Jim, Becky, and Kids: Time is Flying

These four kids are definitely keeping me on my toes! It seems like I just blogged, but it's been over two weeks; sheesh! I can't even remember a lot of what has happened in the last few weeks and I've almost stopped using my camera altogether. It's a good thing I can take pictures with my phone (even though they aren't great quality). Here are our random pictures for the last two weeks:

Abby is a very content baby, but isn't on a consistent sleeping schedule yet. We're consistent with her nap times and bed time, but she's not. Sometimes she goes right to sleep and other times it takes her hours. Thankfully she sleeps well once she's asleep. So some days I'm tired and some days I'm not. Other than that she's been such an easy baby so far. Here she'd fallen asleep in my arms and wouldn't wake up even when put on the floor.

Meanwhile, we had some hot weather so I let the kids play in the sprinkler.

These two crack me up. Their goal for the picture was to look silly, but I think they succeeded in looking really creepy.

Jim is so great with the kids; he's especially wonderful when we have new babies because he will watch them so I can go places ALONE or with the child/ children of my choice. This particular day I took only Alex with me to the store so we could have some one on one time. It was so NOT CRAZY (some mothers are wondering what that might feel like) that not only was I able to think straight, but I also noticed these pink hot dogs and took a picture of them. I was seriously tempted to buy them just so I could find out if they would look like the picture once cooked. But seriously...why would a company decide to dye their hot dogs pink???

Almost two weeks ago Jim had a minor surgery on his nose; he had a deviated septum. Basically they made the holes bigger in his nose so he can breathe better at night and hopefully have fewer sinus infections. I'm obliged to skip the post-surgery picture of him unfortunately, but I assure you it's amusing. We failed to read the instructions until we were going to bed the night before, so it wasn't until just a few hours before his surgery that we realized I was supposed to be at the hospital with him. That wasn't happening at 6am with four kids and no babysitter lined up. Oops. Thankfully when he arrived alone his doctor assured him that it was okay as long as I was there when he came out of surgery. I didn't get that message until 30min. before he was due to be out and everyone was still asleep. Double oops. The kids were champs when I woke them up. They've never cooperated so well in the morning. We were only ten minutes late, everyone was dressed, and I'd even nursed the baby. They called me back to talk to his doctor literally two minutes after we arrived. Phew! Then we had some time to wait and I had hungry kids. Our breakfast had been a banana each. So I was thrilled to discover that there was complimentary juice and snacks in the surgery waiting area; what a life saver!

We finally saw Jim as he was wheeled into his room (he stayed overnight). He was rather groggy from the anesthesia, but he very much wanted us there when he first woke up from the surgery. The kids posed for some pictures while we hung out in his room.

As a reward for being AMAZING all morning at the hospital I took the kids to McDonald's where they were kicked out of the play area because they didn't have socks. Apparently this is a new rule? We haven't been there in a year and a half so maybe not, but I had some very disappointed children and I wasn't very happy either. (I am now carrying socks in my diaper bag.) So we took our ice cream to a park instead. Immediately upon our arrival, Alex needed to go potty (#2) and there wasn't an available bathroom. Thankfully my mom had given me the idea to keep a #10 can with a lid in the car for such emergencies. It makes the perfect disposable port-a-potty and saved me the headache of getting everyone back in the car to find a restroom! (We've used this trick twice since.) Safe to say, we had an interesting day! Jim had to stay home for a week post-surgery, so we really enjoyed the extra family time.

This week was more normal, though I'm not sure what we did. I know the stomach flu was part of our week and I had some meetings and appointments. Otherwise, I can't believe it's the weekend already.

I do remember that we went to the park and Wal-Mart on Memorial Day thanks to the following picture. A friend gave us a card with some money to choose a baby gift. Abby really likes to be upright and she holds her head pretty well already, so we'd been talking about maybe getting a Bumbo (possibly the only baby contraption we didn't already own). So that's what we decided to use the gift money for. It's not obvious in the picture, but Abby likes sitting in it because she can watch everybody so well. (She does show lots of facial expression, but I have yet to capture it.)