Halloween!

    Halloween! I'm so excited!

    My oldest is a kangaroo. Next is Remi the rat. Next is a bear and the littlest is a flower.

    Our only car broke last Thursday, so we won't be able to explore as much as I was planning on, but that's fine. We'll figure it out.

    Halloween was always my favorite holiday. Not because of the candy, or the parties, or dressing up, or all the scary stuff. It's always been my favorite holiday because it wasn't one where I had to dress up all uncomfortably in scratchy, lacy dresses and eat around my mother's family.

Repition

    I'm not really sure why kids want to watch their favorite movie over and over and over again, but I'm going to be honest, I never grew out of it. There are a few songs I could literally listen to all day without getting bored of them.
    I generally dislike using the T.V as a crutch, but I do.
    At 4 am, when one of my girls just decides to be awake, and it's too early for coffee, because I'd really like to go back to sleep, but I'm for realsies too tired to open my eyes properly, I turn on a movie.
    Don't get me wrong, I'd love to continue watching our weekend movie. We make popcorn and assemble on the couch for cuddles together.
    It's a refreshing, end-of-the-week treat.

    We were doing so good for a while. We'd set a "one movie a day" limit and we stuck with it for a few weeks.
 
   Inertia; something in motion will remain in motion, unless something stops it.
   It seems like, as soon as it comes on, it stays on. It's like it's so much easier to walk over, change a disk, wait through the previews to press play than it is to walk over and press the three power buttons. (For those curious out there, one for the DVD player, one for the T.V and one for the sound system).
    When it comes on before I'm awake, I feel like I've lost the battle.

    I've kept the sink clear of dirty dishes for the past two days. I've kept Lulu's teef brushed every night for the past two weeks and I've managed to give our teeny tiniest her K drops nearly ever day since she was born.
    It's my Monday today, but next week, I think I'll add the one movie goal back in.
    I seem to have the hardest time keeping with a routine or schedule, but I'm going to keep working at it until something sticks.

Breezy's Babies today

    Babies are crazy.

    The past few months, I think I've been holding a child 95% of the time I spend at home, and so has my husband.
    It's hard to clean the eternal pile of stuffies on the floor, or do dishes while babies are awake, but it's amazing.
    I love bringing my daughter's monkey to life. There is hardly anything more fun than chasing one around on all fours growling, and then to have another growl back at you.

    I love playing with my kids. It's amazing that I have that opportunity, nearly every moment of every day.
    To have the four little faces and my husband all looking at me lovingly, it's just awesome!

Baby Blues

    I've been sleeping on the couch quite a lot more than I usually would lately, because of our new little addition.

    I can't say it's harder having a new baby for those who are mentally different because I don't have many families of neurotypical people that I know to compare against.

    I think we're doing pretty good. We are generally happy, yes sleep deprived, but we are more compassionate and understanding with our kids than most people I see out and about our town.
    I do miss my husband though.

    I miss cuddling him and smelling him while I sleep.

Consistency is hard.

    I love it when we get through a week or two where we go to the park, eat healthy dinners together, get all the hair brushed and get all the dishes cleaned in the same day, and limit ourselves to one movie a day.
    That feels great.

    It's lasted for 2 months before! BUT, there is always one day where four cups get left in the sink. A baby gets sick so we watch Peep all day and eat chicken soup. Maybe it's stormy or 6 degrees outside so we don't end up at the park. It seems like all it takes is one misstep and then we have bored, naked babies watching T.V all day with messy hair, refusing all forms of dinner and staying up in bed until midnight.
    It really bothers me that this phase will last longer than our "put-together" phase.

    I'm really trying to figure out what we do differently when things are going well, but I don't know.

    Hopefully, someday, we'll get it figured out and our "put-together" phase will last longer than anything else.

Could I handle another?

   I met someone recently who had been successfully selling a book that he'd wrote for years and it rekindled my passion for writing novels.

    He recommended starting a blog in about my novels, but considering how hard it's been to blog today in between taking care of my cute little girls, I don't know if I could manage yet another blog.

Sign Language

    My two-year-old daughter doesn't use many spoken words. It's usually "Nooooo" when I ask her if she wants a particular food. 

   I don't know if she's Aspie, like her momma. I don't know if she has some other thing that makes her not want to talk. I just know that my little baby girl is very frustrated because she can't communicate what she wants.

    I've been picking up Sign Language words for things she frequently wants, such as;

"Bath"

"Milk"

"Tea"

"Chocolate"

I couldn't find pepperoni, so I found "Meat"

    She hasn't used any yet, but she is beginning to relate the actions with the things she wants. I'm hopeful. 

