Oh, Turkeyland and Christmas Tree

I for sure thought this blog was not going to happen today. And then my lower back, which will forever hate me for making it bear the weight of three children, decided to flare up again. It does this from time to time. It got progressively worse with each pregnancy until with the last one the problem never completely went away. I am not sure what the problem is exactly, but it makes me hobble around the house and I can barely pick up Kye. Or bend over to pick up anything for that matter.

So, instead of cleaning my house for my ladies group tonight I am doing things like soaking my back in hot water and sitting on the couch...and blogging. It so happens that this morning Kye discovered for me that a mouse had chewed a hole into my rice bag hot pad. Not only do I not get to use the hot pad on my back today, Kye also decided to evenly distribute a layer of rice all over the living room floor for me first thing this morning. I did get some vacuuming done today too, I guess.

I have digressed.

Turkeyland. I love Thanksgiving. I say that every year and I will say it again. I LOVE THANKSGIVING. For so many reasons that you can probably find on my previous posts about Turkey Day. I just wanted to highlight on the fact that for the third year in a row someone has had the flu around here on Thanksgiving.

Isn't that terrible? On one of my most favorite holidays.

Actually, two of the years it has been me. This year and two years ago I had the flu - and I got it on Thanksgiving Day after completing meal preparations. Two years ago I actually ate the whole meal and felt fine until a few hours later. This time I didn't feel awesome from the start, realized something was up when I sat down for dinner and didn't want to eat it any of that yummy food, and then fully realized what was going on a few hours later when Berlin threw up on me and in front of our guests. Oh my.

Last year it was our friend Dave who was over for Thanksgiving who ended up getting the flu by the end of that day. And this year we so nicely gave him our flu so that he had it a few days after Thanksgiving this time.

All that to say, we didn't get our Christmas tree the day after Thanksgiving this year like we always do. Even when I had the flu two years ago we went out and got the tree because I was the only one who was sick and I didn't want to give up our tradition. This year, however, both of the girls were the most sick and so we stayed home and went that Monday instead.

Berlin will forever love to be outside, no matter what the weather is like. 

Kyeson, on the other hand, pretty much hates winter right now. I've said before that he really loves to be comfortable. Well, picture him as the living example of the little brother from "A Christmas Story" who gets bundled up and can't put his arms down. That's Kye in his snow gear. And it makes him so mad.

 I totally get why he is uncomfortable. Take this for example. He sees a stick on the ground that he gets excited about and, naturally, he wants to pick it up.

 Well, imagine bending over to pick up that stick and then just slowly falling forward until your forehead is resting on the ground and you literally can't move. You are stuck because your mom and dad put so much clothes on you, and you can't get up. That would make me mad too. Shhh. Don't tell, but we laughed really hard about this one. :)

 If that were me, I would probably sit down and have a fit in the middle of the tree field too. Especially if I sat down and couldn't get up again.

 The perfect tree!!

 Cutest little girlies ever!!!!

 Oh, we just love Christmastime around here. :)

Life on This Tuesday Morning

Apparently having three mobile children, homeschooling, starting a photography business, trying to work on a substantial writing project, and starting a women's small group have been the death of my blog this fall.

I am pleased to say that the photography business is going swimmingly and I am about as busy as I can handle being right now. In fact, a few weeks ago I had a few photo sessions every week and, while the sessions themselves only take two hours at most, I was feeling totally swamped with all the editing and website updating that needed to get done. I had to slow things down a bit so that I could feel like I was actually going to enjoy the holidays.

Lately most days are spent trying to keep the house from looking like three little tornadoes live here instead of three sweet little kiddos. There are lots of crafts, painting, coloring, book writing, and toy time going on and those things all involve lots of mess and clean up. The kids are having a great time and I feel really excited about the fun childhood that they are having...I just need a vacation from feeling like I am constantly cleaning the same things over and over. And over and over and over again. Haha!! I am totally blessed beyond measure. I just need to train the dog to pick up toys maybe. :) 

Also, having a one and a half year old little boy is so much different than when I had one and a half year old little girls. I have to keep an ever watchful eye on that little guy because he is constantly doing things he is not supposed to be doing. Such as finding the one marker that the girls missed picking up and carrying it around the house with the lid off. Daily true story. I also can barely type a sentence on the computer without little fingers getting in my way and trying to push as many buttons as possible in a 5 second time span. Maybe a solid reason I don't have much time to actually write a blog anymore.

