Aedan: 52 Months, Week 3
Owen: 10 Months, Week 5 (Week 48)
When I got up with Owen on Sunday morning, I could tell that Ben needed some extra sleep, so after I was done feeding him, I went through our room quietly and upstairs to take my turn with the kids while he slept in. Owen woke up earlier than normal that morning and was ready for a nap by 9:00, and we wanted to try and get him down for one before going to church that morning anyways. It's amazing how chaotic mornings can feel at times.
Ben and I had to be at church early that morning because we were volunteering with kids, Ben with K-1 and me in the nursery. Neither of those places are necessarily our forte, but they have been in desperate need of volunteers, and we were more than happy to help out. In fact, last week the nursery was actually closed because they didn't have enough volunteers to cover any more babies.
After getting home and getting all our tired kids fed, I put Owen down for a nap and then headed over to campus to work in Ben's office for awhile. With Samantha and Aedan being out of their rooms in the afternoon while Owen napped, I haven't had much time to myself to work on my blog, so I arranged with Ben to go to a nice, quiet place to work for awhile on Sunday afternoon. Owen took a decent nap that afternoon, but Ben did have to go down and sit with him for about forty-five minutes at the end of his nap to get him back to sleep for awhile longer. He couldn't lay him down without him waking up. Owen was pretty fussy on Sunday and was up a lot Saturday into Sunday, so we were hoping that it was just his bottom right incisor popping through and not something more. Any time Owen has trouble sleeping or doesn't want to be laid down, I get afraid that he is developing another ear infection or something.
Owen slept well Sunday into Monday and took an almost three hour nap on Monday afternoon, which made me feel much better about him not getting an ear infection, but just that he was having an off day. After a full day away working on campus, Ben came home and changed to get ready for his softball game. Owen hadn't seen Daddy all day, and as soon as he saw him, he went right up to him and snuggled into his chest, staying like this for a good five minutes. He just needed some Daddy snuggles, and it was so sweet. Owen is definitely our snuggliest baby, and we will take it while we can get it.
Monday night was Ben's last softball game of the season, the championship round. It was earlier than normal, starting at 5:20, so we decided to make a picnic dinner to eat at the ball fields. They ended up losing the game by one point, which I know was disappointing to the guys, but they still had fun playing as a team and getting to know each other through playing together this summer. I feel like the time will be much better next summer if they all decided to play again because as the season went on, they got better and better, learned each other's strengths and weaknesses, and worked much better as a team. To celebrate his last game, we stopped at Dairy Queen for an ice cream treat before heading back home and getting the kids to bed.
Tuesday was a busy day because I had a dentist appointment first thing in the morning, then I rushed home to get the kids and head to Sherman Park for the MOPS play date that I was hosting. Samantha and Aedan had fun playing at Sherman Park as it was the first time we had made it to that park all summer. We usually go much more, but we've been busy doing other things or going other places this summer that we never made it out there. In fact, we haven't even been to many MOPS play dates because of other things we've had going on. Samantha and Aedan love climbing up and playing inside the spaceship part of the playground, and they also spent a lot of time on the merry-go-round. That part of the park is nice and shaded, and it is also the older part of the playground with metal equipment, but it seems like that is the kids' favorite area. Owen enjoyed crawling around in the dirt and trying to climb up the narrow steps to get into the spaceship with the other kids. I kept having to go after him and stand with him as he climbed or pick him up and bring him back to where I was standing with the other moms. There was only so much redirection I could do for him though before he started getting frustrated with me, and since he took a pretty short nap that morning, as it approached noon, we needed to get back home to have lunch and get Owen down for a nap. He took another really good nap on Tuesday afternoon, for about two and a half hours, and I was so glad he was getting some good sleep and giving me a chance to have time without chasing a baby around where I could spend time with the big kids.