Considering School

    I'm 28, er, 29. Honestly, ever since I turned 21, I kind of stopped caring about my age, however, I've been really really thinking hard this morning, and I think I'd like to go to college and become a psychiatrist, or at least a psychologist.

    The thing that scares me the most about going to school is the idea of missing out on my girls' childhoods.

    I don't have the mental fortitude, or willpower to be away from them very much, so being away at school while our tiny is learning to walk just breaks my heart.
    I've always wanted to start a business or start some sort of passive income generator, but the truth is, out of all the attempts I've made, none have worked out so far so I'm still working.
    My youngest daughter just turned two months old, and I've been working since she was three weeks old.
    My grand ideas of having a business and being able to spend time with my girls is taking quite some time, so I guess, if I'm going to be gone, multiple days every week, I might as well be going to school for something that can lift us up out of poverty.


    I know my Aspie brain is pretty cool, and I know that with the right support, I could be doing pretty advanced math, but, I'm perpetually the 9 yr old 4th grader who was put in special ed math for crying.
    Yes, I do see it as a punishment. Yes it did stunt my math abilities, and yes, I would probably have done the same if I were my teacher.
    After all the panic attacks and suicidal thoughts I had because of elementary school, I really wish there was a way to magically have gone to school.
    I do wish I'd learned what I wanted to be with everyone else, when we were still round-faced, 20 yr old kids.

    But I take this joy I've found in life and wrap it around me like a big, fluffy blankie.

    It's time. Wish me luck.

Fishy Update

    Thankfully, Jesse has had a full recovery!

     No sad little girls today!

    Jesse is a common goldfish, a.k.a "a feeder fish." Common goldfish tend to be very skittish and shy, probably because they are breed to be eaten, so it took a bit longer for Jesse to become friendly than his late tankmate, who was a friendly fantail goldfish.

Gakou Kimerly 2010 - 2015

    However, now that he's an older fishy, Jessee LOVES attention, and he LOVES the little girls who LOVE to feed him fishy treats out of their little hands. Mostly Bubbles. 

    His tank is directly behind our table, so in the morning when my husband and I are enjoying our wee, baby-free hours in the morning, sipping coffee and chatting, Jesse is right there, blub-blubbing at us and dancing so we can see him. 

    Our fish is a pet, not a decoration. He'd love to be with us all the time, like a golden retriever. When we clean the tank, he's rubbing on our arms and nibbling those treat-giving fingers. 

    I'm so glad he's still with us. 

Finally!

    My oldest daughter is bright. Very bright. She could write the alphabet before she was 3 and was dividing when she was 5, so when her teachers in kindergarten said she had trouble remembering the four letters they were learning, I was rather concerned.

    I've always felt like I could teach her more than she could learn at school, however, she was 6 before she had any siblings. I wanted her to go to school to socialize since I didn't know anyone with kids her age and I myself am not great at socializing so the idea of joining groups and classes for her to be able to find friends was just terrifying at the time.

     A few parent-teacher conferences into her school life and I discovered quite quickly that friendship is not a concern of any of her past teachers.
    Most of them could not tell me if she was playing with kids at all.

    It was terribly, terribly heartbreaking.

   Since she was born, I've been fighting to make that little girl's life as happy and nice as I possibly can, but it seems like the world has been fighting back pretty hard when it comes to her, until yesterday.

    Yesterday was the first breath of fresh air I've ever had while fighting for my daughter.

    We went to a psychological testing appointment and for the very first time, she didn't tell me there was nothing wrong with my daughter.
    When my little girl started crying about not being able to make friends, the psychologist suggested a family counselor who'd be able to put us in touch with social groups.

    I am so relieved to finally have help.

   

4 am, again-again

All three of my teenest tinies woke up. Not sure why, but they were easy to get back to sleep today.

In these dark, comfortable wee hours of the morning, it's almost nice to enjoy these stolen cuddles.

    Next August, I'll be 30 and I was really thinking about that yesterday.


   When I was 12, I had these grand dreams of saving money so that when I turned 18, I could buy some land and plant a tree and then build a house, and I figured that if I planted a tree then, by the time I had kids in my mid to late 30's the tree would be tall enough to be a good place for a tree-house.
    Such ambitious goals.

    I never managed to save more than $200, and even that didn't stay. so here I am, 29.

    It really is crazy, and while I'm typing away at 4 am to work to that goal of having enough money for everything we need, I just really love this life.

    We don't have enough room, and honestly, I'm kind of giving up on Missoula because I'm not finding many nice people here, but sitting with my little girl on my lap is so awesome.