Anyway, this morning Berlin inspired me to pull out my camera and I ended up taking a bunch of pictures of Life on This Tuesday Morning. 

 Yes, the little man child still uses a pacifier. No judgements. AND, the little bugger had a fit every time I pointed my camera at him so I have all blurry pictures of him. Bummer.

 A new development in our house is that I let the girls watch "First Position" over the weekend. It's a documentary on Netflix about kid ballet dancers. It's really interesting, especially for anyone (such as myself) who wishes that they could be a dancer in another life. :) Well, the girls just thought it was about the coolest thing and since they have worn their dance outfits constantly. I'm not kidding. I even discovered this morning that Berlin had her dance outfit from yesterday on underneath her footie pj's and she slept in it all night. They have them on underneath their clothes right now that they put on to go play in the snow. I have seen so many "dance shows" since this weekend.

That's all. If I find a few more minutes to blog tomorrow I might post the "getting the tree" pictures that I just discovered are still on my camera...but...we'll see. :)

Projectland

I love to do projects. Mainly I just love to be creative and make things and so when I say I like to do projects it's kind of like saying I like arts and craft time. But a little bit more then that. I posted this picture on Instagram of a project that Steve and I decided to do when he had some time off a few weeks back.

Piano stairs. Heck yes. 

A year ago when we moved into this house I undertook the project of "fireplace art". I thought why buy something for above the fireplace when I could make something? It took me awhile to make it. To be fair, Steve told me it was going to take me awhile to make it and I said, "Pssh. No way!" It DID take me awhile to make it though, haha!! The four pieces of art represent us and our story, but you'd have to see them in person to really get it and see the detail. Anyway, I am happy with the way it turned out.

 And most recently was this project. Let me tell you, Pinterest is full of awesome ideas but they are not all what they seem. This seemingly super easy Pinterest project idea took me days to finish when I thought it would take a few hours. I am happy with result and the super large piece of art for our upstairs hallway that only cost about $20 to make...but I was almost in tears a few times during the making of said project due to the amount of hours put in vs. some really annoying results and redos that took place. I won't tell you the whole story, but I did actually write a comment on the blog where I found this idea to warn others about what they were getting into. :)

Anyway, I like projectland, even when it doesn't go exactly the way that I think it will. My next project is probably going to involve a really old window that I found at a garage sale that I have sitting out in the garage. Just waiting for the right inspiration about what exactly to do with the window...I'm open to suggestions. Even Pinterest ideas. :) 

Man Child

Alright. I haven't written an update on Kye's progress as a human being in a long time. He has changed so much and has developed so much more of his personality in the past few months!

First of all, I am pretty sure he gets away with sooooo much more than the girls ever did. I guess that's what comes from being the baby of the family. Even tonight I was noticing that he doesn't listen as well as they did at that age, but I think that's because we don't enforce it as much. I told him to "come here" and he ran away and hid in the corner and would not come out. I remember the girls doing the same thing when they were younger, but I never let them get away with it. Tonight I decided I better not let him get away with it anymore either.

Kye is getting more and more verbal, but I've noticed that if I ask him to say a new word in a normal voice he won't always try. However, sometimes I can get him to say new things in a whisper. He will say "up" all the time if I whisper it to him, but he has only said it out loud one time ever. A few nights ago we were all sitting at the table, Steve and the girls were working on a puzzle and Kye was sitting on my lap. He was quietly playing with some plastic toy playdough scissors and so I whispered in his ear, "Can you say scissors?" And he whispered back, "Scissis." I was totally surprised. All in whispers he said mama, dada, Piper, scissors, ball, baby, oh boy! (which sounds like oh biya!) outside, all done, up, thank you (which also totally surprised me because Tryn, our earliest verbal child, couldn't say thank you until she was almost two years old) and he tries really hard to say Berlin. He still won't try saying Tryn yet. Oh, and the way that he communicates that he wants Mr. Monkey, his bff, is making a little sound that is similar to the sound that Piper makes when she is whimpering. So when he is looking for his monkey he walks around making little whimpering sounds with his soft chubby hands turned palms up with a quizzical look on his face and it just melts my heart every time.

