A Very Long Post

So, this has been an interesting week for us – mostly good, and a little bit not so good. On Monday afternoon Michael took our van in to have the locksmith fix a problem with the automatic locks on the doors that had stopped working and a beeping noise that the car had started to make every time the doors were opened – both of these things started happening since the locksmith replaced the lock on the van last week. So, luckily those things were quick fixes, and after that Michael drove to pick his dad up from a hotel in Salt Lake where he was staying for another work trip, so he came and spent the evening with us. We had dinner, family home evening, and then we played some sports games on the Wii for an activity. (It was fun to sit and watch Dick’s facial expressions as Kolby and then Eli continued to get high scores in bowling and in golf (Kolby beat Dick at bowling, and our boys barely ever play the games on the Wii). After the boys went to bed, we played a while longer before Michael dropped his dad back off at his hotel.

On Tuesday afternoon I had an appointment with the midwife and had that fun glucose test where they make you drink the orange soda, wait an hour, and then draw your blood. Everything looks good with the baby and I’m doing well. And then on Tuesday evening Grandma and I went to Enrichment over at the church. There were a few different classes offered, including a knitting class (which I didn’t sign up for), and a basic computer skills class. I went to the computer class (for lack of another place to go, and because I thought they might want me to answer some questions about the new Relief Society blog). The person who taught the class was knowledgeable, but I was glad that other than a few new shortcuts I knew how to do everything that she taught in the class. After she was done, they turned the time over to me and I showed people how to get to the blog, how to leave a comment (which some people had had trouble with), and what different things were on the blog. I was glad to hear that several of the sisters had looked at the blog at home already (I wondered, especially with a relatively large population of older sisters in our ward, if we would get much use out of the blog, but I was glad to find that people of all ages had started to take a look at it so far). And, the thing that I was most excited about from that evening was that they are starting a new provident living group and are planning on doing monthly trips to different canneries in the area. I signed up to go this Saturday morning and I’m looking forward to it, since I’ve never been to one before. And I’m trying to decide what foods to get this time – I think that a case of six of those big #10 cans of oats for about $13 sounds like a great deal (especially since my kids like oatmeal, so that is something I know we could actually use, plus they have a shelf life of 30 years and you can’t beat that).

On Wednesday afternoon Kolby had his piano lessons. He has his lesson at 3:30 and he still takes a nap after lunch every day, so the last two weeks I’ve had to wake him up from naps for piano lessons and he’s been pretty grumpy while I’ve tried to get him ready to go. I guess I’ll just have to wake him up at like 3:00 and give him a long time to get going before we have to leave. His lesson went well. He got a new song to play and he got to the part in the book where he is learning the different letters of the notes. So, for his practice this week he has been doing his song, and then going through and playing all the ‘A’s on the keyboard, then all the ‘B’s, etc. It’s pretty cool to see that he can find all of the correct keys without messing up most of the time, and when he accidentally hits the wrong key, he realizes that he did the wrong one, and he will say, “No, that’s a ‘G,’ not an ‘F.’” So, he is catching on to that pretty quickly.