This week felt kind of busy, but I felt like I was just trying to squeeze the last drops out of summer. I always have a hard time with the the transition back into school and busy schedules and less free time and less family around. I'm really going to miss having Samantha at home. I feel like she is gone so long at school, and we have so little time with her during the week. Having Ben around more in the summer and him being less stressed out is definitely another benefit of the summertime. I told him that I don't know how I would have survived this summer without his help with how much trouble we were having with Owen not sleeping the whole first half of the summer. I think I would have literally gone crazy if he wasn't as flexible at the beginning and able to help me out some when Owen refused to sleep unless someone was holding him. I also have been feeling sentimental about Aedan only having one more year until he will also be gone all day at kindergarten. I was looking at pictures from when Aedan was Owen's age, and they were making me feel sad about how fast time seems to go. My babies are growing so much so fast, and sometimes I don't like it. I want time to slow down. The summer is almost over, and I wish I could extend it longer. There are many moms that are ready for their kids to go back to school and get out of the house, but I wish I could keep mine around for longer. I wish I had more time to just sit and play with them, to just be with them, instead of always having something that I'm trying to get done around the house.
On Tuesday afternoon, Ben and Aedan had hair cut appointments, and then he had plans to take Aedan on a date, just like he had with Samantha. He took Aedan to play mini-golf, and he was actually doing a really good job hitting the ball. Ben told me he got four holes in one, and he won a free icee at the end by getting the ball down into the right slot. He also took Aedan to get dessert at Karl's afterwards, just like he did with Samantha. Aedan picked the Italian Wedding Cake, and he ate it up so fast. He liked the lemon flavoring of it and enjoyed having fancy water with lemon in it. I know the kids really enjoyed having these special times with Ben before the semester starts.
I love this picture of Aedan. He is looking more and more grown up these days, less like a little boy and more like a preschooler. (Getting a hair cut always makes him look older, too.) He has enjoyed picking out his own clothes lately and particularly enjoys this shirt from VBS this summer.
On Wednesday I was able to convince Ben to skip out on a day of working to come with the rest of us down to Mackinac City for the day. One of the things on our summer bucket list was to go to Colonial Michilimackinac. The kids, especially Samantha, really enjoyed it when we went there last year, and I knew it would be fun to take a family trip there. It was going to be a beautiful, sunny day, and we were ready for a fun day of exploring and learning. It was like our own family field trip.
There was an artillery demonstration shortly after we got there, so we let the kids play on the playground for a few minutes first. They found this canoe cut-out with spaces for their faces, and Samantha and Aedan wanted their picture taken.
After watching the demonstration of how they shoot off the canon, we went into the fort, and the kids wanted to watch this movie about the history of the fort. We let Owen crawl around in while Samantha and Aedan watched the show very intently. They were so cute sitting next to each other in their matching yellow shirts. They choose to wear matching colors as much as they can lately, and it's cute to see the outfits they come up with.
We went into every building at the fort, stopping for only a little while to go get lunch and then come back to explore more. Their favorite places were the museum with various artifacts that have been found in the archaeological digs on site, as well as the actual dig site where you could watch the archaeologists and they would show you what they had found recently. It's amazing the pain-staking process they have to go through to uncover the tiniest pieces of objects. It was definitely a fun day, and Owen did pretty well considering he was stuck in the stroller most of the time and only took naps while we were driving there and back. I was glad that Ben was able to come with us, too.
Here are some cool pictures of the Mackinac Bridge from the fort. Sometimes I forget how beautiful of a place we live in. Not everyone gets to see views like this forty-five minutes from their home.
Even though we had had a long day already, I was crazy enough to suggest that we go to the concert in the park that night as well. It was an Irish band, and I enjoy listening to Irish music as a reminder of our days studying abroad. The kids were pretty tired though and were more interested in dancing around and being loud than they were listening to the concert. However, they did make friends with two little girls that were sitting next to us in the park. After intermission we decided to head back home to get our tired kids to bed. I imagine this probably was our last concert in the park for the summer.
After a pretty busy day on Wednesday, Thursday was much more relaxed, mostly because the kids had dentist appointments scheduled. I took all the kids to Aedan's appointment together, and it was a little bit crazy trying to wrangle Owen while they cleaned and checked Aedan's teeth. (Samantha just sat in the lobby and read a book, so she was easy to bring along.) Aedan had a good check-up and did a great job sitting still in the chair while they checked his teeth. Everything was looking good, and his teeth are nicely spaced. They even said his bottom front teeth seemed to show signs of getting loose. (I'm not ready for him to lose his baby teeth yet! I like his cute smile with all his little baby teeth.)
