5:00am – Lee gets up and gets ready to leave for Michigan for the week. Landon also gets up and decides that he doesn’t want to go back to sleep so instead he grunts and groans for an hour and a half.
6:00am – I am near tears as I look at my six week old son who is in desperate need of a good poop. I curse my lack of milk production which requires my kid to try and digest formula.
6:30am – Sloan and Tia both wake up and I bite my tongue not to scream a curse word. They both went to bed at 10:00 the night before because we had a party, are you freakin’ kidding me??!?!
7:00am – I reluctantly drag myself out of bed (Landon finally fell asleep…of course) and get up and make the kids breakfast, then stick a movie in and curl up by the fire. We can’t go to church because Tia has another cold…awesome.
8:30am – Tia, who has only been watching the movie for about 15 minutes, drops a carton of eggs that I carelessly left on the counter on the floor. I again bite my tongue and clean up the mess.
9:00am – Landon is screaming. Seriously, he needs to poop. I give him apple juice. It doesn’t help.
10:00am – I bundle the kids up and plop them in the car for a drive to Target to buy suppositories for my now inconsolable child. Landon screams most of the time we’re in Target. But Sloan and Tia are extremely well behaved because I bribe them with a piece of gum when we leave the store. Score one for mommy.
10:53am – I insert suppository.
10:54am – I pray to God that this works so I never have to do it again.
10:55am – I curse my lack of milk once more.
10:56am – Landon finally poops. Hallelujah!
10:57am – He’s still pooping.
10:58am – Still pooping…
10:59am – yep…
11:00am – put a fresh diaper on him and lay him down. He promptly begins screaming. I calmly close the door and turn a deaf ear. I check on the other two who are outside. They’ve got hammers and are massacreing (sp?) the tree in the back yard. I turn a blind eye and make lunch.
1:00pm – I finally have everyone down for naps. Wait…nope, Landon’s awake again. No nap for mommy.
2:30pm – I reluctantly wake Sloan up because I know if I don’t he’ll never go back to sleep tonight. We sit down to work on his russian, something he’s not happy about. Ten minutes into our lesson (we try and work on it 20 minutes a day) he says, “I don’t want to do this anymore. I want to talk in real.”
6:00pm – After a relatively mild afternoon of playing outside, we leave for the Magic House for a fundraiser for Sloan’s school. My good friend Kara helps and praise God. I would have lost one of the children without the help. The Magic House was great fun, except Landon cried most of the time. It was hot and loud. But the other two had a ball.
9:58pm – Everyone is asleep and mommy should be too. But instead she is typing a silly post on her blog. Stupid, stupid mommy…

We took Landon to the dr. yesterday and he weighed 11 pounds! That means he’s gained 3 pounds in a month…he’s not afraid. I’m really surprised because he is not a big eater. I guess he just holds on to everything he eats. He was 21.5 inches long. Which only put him in the 50% for height and the 90% for weight. So he’s short and fat…Just to give some comparisons – Sloan weighed 12lbs 13 oz at the same age as Landon and was 23 3/4″ long – he was ginormous. Tia, on the other hand was only 9 lbs 7 oz, but was 22″. So Landon is kind of right in between him. Those facts are probably not interesting to anyone but me but thanks for reading anyway.

I miss you. A lot.

Kelli

This morning I cleared a huge hurdle…I got all three kids up, fed and ready to go in time to take Sloan to school. I then went to the gym and walked with Landon in the Baby Bjorn for 30 minutes, then took Tia and Landon to the mall so she could play until it was time to pick Sloan up. I got them all home and fed them and got them all down for naps. Who said three kids were tough?! I did all of that and only lost my patience one time (if Sloan asked me again if he was putting his shoes on the right feet, I thought I would scream. Just put them on!!!) So, this is just me, publicly patting myself on the back. I survived! YEAH!

My wonderful sister-in-law, Becke’, tagged me to write about why I cherish my family. So here it is:
Lee:
1. I adore my husband. I think he’s hilarious. He truly makes me laugh all the time. He’s funny when he’s not trying to be. We always tell each other what geeks we are, and it’s true. We’re dweebs. But we make each other laugh despite that fact.

2. Lee’s a great dad. He is so involved with the kids. He is always willing to give me some time off, to let me go out with friends or just get out if I need a break. He doesn’t put any guilt on me for leaving him with the kids. I love that. He takes on a lot of responsibilities around that house, which I am so grateful for – especially now! He wrestles ith the kids and plays with them and they truly adore their daddy.

3. Lee loves the Lord. On eof the things that I’ve alwasy admired about him is his knowledge of the scriptures. He knows the Bible and can defend his faith. He desires to lead our family spiritually and prays with and for the kids and me faithfully. He really is the leader of this home and I’m grateful for that!

4. Lee is a great businessman. When we met and got engaged, he was a youth minister and that was how I saw him. After we got married and he entered the business world, I was astounded at what a good businessman he was, and I’m still amazed. He is wise and confident and makes good decisions. He’s not afraid to take risks (even though that goes against his nature). He is the physical provider for our family as well. He’s awesome!

