Finger & thumb sucker?

All my kids have took a pacifier, some better than the others. Recently Justin has taken to sucking on his finger and/or thumb. I guess he does this to soothe himself. Last night (4:00am) , the sleeve of his pajamas must have pulled down over his hand and he was fidgeting enough to wake me up in his attempts to get to his fingers/thumb. I went into his room after listening to him fidget for a while (in a half-conscious stupor), pulled the sleeve up and exposed his fingers, and he immediately stuck them in his mouth. He did not make another peep, so I can only assume that he fell back asleep after getting his fingers into his mouth.

The older two boys have occasionally sucked their fingers, but never as much as Justin seems to. I only hope that Justin is sucking them because his gums are hurting and he is trying to relieve some of the pressure and that this is a temporary problem. One can hope:)

Vacation days

Last year or maybe two years ago, I have been at Air Handling long enough that I have earned three weeks of vacation. When I found out I was pregnant with Justin, I got stingy with my vacation days. Heaven forbid something was wrong with Justin, I wanted vacation days to fall back on in case I had to use them. Since Justin seems like a healthy young infant, I asked the other day how many vacation days I have left this year. I was told that I have eleven days of vacation remaining. I have to use them by the end of the year or lose them. Technically I would get paid for them, they just don't rollover. Getting paid for them at the end of the year is no good because I do not get a separate vacation check. It comes added to my regular paycheck. Therefore the gross amount is huge, but my net take-home isn't very good since taxes take most of that check.

Since I had so many vacation days, and I knew I had baptism to get things ready for, I took last Thursday, Friday and Monday off. I took the first two days to get things ready and it is good that I took that many days off. I spend more time cleaning up from the toys the boys scattered anywhere then I did getting any actual cleaning done. I also had a dentist appointment for myself and Nathan on Thursday. On Monday it was a day for me. I spent it in the mall starting my Christmas shopping. The only problem with that theory is that I don't know what my two sisters (in our family gift exchange) want, so I didn't get them anything. Oh well, it was nice just having a day off with no responsibilities.

Baptism

This past weekend we had baptism for Justin. Of course he was the biggest baby being baptized, but he was three months old while one of the other two babies was three weeks and not sure on the other one.

We had lunch at our house afterwards for everyone. Patty & Tony were around long enough that we ended up eating pizza with them for dinner. It was a nice Sunday.

Jinxed

I may have jinxed myself by bragging about Justin. While he was still a pretty decent baby this weekend, he could have been a lot better. He was fussy all weekend and was not content like he usually is. I would feed him, change his pants and he would be fine for a little bit then he would get fussy. He would be so tired that he couldn't fall asleep, or once he started to fall asleep, one of his brothers would wake him up. It finally dawned on me late Sunday afternoon that maybe he was getting some teeth in. I felt his gums, but did not feel anything.

I guess he was just not feeling the best, as he coughed a lot last night, and was off kilter. Hopefully I get my happy-go-lucky Justin back soon.

I'm hungry

I have posted before how Nathan never wants to eat at meal time, and gets hungry later that evening. His new habit is waiting until we turn the lights off and sit down so that everyone can calm down before bedtime to announce that he is hungry. He will announce it several times and each announcement gets louder, more of a whine and he throws himself around. Of course this either wakes Darren up or gets him riled up so that he doesn't want to go to sleep.

Last night about ten minutes before I was planning on turning the lights off, I told Nathan that if he is hungry that he needs to get a snack now as the kitchen will be closing in a few minutes. He thought it was funny that the kitchen was closing, but he did ask for something to eat. He picked out some candy and I asked him if he was sure as that wasn't going to fill him up. He said that he was sure.

I don't know if last night was a fluke, or he ate enough at dinner, but he didn't say he was hungry when the lights went out. Score one for the parents!

Be a cowboy

Nathan has started the obsession, and he has passed the fever to Darren. Every morning before daycare while I am getting them dressed, I hear one or both of the older boys say that they want to be a cowboy.

