It's only 10 AM...

I thought having one child at home was going to be so much easier and require less energy when David and Christopher started school. Boy, was I wrong! With the brothers here they would all play together and keep each other entertained. It's only 10 AM and all I have heard all morning is, "When can we get David and Christopher off the bus?", "In five more minutes?", "Why?", "Nooow can we see if the bus is here?" We've tried to find fun things to do during the day to make the separation anxiety that both of us are 'suffering' from a little easier, but today it is raining and I am feeling soooo lazy!

Last Wednesday, David started the second grade. I can't believe it! He wasn't exactly excited about starting school again. In fact, for the past few days, he's been trying to convince me to home school him! That is not an option for this Mom! Once school started, he was happy to see that a few of his friends from last year are in his class again. After only three days of attendance, he had his first illness in years. He had been complaining of a sore throat over the weekend. Since he never complains, I knew he was sick and brought him in to see the pediatrician yesterday. Turns out he had strep throat. He ended up getting a shot and is back to school today! Christopher started Pre-K on Friday. He was so excited to go. I had my alarm set to wake him (and David) up at 6. At 5:30 Christopher came in our bedroom fully dressed (including his belt, socks and shoes!!). As you may remember, Christopher is our child that sleeps until at least 8. I don't think he has ever been up that early in his life! Well, the early rising caused a slight problem at nap time. He laid down to rest and fell asleep. When nap time was over, the teacher could not wake him up. She got worried, thinking it was heart related, and called in the principal. She wasn't sure what to do either, so they called in David!?! David told them, "Oh, yeah-we don't wake him up!" :) And he was right! Five minutes later, Christopher was still sleeping and started crying so they called me to come wake him. Those of you who have heard Christopher cry, know that should not be a school activity. When I arrived at the school I could hear him in the office. I walked back to his class and he was standing up, still asleep, crying. It was the most heartbreaking thing (well, one of them!) I have seen. As I walked back to his class, the teachers were standing in the hall at their doors. One of them smiled and asked if that was my kid crying! I held back the tears and put on a fake smile and as proudly as I could, said "YES, it is!" even though I really wanted to say, no, I'm just the babysitter...or step mom. :) I felt horrible, he had disrupted the entire school and slept right through it!

In my last post I mentioned that Christopher had an upcoming pulmunolgist visit. We went to tell them that he was off of all of his medicines! He suggested getting on a sleeping medicine since school was starting. I declined and if we continue to have problems with him waking up, we MAY consider it, but not at this point. They ran a lung function test and warned us ahead of time that since he is off the asthma medicine and because of his health history, he would not do well. Christopher ended up scoring 97 out of 100!! He did GREAT!!! We'll see the cardiologist next week for a check-up with him. We don't anticipate any new problems there either, but as always, the anxiety level is up for Momma!

Our Last Weekend Before School Starts

Julie and Jacob floating in the lake. This was when we first got in and Jacob was a little scared. He wanted me to keep "two hands" on his floatie.

I can't believe that summer is already over! Sure, there have been some days (OK, quite a few) when I was thinking year round school was a great idea (yes, even for three year olds!). But today, not so much. I'm sitting here thinking of back in my "crazy" days of how I dreamed of this time. The boys are now old enough to get themselves dressed, wipe their own hinneys, put their shoes on and buckle their own car seats. They are actually little people now and I love it! :) ...What I didn't dream about was how they can talk back, refuse to follow directions, argue and fight with each other and...take an eternity at those previously mentioned tasks when we are already late!!! My brave middle man jumping off the top of the party barge into the lake.

Since this was the last weekend before school starts, we wanted to try and do something fun and that all three of the boys would enjoy. Some of our neighbors have a camp on Lake Vierette and invited us over there for the day. We went boat riding, tubing, swimming in the middle of the lake and alligator "hunting". As in we saw an alligator in the ditch and their fathers (yep, the really mature 'boys') ran and grabbed a fishing pole and some meat to try and catch it. Good times!! David and his friend, Abby being towed in the tube.

We stayed home today as a family and grilled, fished and set up the slip and slide. I love lazy days like today and I think the boys do too!

Lazy Sunday afternoon at home BBQing, slip sliding and fishing.

