Baby E has been having a rough few weeks. He has been dealing with some pretty strong separation anxiety as of late. I think it initially started when Big E started school, but it has progressively gotten worse. It’s difficult for me to leave his line of sight without him getting upset, which is obviously challenging seeing as I go to work each day. I think part of his silent treatment last week was owing to that. This week my mother in law offered to watch him for the week to give him a break from daycare and a chance to reset. I’m hoping it makes a difference, but it was hard leaving the house this morning hearing him cry and scream after me. He cheered up quickly, but I wasn’t there for that part.

Tomorrow morning the kids have a dentist appointment, which means I’ll sneak in a little extra time with him before I head to work.

Dear friends, I’m going to be honest with you here… It might not be a popular opinion, but sometimes being a working mom stinks. When I look at my kids as I drop them off for some one else to raise, it hurts. When I miss out on field trips and school activities, it hurts. And when my baby screams for me to take him with me, it hurts.

So I try to make the time I have with them count. That’s why I push for beach visits and library nights. I can’t give them all the time and experiences that I wish I could, but I can give what I can. So I will.

Wish me luck at the dentist in the morning… It should be an adventure!

Despite staying up late to watch a movie, and losing an hour of sleep, we got up this morning and got ready for church. We really enjoy our new church and we look forward to any Sunday we can be there, so imagine our disappointment when we piled in the van only to find out the battery was drained. Gah!! We think the kids left one of the interior lights on overnight. With no one there to jump the van we headed back inside and waited for someone else to come home. In the meantime we managed to fit in some naps and family time. When my mom and sister got back from their church, Tim got the van started. We were lazy for most of the day, but we finally headed out this evening. 😊

There’s an order to superhero movies. I know this because my husband only lets me watch them in a certain order. I’ve fallen behind, so this evening we took a step towards catching up and watched the first Guardians of the Galaxy movie. We pulled the tv super close to the television, turned down the lights, and settled in for a nice movie night.

We had a good day with the kids. We came out to the new house last night and got to bed late. Baby E woke up around 2am with a dry cough that kept him awake. Eventually I let him crawl in bed with us, and I didn’t get much sleep after that. We all woke up super early.

It’s strange that back home, it is rather difficult to get Baby E to take a nap, but when we come to the new house he will tuck himself away for a nap every day we are here. He does it on his own. In fact today he gave himself two naps. He also learned this evening that he loves roast beef and gobbled down a larger dinner than he has managed for weeks.

The kids got to play outside for awhile today. It has always been too cold on our previous visits for the kids to get out much, but they certainly enjoyed it today.

Sorry that this has been a rambling post! Good night, friends!

Words of wisdom from my best girl.

This handsome fellow was my date for the evening. My in laws took the big kids to church and Baby E and I headed to Starbucks for some decaf coffee for me and a cake pop and coffee water (ie- iced water) for him. Tim met us there so the three of us had a delightful evening. Baby E was in a perfect mood of happy and goofy and we enjoyed him immensely! We ended the evening with a trip to the store for a new hot wheels car, and then home for some much needed cuddles. ❤️❤️

The kids had a two hour late arrival this morning for school, so my mother in law said she could take them to the bus stop and then drop Baby E off at daycare for me. I got the kids up at the same time as normal and got them ready to go. When I left the house they were happily watching tv and eating pancakes. She got them to the bus stop and dropped Baby E off as planned. About an hour later, the day care provider texted me to say that Baby E was acting very strangely. She said that he hadn’t spoken a word since he had gotten there.

Now Baby E has his quiet moments, and he is fairly shy around people he doesn’t know, but he’s never quiet at home or daycare. In fact, he’s typically very chatty. I asked if he felt warm, or was doing anything else strange and she said no. He was playing like normal and following instructions, but instead of talking, he would only point to what he wanted. He wouldn’t talk to her or the other children.

I checked in periodically with her and he hadn’t changed. He had been silent the rest of the morning. He was silent at lunch. He was silent before nap time. He was even silent when he woke up. At this point I was starting to get worried because this is so completely out of character for him. After 5.5 hours of him not speaking, I decided to go and get him to see if something was wrong.

I left work a little early and booked it to the daycare. By this time he hadn’t spoken for 6.5 hours. I walked in the door, Baby E jumped out of his chair, and he ran to me shouting, “Mommy!!!” The day care provider looked shocked. “That’s the first thing I have heard him say all day.” As I stood there with him in my arms, he started playing with my hair, showering me with kisses, and hugging me. He kept telling me he loved me and he missed me. As I was getting him in the van I asked him why he didn’t talk and he said he missed Mommy and Daddy. 😦 I was relieved that nothing seemed to be physically wrong with him, but my heart broke a little bit to know my little guy went on a talking strike all because he missed us. 😦 He jabbered and talked most of the way home and the rest of the evening he barely took a break.

When Tim got home, we played Hugging Monster for awhile- the kids try to escape Mommy and Daddy as we chase them around, capture them, and hug them. Baby E squealed in delight beside the other two and there was so much laughter in our house this evening.

Hearing Baby E’s laughter and talking washed away the anxiety that had been gnawing at me all day. Clearly I need to find a time soon to spend some one on one time with my littlest savage. He didn’t get as much time with us this weekend because of the day we spent van shopping, so I’m going to try to sneak some time in with him, perhaps when the other kids are in church tomorrow night.