Oh, haha!! Also, Kye loooooves his dad. As soon as Steve gets home from work Kye wants to be where ever his dad is or do whatever he is doing. If Steve is in a different part of the house, say going upstairs to change clothes, Kye will either have a fit because he didn't get to tag along OR he will stand at the bottom of the stairs and yell, "DADA! DA! Dada!" until Steve answers him. The yelling parts, not the fits, are hilarious.

One of my most favorite things right now is the fact that he has realized that he can communicate that he wants to be picked up, even though he won't say "up" out loud. What he does instead is he comes up to me and lifts up his arms and then with all of his little might and energy he lifts his body as much as he can. He gets all the way up onto his toes, as if stretching and reaching for me with all his might is going to lift him right off the ground into my arms. It's too darn cute.

He also loves to be outside (what boy doesn't?!), loves to play upstairs in his big sister's room, loves music, has started dancing or clapping when he hears his favorite songs, loves to be at home (as in gets stressed when we spend the night elsewhere and is never more happy than when we come home after being away for a few days), loves trucks and getting into anything (especially markers) that his sister's leave laying around, and he loves food. Well, he loves food that he likes. He still won't eat many veggies, but gosh this little boy can sure eat a lot when he likes what he is eating!

He is changing all the time, but one thing still remains the same. He is still The Most Loved Boy in the World.

The Last Month

Yikes. Blog neglect at it's finest.

My very, very, very good reason is that I have been spending a LOT of time working. Yes, actually working. For a long time I was saying that I was trying to start a business, now I think I can officially say that I have started a business.

Heidi Haines Photography.

You can check out the site that has been getting a lot more of my attention that this blog: Heidi Haines Photography. It has been a lot of work to pull together and I didn't even do it all myself. Thankfully I had some wonderful help from someone who doesn't feel like HTML code is a second language. Anyway, I have also been pretty busy with photo sessions and editing. I love it because I get to be creative and get out of the house a little bit!

If you're interested in a session, contact me!

Also, Steve managed to have almost two weeks off from work and so we were also staycationing, relaxing, and getting other projects done too. One of my favorite things that we did was this:

Piano stairs!! I am also really excited about two different projects that are still in the works and so I don't have pictures of them yet. Stay tuned.

But, I do need to write an update blog about Kye because he has changed a ton and it just one of the cutest little things ever right now, so...back to blogging!!

Beach Time?

On our nature walk through state parkland we found this beach which I officially vote Most Real Sand Sandy Beach in all of Minnesota, right there on the river. The kids loved it. It was like a huge awesome sandbox...or like being at the beach except way too cold to actually be at the beach. 

First of all, I love this picture!! It makes me laugh! What a cute family I have. 

And Kyeson, who spends most of our walking/hiking time strapped to Steve's back in a backpack, got to get out. Which he LOVED. "Look Mom! I got sand on my feet!"

Instead of footprints in the sand, this is what it looks like when you can't walk down a sandy hill but scooch a gimpy crawl down the hill.

And, haha!! This picture also makes me laugh! I wish you could tell what this hill was like from the picture, but Kye was trying to stand up to make another walk attempt through the sand and got off balance because of the incline. At first I thought he was just doing his "look through the legs" thing, but then realized he wasn't when he started getting mad because he couldn't lift up his head because it was too heavy at that angle. Haha!!

My Hearts

First there was one. 

Then there were two. 

And now, now there are three. 

Oh, my sweet babies. 

Colors

Anybody else watch The Cat in the Hat?

Red...

 Orange...

Yellow...

(And Red, Orange, Yellow all in one!)

Then Green followed by...

 Blue...

(Indigo, which, what the heck? It's not even considered part of the primary rainbow colors anymore.) And Violet! That's a rainbow song for you!!

