too.  But you're left-handed, and I'm having a heck of a time teaching you how to write!  But you're just sort of figuring it out on your own, which is fine with me!

 

I asked you some questions today, and here are your answers:

Favorite Color: Blue
Favorite Movie: Max and Ruby
Favorite Game: Farmer (you play this with wood blocks, little people, and tractors with Luke)
Favorite Game with Daddy: Forest Monster (Daddy chases you around and you squeal with joy!)
Favorite Outside Game: Baby (Beth is the Mommy, Luke is the Daddy, and you're the Baby!)
Favorite Friends: Sydney and Andrew
Favorite Place to Go: B.J.s (out to eat!)
Favorite Book to Read: Billy and Blaze (though I think you equally love Fancy Nancy!)
 Favorite Meal that Mommy Cooks: Pizza
What do you want for your birthday: A scooter

You are such a joy to me!  Your birth was such a pleasure (no, really- it was.  Nearly painless!) and you changed my life for the better.  I love you!

A Day at the Beach

Ryan surprised me with a day off from work to drive us down to the coast for our first beach trip of the year.  We were there for maybe 5 hours or so, and I realized that the three older kids are the absolute perfect age to enjoy the beach.  Beth and Luke spent most of the time in the water, fighting the waves, while Jack was content to play on the beach in the shallow waves.  Caeli dipped her toes in the sand and water and took a couple of naps in my arms while I read my book.  The seaweed was awful but the kids didn't care!

 

 

Mommy and Son Date

Luke and I had a mommy- son date night with the other boys in his club.  It was hosted at a nice club house, and all of the boys spent time serving and honoring their mothers in different ways.  Luke served me my iced water and my dinner from the buffet (okay, I had to help a little bit!) and he also won a prize for me!  Several little games were played, and he was given second place for "Sweetest Love Note to Mom," where an older girl wrote for him while he dictated a note to me.  There was a little prize basket and he picked out a magnetic note pad and matching pen for me.  We had dinner, the boys played musical chairs, and we all danced before dessert.  We had to leave a little early- Luke was ready to go at about 10 pm!    He just LOVED our special time together, and I was so happy to spend that one-on-one time with him!

An Early Summer Harvest

Our garden has grown wonderfully this year!  We've had a great harvest of lettuces and spinach and radishes, and this week it was time to pull up the carrots and onions.  Well, to be honest, I'm not positive it was "time" yet.  The ones we pulled up to test seemed good enough, and the tops didn't seem to be growing any higher- in fact, they started slumping over after a hard rain and never recovered.  We decided to go ahead and pull them up.

I let Beth, Luke, and Jack do all of the work.  Why not?  They loved it!  Every time they pulled out a huge one they'd celebrate!

There were a lot of tiny ones, but that's probably my fault for scattering the seeds and not thinning them out instead of carefully planting them.  I hate thinning out seedlings.  It seems like murder, lol.

This was my first year to do onions, and I think I did something wrong. I guess I didn't plan them deep enough, because they all formed on top of the dirt, and they didn't get very big.  But these also started to slump over and dry up, despite never flowering.  Maybe they didn't get enough sun?  (The carrot tops got pretty tall right next to them, maybe they blocked the sun?)  I will have to figure that out for next year.  Since the onions were pretty small, I dried and kept them, but I'm primarily using them in something like a pot roast where a whole but tiny onion is perfectly delicious. 

After harvesting all of the carrots, they pulled off the green tops (which we saved for the rabbits), and then Beth washed all of them.  I'd like to say that we froze some for later use, but honestly the kids ate all of them within a week.  They snacked on carrots all day!  I'm surprised none of them turned orange!

End of our School Year

 

Last day of 1st grade!

First grade is officially over! Comparing this picture with the one I took at the beginning of first grade, I can tell Beth has blossomed quite a bit this school year.  She has gotten taller and her hair has grown (but she's wearing the same shirt in both this picture and the first day of school picture!).

She told me her favorite subject was math, because she learned how to do calculations faster.  Her reading fluency has really improved, she went from a first grade to a fourth grade reading level (according to the little online tests, are those even accurate?).  She still loves reading bible stories and drawing and coloring pictures of what we've read, and as of last week she wants to be an author and illustrator when she grows up!

Science reading

She really enjoyed our co-op, her favorite part was meeting new friends, bible history, and US geography.  She thoroughly impressed all of her teachers at co-op.  During both semesters, they would come up to me to tell me little stories about how smart and sweet she was. One teacher told me about how Beth kept raising her hand to answer questions, but then stopped raising her hand.  After class, Beth told the teacher that she stopped raising her hand to give the other kids a chance to answer questions!  Another one told me about how Beth politely corrected her when she said something wrong about one of the bible prophets.  And everyone was always impressed with her manners, although I heard that she goofed off a little bit with a couple of other girls in her class. ;-)

Friends from co-op

 Luke and Jack loved co-op too!  It was SO good for them.  It was really good for all of us, actually.  :-) Their class was mostly boys and it was just the perfect atmosphere for Luke.  Their teacher was so sweet and amazing, and Luke also matured so much.  His writing and drawing has grown by leaps and bounds, and I think once he's ready he is going to take off reading.   He's super excited about kindergarten next year (he keeps reminding us that HE will be in kindergarten and NOT Jack) and is looking forward to seeing his friend Sam at co-op again!

