Lately

Too much time has passed since my last post.  I feel like life has been so frantic and I haven't made the time to come in and update.  I wish I'd been able to post funny quotes and pictures weekly or even monthly, but here it's now been a year and a half with nothing.  I need to figure out how to post from my phone because I hardly ever get on the computer anymore, I just do everything from my phone.

The older boys are now four and a half.  They're so funny.  We still have challenges.  I don't think I could honestly say that it's gotten easier as they've gotten older.  I really struggle with the mental challenge of raising preschoolers.  Wisdom in discipline is something I really need and don't have enough of.  I know the Bible tells us that we just need to ask God for wisdom and He will give it.  I just forget to ask.  They just finished their third year of Mother's Day Out.  They attended this time at our church.  They've started making friends and even are picking out girls to be their future wives.  For a long time Micah said he was going to marry Kylee, but now he's moved on to another girl, so Luke plans to marry Kylee.  She's a nice girl, I wouldn't mind her as a daughter in law, but there's lots of time for them to change their minds. ;) 

Luke was in PT and OT again this year after having a year off.  He aged out of Early Intervention when he turned 3 and tested but didn't qualify for the public school special ed program.  But last fall I started feeling like I should get him re-evaluated just to make sure he wasn't falling too far behind.  In speech he tested older than he was and the speech therapist didn't think we have anything to be concerned about.  He did want to check him again after 3 months just to make sure he was still on track, but I accidentally missed that appointment and was too cowardly to call and reschedule.  He tested quite low for some areas of PT and then a couple months into that I had them do an OT eval on him and he qualified there too.  I'm thankful that both the physical therapist and the occupational therapist were optimistic about his abilities.  He just recently graduated from physical therapy and his occupation therapist is giving him two months off to see if he'll be okay without it.  He'll recheck him in August to see where he's at.  We have had some concerns about his growth, or lack of it.  He's pretty small still.  I actually need to get him back to the doctor for another weight check.

Josiah is two and is so super duper cute. He's also really testing boundaries which is not fun and not cute.  His vocabulary is amazing and he's learning and repeating new words daily.  It really is amazing.  Some of my favorite things I've heard lately is "No way!" and "Yep" and "Baba (Micah) did it" when I ask who did something naughty.  We've been very casually working on potty training.  He mostly just goes right before or right after bath time.  Once he went in the middle of the afternoon after sitting on the potty chair for over an hour.  At breakfast this morning he said he needed to go potty so we rushed into the bathroom and he did go.  So far he's completely motivated by cheering and a potty dance, but once we take the training to the next level we are prepared to introduce chocolate chips as a reward.  For all of his life I have struggled with getting him to sleep and keeping him asleep.  CIO did not work with him, he would just cry for hours until he fell asleep out of exhaustion.  I never felt good about it, but didn't see any other option.  I pretty much rocked him to sleep until a few months ago when he wouldn't stay asleep when I went to lay him down.  He'd have been happy to sleep all night in my arms, but that's wasn't cool with me, so we would put him to bed and then he'd cry.  Thankfully once he turned two his crying was limited to under 10 minutes for the most part (I'd send Glen in to check on him if it was longer).  But I still hated the crying.  It made me feel horrible every night.  Well last week he started fussing when I started to leave so I told him I was going to go see Daddy in the living room and I left his door open.  He laid down and went to sleep without a fuss.  I've continued that for about a week now and it's worked great.  I'm so relieved.  I feel bad that I didn't try that sooner.  It seems like such a simple suggestion I really should have tried it before now.

Last weekend we bunked the twins' beds.  Their bedroom is really small and so there wasn't much floor space in their room with two twin beds.  We figured Micah would do better on top because he's stronger, but also because he's the one who gets out of bed more often and we hoped having him on top would prevent all the wandering after lights out.  At first they both wanted to be on top but once we told them Luke would be on bottom he was cool with it.  I think that dark cave-like space is perfect for him.  So relieved to hear him cheer when we reminded him he'd be on bottom.  Micah still gets out of bed a lot, so I worry that all the up and down he's doing will make an accident more likely, but so far he's been good.  It's nice to have the extra space in their room.  At some point we'll probably move Josiah in with them, so it will be tight again, but it will be nice to have his room to use for something else.  Guest room maybe?  Or maybe a nursery?  Or playroom?  Who knows.

Luke and Micah are starting to drop their naps.  They nap about half the time.  I can never decide if I should put a lot of effort into getting them to nap so I can have an interruption free nap time, or if I should let them stay awake so we can have an earlier bedtime and Glen and I can have more downtime in the evenings.  The earlier bedtime hasn't really been working lately because it's hard to get them wound down by 8:00.  If we go outside after dinner, it's so nice out and is cooling off, so we stay out as long as we can. 

We've moved since my last post.  Our neighbors have a just turned 6 year old boy and a 2 year old boy (his birthday is two days after Josiah's).  We really like our neighbors and could sit and talk to them forever while the boys run around crazy.  It's been fun having neighbors we click with.  The older boy can be kind of annoying.  He gets annoyed with my boys, which I understand, but then tattles, so it's not always a relaxing time for me.  But I suppose it's probably a good learning opportunity for my boys to learn what's socially accpetable and what's not.  It sure is a lot of work raising kids. 

Well, the kids are getting on each other's nerves, so I better go referree.