Obviously, we went on a beautiful hike through a state park. It was glorious. I brought my camera and took way too many pictures, but I don't regret taking way too many pictures. :) 

Stay tuned for the important pictures, the pictures with kiddos in them!! ;)

On Having A Man Child

People ask me all the time if having a boy is different than having girls. It's funny because how could it not be different? I wondering if they are asking secretly hoping that I am having the trials and tribulations of a young man child and they want to be sure their boys aren't the only ones. Haha!!

Even though I have what is considered a tom boy, my sweet little Berlin who I frequently find has been laying in the neighbor kid's sand box and will come home with a scalp full of sand, a little man child is still very different.

It's not just the fact that his favorite things are trucks and balls while the girls liked dresses and dolls. Perfect example? We have had the same garbage can, a tall silver contraption with a pedal and a flip lid, since Tryn was Kye's age almost exactly. Well, I recently realized why they sell locks for said garbage cans. Neither of the girls cared one bit about the darn thing, but not a day goes by without Kye and I having a "discussion" about whether or not he should open the lid. Worse than that, he likes to put things into the garbage...and pull them out. I'm starting to consider that lock.

Another way I noticed that Kye is completely different from the girls is when he ate a mouthful of sand. All kids do it at some point, sitting at the beach or in a sandbox they take a huge fistful of sand and pop it in their mouths. Well, when both of the girls did this as babies world ending cries and lots of spitting and drooling ensued. The man child? Well, he popped the sand in his mouth, paused, and then looked up at Steve and I with a big sandy grin and started laughing. Steve had to dig it out of his mouth so he didn't try to swallow it all.

Don't even get me started on taking this kid to the store. Wow. He is a pain in the you know what. Let's just say that most of the time involves him screaming because he is trying to turn around in the cart seat and gets stuck or falls over. Or he spends his time trying to wriggle out of the strap so that he can stand up. I basically have to walk around with my hand on him to keep him in the cart and he treats it like torture. How dare he be confined! I used to think the girls treating the store like a playground was a lot to deal with...at least they were laughing and having fun and not screaming like their fingernails are being removed.

And then there is the whole diaper changing situation. I recently read this thing that a mom wrote to her son, 25 Things I Want to Tell My Son (who was three). I can't find it now, but number 18 was something like, "You do not always have to touch your penis. It will be there for the rest of your life. You will have lots of opportunity to use it, you don't need to grab it all the time. It is not a toy." I just want to second that. Every single diaper change...every single time.

There are, of course, the things that are easier too. I finally have a kid that loves to eat. The girls treated food like it was a chore or something and would always eat the smallest amounts possible. Kye can already out eat them most of the time. That will probably never change. 
 
Don't get me wrong, I love this kid. I think he is the cutest little baby boy on the face of the earth right now and I am enjoying him immensely. But the answer to the question is YES. Yes, having a baby boy is much different than having a girl, in some ways at this age it is much more difficult. I have heard this is true, that boys get easier as they get older and girls get harder. That remains to be seen.  

Oh my, this could not have happened at a more ironic time. As I finished up this post Kye walked past me into the kitchen and this is what I found two minutes later:

Yes, next to his t-ball bat on the floor are banana peels and coffee grounds that he pulled from the garbage. And yes, of course I just swept and mopped the floor less than 30 minutes ago. Yes, I forgot to put the tray back on his chair to block him from climbing up. And what you can't see in this picture, and what alerted me to the trouble, is the fact that he also had a beaded necklace around his neck that he pulled and broke. I heard the beads landing on and rolling all over the floor. Thank goodness it's nap time. 

The "H" Word

There is one thing, and mostly one big thing, that Steve and I said we would NEVER, never, never ever do concerning our children. It involves the "H" word.

We said we would never homeschool our kids. Ever.

Steve and I were both homeschooled (cue jokes about denim jumpers, socially awkward, whatever, whatever. We've heard all the jokes, we've made all the jokes ourselves, go ahead, try one. I bet I've heard it or said it myself already. Haha!) and we both didn't want to homeschool for various reasons.

So, it is with great confusion that I find myself as a homeschooling mother this year. What?! Yes, you heard me right. I am homeschooling Tryn and Berlin.