I am making myself wait until July to start planning for the fall.  I just want to get past a few upcoming events before I delve into planning again!  I'll do another back-to-school post in the fall!

7 Quick Takes!

---1---

My mother's day was so very nice and relaxing.  Well, it started off a little busy- I got called to work at 4:30 am!  My first birth back was on mother's day!  It went pretty fast and I was home by 10 am so we could run to 11 am mass and come home for brunch.  Ryan and the kids made me a feast, and I was treated to a back massage by Luke while Ryan was cooking!  Of course we had mimosas, but also my favorite- toast with fried ham and cheesy eggs!  And bacon.  Always bacon.

---2---

But mother's day didn't really start there.  The day before, on Saturday, we drove out to a local plant nursery that I just adore.  They were serving frozen bellinis and I got to cruise around while Ryan hoarded the kids around.  I bought a few plants to put in the pots on my porch!  Before the day was even over there was already a hummingbird drinking from the pink salvia!

 ---3---

I have to tell you how proud I am of my garden.  It's grown so beautifully and perfectly.  We have fresh mixed salad almost daily!  Soon we should have carrots and onions too! I randomly threw in some naturtium seeds in an attempt to keep aphids off of my other plants.  They add a beautiful pop of color in both of the beds.

 

 ---4---

 This week and last Caeli has really gotten into some serious finger sucking.  She's the only kid who hasn't needed a pacifier, so I guess to compensate she uses her fingers.  I know how hard it was for the other kids to wean from their nuks, so when Caeli didn't seem to need one I didn't bother to offer.  And now she sucks her fingers.  Well... All three big kids still always have something in their mouths- fingers, toys, hair... I know finger-sucking is a hard habit to break, but it's not like a pacifier kept the other ones from sticking stuff in their mouths!

---5---

Oh yes.  The other big thing we did last weekend. ;-)  I made an impulsive decision because Ryan wouldn't decide for me!  At the farmer's market a man was selling bunnies, $10 each.  I offered $15 for two, and he accepted!  Meet our two newest family members,

Blaze

and Star

They're not quite as little as I wish they were but they're sweet bunnies who fit in perfectly with our crowd!  Of course the kids love them and they're doing super-well with them.  I got a rabbit for my 9th birthday and had various pet rabbits up through early high school, so my love for them is deeply ingrained, and I knew I wanted to have rabbits as a part of our family eventually.  So while it was impulsive, it was a tiny bit planned!  

They're named after animals in two of our favorite books- Star was one of Almanzo's cows in Farmer Boy, and Blaze is named after the horse from the Billy and Blaze books.  (If you have a boy under five years old, you have to read Billy and Blaze.  My boys love them!)

I've ordered a cage for them and I think we will set them up in our school room.  So far Finley is terribly interested- I think it's going to take some time for him to be calm around them.  I don't anticipate them being friends anytime soon, if ever, but he at least needs to chill out around them.  I won't ever take any chances with Finley or the cats around them, but they should all be able to at least coexist nicely!

---6---

Summer is almost here for us!  Beth is finishing up rather quickly so I think we will cut down on our weeks and finish in about 3 more weeks.  Since our co-op and other activities have drawn to a close, we're trying out some new things!  There is an Irish dance studio down the road, and they have a class with a lot of our home school friends, so we decided to join for the summer months.  Beth and Luke love it, and Jack sneaks in when no one is watching him!  It looks like so much fun!

---7---

Okay, I'm going to go out on a ledge here with this last one.  This has been heavy on my heart for months now and I want to get it out.  I re-joined my gym when Caeli was six weeks old.  I lost three pounds pretty quickly but I've hit a plateau with these last five pounds- and I'm okay with that.  I'm still a good two sizes larger than what I was before.  But I'm okay with that too.  I know what my body used to be, I know what it did (hosted 6 little souls and birthed 4 of them!), and I know what it is now.  

What I really want to say to everyone who feels like they have a right to comment on my body is this: Please.  Don't.  Please don't think anything of me at all.  It hurts my feelings and makes me feel very self-conscious.  I am not doing this to "look good."  Please don't jokingly tell me you "hate me" or that you're "jealous" of me.  Be proud of your own body, for what it has done, and what it is capable of.  Don't compare yourself to me or anyone else.

Because what you don't see is the inside of me.  You don't see the clouds that gather in my mind when I don't make it to the gym for an adrenaline rush.  Yes, I want to be strong, healthy, and to set a good example of health to my children, but most of all I want to be mentally present to them. I've found that for me, the best way to accomplish that is through exercise.

So the next time you see a woman who has dropped a lot of weight quickly after having a baby, please don't judge her, or silently be jealous.  I read an example in Simcha Fisher's book The Sinner's Guide to NFP that really made me think about how I can be judgemental.  A woman was so fit and athletic, but complained about not looking good enough to her friends, and everyone thought she was crazy because she was clearly a beautiful woman.  At the end of the example, the reader discovered that this woman was in an abusive relationship with her husband who told her she was fat and ugly, so she thought she wasn't good enough.  Would you have even considered for a second that maybe there was more to her story?  There's usually is.  There's so much more to my story.  (Though I should probably clarify, not abuse, thank God!)

I'd like to encourage anyone who feels the need to clear their mind to just find 20 minutes to go walk around the block.  It doesn't have to be some huge production at the gym.  Mental health is so important and worth it.  For your kids, your spouse, and for you.

Okay I'm off my soapbox now and done with my second 7 quick takes! Have a great weekend!