I was a little worried about Samantha's appointment just because last year we discovered so many issues with her teeth where we had to go down to Petoskey to see a Pediatric Dentist. This time they noticed a small cavity on her upper left side, but everything else looked good, thankfully. However, they did mention concern for the overcrowding in her mouth. She has lost all four front teeth on the top and the bottom, and her four bottom teeth have come in, but they are definitely crooked. She has gotten her top front teeth in, but not the incisors on either side. They showed me the x-rays of her mouth, and they were so fascinating because you could see all the teeth waiting under her gums, ready to come in at their proper time. The front incisors were in place to come in, but there just isn't space between Samantha's teeth for them to emerge. They were concerned that the teeth might not be erupting because of that, or that they may start coming in crooked or in the wrong place, so they encouraged me to make an appointment to see an orthodontist to see what they would recommend doing. Samantha has a pretty large space between her front teeth, so they may use some sort of appliance to move her front teeth closer together to allow space for the other teeth to come in. I will definitely call to make an appointment, and we will see what they say. Samantha kept apologizing after her appointment, like she thought it was her fault that she had problems with her teeth. I kept telling her it was okay, that it wasn't her fault, and that she probably just inherited teeth like mine. My mouth was always overcrowded, too, and my incisors came in behind my front teeth because they had no space to come in the right place. I remember being called shark in elementary school because I had two rows of teeth like a shark does. Then, starting in 8th grade, I got braces to move my teeth over to open space for my incisors to be moved over and forwards. My orthodontist often talked about how he used my case to talk to other orthodontists at conferences, so apparently the work he did on my teeth, and the good result that came of it, was a rare case. I got my braces off right before my senior pictures, so I had them for five years. If we can help Samantha avoid all that I had to go through with my teeth, I am happy to help her in any way that I can. And it is certainly not her fault at all.
That evening I was out in the back yard, I decided to check on Samantha's caterpillar. Back a week ago, the kids found this huge green caterpillar crawling on a plant in our back yard. I wish I would have taken a picture of it because I had never seen something so big. The picture below is what it looked like, and from searching on the internet afterwards, my best guess is that it was a luna moth caterpillar. I got Samantha a glass jar with a lid with holes already in it for her to put the caterpillar in. She put a couple sticks in it for the caterpillar to climb on, and she put some leaves from the plant it was climbing on when they found it. The next morning, Samantha couldn't wait to go outside and check on her caterpillar, and it was already building itself its cocoon on the top of the jar. It was pretty incredible to see the silky strands that it weaved around itself. We decided to keep the caterpillar in its jar outside, since the cocoon would have been outside anyways, but I encouraged Samantha to keep the jar up in their tree house so that it wouldn't get knocked over or rained on. You can see the cocoon at the top of the jar in the pictures below. So Samantha is eagerly awaiting the day that she can hopefully watch the caterpillar emerge from the cocoon as a luna moth. She even has plans to bring the jar with us to Upland if it hasn't emerged yet. I hope for her sake that we do get to see it and that it doesn't just die inside the cocoon or something like that. I love that she is interested in nature and how things work and grow. I love that she isn't afraid of bugs and actually goes looking for them in the "woods" in our back yard. I love her curious mind that is always eager to learn about the world around her. I hope she never loses that curiosity and is always learning something new.
Friday we had special plans, as there was a MOPS play date scheduled at the Garlyn Zoo. Several families planned to meet there at about 11:00 to explore the zoo and eat picnic lunches. After getting ready, getting our lunches, and getting gas, we left shortly before 10:00. The drive to Garlyn Zoo is about an hour and fifteen minutes, and after a little bit of work (playing JJ Heller's lullaby CD and rocking his car seat back and forth), Owen fell asleep and took a nice, good nap on our way there.
Samantha and Aedan could hardly wait to get into the zoo. We got a discounted group rate, which was nice, and I got a bag of feed and cones for the kids to feed the animals, as well as three apples so we could feed the bears. Since we got the food, the first thing they wanted to do was feed the animals. We stopped at the deer first, but they were too strong and kept stealing the whole cone out of the kids' hands instead of just eating the food, so we decided to go over to the goats instead to feed them scoops of our food. Samantha and Aedan loved this part, and they tried to feed the little ones that were getting overrun by the big ones. Last year when we came with Samantha's kindergarten class at the end of the year, Aedan was too afraid to feed the animals, but definitely not this year.