I'm not really confused, but sometimes it's still hard to say it out loud. Yes, I really am teaching the kids at home and there is no way to get around that fact. We are a homeschooling family. (I'm still mentally saying, "What?!" to myself. WHAT?! I'm HOMESCHOOLING?! Yes, I really am.)

How did this happen? So many reasons, lots of evaluation, and the realization that for this year (and this year only, one year at a time commitment to this craziness) homeschooling was the best option for the girls and our family as a whole. A big factor was that Tryn would have been getting on the bus at 8:39am and getting off at 4:09pm Monday through Friday. Steve works almost every Saturday and Sunday. We were starting to feel like, "What's family time? Is that going to exist anymore? Will we ever have a "Saturday" day all year long?" Whoa. Depressing. And that does not hold true to our values as a family at all. Also, the school that we really wanted Tryn to go to was full. She got put on a waiting list and never got in and so our first choice (performing arts magnet school where they have piano lab every day and can be in band/orchestra/choir etc. starting in first grade!!!!) for schools was out for this year.

We waited until the last minute to commit to something that we never thought we would commit to and every morning now I don my denim jumper, ahem, and teach my children.

I am pleased to say that so far it is going quite well. I think that quality time speaks love strongly to both of my girls and so school time is just one big bundle of love for them. It's also nice for me because I get to spend time with the girls not coloring (activity of choice 99.9% of the time otherwise) but doing other things that I find interesting as well.

I was also able to start Berlin in kindergarten this year. If we were doing the public school thing she wouldn't have been able to start until next year and she really wanted to start school with her big sister. So here is our first day of school picture for Tryn in first grade and Berlin in kindergarten. I let them pick out a new first day of school outfit and they picked the most sparkly dresses that were available. And they have worn them almost every day since. I have to steal Berlin's while she is sleeping to wash it. But, hey, they can wear the dresses every day for the rest of the year without getting teased if they want to...because we are a homeschooling family. :)

The House

On August 31 it was our one year anniversary of the day we bought this house. Since we worked so hard and so long to be able to purchase a house, the one year anniversary was really fun for me. For us, purchasing a house was not just another big purchase, not something that happened very easily (to tell that story I would have to write a book, which I might someday, but not today) and so it has never been something that I have taken for granted.

I feel so thankful every single day. 

I don’t know how we got this house. I mean, I know how, but…It’s perfect for us. It was on the market for several months before we bought it, priced significantly higher when it was first posted. Maybe that had something to do with it not being sold? It also had an icky flooring situation in the basement, but we took care of that. I just can’t believe that nobody snatched it up before we did. Honestly, this is better than I thought our first house would be. 

This was the first house we looked at and we made an offer the next day. It was accepted within a few hours. We live in Robbinsdale, which is just outside of North Minneapolis, seriously about three miles from where we were living before. It is so much quieter and safer though. We still get to be next to North, and we are still in a very central location which was important to us. We also live one block off a parkway which connects to miles of trails all throughout the Minneapolis area. Just wonderful. 

I once heard someone say that you should never buy a house that you can’t live with just as it is…otherwise you will never, ever stop doing projects and putting money into it. I’m not sure if they meant structurally or cosmetically. Part of the fun for me of owning a house is getting to do some projects to improve it, but it’s all easy cosmetic stuff. I could live with this house, just as it is, for a really long time. However, if we stay here for a really long time we have some exciting ideas to improve the kitchen, potentially add one more bedroom, fix our two garage situation, and it would even make our yard bigger than it is. But we don’t need to do any of that to be happy here. We are just happy. 

A lot of people also talk about home buyer’s remorse, that time when you regret not waiting for something else, wanting something else, or wishing you didn’t have your particular house to deal with. I can honestly say that I have not had one day or moment of buyer’s remorse. Not one. And it’s not like we don’t have issues to deal with here. We have a bunch of doors and cupboards that don’t stay shut or just don’t shut well, we have plaster walls that get holes when we try to hang pictures, we have old plumbing that Steve has had to deal with several times and has us considering buying stock in Drain-o, a poorly designed bathroom/ventilation so that mold likes to grow there…blah, blah, blah. I don’t even care. 

