And this is my Joy: April 2010

A few pictures decorating eggs...

The kids ALWAYS have a blast, and never want it to end...

But boy, am I glad when it's all over!

The Easter Bunny always leaves a "poop trail" of candy from each bedroom door that leads to your Easter basket! Anna was so surprised about EVERYTHING, and even ran downstairs and about scared little poops right out of aunt Gill, who stayed the weekend with us, as Anna yelled, "GILL, WAKE UP! The Easter Bunny came!" Then Anna woke up grandma and grandpa, and Carter too!

Emily

And Emily's baby sister, Abby.

All the kids, so EXCITED, ready to go outside for the Easter Egg Hunt!

Mason(6), Anna(alomst 5), Carter(almost 3), Emily(almost 3), and Olivia(11) in the back.

Anna and Mason are great friends, and they have surprised us all by becoming the best little playmates with each other! They really do get along amazingly well! It's so fun to have so many cousins!

Emily and Carter, much like Anna and Mason, love to play with one another too. All the adults watch these two interact, and it is so funny sometimes what they say and do!

Gotta love the look on her face here!

Hahaha, and this one cracks me up too! I told him to say, "Cheese!" not realizing he has a mouthful of gum!

This is what can happen when little boys miss their nap...

and are traumatized after falling off the top bunk bed...

and wanting blankie and mom, while mom talked on the phone with Nanny...

He snored like you wouldn't believe, and he was so big and hot and heavy!

I am just glad he didn't pee on me, since he had his under-roos still on!

I think he drooled a little...

Okay...I know I just barely posted a picture of my belly...I am going on 11 weeks now...

does that seriously look like an 11 week belly to you?

Cuz I am feeling HUGE!

My 12 week appointment is April 19th...

I am hoping it is just me feeling that I am more huge-er than I really am...

Welp....that's all I got for now! We got Anna registered for kindergarten, and she got her last 4 immunizations! She was AMAZING and didn't even make a peep during the whole visit! Not even a tear escaped, nor did her eyes even tear up! She was so brave!

With Anna in kindergarten and Carter starting pre-school this fall, I won't know what to do with myself!

I guess that's why I am having another baby!

PS: If Kristen Johnson happens to read this, I really need your email, so I can be invited to your blog! Here you've gone and had another baby and I didn't know a thing about it! haha! Thanks!

Today...all afternoon...I've had the Winnie the Pooh song stuck in my head....chubby little cubby all stuffed with fluffies...silly willy nilly ol bear!

March 31st, Carter decided that he was going to go pee in the potty....and has been consistently peeing and pooping.....in the POTTY.....ever since!

WAHOO!!!!!!! Need I say more?

Easter: lovely, but too much candy!!!! Way, way, WAY too much! Maybe that would explain Carter's random donkey kicking....over and over again....during the morning session of conference...

Maybe that would explain why he has eaten very little FOOD...

And why he has been running up and down the hall, yelling, and then crashing into the couch!

I have discovered, too, that after a holiday dinner, it seems that we spend hours cleaning up...late that evening, the next morning, into the afternoon...bleh...

For dinner tonight we grilled: Bratworsts. And do you know what I was craving on them? Sauerkraut and sauted onions! Seriously, NOTHING could have tasted better to me tonight than the two bulging brats mounded high with the toppings! Delicious! Wow...this pregnancy really has me craving wierd things I never craved with my other pregnancies!

There was a question about my cravings and heartburn....sadly, I do not indulge in all the cravings I have....so, I don't have to worry about the heartburn. But yes...the heartburn has begun now...yay...and I am finding that if I eat 5 small meals throughout the day instead of 3, it works out better for me.

Is this wierd to any of you....I get heartburn inbetween meals...yeah, when I haven't eaten anything for a few hours....and I get heartburn if I eat too much sugar....so I haven't really indulged in the sweet stuff this time.

Kindergarten registration for Anna is this week! CRAZY! I cannot believe I will have a child in school!!!! But I am WAY EXCITED for her! She will love it! And of course I will miss her while she's gone, and worry that she's picking up bad habits or words from other kids...I will hope that kids aren't rude to her, and if they are that she won't let them walk all over her....but mostly, I know that this will be a great milestone and experience for her.

LOVED General Conference this month.....loved it! So many talks I want to listen to again, and again....and many that I need to listen to because of an occasion droopy head and heavy eyelids. The kids were great and stayed in the family room with us for all four sessions, though there were many moments of shushing and Carter asked me a dozen times if he could, "Watch gugginton (Chuggington, a cartoon) nooooooow, mom?" He shared lots of his candy with everyone, and even took his first nap in undies in our brand new bed! Yeah, brave move on my part, but he woke up dry and made it all the way to the hallway door, where he couldn't get it open and then peed all over the floor! Better the floor than my brand new mattress! Funny now...the kid doesn't even like to wear a diaper anymore and INSISTS on putting on his underwear all by himself, even though he hasn't a clue how to do it right! I managed to find a way to "help" him without letting him realize I am really helping him!