Thursday was a pretty rough day for me. The boys did a lot of crying, fighting, and whining, and I did a lot of yelling, time-outs, and some spankings. Besides dealing with all their whining and not listening to me (which seemed like a lot more than normal), I was also struggling because for about the last week or so I had been having an especially hard time with Isaac. I think he has been teething, and he has been extremely fussy some nights (but fine on other nights, so I’m not sure – but it looks like one of his top teeth might finally be coming in). Anyways, Isaac has always had this strong bond with Michael. None of our other boys seemed to have any preference for one parent over the other (although I know that lots of other peoples’ kids do seem to prefer Mommy or Daddy at different times), but all of our other boys were just as happy with one parent or the other. Isaac has always especially liked being held by Michael, and especially cried a lot when Michael left the room. I actually liked this most of the time, with him being the fourth child, because if he was having a really hard time I could hand him off to Michael and he could often calm him down. But lately, especially with Isaac having these fussy times with the teething, he seemed to be crying a lot, and me holding him wasn’t doing any good. He clearly wanted to be held, but then when I picked him up he wouldn’t calm down and would cry just as much. At church last Sunday (Michael had to be at the hospital that morning) Isaac had an especially hard time and I held him in the hallway for over an hour before he finally calmed down and went to sleep, just to wake up about 10 minutes later and cry for a good part of the last meeting. The thing was, he seemed to want my Grandma to hold him more than me, and he even calmed down a little when this cute teenage girl in our ward came over and started to play with him. (He could probably just sense that I was getting stressed and needed a change of people to hold him, but it really felt like he liked everyone else better than me). And with him being especially fussy off and on this week, I felt myself getting annoyed with all his crying for no apparent reason. So, by the time Michael got home from work after a long call day at the hospital on Thursday, very tired and ready to go to bed right away, I kept him up for a while trying to figure out what to do about Isaac and how I didn’t feel like he and I had bonded like we were supposed to. I confessed that I wondered if the fact that Isaac never let me nurse him (I pumped milk and he was bottle fed breast milk for 6 weeks before I switched over to formula) was part of the problem. And Camden did nurse longer than Isaac, but it wasn’t for a really long time, but with Camden I remembered that I would keep him up when I put the other two boys down for naps and I would force myself not to do anything else for a while and lay down and hold him while he was taking his bottle and he would often fall asleep while I was holding him. But with Isaac I didn’t do that – I don’t know why. I guess I didn’t really think of doing it with him, and the idea of getting all 4 boys down for a nap at the same time so that I could have a couple hours a day of no demands and just time to myself was very appealing. And now that he just turned a year old, he takes less than 5 minutes to empty his sippy cup and he is constantly on the move, so I don’t think that I could get him to lay down with me at this point, even if I tried. So I wondered if I had messed something up with him and that I had missed my chance and I could never make it better. It felt good to say all this stuff out loud to Michael, even though it feels really guilty to admit that you don’t feel bonded with your baby. But we talked about it, and just decided that I’d have to try to do other things with Isaac and see how it would go in the future. I think I needed to get all that out, because since then it has been so much better.

The next day I decided to stay off the computer except when all the boys were asleep – it’s easy to get on to check e-mail, then just upload the pictures from the camera real quick while you’re waiting for the internet connection to re-connect to read that last e-mail. Then you need to post something to the Relief Society blog real quick that you received in an e-mail from one of the Relief Society presidency (because you feel bad for already waiting several days before posting some things she sent you last week, and then it turned out the coupons she sent were expired by the time you got around to posting them on the RS blog, so you had committed to being better at just doing it as soon as you got the e-mails). And then when those pictures get uploaded from the camera, you might as well just post them on the family blog while you’re at it – the kids are all happy playing with their toys at the moment anyways – and all of the family members who live far away have expressed such gratitude for you keeping your blog up to date with pictures and videos of the kids so that they can feel like they are there with your family too – plus our blog isn’t just a blog, it’s our family journal and we are printing it into a series of books to save for posterity, so we’d better keep it up to date, since we all know what a good idea it is to keep a regular journal – so anyways, you post those photos that you uploaded from the camera to the blog (but first you have to open the pictures in Photoshop real quick, just to get rid of the red-eye in the pictures that must be genetic, because your husband and all your kids always have red-eye in most of the pictures you take). And hopefully the computer was cooperating all this time, the wireless internet connecting quickly and the computer not freezing up or slowing down because you have a few different programs running at once. Anyways, you can see how hopping on the computer to get something done real quick might end up taking an hour or two, and that’s if I don’t even have anything ‘big’ to work on at the time, like creating a new blog for the Relief Society, making and printing birthday party invitations, updating the books that I keep of each of the boys’ art work, trying to get some genealogy done, etc.