I just feel so thankful every day. And I love living here. 

Our yard is almost twice the size of the average city lot, which was one of the reasons we loved it. We went from having basically no yard to a bigger than average yard. It’s awesome. Honestly, one of the only reasons we might move someday is because we would actually want to live in the country and have 5 or 6 acres, a few more animals, and some serious produce growing on our land. Right now we have other priorities that don’t include large plots of earth and growing things…we have found we aren’t super good at growing things anyway. The whole south side of our property has a built in garden that we tried out this year. Maybe when we get better at it…Anyway, we have a fabulous yard AND we have a built in playmate directly across the alley, which is something I am also thankful for on a daily basis. The girls not only have our yard to play in, they have Ava and her yard and unending hours of magical childhood playtime. I have realized that this is a rare blessing. How often do you buy a house and find a best friend for two of your kids? Not only do all three of them get along famously, I can also see them playing in her backyard from my backyard. How much better could that be? I don’t think it could be. 

Did I say how thankful I am yet? 

I am so thankful. 

Yup

Someone else wrote this, but it pretty much sums up my life:


I Wanna Muffin

If you give a mom a muffin, she'll want a cup of coffee to go with it. She'll pour herself some. Her three-year-old will spill the coffee.  She'll wipe it up. Wiping the floor, she will find dirty socks. She'll remember she has to do laundry. When she puts the laundry in the  washer, she'll trip over boots and bump into the freezer. Bumping into the freezer will remind her she has to plan supper. She will get out a pound of hamburger. She'll look for her cookbook. (101 Things To Make With A Pound Of Hamburger.) The cookbook is sitting under a pile of mail. She will see the phone bill, which is due tomorrow. She will look for her checkbook. The checkbook is in her purse that is being dumped out by her two-year-old. She'll smell something funny. She'll change the two-year-old. While she is changing the two-year-old the phone will ring. Her five-year-old will answer and hang up. She'll remember that she wants to phone a friend to come for coffee. Thinking of coffee will remind her that she was going to have a cup. She will pour herself some. And chances are, if she has a cup of coffee, her kids will have eaten the muffin that went with it.

by Kathy Fictorie
based on "If you Give a Mouse a Cookie by Laura Numeroff

Twizzlers and Sthneeds

This just happened. 

Tryn walks up to me and sticks out her foot: Mom, I need the twizzlers. I have this thing in my foot.

I examine and go get said twizzlers (i.e. tweezers).

After trying for a minute or two with no success I pull out a needle.

Tryn, grabs her foot,: Oh, it doesn't hurt anymore.

Me: Just give me your foot.

Tryn: No, mommy, NO!

Absolutely refuses to give me her foot.

Me: Trynie, give me your foot.

Tryn, not kidding, reaching hysterics: No, NO, NO, NO, it's gonna hurt!!

This goes back and forth a few times. I am starting to realize that she is maybe truly terrified of the needle. 

Me: Tryn, I am not going to hurt you! It hurts you to have the sliver in right now, doesn't it?

Tryn: Are you gonna use that? The sthneed?

Me: WHAT?!

Tryn, pointing to the needle: That. The sthneed.

Instead of going for the obvious "WHAT?!" again I tried: Who told you it was called that?

Tryn, still with tears streaming down her face: You did, Mommy.

I refrain from sounding like a total moron by not saying "WHAT?!" again. Instead I start giggling really hard. I honestly have no idea where she heard that, but it sounds like a Dr. Seuss word or something.

Me: I really told you that? Are you sure you didn't have a dream about something like that?

Tryn: No, you told me.

And yes, the sliver is still there as we could not get it out with the twizzlers and really needed to avoid the hysterics of using the sthneed.

He Walks!!

Kyeson walked!!!

He's almost 14 months old (on August 12) and so we have been thinking that it would happen any day. In fact, last Sunday when we got back from camping Steve and I decided to do that make-the-baby-walk-from-you-to-me thing because both of us really wanted to be around for his first steps. He was not interested at all until Steve got out some Cheetos (no, I do NOT normally give my one year old Cheetos, but sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do.) So, by holding Cheetos in view as a bribe we got him to take a step or two via lunge between our arms.