Sloan:
1. I love Sloan’s personality. He’s so funny and fun. He’s outgoing and from the time he was a baby has never met a stranger. He’s always ready to make a new friend. He loves people and is so sweet.

2. Sloan loves to be a helper. He loves to clean the bathroom for me (which consists of nothing more than shoving everything off the counter into the drawer) and is so proud of himself when he does it. He knows he’s helping me and that brings him great joy. I love that about him.

3. Sloan is just funny. He says funny things and does funny things. He is a mimic, like his mama, and can do funny voices and funny dances. It’s so fun to watch him grow and develop with each passing day.

Katya:
1. I truly never expected to have a little girl and would have been perfectly content with all boys, but oh how I cherish this little girl! I adore her precious little face with her big eyes and chubby cheeks. I am madly in love with her.

2. Tia is developing into a little character like her brother. I love to watch her follow him around and mimic him (I kow it drives poor Sloan crazy though). She literally does everything that he does, almost exactly as he does it. It’s hilarious.

3. Tia is very sweet natured. She does not like to see people upset or crying. She is a snuggler and hugger. I love watching her interact with Lee. She snuggles up on his lap and I can see him turn to mush. I love watching her become more motherly with her baby dolls. It’s so sweet.

Landon:
I don’t know much about Landon yet. But I kow I’m in love with him. I love the way he turns his face into my neck when I’m holding him so that his chubby little cheek is right up against mine. I love how he looks up at me with his big sweet eyes while I feed him. I love they way he is moving his little mouth around, trying to figure out how to stretch it into a smile. I’m excited to see what his personality will be like.

So that is my precious family. They are all unique and darling and I feel blessed beyond measure to have each one of them!

Here is a conversation Sloan and I had yesterday in the car as we drove past a cemetary:
Sloan: “Mommy, why does that garden have all those statues in it?”
Me: “Those are headstones. That’s a cemetary.”
Sloan: “What’s a cemetary?”
Me(starting to sweat a little at the thought of explaining this): “Well, when people die, we bury them in a cemetary, then put a headstone with their name on it so we know where they were buried.”
Sloan: “We bury them in the dirt?”
Me: “Yes.”
Sloan: “But I thought people went to heaven when they die.”
Me (really sweating now): “Well, if people know Jesus, they go to heaven. But their bodies stay here. You remember when Mr. John (our neighbor) died? He went to heaven but his body stayed here. (At this point I really began to hope that he didn’t need further explanation. How do you explain the spirit to a 4 year old?)
Sloan: “I don’t want to go to heavn.”
Me: “Oh, yes you do. Heaven is a wonderful place with streets of gold and angels…”
Sloan: “I don’t like angels!”
Me: “Angels are wonderful! They’re nice and they love God and love to sing praises to Him.”
Sloan: “Not the bad angels in the forest.”
Me: “Ummm…but we’re talking about angels in heaven.”
Sloan: “No, I want to talk about bears.”
Me: “Uh…okay.”
Thus ended a potential teachable moment and began a ten minute dialogue as to whether bears cry and what a bear cry sounds like. As you can see we must always be on our toes when talking with him!

So we made our first trip to the ER for the year 2008. Awesome. We’re eating dinner tonight and Lee looks down at Landon and notices that he looks a little pale. A little? He looks like Casper with red hair! So, we both have a minor moment of panic. Lee picks him up and walks him around a little and the color returns to his face, but his hands are still pretty transluscent so we make the necessary all to the doctor. After describing the symptoms, the on call nurse recommends we go to the ER so we pack up our wheezing baby and head back out into the subzero night, this time driving through spitting snow. I hate winter…
Anyway – we get to the ER at Missouri Baptist, (which is a great place by the way, I highly recommend it) and they take his vitals. First, they tell us the kid weighs
10 lbs. 9 oz., which I’m not sure I believe since he hasn’t eaten more than two ounces at a time for four days now but whatever. Then they check his lungs. Was he wheezing? NO! The kid had nary a cough or rattle. We’re starting to feel foolish but we go with it. Then they put us in a room where they take his vitals yet again – he’s still fine. He’s even breathing through his nose, which he’s done little of these past few days. We feel even more foolish. When the doctor came in I found myelf sending out telepathic signals. Cough, Landon. Show them how sick you really are. It seems to work for a moment as he lets out a nasty, chesty wet cough and I feel momentarily vindicated. See, he is sick. But then he stops coughing and again starts breathing through his nose. They must hate people like us! Anyway, it is a praise because he tested negative for RSV and everything else looked fine, other than minor congestion, a nasty cough and a goopy eye. So, $75.00 later they tell us what we already knew…he has a bad cold. As we drive home, I swear I hear him giggling in the backseat. That’s right, my dear sweet boy. You made us look foolish. But, we will sleep better tonight knowing you’re well so I guess it wasn’t all that bad!

Last night some friends brought us dinner. Sloan asked what they brought and our friend kindly replied, “I brought you Enchiladas!” Sloan just furrowed his brow and looked concerned. After she left Sloan turned to us and said, “Can I eat something different because I don’t like to eat Chihuahuas.” Hee, hee, hee