After walking around for a little while and seeing some other animals, Owen started to get grumpy in his stroller, which I figured was mostly because he was getting hungry, so we decided to exit the zoo and eat our picnic lunch at the tables outside. We purposely packed meat and cheese sandwiches, bananas, and crackers so that we wouldn't attract as many bees. Samantha, in particular, is very afraid of bees flying around her, she always has been, so I try to be sensitive to that. They were being a little slow at eating because meat and cheese sandwiches are not their favorite thing. However, we lucked out because the bees largely left us alone when it was just us sitting outside. As time went on, more and more people came to sit down to eat lunch, and they brought food that the bees were very interested in. We quickly finished up so we could get out of there, away from the bees, and into the zoo to see some more animals.
Our first stop was a new building right by the entrance that had lots of interesting animals in it like ring-tailed lemurs, various snakes, tarantulas, bats, lizards, iguanas, turtles, skunks, and the favorite of everyone, this macaque monkey. They rescued him from someone who did not take care of him properly, so he had a lot of nervous tendencies and somewhat neurotic behavior, but he was very active, jumping, climbing, hanging, and playing with his toys. The kids thought he was great to watch, even Owen was mesmerized as we just stood there and watched the monkey play around.
Once Owen got tired of being still in that building, we moved on to see some more animals. On our way into the previous building, we noticed some eggs under the edge of the store building and then on our way out, we saw the hen underneath, sitting on her eggs. Samantha thought it was so cool to see the mommy taking care of her babies like that and wanted to take a picture.
We saw all kinds of other animals as we walked around the zoo: lions, a tiger, a cougar, an alligator, a porcupine, a camel, and many others that I can't remember. We just took our time walking around, observing the animals, and having a great time together. I think this was really the first outing that I had taken all three kids on all by myself, especially this far away from home.
At the end of carnivore alley were the bears, and the kids were excited to put their apples through the pipes that went straight into the bears' enclosure. They were very eager to come up to the fence to get their treat. This one even stood with his nose at the end of the pipe, hoping another apple would come rolling down. I even got Owen out of the stroller so he could put an apple in the pipe to feed the bears.
After walking past the goats and down to where the reindeer and white-tailed deer were, there was a new exhibit with some water that held some ducks and black swans. The kids were getting tired, so we all just enjoyed standing there watching the ducks chase each other and the swans stick their necks so far into the water looking for food that their bottoms went straight up into the air.
As we continued on in the zoo, pretty much all the other MOPS families had left, but we were still enjoying ourselves and everyone was doing well, so we enjoyed taking our time to watch the animals. We watched this zookeeper give water to the llamas and emus, spraying them with water as well to help cool them off. I loved observing all three kids just watching with great curiosity, soaking in all there was to see in the animals around them. I was afraid that Owen would get tired of being cooped up in his stroller all day, but he really didn't seem to mind because there was enough for him to look at that kept him interested. This was his first trip to the zoo where he was really old enough to notice things, and he found the animals very interesting. I knew if I got him out of the stroller, he would want to crawl around, and I didn't want him crawling around in the dirt/wood chips where all the birds were walking around as well. Even though this zoo isn't quite as big or fancy as the Cincinnati Zoo, which we loved visiting so much, the kids definitely enjoyed it, and it was a wonderful excursion for the day. With the new add-ons, they definitely had more to offer, and we will have to add this to our list of things to do at least once each summer.
There were so many birds that just wandered free around the zoo: hens, roosters, peacocks, guinea fowl, and lot of little babies everywhere, too!
Before we left for the day, the kids wanted to stop one more time to watch the crazy monkey, and then we took a picture with the Garlyn Zoo sign. The kids did so well for me that day, and it was such an enjoyable day together. They listened well, they were respectful, and we had a wonderful day. I was a little apprehensive going in to the day, but I was pleasantly surprised by how well the day went. I'm so glad we were able to do this trip together.
