Aedan: 42 Months, Week 4
Owen: 2 Months, Week 1 (10 Weeks)
Since we were going to be traveling over Thanksgiving weekend, I thought it would be a good idea to put our Christmas decorations up the weekend before Thanksgiving instead of waiting for two more weeks. Ben got our new tree on Saturday night, so after church on Sunday we started getting everything out and set up. Since our tree was brand new, it took quite awhile to fluff all the branches out so that it looked nice. I also attempted to put the icicle lights up outside, but there were several sets with lots of bulbs not working, so everything just took way longer than it should have, especially because I had to keep stopping to take care of our nine week old baby. It was one of those days where I felt frustrated because I had things I wanted to accomplish and didn't get done as much as I wanted to. Thankfully, Ben offered to help me hang up the lights outside while I fluffed up more of the tree, so we were able to get two things done at once. Usually I try to take on the brunt of Christmas decorating because Ben is not a fan of it, but this year I needed some additional help.
Here is what Aedan brought home from church that Sunday morning. We took a picture of it and sent it to Ben's parents. Both kids were really looking forward to our trip to see them for Thanksgiving. It couldn't get here fast enough. Samantha even had a countdown going in her room that she would update every day.
Earlier in the afternoon, the kids helped me get all the ornaments out of the boxes and lay them out on the coffee table. However, it was very difficult for them to resist playing with the ornaments, some of them being breakable. It's always fun to get the ornaments out each year, especially our family ornaments and the individual ornaments for each kid for each year. We are carrying on the tradition of Ben's family in getting ornaments for the kids each year and then when they move out of the house and/or get married and have their own Christmas trees, they will already have a collection of ornaments from their childhood, each one signifying something about the past year, like a ballerina for when Samantha was in ballet lessons or a monster for when we called Aedan our little monster when he was a toddler. When we take the tree down I will have to take a picture of each year's ornament and post it on my blog. It's fun to talk about each ornament as we hang it on the tree, reliving that time in their life together. Also, since the kids have been born, we have done a picture ornament for our family ornament. As Ben and I get older, especially when our kids are no longer living in the house with us, these ornaments will be dear to our hearts, like a little walk down memory lane.
Here are my little tree decorators helping to hang the ornaments. They actually did a really good job of trying to spread the ornaments around in different places on the tree. Samantha tried to hang hers up a little higher since Aedan couldn't reach that part of the tree. I loved having their help that evening.
Lately Owen has been sleeping in pretty consistently every morning. Ben and I will get up and showered, and we will have time to eat breakfast with Samantha and Aedan and get her ready for school before he wakes up for the day. For example, this Monday morning he slept until after 8:30 which is nice to have that time and for him to wake up well rested. Here is my happy, smiley boy that morning as I changed his diaper. I was able to get this great smile and video of his little gurgles and coos as I tickled his chest and blew raspberries on his tummy. I love that he is starting to smile and laugh more. It's so fun to find new ways to make him react.
That evening there was an event at Samantha's school called "Gifts in a Jar." We didn't go last year for some reason, but this year we thought it sounded like fun. They had all the supplies provided for you to make jars of cookie mix to either keep or give away. The kids had fun taking turns finding the ingredients and the right measuring cups and then pouring the ingredients into the jar. While Samantha and Aedan worked together, Owen sat happily in his car seat, looking around at all the people.
Since we are busy on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings, we always do bath nights on Mondays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. I took Owen downstairs to give him a bath as well. It's easier for me to give him a bath on the same nights as the kids or else it's hard to remember, to be honest. I think I wrote in my last blog post that Owen started splashing in the tub, but it was actually at this bath on Monday, November 20th that he realized if he kicked his legs and moved his arms up and down, he could splash the water around and have a pretty cool sensation. He flooded the bathroom counter with all his splashing, and I will definitely have to move him into the bath tub from now on. Owen definitely loves bath time.
In preparation for our trip out of town for Thanksgiving, Aedan and I had to run a couple errands on Tuesday morning. After dropping off a lot of recycling at the recycling center, we went to Meijer to buy a few things. Owen had fallen asleep in the car, so I just hooked his car seat into the stroller and pushed him around the store like that since we didn't have that many things to buy and didn't need a cart. Aedan did a great job walking around with me. We got all the items we needed and even picked out a couple new movies from the $5 bin so we would have some new choices to watch in the car on our road trips. As we walked down the aisles at Meijer, I reached out and held Aedan's hand, and we just walked hand in hand for most of the store. I told him how much I love holding his hand, and it warmed my heart to have this special time with my little man. I still had money left on a Starbucks gift card, so I decided to stop and get peppermint mochas for both Ben and me. Aedan had a sugar cookie from the bakery, and he just went right over to a table to sit down and eat. They had little cups out for samples, so I took a sample, drank the coffee, and then filled it up for some water for him. He wanted to sit and enjoy his cookie and drink at the table, and normally I would have tried to hurry us along in case Owen woke up, but he was still happily asleep, so I decided to take Aedan up on his desire to sit with me. We had a lovely little mini-date, and it was so fun to just sit and talk to him and enjoy time with my silly little 3 1/2 year old boy. Sometimes I need to remember to just slow down and enjoy my time with my children. I don't need to always be moving through life at a frantic pace. It's okay to stop and sit and follow the lead of my kids. After all, I will not always have these moments with them, and I don't want to look back and regret that I chose to do other things rather than just being with them.