    She's being wiggly and painful on my lap, but these little cuddles are worth so many unpleasant nights at work. They are worth all the sleep deprivation and every poo diaper changed.

    It's so amazing how precious my kids are to me. I really appreciate them, and my husband.

Oh Fishy, Fishy Fish

As a mommy of four girls, three of which are under four, I don't sleep much.

    I'm too tired to blog today.

    Sometime in 2011, when my oldest daughter was about 5, I let her pick out a fish.
    Surprize! She, of course, picked out a 20 cent feeder fish, half white, half orange, and named him Jesse, because, at the time, she named everything Jessee.

Baby Jesse in 2011

    It was good, that he was 20 cents, it was bad that he was a feeder fish, which remain untreated when they are sick and are generally not cared for as well as fish that sell for more than a dollar.

    Well, Jesse is a beloved part of our family now, being hand fed every morning by my husband, me or very lovingly fed by Bubbles, our animal loving mini-momma.

    Yesterday, while feeding him, Bubbles mentioned that he had an owie on his tail.

    He had gone through an infection that resolved itself the day I got him some tetracycline, so to see it crop up again, I freaked out and dropped the tetracycline in the tank, forgetting that that will kill off the helpful bacteria in his filter.

    Fun fun.

Big Jesse in 2016

    Also, we had run out of his fishy treats, And, the heater in his tank wasn't working well enough to keep a sick fishy warm.
 
    Without his treats, Jesse, a.k.a Fishy got sadder and sadder. He barely breathed and sat on the bottom of the tank, and it seemed like something else needed to be done.

    I sat next to him and pet his tank to remind him of all the krill we hand feed him every morning, and he stared at me. Even with his tiny fishy brain, he acknowledged me with sad, sick eyes, and I was sad too.
    When that fish finally does go, I know a lot of little girls who will be quite sad.

    Well, I ended up running to the store, late at night, or super early this morning, I suppose, at 1 am.

    After much deliberation over Walmart's very limited fish food and aquarium heater selection, I ran home like a superhero to Save Our Pet!

    He ate five pinches of shrimps which was all the food he'd had since he stopped eating the day before, and this morning, he's swimming around like he doesn't have a bright red tail.

   It's good to see.

Pictures

    So, as someone who's identity was "borrowed" and used nefariously as a child, it makes me really nervous to put obvious pictures of my children's faces online.

    I guess even the creepy way people use pictures of other people's kids isn't necessarily something I'd be honestly afraid of, but in general, I think people sacrifice WAY too much of their children's privacy with the amount of adorable pictures they put on social media.

    This isn't to say I don't love, love, LOVE the pictures.

    I know a few other mothers who have four babies themselves, and every time I see a collage they post on Facebook, I like them, with the like button and in my heart, I really do like them, but I'm still going to avoid doing it myself.

    Having said that, I discovered a new-to-me option on the gallery app of my Note5 where you can make collages!
    So fun! I've made so many adorable collages, and I'm so tempted to just spam my blog with their adorable little faces, but I can't.

    I cannot do that and feel good about myself. I can't do that and feel safe.
   

    I still have a deep desire to show off my cuties before they get bigger, well, actually I have a deep desire to show them off, at each step.

    I want to share, I want to meet more parents and connect and gush over the mutual cuteness of each other's kids, but I guess I'll just have to go "old-school" by making friends, getting numbers and texting pictures.

4 am, agian

   Oh sleep.
 
Ode to sleep:

   Oh sleep.
   How lovely are your features
   I love NOT falling asleep while driving because I've rested so restfully in my bed.
       I miss you.



    The biggest sacrifice to babies is sleep. (Period) in an absolute sense. Absolutely absolute. Goodbye sleep.

    . . . She might be out again. I'm gonna go curl up with her on the couch.
They give the best cuddles!

Don't You Wish?

    "Don't you wish one of your girls was a boy?"

    "Are you going to keep trying until you get a boy?"

    After I tell people I have four daughters, I get these questions a lot. A LOT.


    "Don't you want to know what it'd look like if you had a boy?"
    I know what a boy would look like. He'd look just like his sisters because they look so much alike, people ask me if they are twins.

    My husband and I horrified everyone after my first pregnancy by not expressly wanting a boy.
    Why does everyone care so much?

    "Are you hoping for a boy this time?"
    Everyone asked that, everyone, with my second, third and fourth daughters.

    "We really don't care what gender it is. We love all our babies." This was our very, very honest response.