A few months ago we met with Christopher's pediatric pulmunologist over my long term concerns of him being on so many medications (especially the ones that had some dangerous side effects and were suppose to be helping him sleep-but were not). We set a goal of Christopher being medicine free (NO asthma, reflux, sleeping, heart, etc) before he starts school. He starts school on Friday and I'm super excited to say he is not on any medicine and has not been for a couple of months!!! Since we've moved in about three weeks ago, he has stayed in his bed all night long and we've not had to go up there! I'm not saying he 'sleeps' all night...but he does stay in his bed and has learned how to get himself back to relaxing and sleep. He does not wake up as cranky as he used to. I guess we should have moved a long time ago!! :) Even though I don't anticipate any problems tomorrow these "big" doctor appointments always cause anxiety for me. Please keep my middle man in your prayers tomorrow!!

A year later....

So I haven't updated the blog in quite a while. Here's a quick overview of what we've done over the past year...

August 2009
David started 1st grade

September 2009
Christopher and Jacob started Mom's Day Out three days a week. I worked on the three mornings they were in school.

Christopher ended up having an overnight sleep study performed to try and figure out why he was waking up so often at night. We found out that he was actually waking up far more often than what we thought. The pediatric pulmunologist described his sleeping disorder as a type of seizure (sounds worse than it is). He does not have any control over his limb movements and that was waking him up. There were times he was waking up four times an HOUR! He was put on some anti seizure medicines (and they didn't work). So they kept trying with some different medicines. He was also diagnosed as having reflux (duh!) and asthma and put on some preventative medicines for that.

Christopher strapped up for his "sleep" study. I'm not sure how anyone could sleep wearing all of that!

October 2009
We visited an area Pumpkin Patch with my parents and for Halloween. For our family Trick-or-Treating party, I dressed up like Nadia Sullman (OctoMom)! I guess I live a boring life for that to be one of my highlights for October!! :)

This is me as Octomom. I had two more babies strapped to each ankle! :)

November 2009
Brad and I went on a much needed solo vacation while Brad's parents watched the boys. We found a cheap cruise to Mexico. This was our first (and LAST!) cruise. For some reason, after no hurricane activity all summer...a hurricane decided to come through the gulf in NOVEMBER! We just happened to be on a cruise ship in it's path. So the boat was extremely rough which made it to dangerous for the shows to go on, it also made it to dangerous to be out on the decks, it also made it to dangerous to swim (so they took all of the water out of the pools)... It was still nice to get away, but I think next time we'll find an alternative means of transportation to get there! :)

After ten years of living in Maine, my twin sis decided to move down to Baton Rouge. Being the great sister that I am (and someone that looks for any reason to travel!) I decided to support my sis on her new adventure! I flew to meet her and we drove her car from Maine to Baton Rouge! We took a few detours (New York City, the Biltmore Estate...). It was a great road trip, if you can get past my sister's driving skills - or lack thereof!)

Julie at the Statue of Liberty Park with NYC in the background.

December 2009
Every member of our household is an official member of the "Underwear Club"!! :) No more diapers!!!

We enjoyed Christmas at our house. My twin sister and parents stayed the night and helped look out for Santa. It's great having my twin sister in town!!

January 2010
David turns seven years old!?! How can he be so old?? He wanted a rock star party and so we did! It was a blast to plan. I'm not sure who had more fun - the kids or me!?

Dave Man and his fanclub.

February 2010

Brad and I went to Washington DC for a mini vacation before his Chick-fil-A Conference. It was right after their huge snow storm so the snow was still everywhere, but thankfully a little warmer. The city was beautiful! After all of my letters to my senators, they were able to get us in to tour the White House!! And that my friends, is one of the reasons you should always keep in touch with your Senators! :)

Christopher turned four years old and Jacob turned three!! They still mostly share the same friends, so I had their birthday party together. They ended up having a snow birthday party! Yep, we had a guy come in with a snoball machine and he made "snow" in the backyard! We made snowmen and had snowball fights!

March 2010

We celebrated "Christopher, the survivor" at the American Heart Associations Heart Walk. We joined a group of other families that have children with Congenital Heart Defects (or diseases). It's great to see how active these CHD children are, especially considering how much these kids have been through!