I don't really consider this walking though because he didn't do it on his own and it wasn't totally walking. It was taking a small step while reaching as far as possible to grab the outstretched hand and, therefore, Cheeto. It was a start, but lacking for sure.

Friday night, during the Opening Ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic Games the man child walked for the first time. Steve was sitting on the couch and I was sitting in a chair near the couch and Kye had been walking along holding on to the couch. Then, without any bribes or prompting, we almost weren't even watching, Kye let go of the couch and walk to where I was sitting in the chair. It was a total of about 4 or 5 steps.

It's a sign people, a sign. We have an Olympian in our house. Haha!!!

Probably not. But wouldn't that be something if we did and that's when he started walking?

He has taken a few steps since then, but he is really just taking his time. When the girls started walking, especially Berlin, they never really crawled again. Kye still seems to prefer crawling though as it is much faster than his walking.

Truly, I am so glad that it has taken him this long to walk. It has made him feel like a baby much longer and I just feel thankful for that. It's hard to let go of the baby part of your last baby and it has been good for my soul to have him wait on the whole walking thing.

But now he's a big boy with a big boy hair cut. Anyone want to bring over their baby for me to hold? Haha!

Big Day

This last Thursday was a big day in our household.

First of all, I have been putting off cutting Kye's hair for quite awhile now. I always said that I was never going to let his hair get too long, you know, like those little kids you see and you're not sure if it's a boy or girl even if you're pretty sure it's a boy? Yeah, definitely going to avoid that. However, I was also really not excited about spending $25 for a haircut for a baby...so I finally got brave enough to cut it myself. I figured if I totally mess up I could just shave it all off. :)

I didn't have to shave it, but it took me three different tries. He was not excited about any part of it, but I just kept chasing him around until I got it all. It's also not perfect, but it's fine for now. And he looks like a totally different baby, like a real boy!

Before:

 

After:

Then. Then, my little baby girl Trynica lost her first tooth. This was a big deal for both of us. Tryn has been wanting to lose a tooth all year, ever since the beginning of kindergarten and realizing that her friends were starting to lose teeth. At least once a week Tryn would come up and ask me to feel her teeth to see if they were loose. Finally, one started to get loose. Then another. And it was actually the second one that fell out first.

It was a big deal for me because I was pretty darn sure that I would never ever pull out one of my kids teeth. Ever. The only nightmares I ever have, that I've had as long as I can remember, are about my teeth falling out. Or crumbling in my mouth and turning to dust. I had a really hard time losing my teeth as a kid, I never liked it.

During the last week, when the tooth was getting really loose I actually had a hard time wiggling it because it would make me feel nauseous. Steve tried pulling it out on Wednesday night and I couldn't even watch.

Thursday night, of course, Steve was gone and Tryn was pretty determined to lose a tooth. She sat at the dining room table for 20 minutes after she got ready for bed just pulling on her tooth. She got it so loose that it was only holding on a little bit on one side and I was afraid that if she went to bed with it that loose that she might swallow it during the night. So I pulled it out. You probably don't understand what a big deal this was for me, but I would say it was equally as big of a deal for me as it was for Tryn. And it was a big deal for Tryn. Check it out:

Camping

We took our first ever family camping trip. Well, almost. Steve and I went camping one other time for one night when Tryn was a baby, younger than Kye is right now. Then we braved one night with one kid. This time we braved two nights with three kids. So...the best way to tell is just to highlight some things.

* First, getting ready to go camping is a lot of work. Wow. I have always thought that getting kids ready to go somewhere for the weekend and just packing their clothing was a lot of work. Packing food for every meal, dishes, cookware, bedding, etc., now that is a lot of work.

* We went to Savannah Portage State Park and it was beautiful. It's in the very heart of Minnesota, north of McGregor by 15 miles or so. It was amazing to be on lakes where there was not a house, person, or boat in site. They also have this small hidden lake that you can hike to that has a bog boardwalk trail. The ground of the forest there was just thick deep moss that they built a boardwalk on top of so that people can hike out there. We saw some super cool plants that I have never seen before. It was awesome.