So anyways, I didn’t even turn the computer on until after the boys went down for naps. And while they were playing with their toys, I tried to pick up Isaac and hold him whenever he was in between running after his brothers and crawling after a toy. It would have been kind of a rough morning, because on Friday Eli woke up throwing up (he has always kind of had a week stomach – not that he is sickly or anything, but every few months he will have a day when he just throws up for no apparent reason, no one else in the family gets sick, and he fully recovers before too long). So, Eli was throwing up, and he asked for toast for breakfast, but then he didn’t really want to eat it (which is strange, because even when he is sick I usually have to explain to him why we can’t eat a big meal when we are throwing up while he is pitifully crying for me to get him food). He and I had a holdy on the couch, and then he told me he needed to go potty. He was in the restroom for a while, so I went to check on him to make sure he wasn’t sick again, and he was sleeping on the floor (the only time I have ever appreciated bathrooms with carpeted floors). I covered him with his blanket, set his bowl near him, and shut the door so he could sleep (after taking a picture), and he ended up sleeping in there for at least an hour. After that he ate and told me he felt fine, and he didn’t act sick again, which is always nice when there is a quick and painless recovery like that. So, we spent the day inside, playing together, and things went a lot better with Isaac. And he started doing the best thing ever – I was holding him and he laid his head on my shoulder. When he picked his head up, I said, “Isaac, give Mommy a hug.” And he did it again – since then he has been giving me hugs on demand, every time I’ve asked him to, and I felt almost like that was an answer to my prayers that he does like me (no, I didn’t really think he didn’t like me, but it kind of felt like he liked being held by other people more than by me) and that we did have a special connection. Anyways, that was a very quick change – I went from crying and feeling like I had messed up on raising my baby one night, to feeling normal, happy, and like he liked me the next day. Michael was glad to find out that I was feeling a lot better and Isaac had done well when he got home that afternoon. And things have gone just fine with Isaac since then. So, sorry if I don’t respond to an e-mail or keep up to date on everyone’s’ blogs in the future – but I think that is one little thing that I can do to have a better relationship with my boys, is to spend more time having fun with them than writing about and posting pictures of the fun we’ve had. (But don’t worry too much, Michael and I will still try to keep up our weekly blog posts and I’ll always have nap time to catch up on things).

So, back to our week. Oh, I forgot to mention that I cut Camden’s hair on Thursday morning too. I noticed that it was almost to his shoulders again, after just cutting it while we were in San Diego. So, I decided to just trim it like I did last time, but do it a little shorter this time so it would take a little longer before I had to cut it again. I totally messed it up, though. (Boy, am I glad that I waited until after we had our family photos taken to cut it!) I got it wait, combed it all straight, and cut it all the way around his head in a nice, straight line, but when it dried and curled back up, the back curled up noticeably shorter than on the sides around his ears. So, it ended up looking to me a lot like a really cute short little girl’s haircut (no, I did not think Camden looked like a girl, but I think he looked pretty silly with a girl haircut – which is kind of funny, that I would think a shorter haircut would look girly, even though I know others thought his long curls didn’t look very boy-ish). Anyways, I left it for a few days, thinking of how I would need to fix it, and then last night right before bed I ran him into the bathroom for a quick fix trim, because I couldn’t stand taking him to church with that haircut the next morning. I trimmed it shorter around the ears, and I think that fixed it – although I should have just left it how it was in the first place, this second trim looks a lot better than the first one (and a lot more like a boys’ haircut), and it can grow back out now. I couldn’t help thinking today, as he wore a little sweater to church that Kolby used to wear, and as his hair is now a similar length as Kolby’s used to be when he was that age (although still more curly), that Camden really reminded me of Kolby. I know that everyone thinks I am way off whenever I say I think Camden looks somewhat like Kolby did, but we’ll just have to wait and see – I wouldn’t be too surprised if they looked more and more alike as they get older.