The boys each had their own Easter Programs at school. It was a blast to see them stand up on the stage and perform. None of my kids seem to have a shy bone in them...not sure where that came from! :) We also did our annual tradition of dying our hands...uh, I mean easter eggs! :)

It had been quite a while since I had a girls slumber party, so I gathered a bunch of my girl friends and we had an "old fashioned" slumber party. It was a blast-complete with the same games we used to play as kids and we threw in a few adult activities too! A friend of mine came and taught us all how to paint.

April 2010

Spring baseball season begins! All three of the boys were able to play this year. I coached Christopher and Jacob's team. This was David's first season to play coach pitch. He played in Gonzales this year, it is a lot more competitive (and organized) than the Y.

We took a family road trip up to Indiana to see my big sis and her husband. I have to admit, it was much prettier than I thought it was going to be! We stopped at a few places in Tennessee and Kentucky on the way and really enjoyed our spring break!

Brad and I went on a couples trip to Rome!!! ...georgia... :) We went to the Winshape Retreat Center for a couples retreat. It is a retreat center that Chick-fil-A sponsors and it was awesome! Anyone can go and I would suggest it. Each session has a different theme. We went on the Romantic Adventure. They had a ropes and obstacle course set up for us. One of the challenges was climbing a really tall telephone pole, standing on top of a small 8X12 platform that is on the top of it and then jumping off to reach a trapeze...oh, did I mention both of you do it at the same time??? Yep!!! I was scared to death and the entire pole was shaking, but we made it alive.

We had the fourth annual LPCF Tennis Tournament and Fundraiser, as always, it was a great hit and very successful thanks to the generous families and businesses in our area. The money raised and the Foundation was created to help support families affected by CHDs that have to travel for medical care. Baton Rouge does not have a pediatric cardio-thoratic surgeon and most of the children in our area with complex heart disease travel to Boston for their medical care. The last thing that these Moms and Dads need to add to list of worries and stress is how are they going to afford the meals at the hospital or a place to stay while they are up there...that is where LPCF comes in to the rescue! :)

May 2010

The boys did their annual swimming lessons and then we took a beach trip to Destin.

The boys finished up school with end of the year school parties and awards programs. David earned A's in every subject all year long! He's quite the little academic student! I'm pretty sure he got those skills from his Mom! :)

For Memorial Day, the boys and I went down to the National Cemetery in Baton Rouge. It was quite touching to see all of the tombstones there. I think it was a real eye opener to David too as I explained that people had to die for us to have the freedoms we have...so we can go to church where we want, say what we want, go hunting-if we want...

June 2010

My brother came back from his tour in Afghanistan. While on leave, he was able to go to my parents house. My sisters and extended family were all able to go. It was the first time in many years (7 or 8, I think) that all of my siblings were all together at the same time. It was great and I hope we're able to do it more often.

After almost a year of keeping our eyes open and trying to decide what we should do about our living situation, we finally found our dream house! The only bad thing was another couple also wanted the house as bad as we did and were in the process of negotiating a contract when we went to see the home. The seller was not wanting to wait until the buyer could sell their house (and ours wasn't even up for sale!!). So we did what any crazy irrational competitive couple would do and made a non-contingent overpriced offer so we would "win" the house. The next day the offer was accepted and Brad and I just looked at each other like "uhhh, duhh...what do we do now?" So we quickly got rid of a BUNCH of stuff at our house, took pictures and posted them on the for sale by owner website. The stress set in...we did NOT want to be stuck with two house notes and the expenses that would go with both of them!! So thankfully, six DAYS after putting our house up for sale - we received an acceptable offer on it!

July 2010

We went back to Destin for the Fourth of July. The beaches were still clean and the water looked great. The waves were rough, but clean! :) The boys all had a great time. It's always entertaining when you have five little boys ranging in age of 3 1/2 to 7 (my nephews were there too!)

We moved!!! After seven years of living in Longwood and many memories, we moved into the house we have dreamed about. Each of the boys have their own bedroom (all upstairs so we don't have to trip over their toys or hear them argue!), a huge backyard (with plenty of room for a pool!), a ski lake (yep, it is a water skiing lake - but you can fish too!) and wonderful neighbors. I have to admit, I was very sad to leave Longwood. That was our first house and where we met our best friends; the place where my babies 'grew up'. The potty training days, the sleepless nights worrying about kids, their first steps...

Brad and the boys in our new backyard (along with the fish they caught).