Yeah...you heard the part about a brand new bed??? For the first time in our lives, Russ and I get to sleep on a brand new mattress with a footboard AND headboard!!! It's so pretty and I love it! We also got a matching dresser and mirror, and plan on buying the other taller dresser a little later on as well as a nightstand. I will post pictures soon!

Question: Are any of you dealing with children who are especially whiny and complain a lot? Our biggest trial with Anna, lately, has been this constant whining and complaining. And it is pretty much about everything and anything! It is worse if she is tired or hungry. She whines about her clothes, and this morning, as I handed her her pants and shirt and clean underwear, she asked me, "Mom, do your panites haveta match yer clothes?" I told her they didn't necessarily have to match if she didn't want them to, but they could match if that made her happy. Well, then she starts whining because her panties matched her clothes and she didn't like it! It is ridiculous, really. And it is driving me crazy! Truly.

Rules are rules, and we stick to them. At mealtime, if they don't eat their food, fine, but they don't get to eat again until the next mealtime. Anna continually insists that she is done (whining all through the meal) and then is hungry later and wants more cereal. Then whines and complains when I tell her she has to wait until lunch before she can have something to eat. She knows the rules, and what is so frustrating is that she still gets upset when the follow-up is the same!!! Hello? Did I not just explain this to you, very clearly, today....and yesterday.....and almost everyday this month?! I could go on and on about all the things she whines and complains about....I just keep thinking to myself that there's got to be a better way out there to solve this dilemma...

Any suggestions?

On the other hand...
Anna has grown up a ton over these past few months! She has become so helpful with Carter and loves him so much! She loves to be able to make him laugh and she felt very proud of the moment when he went pee in the potty and she was there to help him instead of me!! I told her that is why he is doing so well, because of her help, and she was just beaming with pride! She cannot wait for our new baby to be born and always tells me about all the things she will do to help. I told her that I am going to need her to hold the baby a lot when I have to do other things, and by the look on her face, I could tell that there was nothing else in this world that would make her happier! I have to keep reminding myself, after I get too caught up in her difficult stages (like the whining and complaining) that there is so much she is doing that I need to take notice of and compliment her for. She is very creative and becoming a great artist! And though she has little interest in the alphabet, reading, letter sounds, and things in those areas, she is thriving in all her artistic abilities. Those will always be her strengths. She will find shapes in the grain of wood, in a pattern on clothing, from the texture of the wall, and find pictures or letters and point them out to me. I am so grateful she has an imagination and that she lives in such a world where she is separate from the adult world.

Now Carter's turn. He has such a fun personality, and the way he talks is so funny! He has a great sense of humor and appreciates the fun parts of life. He is really enjoying having a sense of independence, and yet it can be a huge struggle for us too. He terrorizes the cat, and yet he doesn't realize that what he is doing is terrorizing! He will laugh hysterically at the cat as he is terrorizing her! It is so funny to him, that he has to keep on doing it! That kid is all about fun! His attention span is far shorter than his sister's is, and he is so very very active! When Anna was his age, she was very nearly an angel....Carter....well....he is a rascal!!! One very extreme frustration for me concerning him is: bedtime. Anna and Carter both struggle with bedtime. It is exhausting some nights. Carter LOVES to play, thus, the going to bed with nothing to do but lay there....it very VERY unappealing to him! He will do anything to avoid bedtime! So, once we get him all ready, and try, very hard, to get him to climb into bed himself, we usually end up having to put him in bed, which starts the tantrum. First, he kicks off the covers, then cries because he wants covered up. Then he promptly kicks them back off. It's all just distractions, of course, to delay the inevitable. Then he started throwing his blanket off the bed, and then would cry because he wanted it. We would give it back to him, cover him up, say goodnight, and shut the door only to find that minutes later he had thrown it back off his bed.

So, I started explaining to him what to do and not to do at bedtime and what the consequences would be. No matter how many times I reminded him about what would happen if he threw his blanket off the bed or threw fits at bedtime, he would look at me and then do exactly what I told him not to do! So, I would follow through with the punishment. But his bad behaviors at bedtime are still happening consistently, even though we follow through with the punishment every time! Tonight, he threw his blanket off the bed, once again. So, finally, I just took it away and told him he can have it in the morning. He is still not asleep and crying on and off because he wants it, but I am at wits end as to what else to do! He sucks his thumb at night, and holds the tag on his blanket as he sucks, and that is how he has always gone to sleep. So I am sure he is not liking having to go to sleep without his tag.

So....any suggestions?

My belly is growing at an alarming rate....and my dreams have been quite dramatic. If you know me or heard me repeat many of my dreams, you would know that I normally have very weird dreams, weird and crazy! So, while pregnant, they are just amplified. When I was pregnant with Anna, I dreamt that while I was married to Russ, I was also engaged to a guy I knew from a singles branch, and had an affair with a black man. I attended a roommates wedding reception, where Russ, boyfriend, and one night fling were all present and I was trying to keep them all from finding out about each other! It was quite hilarious, and we all laugh and joke about it still! Russ claims that the black guy symbolizes his alter ego, haha!

There are so many more I could tell you about! Craziness! At least it keeps everyone entertained at the breakfast table, as I recount my newest dream!

Anyway, enough of the jabber....just wanted to get some things written down.

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