Well, yesterday was long, but I got a lot done. I decided that I needed to get all the Christmas gifts and wrap them all before Thanksgiving, because both my family and Michael’s family will be here, so we can give everyone their gifts and avoid paying to ship them in December. So, I made a list and discussed it with Michael, and then went out and got it all done yesterday. (Oh, I guess I had already made the gifts for each of our parents a couple months ago, and I went and picked up something for my brothers on Friday evening, but I got everything else done on Saturday). I got everything done for the parents, brothers and sisters, and cousins (so I do still need to do it for Michael and the boys, but I don’t have to worry about shipping their gifts). Now there is one gift left that I need to make, and I’ll print some family photos for the parents and grandparents like we do every year, and then all we’ll have left to do is the wrapping. I’m pretty proud of myself that I could get it mostly all done in one Saturday – it only took trips to 4 different stores and about 5 hours (with three of the boys with me the whole time). While we were out, we also got some new jeans for Kolby and Camden (each of them had a pair that wore out in the knees in the last week or so), a new pair of pajama pants for Michael since his old ones got a hole in the knee this week too, and stuff for dinner last night. Oh, and Michael hit a milestone – I bought his pajama pants in a size large because the other sizes didn’t look like they’d be big enough for him, and when I brought them home and he saw that the tag said “size Large, 36/38,” he said there was no way they’d fit him. He had always gotten 34/36 in the past. But I said he should just try them, especially since they had a draw string. Amazingly, they fit, and he didn’t even have to use the draw string to synch them up around the waist or anything. So, Michael has officially gotten fat (no – I would never say that, he was the one making this claim). But really, it is nice that he’s gained a little weight because it’s kind of difficult to find a size 34/36 in some stores sometimes, and I think he looks very nice now that he’s “filled in” just a little bit. I guess eating free hospital cafeteria food has paid off. :) Anyways, after a good dinner of spaghetti squash and garlic bread – spaghetti squash is one of our new favorite meals, since it is relatively quick and easy to make, everyone in our family likes how it tastes, and it is healthy for you – we got the boys down for bed and Grandma stayed with them while we went on a date. First we went to a store that I had seen advertisements for called Tai Pan Trading (kind of a weird name, but it was a really cool store). It was a giant store filled with all sorts of Christmas items, home decorations and art, and things that you could use to make your own Christmas decorations. We only had half an hour there before the store closed (and Michael was disappointed to see a sign advertising free fudge samples, only to find out that that part of the store had closed earlier in the evening) so we probably didn’t even see everything in the store, but it was fun to just walk through and see all the fun Christmas stuff. After that we stopped at Target and picked up a snow brush for Michael’s car (since the one he had before had broken last winter). And after sharing a banana milkshake, we saw a late showing of the new James Bond movie. Although we were both tired, it was still nice to get out and just be together.

Today things went pretty well at church. Michael had the day off today. We got ready this morning and the boys had enough time to watch a quick church movie while Michael and I were getting ready and then Michael played a couple songs on the piano before we walked to church (it’s so much easier getting them all ready for church when I’m not the only one doing it). Although Michael had a headache at church, and Isaac was being extremely wiggly in Sacrament meeting (by wiggly, I mean throwing his entire body back and forth as to make it difficult for any adult to keep him from falling off their lap) so Camden, Isaac, and I spent most of the last meeting in the hallway, but Isaac and Camden played together on the floor happily while I listened to a good talk on tithing, so that was a lot better than last week’s church meeting went for us. After walking home and having quesadillas (or “didas,” as Camden would call them) for lunch, we have gotten the boys down for naps and I think they are all finally asleep – after two additional potty trips for Eli (yes, we do always make both Kolby and Eli use the bathroom before going to sleep), 3 or 4 trips into Camden’s room to tell him not to get out of his bed/not to get into Isaac’s bed/and not to get things out of the closet, changing 1 poopy diaper on Camden, moving Camden’s crib to a different side of his room so he couldn’t get into the closet as easily, and going in to find Eli repeatedly doing some kind of hand stands and then flipping over in the corner of his room – now there is silence and I think they are all finally asleep.

So, sorry for the long post, but at least this kind of rough week ended up being a good week for us. Hope it was good for all of you too.