That Friday, August 17th was the day Owen turned 11 months old, and although I didn't take any pictures of him with a sign, I got some other great pictures of him throughout the day at the zoo and once we got home. After nursing Owen, he was being so cute and snuggly with me, just resting his head up on my shoulder, perfectly content being in my arms. Well, when I came upstairs, I asked Ben to take a picture of Owen and me together. I don't have many pictures of just the two of us, and isn't his smile just so great in this one? I love that he still has his little dimples, and that his hair is getting long in the back and starting to curl up. I'm glad that he loves to give us hugs and cuddles.
The other best way to describe our little 11 month old is through this video of him toddling around. He's getting better and better at walking, especially when he has motivation to come and get something. Owen is definitely our most mobile kid, as Samantha and Aedan didn't start taking steps until 14 or 15 months. However, I don't think it's going to be long before he is a proficient walker. :)
Before bed time that night, I was saying good night to the kids, and they all came in for a good night hug. My day was full of wonderful memories with my three little loves, and there is nothing that makes my heart happier than being surrounded by my family like this. I love them so much. They are the world to me.
Saturday ended up being a much busier day than I anticipated. After sleeping in in the morning, we took our time having breakfast and getting ready, letting Owen take a morning nap at home. Then, we went over to Canada for something called a Fringe Festival that had free activities for kids. We found some tables set up where the kids could make dream catchers, and I sat down with Samantha and Aedan to help them make them. It was quite the involved craft, and while I helped the big kids, Ben walked around with Owen in the stroller along the river. It's fun to see a view of the American side from the Canadian side. (Although I think it's much nicer on the Canadian side.)
The craft took us almost an hour and a half to complete, much longer than we anticipated, but Samantha was having such a good time and loves to do crafts like that, so we wanted to let her finish it how she wanted it to be. Here are the kids with their finished crafts, dressed up in costumes. Samantha was so proud of her dream catcher that she worked on so hard by herself, with really very little help from anyone. We were definitely going to hang these up in their rooms. There were too pretty not to.
The rest of the day was busy because we were invited to our neighbor's house for a birthday party for their daughter who was turning four. She calls Samantha and Aedan her best friends, and the kids were excited to go on the other side of the fence into the neighbor's back yard. It was good to be able to sit and visit with our neighbors and get to know them better, and we appreciated them inviting us over. We definitely need to invite them over for dinner sometime and plan a time for our puppies to get together and smell each other to hopefully prevent them from barking like crazy at each other all the time.
Owen napped while we were over at the neighbor's house, and then we left to go to Ben's end of the season get together with his softball team. We drove down to Rudyard and brought food for a cook out. It was fun to get together with them in a casual setting where we could all just hang out and talk and our kids could run around outside and play. The kids were pretty tired after the busy day we had with lots of fun activities, so they didn't make the best choices that evening, fought with each other too much, and we ended the evening with Aedan falling down and crying. However, it has been so nice to have friends to get together with, and it's wonderful to have families that we get along with that have kids that get along with our kids as well. I hope we continue to build these friendships even into the busy school year.
(Blog about August 12-18, 2018)
I was a little worried about Samantha's appointment just because last year we discovered so many issues with her teeth where we had to go down to Petoskey to see a Pediatric Dentist. This time they noticed a small cavity on her upper left side, but everything else looked good, thankfully. However, they did mention concern for the overcrowding in her mouth. She has lost all four front teeth on the top and the bottom, and her four bottom teeth have come in, but they are definitely crooked. She has gotten her top front teeth in, but not the incisors on either side. They showed me the x-rays of her mouth, and they were so fascinating because you could see all the teeth waiting under her gums, ready to come in at their proper time. The front incisors were in place to come in, but there just isn't space between Samantha's teeth for them to emerge. They were concerned that the teeth might not be erupting because of that, or that they may start coming in crooked or in the wrong place, so they encouraged me to make an appointment to see an orthodontist to see what they would recommend doing. Samantha has a pretty large space between her front teeth, so they may use some sort of appliance to move her front teeth closer together to allow space for the other teeth to come in. I will definitely call to make an appointment, and we will see what they say. Samantha kept apologizing after her appointment, like she thought it was her fault that she had problems with her teeth. I kept telling her it was okay, that it wasn't her fault, and that she probably just inherited teeth like mine. My mouth was always overcrowded, too, and my incisors came in behind my front teeth because they had no space to come in the right place. I remember being called shark in elementary school because I had two rows of teeth like a shark does. Then, starting in 8th grade, I got braces to move my teeth over to open space for my incisors to be moved over and forwards. My orthodontist often talked about how he used my case to talk to other orthodontists at conferences, so apparently the work he did on my teeth, and the good result that came of it, was a rare case. I got my braces off right before my senior pictures, so I had them for five years. If we can help Samantha avoid all that I had to go through with my teeth, I am happy to help her in any way that I can. And it is certainly not her fault at all.