    Honestly, why? Why does gender matter so much? When my daughter smears peanut butter all over her tummy, would it be any less cute or obnoxious if she had boy parts instead? When they color or play with their fake food, or *gasp* even dolls!?! would it be any different?

   At 3 and under, absolutely not.


   Even my 10-year-old bookworm would not have been different if she was a boy. Maybe she'd wear different clothes, as a boy she could still be into her "unicorn pooping under a rainbow" t-shirt, maybe not, so I really don't understand why my deep affection for the four of my girls, despite their single gender is such a confusing and possibly slightly offensive idea. Why do I need to resent at least one of them for having the "wrong" gender?
    I really don't care if other women want "one of each." That's their thing. I just really don't care about gender.

   If we had had a boy instead of any of our girls, I would have loved him, just like I love our girls. Someday, when we have more room, we might have a boy, or adopt a boy and his boyness would have absolutely no effect on how much we loved him. Which would be heaps!

Stronger

    Last night, I got terribly nauseous. I ate a family member's food who is not particularly good at food safety, so I was kind of expecting an upset stomach and nausea, but I wasn't really prepared for the full body ache.
    From about 5pm on, moving at all was hard and it took all I had to avoid being crabby.

    Well, both Icy and Bubbles fell asleep past nap time, around 7pm, which is that terrible time where they might be down for the night, but probably not.
    Well, we let them sleep which resulted in them waking back up and staying up 'til 1 am. FUN.

    It was so cute though, when Bubbles woke up she wasn't pleased about it.
    "I awake!" She lamented angrily, cuddled in her blankies.


    Around 5 am this morning, chaos ensued. Babies woke up and woke up more babies and then there was a morning filled with screams in the darkness.
    Like the good mother I hope I am most of the time, I cooed gently to Icy. I got her a bottle, started a sleepy movie for her, brought our littlest out to the living room and then RAN TO THE BATHROOM!

    As I finished the horrible tummy experience I was expecting, I could hear a little two-year old, meandering and whimpering down the dark hallway. She sounded like a sad little lamb, lost in the woods, all abandoned and alone.
    Even though I was feeling quite miserable, and I was also very busy, I called out to her, and let her know that I was in the potty.
    She curled sadly against the bathroom door and continued to whimper at me as I reassured her.
    I'm not sure if it's a good or a bad thing, but if one leans from my toilet, one can open the door. I warned her about the smell I was currently making, but I opened the door for her, and the relieved way she waddled in and climbed up on my lap was precious.

    Sitting there, still stuck on the potty with a terrible tummy ache, holding my daughter, I realized I was stronger than I thought.
    The night before I had imagined that I couldn't handle any more of anything. That day I was planning on sinking into a warm tubby-tub and hide from the world for the rest of the day.

    Even in my potty time, it was quite obvious that she was deriving great comfort from being on my lap, with me in the way-too-bright-for-this-early-in-the-morning bathroom than she would have been getting from her warm blankets in the unsmelly living room with her movie.

    The strength we find in the dregs of our energy barrels for our children is astonishing.

Dippy Eggs

    Once upon a time. . .
             when I was a baby Breezy, my cousin and her sister loved "dippy eggs" which were over easy eggs that they'd dip their toast in.

    As a child I found the "raw in the middle" idea of over easy eggs made me, uneasy. I was horrified. Mortified. Terrified. Disgusted. Yuck.


    But then, my other cousin introduced me to a food she called "Cowboys." In V for Vendetta Gordon calls it "Eggy in the Basket."
    Apparantly they are sometimes called a "Bird's Nest"

   If you do call it "Eggy in the Basket" please do your best at the accent. It's just so much better that way.

    It's a buttered piece of toast with a circle removed from the center, usually with either a round cookie cutter or a cup's edge. An egg is fried, over-easy, in the center and the bread puck from the center is fried to, to dip in your dippy eggs.



    Well, fast forward years later and I make Cowboys for my husband. To begin with, he was also horrified and disgusted, but after about two, he began his long, loving relationship with dipping things in his dippy eggs. When he started his keto diet, he switched to dipping his bacon in over-easy eggs. He adores them.

    I make them for our kids and they also love the dippy eggs.

    Well, fast forward even more and a few weeks ago, while he's out drinking with friends.
    It's not the most pleasant day he's had. After drinks, they go out to eat and he orders "Dippy Eggs," because, well, he's always been a daddy. . . aaaaand he's never heard me refer to them with their adult title, over easy.
    Luckily for him the waiter was either a daddy himself, or served enough kids who love dippy eggs because he knew what my love was refering to.

   Tehe. woops.