Nathan's standards of a cowboy are a lot higher than Darren's. Nathan has to have jeans on, a striped button down shirt and his cowboy boots. He has got a lot of hand-me-downs from Brad which look brand new but he doesn't want to wear any of them. The only exception is that he does want to wear Brad's old striped button down shirts from Polo, Abercrombie and GAP. I don't want him to wear those to daycare, because I don't want him to ruin the clothes for himself or his brothers down the line.

You can put almost anything on Darren and as long as he wears his cowboy boots, he considers himself a cowboy. The other day he wore sweatpants and his "cow boots." He looked quite silly, but he was happy and I have to pick my battles in the morning and that wasn't a battle worth fighting.

Straw ride

This past weekend, some friends were having a "camp out" and kids were invited. Well, it rained Friday night so the camp out was cancelled for that evening, but Saturday was still a go. We decided to go and hang out for a while, but not spend the night. I am not a person big on camping, and with a newborn, we decided that we would just go home later that evening.

The camp out was on a farm set off the road and they have a boy about four months older than Nathan. The kids ran around like they were crazy and they would go in the house and play farm and come back outside with toy guns and be "bad men." As a treat, they put straw bales on a wagon to offer the kids a hay ride. The trailer only sat off the ground six inches to a foot; I think it was a trailer that you would use to haul a car.

After the ride I was asking the boys if they had fun on the hayride. Darren said he had fun on the straw ride. I had to laugh because he knows at this age that he was riding on straw and not hay. He is still talking about his straw ride a couple of days later.

Lucky me

I don't want to do anything or say anything to jinx myself, but Justin is the absolute best baby. The past two Friday nights/Saturday mornings, he slept until 9:00 am. Considering I put him to bed around 8:30-9:00, he is sleeping twelve hours at a stretch! Two Saturday mornings ago I went in to wake him up at 9:00 and then this past Saturday I went in to wake him up at 9:00 but he was already awake.

All he did this past weekend was eat and sleep. I was concerned that with all the sleeping he did that he wouldn't sleep at night, but I had no problems with him sleeping those nights. I do think that he sleeps more than Nathan or Darren ever did so I will mention it to the doctor when I take Justin for his four-month checkup.

He is always so happy. He is always ready with a smile and/or a laugh. When they are this age, and behave as well as Justin is, it makes me want more kids. Then reality sets in and I realize that they grow up and can become a pain in the backside. I don't know if it is because I have boys and they always have to test the boundaries, but all we ever got done doing is yelling at them for one reason or another.

Shattered heart

The other night Bruce wasn't home so I was trying to feed Justin and watch the older two boys at the same time. Sometimes they are very good kids, and other times they would try the patience of a saint. Wednesday night was one of the nights that they would have tried the patience of a saint. After I finished feeding Justin I laid him on the floor on a blanket so he could watch his big brothers, and I got on the floor so I could play with the older two. I was hoping that would calm them down.

I am not sure what Nathan was doing for me to yell at him, but he said the words that all parents hear and do not like to hear. "I hate you Mom." I could almost literally hear my heart shattering into a million pieces. I think that tears were starting to form in the corner of my eyes, and I know that I will hear it a hundred more times before he is grown, but I hope that I don't have that reaction every time.

I took a deep breath, mentally counted to five and said, "Well Nathan I am sorry that you feel that way but I love you." Everything else I said is kind of jumbled, but I remember feeling like my spirit was crushed. What a horrible feeling!!

Discovery....

I think that Justin has discovered both his tongue and his hands. You can often see him sitting there with his tongue sticking out. If I try to touch it, he gives me what I call a dirty look and puts his tongue back in his mouth. He will just sit there and stick his tongue in and out.

There is a colorful plush dinosaur/dragon that hangs on his seat which has all sorts of toys on it; rings, bright colored ribbons, a rattle and something else. I seen the other day that he had his hands thru the rings, and was really studying the dragon. I guess I can start giving him toys and he should be able to hold onto it.