Tonight was Family Dance Party night at our house. It’s when we turn on our piano and push the demo buttons and dance along to the 30-60 second songs that play. The demos cover a variety of music genres, so it gives us plenty of options for our dancing styles. C prefers the slower music which shows off her ballet skills. Big E prefers anything that lends itself to breakdancing. And Baby E likes to stand in the corner and wiggle his butt like Pokoyo. Family Dance Party nights are strictly unplanned, which makes them even more awesome. And after we get all our wiggles out, we are all ready for bed!

Motherhood definitely has it’s disgusting moments. I mean, the entire birthing process is pretty unsightly no matter how the baby comes out, but seriously that is just the beginning. With seven and a half years of parenting under my belt, I’ve got my own laundry list of gross moments.

• The time C threw up hotdogs in the middle of the night and it all ended up in her hair and I had to clean it out.
• The time Baby E projectile vomited on me, completely drenching me twice in one day.
• The multiple times I’ve gotten one of my children’s poop on me because they move when I’m wiping them.
• The blow out diapers that somehow reach their hair. (how does that even happen?!?)
• One of the sick kids coughing in my open mouth.

And today, I added one to the list. Baby E has been doing awesome potty training. He’s a champ at it, and this afternoon he peed in his training potty. I took the pee filled bowl to the toilet to empty it out. As the pee poured into the toilet it splashed up and hit me… ON THE LIPS!! Are you listening to me?!? Nasty toilet bowl pee water splashed onto my mouth!! I have never been so happy in my life that my mouth was closed, but there wasn’t enough soap in the world to make my lips feel clean again. Gag. Yuck. Ugh!! That was disgusting.

Now it’s your turn… I’d love to hear some of your disgusting or gross parenting stories. Let’s start this week off with some smiles… pee-free smiles, if possible!!

Since I have no pictures from today, here are a couple from when we visited the great grandparents the other night at their hotel. They were in town for vacation and we got to see them on our way out to the new house. The kids enjoyed their time with them, and this evening as I put Baby E to bed he told me he can’t wait to visit them. I hope we can do it in the next few months.

“Ma’am, are you ok?” The salesman across the table asked as I paused from signing paperwork. My heart was racing and the room seemed to be closing in. “It’s ok. I’m fine. This is normal,” I force a smile and pick up my pen. It is normal, after all- normal for me.

Tim and I have been scanning the internet for months for used minivans. We set today aside to test drive the ones that stood out to us.

The first place we went had 3 cars on our list. The first van seemed promising as we test drove it, until we rolled the windows down and they wouldn’t go back up. We never got the second van off the lot because one of the sliding doors got stuck. I can’t even remember the third van, other than it made us return the keys quickly and sent us on a beeline to our car.

The next place had one van that we were very interested in. The salesman spun a tale about another couple being interested in it, but they were running to the bank to get their check, so if we wanted it now was our chance. They pulled it up front, and when we got in, the first thing we noticed was the overpowering smell of carpet shampoo that couldn’t quite overcome the overpowering smell of cigarettes. Tim opened the side door to look inside and the door wouldn’t close. We tried and tried, but it just wouldn’t. The salesman came over and offered the idea that there might be something stuck, but they would clean it out for us and treat it with some WD-40. The screeching sound of the door finally closing seconded his argument for the lubricant, but he assured us that he had a nicer van in the back that he would pull up. With a great deal of skepticism, Tim and I nodded and he drove off, water pouring out of the tail pipe. We looked at each other and once again beelined it to our car. We were long gone before the water stopped dripping from that van.

We drove slowly into the next lot. A salesman standing outside taking a smoke break waved at us and made his way to the car. Tim motioned him to his side and rolled down the window. We were greeted by a very gruff, (possibly inebriated), stereotype of a used car salesman. The stench of the cigarettes seemed to seep from him, and I held my breath as he talked to Tim. Tim listened to his spiel, walked into the sales office with him to see what they had, and within moments was back in the car speeding away from yet another defeat.

The next store on our list was an actual new car dealership with used cars on their lot. It was a little out of our way, but we decided to give it a try. We met with a salesman that clearly valued personal hygiene much more than our last encounter. He showed us a few options on the computer and then we narrowed down our test drive choices to five. Four were on par with each other in terms of price point, mileage, and age. One was slightly higher with significantly less mileage. We ended up test driving 4 of the 5 and liked them all! We debated about the pros and cons, sat in them all multiple times, talked through our expectations versus the realities of buying a used van. We scoured the Carfax reports and the dealer service records and in the end we chose the one with the least miles on it. This is a long term vehicle for us, so it made the most sense.

But naturally as we started signing the papers, I felt that familiar sense of panic I feel during any major life purchase, so when the poor salesman looked up, I’m sure he was convinced he was about to lose a sale! But knowing that the feeling would be hard to shake, I informed him that it was just fine, and that’s just how I would feel until we were completely done. I forced a smile and we finished the paperwork. Within about an hour the salesman was handing us the keys to our new-to-us minivan. At that point I could barely contain my excitement!! I have a van again! No more shoving three kids in the back of the Matrix like a Tetris puzzle! We have a van! The drive back to the new house was wonderful and I couldn’t be happier with our purchase. The kids came out to take a look when we got home and they all loved it too. They are looking forward to getting a ride in it tomorrow!