After getting back from small group on Tuesday night and getting all the kids to bed, Ben and I stayed up fairly late trying to get as much packed up as we could so we could have a smooth morning and leave as soon as we could. Samantha and Aedan are always antsy on mornings when we are leaving for trips, usually causing more trouble than being helpful. Plus, I had no idea what Owen's schedule was going to be like, so I didn't know how much I'd be able to help Ben out. I was feeling very anxious about the trip, just not knowing how it would go with Owen on a longer car trip. The farthest away we'd gone with him was twenty minutes over to Brimley, so we had no idea how he'd do in the car. Plus, he doesn't really take a pacifier, so there's really no way of consoling him when he's crying the car. Nevertheless, this three hour trip would be good practice for when we travel the 6 1/2 hours of driving to Upland, then the 4 hours to Chicago, and then the 7 1/2 hours back home over Christmas.
We were able to check in at the vacation house earlier than we thought, and Owen slept until 9:45 that Wednesday morning, giving us time to pack up and be all ready to go. Once he was awake, I fed him, did last minute things, and we were on the road by 10:40. Things went pretty well that morning. We drove about an hour and forty-five minutes and stopped for lunch in Gaylord. Owen took a little bit of a nap in the car, but woke up crying when we were about fifteen minutes away from stopping for lunch, so it wasn't a very fun last fifteen minutes. I tried to get Owen to nurse inside Culver's, but he was just not interested and was too distracted by everything around him. After I ate my food, I took him out to the car to try to feed him in a quieter environment, but he was not interested then either. It was almost like he wasn't hungry, even though he should have been. I was just worried that he wasn't going to eat and then once we started driving he would get hungry and mad and we would have to stop again so I could feed him.
Our stop for lunch and bathroom breaks was about forty-five minutes, and then we were back on the road again. We ended up having Izzy sleep on her bed in the front seat so that we could sit in the seat next to Owen to play with him and help him when he got upset. Owen fell asleep again that afternoon, taking a fairly good nap while Samantha and Aedan closed their eyes for awhile too.
We arrived at the vacation house a little before 3:00 and the kids were SO excited to be there and see Grandma and Grandpa. Owen cried pretty hard the last fifteen minutes or so in the car again, so he was very happy to be taken out of his car seat and held. The trip went pretty well considering we were traveling with a puppy and three kids, one of them only being two months old, but it did make me feel slightly nervous about our trip over Christmas if Owen is only happy in the car for about an hour at a time.
Once at the house, we brought in all our stuff and got things unpacked and settled. Samantha and Aedan were going to share a room on the main floor with two twin beds, and Ben, Owen, and I were going to take the master bedroom off the living room because it had a queen sized bed and enough room for Aedan's pack and play, whereas the other rooms were a open loft and a basement room with two full size beds, which we assumed would work well for Jeni and Alaina. We spent the afternoon just hanging out and eating pizza for dinner before getting all our tired kids tucked into bed.
Sleeping that first night was a little tricky because Jeni and Alaina were going to arrive after bedtime. Izzy was doing pretty well in the house, even though she was a bit unsettled and kept expecting us to leave and get back in the car. However, we knew that she would bark when Jeni and Alaina arrived, meaning she would wake up all the sleeping kids. We were going to put her kennel down in the basement, but we didn't want her to bark down there either when she heard people talking and walking around. So, we decided to put her in her kennel in the bathroom attached to our bedroom with the fan turned on so that she couldn't hear anything outside of the room. I got Owen to sleep pretty easily that night, but the room we were in was in a difficult place. It didn't have a real door, just a sliding barn door with like a five inch gap at the bottom, meaning lots of light and sound was able to come in.
We hung out in the basement that night and started watching a movie before Jeni and Alaina arrived. It was so good to see Jeni and Alaina again, as we hadn't seen them since the wedding at the beginning of July. Ben was being silly with Alaina, and she was happily dancing around the house. We sat and talked with Jeni and Alaina for awhile that evening before getting to bed ourselves.