Real sick or fake sick?

It is common knowledge that my Mom is my back-up sitter in case one of the kids gets sick, or daycare is closed for some reason. Nathan just caught onto the fact that he gets to go to Grandma's when he is sick. This morning as I am pulling into daycare he tries to tell me that his belly hurts and he needs to go to Grandma's. Of course I do the only thing that I can do and lie. I tell him that Grandma isn't home today. He asks me how I know this, and I fib again. I tell him that when I talked to Grandma on Sunday, she told me her schedule for the week.

He is going to have to become a more convincing faker if he wants to go to Grandma's!

Clothes, clothes and more clothes

This weekend I spent a majority of the time packing up the boys summer clothes and getting out their winter clothes. Poor Justin is going to be getting a lot of hand-me-downs!

I put away most of Nathan's summer clothes with the exception of a few nicer t-shirts. Mom also took Nathan shopping on Sunday to get him some new jeans since there wasn't enough time left this weekend to get it done. I had said last fall/spring that I am definitely going to get his jeans from Sears since they have the Kidvantage program and Nathan wears the knees out in all of his pants before he outgrows them. They also offer the same program on their shoes! Nathan is impossibly hard on his shoes (my Mom said that I was the same way) so it is worth it to spend a little more. I may end up bankrupting the Kidvantage program with three boys. Bruce was complaining about the bill after I paid Mom back, but I figured that four pair of jeans, three pairs of pajamas, a pack of socks and a pair of tennis shoes were well worth it.

Because Darren is so skinny, most of Nathan's 24 month/2T pants don't fit very well. I would rather not buy him new clothes if I can help it so I have to figure out a way to tighten the pants up. The length is perfect, and the shirts fit pretty decent, it is just the waist that doesn't fit correctly.

Since Justin is the third in line, we have a LOT of boys. Most of the boys clothes are 9-12 months, but there is a few 6-9 months in the lot. The 6-9 months is a smidgen to big and the 9-12 are even bigger, but I am not going to buy him a new wardrobe. Since he isn't mobile yet, I will just roll up the sleeves and hope for the best. There are so many winter clothes that I can be choosy about what clothes I hang in his closet.

That's okay....

Nathan spent the day on the farm Friday and was a big helper for Grandpa. My grandma got a new propane tank on Friday, and Dad went over to help them set the tank. Grandma has bushes in front the propane tank, and so my Dad started trimming them before they set the new tank. Nathan walks into great grandma's garage and get a bushel basket to start picking up the sticks. He picks them all up for her. Great grandma offers Nathan money for helping her since he picked up all the twigs. Nathan told great-grandma, "No that's okay, I have lots of money I don't need anymore."

I was proud of him for not taking money from great grandma, but that didn't stop him from taking the handful of change that his grandpa gave him when we left Friday evening. When I questioned him about it, he said that he worked harder for grandpa so that's why he took his money but not great grandma's.

Nathan wisdom

Last night Nathan was complaining that his belly hurt. Bruce asked Nathan where his belly hurt at. Nathan, in all seriousness, "inside my belly." We could only laugh although we meant the top of his belly, the side, etcetera. We got a literal answer!

Followup: Nathan pooped three times last night after saying his belly hurt. We happened to look in the toilet each time he pooped, and with the amount that was in there each time, it is no wonder his belly hurt. He was full of poop! We explained to him that when he has to poop, even if it is at daycare, that he needs to poop then and that will keep his belly from hurting.

In our house, we call the belly button the "tickle button." We also call the groin area on males, "boys" most of the time. Last night Bruce was playing with Nathan and getting his tickle button. Bruce asked Nathan if he knew what his tickle button connected to. Nathan said, "Yeah, it is connected to my boys." When Bruce relayed this to me, I gave a confused laugh, and Bruce said that sometimes when you press the tickle button you can feel it in your groin. That was news to me.