She Missed

For those of you who've seen Daddy Day Care, there is the "I Missed" scene.

    That was my morning yesterday.

    Someone had an upset tummy while she was asleep and came out to the living room covered in GROSS!
    She's sensitive to being yucky so I had to sacrifice my shirt to hold her close and happily inform her that it's Tubby Time.

    I washed her while Daddy washed ALL the bedding and Bubble's favorite book, Brown Bear, Brown Bear. After I set her up with a movie, I helped, washing the wall, some dolls she got into and the trail of GROSS on the floor that winded down the hallway.

   I ended up scrubbing the mattress until I was late for work.


    Before my oodles of kids, situations like this would have horrified me and made me sick to my stomach.
    Now, AC (after children) I was unfazed by the GROSS and my main concern was my possibly sick little girl and making sure she was getting fluids during the chaos.


    How was your morning?

Always Money for Diapers

    We don't make much.

    We survive on a very tight budget (YNAB if you're interested), however, last night when I discovered that we were in fact out of diapers for our oldest two babies, we found the funds!

    Always diapers! Always

Carousel

It's the little things in life that make it so fun.
Little things like little girls and getting to the park and back, fully dressed and in one piece.

I Think I Can!

Can I. . .
Get the girls fed, brush teeth and hair and get them dressed before noon today?

I think I can!

Can I . . .
Pack them all up and enjoy a day at our local children's museum today?

I think I can!

Can I . . .
Keep them happy and playful while we're out of the house today?

I think I can!


Time to give today a try!

Ug Work

    I don't take a break on the weekends, I work.

    I work at 10:45 today for $9/hr until 6:00pm and I really don't want to anymore.


    I'd love to move somewhere better for my family.

    Somewhere with more parents with 3+ kids.
    Somewhere that pays more than $9/hr on average.
    Somewhere where there are nice kids for my oldest daughter to befriend.


    I'm not there yet.
    Right now I have to leave my month and a half old baby to work, and I can tell you, it's so hard, but it keeps us living in our house. It keeps diapers on those cute little butts, so whenever I have to drag myself through two delicious cups of coffee before I can stop resenting the day, I hug my girls bye-bye and provide what I can for them
                                        . . . until I can provide more for them.

Extra Love

    Isn't it amazing how much some extra love can help?

    Extra love is like a panacea (cure-all) for all kid things.

    Oh no! A fall down?
I prescribe a kiss or two.

    Throwing?
I prescribe a "throwing can hurt people, Honey," Followed by four extra hugs for the next two weeks.


    Jealousy?
I prescribe movie night with family cuddles and optional popcorn.



    One of my daughters is quite pestery. She thoroughly enjoys knocking stuff over and throwing and all sorts of other naughty things, and if she gets caught and gets negative attention, BONUS! It's like icing on her little cake of mischief.
    She's not doing it for the attention. If we ignore her, she will continue to throw things or draw on her face, she just thinks being caught is fun, like hide and seek.


    However, I've been cuddling her at night, being super sweet and going way out of my way to hug her more and make her feel more loved by her momma.
    I have to say, it's really, really made her a better little girl.

   If you love your babies, make them know it. It makes life so much easier

Waking up. . . dum dun duuuun, the Icy!

   One of my kids is hard to wake up, not in that it's difficult to coax her awake, in that it's hard for me to mentally prepare to parent her.

   I often find myself hoping to wake her up at 7 am, but procrastinating until 9am.

    I feel really bad that I find her to be so challenging, and I make sure she feels loved, and that we have fun together all the time.

  With hugs and quiet time, her tantrums and throwing as gotten a lot better, but she's still the one that takes the most energy.

    Saying that, aside from a few hours, I can't imagine what I'd do with her if she were gone for a day.

So Much Pumping!

    Since my newest daughter is a whole six weeks (or month and a half) old, and I have to work to keep us scraping by, she's developed nipple confusion! NooOOOoooOOOoo.

   So, she only loves the bottle so I've been pumping and pumping and pumping breast milk to keep her, not only fed while I'm home, but to feed her while I'm at work.
   Holy Crap!

   We ran out of our filtered water, so for a few days, I switched from drinking a half gallon of yummy water, to a half gallon of tap water.
    I didn't really think it'd make much of a difference, but I will tell you that I got so incredibly dehydrated. My mouth was dry and my milk supply dropped off by 12 oz. TWELVE OUNCES!
   I've been desperately squeezing anything I can, and as a result, I'm sore and exhausted while I chug water and try to make up for that lost milk. I've been dipping into the frozen reserves and now I have nothing for Thursday, when I work. :/ Lame.

   The hell's up with tap water!?

Do You Ever. . .

    Do you ever wake up anytime from 3-6 am due to your kids, fail to blink your eyes open as you stumble through the hallway and think,
   "This is ok, I wanted to wake up early to workout anyway."

   And then you put on a movie for the tiny awake child, because yes you need the electronic babysitter when you feel like you might pass out like a narcoleptic 'cause you're running on, oh about 3 hours of sleep? And you really don't want to wake up to permanent marker on the walls, again, which, where did they even find a permanent marker? Didn't you put them ALL up in the pen drawer that you moved up on top the fridge the last time?
    Anyway, get milk. Maybe the tiny will go back to sleep on the couch and you'll have just enough time to drift off in your computer chair for 15 minutes before your alarm goes off again, which for reason you didn't hear the first time because you must have turned it off in your sleep.

   Time to start the day!

   Crap! What about the workout!?

Birfday!

    My third baby turned 2 yesterday!

    That little girl has so much emotion!

    She wanted outside all naked in the morning, so I got her sisters ready for a park adventure. Birthday girl didn't want clothes, so eventually I figured she wanted to stay with Daddy, but when we opened the door, naked birthday girl rushed out!