The night went okay that first night, but Owen woke up shortly after we got into bed, so I had to feed him and get him back to sleep again, then Izzy barked a little bit in the middle of the night, making me very worried how the rest of the night would go, and even with a fan on to block out noise, we could still hear every sound in the house. Owen woke up a couple times during the night, and Samantha and Aedan came bursting into our room shortly after 7:00, waking Owen up. I always wish our kids slept better so that it was easier for us to travel and have them sleep in the same room together. Aedan always wakes up early, like 6:15 every day and just talks in his bed, which means he wakes Samantha up early as well. Then, Samantha gets up two or three times a night to go to the bathroom, which probably wakes Aedan up when she goes in and out of the room. Sleep is always hard in a new place, especially the first night.
Thursday was Thanksgiving, and Samantha, Aedan, and Alaina were so excited to play with one another. We let them just hang out and relax in their pajamas, running around the house and playing while the grown-ups worked on preparing food for our Thanksgiving meal. The Tolls have their big Thanksgiving meal at lunch time and then eat more of it as leftovers for dinner. Since we weren't in someone's home, and we had lots of kids around, our goal was to keep it simple, but we still had turkey, along with mashed potatoes, stuffing, gravy, rolls, and pecan pie and/or pumpkin pie for dessert. Here are some videos and pictures from the morning of Thanksgiving Day.
Jeni was leading the kids in a song for Thanksgiving, everyone was getting in on the action of acting like turkeys. (I think I was feeding Owen during this song and dance.)
Jeni and Alaina were super excited to meet Owen when he woke up that morning. He got lots of love from them, and Alaina was so excited to be able to be able to hold him.
Aunt Jeni loves to be silly with the kids. Here they are having fun on Ema and Papa's bed up in the loft. Aedan even brought his Spider-Man costume along because he likes to wear it almost every day around the house.
Owen seemed to enjoy all the extra attention from his extended family.
I love this picture of all the cousins together. Although I think we need to work on getting our kids to smile more. Aedan is just staring, and Samantha is giving kind of a forced smile. Regardless, it's a cute picture of everyone spending time together, which is really what our Thanksgiving trip was all about.
After a morning full of playing, here are the kids relaxing and getting some downtime in while watching a show.
Jenn
After much debate and indecision on my part, Ben and I decided to switch rooms with Jeni and Alaina, giving them the room upstairs so we could have more quiet for sleeping for Owen. He usually sleeps in some in the morning, but there was going to be no chance of that happening if we stayed in the upstairs room because it was just too loud in there, and we couldn't expect everyone to stay quiet every time he was sleeping.
Thursday afternoon was rest time for everyone. Aedan and Owen took naps in their rooms, and Samantha and Alaina got some time to play on their LeapPad/tablet for some quiet time. Most of the adults decided to go for a walk that afternoon, but I figured I couldn't risk going because Owen would probably wake up soon. Samantha and Alaina were both very excited to go into the room to get Owen when he woke up from his nap, and they both wanted to take turns holding him. He really did enjoy being held even though it doesn't look like it from the expression on his face.
The weather was actually unseasonably warm while we were there for Thanksgiving, so we took the chance to play outside in the afternoons. Our cabin was in the middle of the woods, and there wasn't anything much to do or play with, but the kids didn't mind. They enjoyed running around and playing with Izzy, jumping in the leaves, and climbing up and hanging on tree trunks. It was fun having Izzy with us. She settled down more after realizing we weren't going to be leaving, and she did a great job staying by us outside, so we didn't even have to put a leash on her at all. She just had a grand old time running at full speed, digging in the leaves, chasing tennis balls, and running around like crazy with the kids. Owen was being taken care of by Jeni and Ema on Thursday afternoon, so I went outside with Samantha and Alaina. It was so fun being able to play with them and spend time with them, without having to worry about taking care of a baby at the same time. Those girls love each other, and they have so much fun when we are together. Here are some videos and pictures of our time outside that afternoon.
Once Aedan woke up from his nap, he joined us outside as well. He was using this stick to poke through leaves.
Aunt Jeni loved every chance she got to snuggle with Owen. She was really good with him, and he would fall right asleep on her shoulder as she walked around or danced around with him. I like this picture of little Owen all snuggled up with his Aunt Jeni. :)
Since Uncle Timmy couldn't make it to the house for Thanksgiving, we did FaceTime with him so he could see everybody. Here he is talking to Owen. Owen was pretty fascinated by looking at him talking to him through the phone.
And here's another super cute picture of Alaina holding Owen. She loved to hold him as much as possible. She was so kind and gentle with him.
Thursday night Owen did much better sleeping, nursing before bed and sleeping until 5:00 a.m., then going back to sleep until a little after 8:00. I was glad for a more normal night with more sleep, and even had a chance to sleep in myself. It was nice having so many people willing to hold Owen, giving Ben and I a little bit of a break, but also giving family some great one-on-one time with the newest member of the family. He took most of his naps cuddled up in someone's arms. Here is Owen snuggled up in Daddy's arms that morning.