That evening I was out in the back yard, I decided to check on Samantha's caterpillar. Back a week ago, the kids found this huge green caterpillar crawling on a plant in our back yard. I wish I would have taken a picture of it because I had never seen something so big. The picture below is what it looked like, and from searching on the internet afterwards, my best guess is that it was a luna moth caterpillar. I got Samantha a glass jar with a lid with holes already in it for her to put the caterpillar in. She put a couple sticks in it for the caterpillar to climb on, and she put some leaves from the plant it was climbing on when they found it. The next morning, Samantha couldn't wait to go outside and check on her caterpillar, and it was already building itself its cocoon on the top of the jar. It was pretty incredible to see the silky strands that it weaved around itself. We decided to keep the caterpillar in its jar outside, since the cocoon would have been outside anyways, but I encouraged Samantha to keep the jar up in their tree house so that it wouldn't get knocked over or rained on. You can see the cocoon at the top of the jar in the pictures below. So Samantha is eagerly awaiting the day that she can hopefully watch the caterpillar emerge from the cocoon as a luna moth. She even has plans to bring the jar with us to Upland if it hasn't emerged yet. I hope for her sake that we do get to see it and that it doesn't just die inside the cocoon or something like that. I love that she is interested in nature and how things work and grow. I love that she isn't afraid of bugs and actually goes looking for them in the "woods" in our back yard. I love her curious mind that is always eager to learn about the world around her. I hope she never loses that curiosity and is always learning something new.
Samantha and Aedan could hardly wait to get into the zoo. We got a discounted group rate, which was nice, and I got a bag of feed and cones for the kids to feed the animals, as well as three apples so we could feed the bears. Since we got the food, the first thing they wanted to do was feed the animals. We stopped at the deer first, but they were too strong and kept stealing the whole cone out of the kids' hands instead of just eating the food, so we decided to go over to the goats instead to feed them scoops of our food. Samantha and Aedan loved this part, and they tried to feed the little ones that were getting overrun by the big ones. Last year when we came with Samantha's kindergarten class at the end of the year, Aedan was too afraid to feed the animals, but definitely not this year.
Our first stop was a new building right by the entrance that had lots of interesting animals in it like ring-tailed lemurs, various snakes, tarantulas, bats, lizards, iguanas, turtles, skunks, and the favorite of everyone, this macaque monkey. They rescued him from someone who did not take care of him properly, so he had a lot of nervous tendencies and somewhat neurotic behavior, but he was very active, jumping, climbing, hanging, and playing with his toys. The kids thought he was great to watch, even Owen was mesmerized as we just stood there and watched the monkey play around.
At the end of carnivore alley were the bears, and the kids were excited to put their apples through the pipes that went straight into the bears' enclosure. They were very eager to come up to the fence to get their treat. This one even stood with his nose at the end of the pipe, hoping another apple would come rolling down. I even got Owen out of the stroller so he could put an apple in the pipe to feed the bears.
While I helped Samantha and Aedan with the craft, Owen crawled around inside this area with boxes like forts, and Aedan joined in after awhile when I took over the winding around of the thread for his dream catcher. (He didn't quite have enough patience for this craft.) It looked like the boys were having a fun time with the boxes though!
Owen napped while we were over at the neighbor's house, and then we left to go to Ben's end of the season get together with his softball team. We drove down to Rudyard and brought food for a cook out. It was fun to get together with them in a casual setting where we could all just hang out and talk and our kids could run around outside and play. The kids were pretty tired after the busy day we had with lots of fun activities, so they didn't make the best choices that evening, fought with each other too much, and we ended the evening with Aedan falling down and crying. However, it has been so nice to have friends to get together with, and it's wonderful to have families that we get along with that have kids that get along with our kids as well. I hope we continue to build these friendships even into the busy school year.
(Blog about August 12-18, 2018)