* Kyeson really loves to be comfortable and really doesn't like to be uncomfortable. This means that he likes to sleep in his bed and nowhere else. Not even in the car. He took a 30 minute nap on the way up to the campsite, which the trip was an awesome 2+ hour opportunity to nap that he did not use to his advantage. This also lead to a crazy bedtime in which we helped him fall asleep no less than 8 times. One time included Steve and Kye taking a midnight walk down to the lake, one time included trying to just let him cry for awhile, and ended with Steve rocking him to sleep at 2am. We got 4 hours of sleep the first night.

* Berlin loves to be outside. I mean, she loves it in a way that I haven't often seen a little kid love to be in the outdoors. When we take trail walks she runs most of the way, which is really great because she also has to stop and look at every other plant, flower, rock, or stick. If she walked it would take us forever to get anywhere. It's so fun to see her so happy though. She also learned how to climb trees near our campsite which she just thought was so awesome. This was a log she tried to climb while on a hike:

* I have more mosquito bites than I ever remember having in my life and I think I saw more bugs and spiders this last weekend than I have seen in years. So many bugs. There was a couple of times when I thought the kids might actually start going crazy and running around like banshees because they were so frustrated about the bug situation. There were also spiders in every toilet stall which made certain little girls very nervous. :) We went through three bottles of bug spray in 2 1/2 days. Ew.

* Trynie mainly just loves to swim. She also struggles with liking to be comfortable and not liking to be uncomfortable, but she really, really, really loves swimming so we made sure to do that every day.

* The second night after we successfully got all three kids to sleep at a reasonable hour, Steve and I walked down to a dock (that was within site of our campsite) and listened to frogs croaking and saw several shooting starts. It was perfect. It's amazing how many stars you can see when there are no lights around.

*The first night we had to pack up our campsite a little (put chairs in the van, take down all our clothes hanging to dry, etc.) because a thunderstorm rolled in as soon as it got dark. This was not a big deal as the sound of rain falling on my tent while I am sleeping is wonderful. However, since we had all our food in two plastic bins we left them out. Well, we heard some rustling in the middle of the night and in the morning we found the plastic bag that had once contained our marshmallows near the edge of our campsite. Who eats an ENTIRE bag of marshmallows? Yuck! The second night I put all the food in one bin, shoved it under the picnic table and placed a cooler on top of it so it was wedged under there. Somehow the darn animal (raccoon we are pretty sure) still pulled up the corner of the lid and pulled out a bag of cereal and demolished a bag of unopened tortilla chips. Grrrrr. Jerk.

* Oh, and speaking of food, Steve and I decided on this camping trip that we are officially foodies. We just really like to make and eat good food. We cooked all our food over the fire, which was super fun. Both mornings we made french press coffee (a must), pancakes, and then one morning we made bacon and the other morning we made eggs and ham. For dinner the first night we made chicken and veggie kabobs with roasted potatoes. Lunch was hot dogs. Dinner the second night was a fun recipe I found for campfire mac 'n cheese where we made the noodles in a pot over the fire and then put noodles, butter, milk, and a few different kinds of cheese into foil type pie pans and cooked that over the fire. Yum. It was really fun to make the food. 

* It was super great to be away from technology. Although, I have to admit that we still didn't live without my phone. Since Kye was having such a hard time sleeping we had to use the noise/rainmaker app on my phone and place it right next to him while he was sleeping so that he would stop waking up at the slightest sounds. Since we were in view of the bathrooms I would take my phone over there during the day and plug it in for a few hours on the outside of the building and watch it from the campsite...all so we could have a sleeping baby at night. And, sadly, about half an hour into our trip I realized that I had totally forgotten my camera! So I also had to use my phone to take pictures. Worth it to not totally go without technology? Heck yes. Haha!! Thankfully, the one other place in the world besides his bed where Kyeson will fall asleep easily is this backpack that Steve carries him around in, so he did take a couple of naps in there.

All in all, we had a really great time and now that we got over and through the first experience, we will definitely be doing more camping in the future!!