And here he is napping on Aunt Jeni again. He looked so comfortable in her arms, so relaxed, and she loved the baby cuddles.
I love how Izzy is just passed out on the rug in the background of the picture. She was back to her normal self by Friday morning, and she loved these rugs in the kitchen for they were a comfortable spot to lay where she could still see everything going on in the house.
Samantha and Alaina started digging rocks out of the ground and making a rock collection on the porch. Samantha even sorted them into small, medium, and large rocks.
Aunt Jeni took this really great picture of the Samantha and Alaina. I love both their smiles in this picture. They are beautiful girls. :)
Saturday morning we all got up and got ready as quick as we could so we could drive into Clare and eat breakfast at a place called Cops and Doughnuts. The kids were super excited to pick out the doughnut they wanted. Aedan picked one with blue icing, sprinkles, and jelly in the middle. Samantha picked a long john with chocolate icing and cream in the middle. Alaina picked a round doughnut with sprinkles. Most of us also ordered a little bit of food to share so that we weren't just consuming sugar for breakfast. Our doughnuts were delicious, and we could definitely tell why this place was so popular. Even better, Owen fell asleep in the car and slept through our whole time out of the house.
Aunt Jeni and the two silly girls.
On Friday morning our plan was to go swimming at the clubhouse pool. We got the kids all dressed and ready, with plans to leave Owen with Ema and Papa so that the rest of us could enjoy swimming. However, when we arrived at the clubhouse, we discovered the pool was closed because a motor was broken. That left a lot of kids very sad and disappointed. Aedan cried about it for quite awhile, but we explained that there was nothing we could do about it and we knew it was disappointing.
However, it was another warm day with temperatures near fifty degrees, so we made sure to spend some time playing outside again. This is a great picture of Alaina and Aedan playing together. In the past the girls mostly played together and sometimes Aedan was kind of left out. However, on this trip we got to see Alaina and Aedan forming more of a bond and finding ways to play together. Sometimes when Samantha just wants to sit and do a quiet activity like reading or coloring, Alaina and Aedan have the chance to do more roughhousing together. It was fun to watch them develop more of a connection during this trip. In these pictures they were observing a dead "calepittar" (as Samantha and Aedan called it) on the tree.
Here are some pictures from our time outside that afternoon. It was such a lovely day, warm and sunny, the perfect weather day to spend outside playing.
Since we had kind of a let down of a morning with not being able to go swimming, we decided to get the kids bathed early and let them watch a Muppet's Christmas Carol. They all sat on this oversized chair together under a blanket, and we turned off he lights. They were so cute together. Even though the kids were a little unsure of the spirits at first, they all ended up enjoying the movie. I tried to put Owen to bed when they started watching the movie, but he didn't seem ready and was not wanting to nurse, so we came out and joined the movie watching as well. It was fun having a relaxing movie night.
Friday night was a bit rougher with Owen. He woke up shortly after we got in bed to go to sleep and nursed for awhile, then he woke up again around 3:30. It's hard when he wakes up right when we are going to sleep because then I feel like I'm going to bed so much later, when all I want to do is sleep.
Saturday morning we all got up and got ready as quick as we could so we could drive into Clare and eat breakfast at a place called Cops and Doughnuts. The kids were super excited to pick out the doughnut they wanted. Aedan picked one with blue icing, sprinkles, and jelly in the middle. Samantha picked a long john with chocolate icing and cream in the middle. Alaina picked a round doughnut with sprinkles. Most of us also ordered a little bit of food to share so that we weren't just consuming sugar for breakfast. Our doughnuts were delicious, and we could definitely tell why this place was so popular. Even better, Owen fell asleep in the car and slept through our whole time out of the house.
Can't you tell Aedan enjoyed his jelly doughnut?
We found this random rooster statue outside, so we have the kids pose in front of it for a picture.
When we got back to the house, Samantha called a family meeting so she could read off the paper that she made at church of all the things she was thankful for. (Aedan was glad to snuggle up on the couch with Ema.)
Owen took so many naps cuddled up on Aunt Jeni's shoulder. We started calling her the baby whisperer. She was really good at getting him to fall asleep. :)
Everyone had to leave to go back to their homes on Sunday morning, so we spent Saturday night playing some games together, like Bingo, and soaking up our last moments of time together. It was so fun being able to use this house to get everyone together over Thanksgiving. It was such a great idea suggested by Ben's parents as a way to see everyone without anyone having to drive a long distance.
Alaina had to get one last cuddle in with her new cousin before the night was over as well. :)
(Blog about November 19-25, 2017)
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