   Like a seasoned mommy, I grabbed a quick dress and some warm fleece pants and threw them on her before we were off our porch.

   The skills you acquire and perfect as a multi-parent are funny.

   I've been able to pick up things with my feet since I was a child, but now I can open doors and throw away garbage without hands.


   What's your favorite parent skill?

Feelin' Down

    I work at an arcade. I go to work every day and it seems like I can woo any tiny kiddo into the darkness of laser tag. They go in trembling, on the verge of tears, and they come out bouncing around, ready for me to turn the mind-boggling loud music on.
   I cuddle little crying cuties who've lost their siblings, their new crappy toy or candy and I feel productive. I feel awesome that I can help anyone's kids.
   I teach parents the I Feel Statements. "I feel _______ when you ________ because ______ and what I need is _________." It helps them be better parents. All the parenting books and classes and research bubbles up within me and I feel like a brimming fount of parenting awesomeness! . . .


   Until I get home.

    When I'm looking up how to teach kids how to wipe with peanut butter to teach my 10 yr old something I thought she got down, 5-7 years ago, when she was 3-5 years old and still potty training, I feel pretty bad about myself.
    When I come home and my 2 yr old with her chronic anger is slapping her sisters and her father, I feel all of my awesomeness drain right out of my toes, seeping through the floor and into the ground, so deeply beneath our home that I can never hope to even imagine of getting it back. It's like I never put years into being the good parent I feel like I am when I'm not around my own, adorable kiddos.

My Difficult Daughter

    My oldest daughter is 10. She's from a previous marriage and I love her entirely.

    Without realizing it, she can be blunt, awkward and sometimes straight up mean with her words, but she's a sweetheart who is working on saying the nicest truth, and loves her growing fan club of tiny sisters.


    My problem is that she's come back from her father's house with a type of food poisoning called campylobacter.
    It's horrible. It makes her constantly smelly, gives her horrible tummy cramps and since she doesn't take showers at his house, she gets very unhygienic sores on her bottom.



    It's so difficult to get her to more independent while she's over there. Even when I call her and remind her to shower, I have no way of knowing if she will.

    It's difficult to not raise her Friday and Saturday.
    It's difficult to see her hurt and not be able help.

Raffie the Lamb

   We have a lot of giraffes in the house, like, four I can think of without looking, so when someone got my daughter a Lamb Hottie from  Aroma Home, she named it "Raffie," like all the other raffies in the house.

    They are filled with a lavender hot pack that you warm in the microwave and they are wonderful!

Five Things

    I'm all about self-improvement and one thing that keeps coming up is the number five.
    Warren Buffet has a brilliant Two-List System where he says to work on only the five most important things to you.

   My top 5 would be related to creating and sticking to a consistent schedule:

• Number One is, and will always be, Be the Best Parent I Can Be
• Number Two is, and will also probably always be, Explore New Ways to Make Money
• Make teeth brushing teeth a priority through out my family
• Pump milk more than twice a day. (Quite a challenge)
• WAKE UP ON TIME!! (The most challenging)

I Think I Have Girls

    There is a bunch of things in my house which makes me suspect there is a girl infestation in my house. What do you think?

There's a bunch of frillies, waiting for a hand washing in my tub.

I caught a glimpse of one tearing apart the couch!!

Pile of blankets? Or not?

I found one in the cabinets!!

My Daughter Loves Creepy Crawlies!

    Ok, it's not a secret that Bubbles loves spiders and bugs, but going through the piles of adorable baby pictures I have in my phone, I realized how very much she loves bugs.
    We have to take a picture before they go to live outside. Three house spiders and one beautiful moth. Crazy

Diaper Reward Addiction

    You know, even with four babies, I've never gotten enough points from any Diaper Reward System to get any rewards, but every time I see a code, I have a strange impulse to log on and type it in.

   I feel it's an addiction!

   Huggies, Pampers. Every time I go to throw away GARBAGE, but I see a string of numbers and/ or letters, I pause, and despite 99% of my brain that screams
    "JUST THROW IT AWAY!!" That 1% pulls that empty bag of wipes back so I can lob off that code and throw it in the pile of lobbed off codes by my husband's computer so I can hopefully remember to type it in later.

    I've gotten nothing from this relationship but a mess, what compels me to continue with it?

    AHGHHH ADDICTION!

Best Parenting Book I've Ever Read

     I've done a lot of psychological study. I've read a ton of psychological studies in my spare time. If I didn't mind being away from my babies for too long, I'd have gone to school to be a psychiatrist.

    Having said that, I've read a LOT of parenting books. Lots and I have to say, the best I've ever seen came from a brain scientist.

    Brain Rules for Baby by John Medina  goes through brain development and every thing he says he has fact checked so much, that I trust his opinion alone. I don't like to state facts unless I've seen them in three unique places.

   It's an amazing book that is available for free on kindle

   It goes through the science of brain growth and beyond, throwing in great analogies and occasionally his own personal parenting style.

   I recommend it to any parent, new or seasoned. I also recommend it anyone interested in psychology

Mommy Blog Begins

    After starting my blog, My Beloved Bipolar, I noticed that I talk a lot about my kiddos, and that makes sense, since I have four and I love them dearly and, well, my husband and live with them.
    I figured that I might be able to write more about my husband if I started a mommy blog to gush about my kids in.

    Guess we'll see how well it works!

    At first I was resistant to starting a mommy blog, because I didn't know who reads them, but then I realized, I read them!

   I want to connect with more parents! I want to hear about their trips to the park, I want to see their fall crafts, their recommendations for baby products and hear all about their pets.

   Off I go on the mommy blog adventure! Wish me luck!