BUS!

The children loved the bus - so much so, they insist on going on it again instead of going to preschool/daycare. I'm not sure when we'll be able to go again. This Saturday is our Santa picture time at my work and Sundays are usually busy with church and getting laundry done.

Last night, Ella wanted Benjamin to lay down on the floor so she could change his diaper. She got everything ready. The diaper, the diaper rash cream and even got him a little pillow in which to rest his head. Funny. All the time, she is cleaning her baby doll's diapers and saying they have an "owie butt". Poor Benjamin has quite the rash going right now and we're trying to get rid of it. Pretty soon, we will be potty training the kids. First, we will work on Ella who seems more likely to be into it. We will work on her during Thanksgiving time while at Christmas time, we will work on Benjamin. We chose these times because one of us will have a chunk of time off around that time and so we can devote more straight days to the task.

Also, last night, Nicholas crawled over to this Fisher Price barn we have and pulled himself up to his knees then to his feet. Good thing we lowered his crib mattress the other night! This little guy wants to get up and run around with his brother and sister already!

Bug Safari & Bus

Today, we took the kids on their first bus ride. We took the bus to downtown and had some lunch, then went to the Bug Safari at Pike Place. Ben & Ella seemed to have really enjoyed the bus ride and will probably be the only thing they will remember of today despite seeing HUGE cockroaches and tarantulas.

Currently, Ben & Nicholas are sleeping, but Ella refused to take a nap so she's playing with the money. The twins really, really like playing with the coins we have in their piggy banks.

That's about it for now.


(And to the person who commented on my last post - I am not approving the comment because WTH? I can write whatever I want to on my blog - no matter how short or long it is.)

Oh, and a tooth

Nicholas now has 2 bottom teeth and one tooth popping through the top. :-D

We have a crawler...

I am so bad - I really want to document Nicholas growing up as much as I did with the twins.

Anyway, Nicholas is definitely a crawler now. He has been for about a week or two now. He's gotten quite good at it. And he seems to understand the word dance because when I say to him, you gonna dance, he starts swaying from side to side. His two favorite activities are crawling over the floor puzzle and messing with it while Ben & Ella are playing with it (they don't like that too much) and blowing raspberries.

He has had a lot of different kinds of foods, including Gerber puffs. He loves those - as do the twins...still. They insist I give them some when I get some out for Nicholas. Don't bother telling them they are for the baby.

Both Ben & Ella like to play with puzzles. Ben likes to play with some different types of computers at the daycare.

They went trick or treating for the first time this year (see pics at www.flickr.com/photos/heathercim). They don't quite get it yet and forgot all about the candy once it was out of site. Wish the same could be said about their parents. :-D

Ben was a lion, Ella was a pink poodle and Nicholas was a pumpkin.



We also went to a farm this year to look at the pumpkins and went through a hay maze. The maze had a slide at the top that both kids went down. They also got to look at different animals and eat some kettle corn. Good times!

Sitting up

Nicholas is pretty much able to sit up all on his own now. He is getting even closer to crawling too. Any day now, I'm sure.

The twins are very good at their puzzles. I just got them a new puzzle at this sale I went to over the weekend that will help them tell time and learn to recognize numbers. They seem to be enjoying the puzzle part of it. They are able to recognize some letters too - Benjamin more so than Ella. They can count to 10.

Pics of the kids at www.flickr.com/photos/heathercim.

Just a short post today!

Book Club - "It Sucked and Then I Cried"

I've finally decided to get back into the online book club and this month they were discussing "It Sucked and Then I Cried" by Heather Armstrong aka Dooce.

First of all, I loved this book. Her writing style and humor are great!

Now onto the questions...

Heather obviously has a very distinctive writing style that comes across in both her blog and her book. What do you think has made Heather such a famous blogger? Her writing style, honesty, or something else? Do you write with the same passion and honesty that Heather does?

I definitely think it's her writing style and humor, like I said above. :-D She has a way of talking about serious subjects with humor that it's hard not to want to read the next entry or the next chapter. I definitely don't write the same way she does. I just am not that good of a writer, nor do I have the wit she does. I do sometimes wish I could write with as much honesty as she does, but I'm afraid of what those I know who are reading would say. I don't think some would realize that I'm just venting sometimes and I just need to get it out. Although, I could just as easily take things personally too.

One of the main reasons why I was interested in this book was that she was going to address her issues of postpartum depression, which I struggled through with both my children. I found her frank style dealing with this issue very helpful and I could relate to her distress. Have you or some one you know dealt with PPD or depression? How did the author’s experience resonate with you?

I've known people who have dealt with PPD, read books about it, and have gone through a minor bit of it myself. Sometimes I wonder if I'm really through it even now. Her experience was definitely different from mine though. I didn't feel like it was strong enough to need medication for a long time, and when I did think it could help, I only was on a minor dose and for the most part, I think that helped me. I do wish I would have written about it more to get those feelings out there as she did. I think that would have helped tremendously, but I just could never find the time. Reading her talk about it made me think I should have tried harder.

The author's blog is well-known for her biting sense of humor, interspersed with expressions of deep emotion toward her children and husband. Although there was plenty of humor, I found the book to be much heavier on emotion than I expected based on reading her blog. On your own blog, how much emotion do you express? Is that more or less than you tend to express in real life?

I just to write more emotional pieces before we were pregnant. Since then, I've become the "mommy blogger". I don't seem to write about the times that I'm having a hard time with things anymore because no one wants to hear that from someone who was able to get pregnant from IVF and then have a surprise pregnancy! However, I think there are things post-pregnancy that would be good to write about - i.e., PPD.

I don't think, however, I could go to the level of honesty that she expresses. With her and Brooke Shields - they were so open about how they were feeling - even the bad parts. I guess I was too afraid to admit that there were times that I had some of the feelings that they expressed in their books/blog (of course, I kinda just did).

The author talks about how she imagined her future children before becoming pregnant:

When you're childless and young and hopeful, you have this idea of what your children are going to be like, and you make mental notes when you see other kids in public. You say to yourself, "My kid will be cute like that," or "My kid won't ever throw a tantrum in public like that little demon." I had always envisioned a sweet little princess who looked just like me sitting quietly in a high chair, her pressed velvet petticoat creased perfectly as she sat and waited to be handed things in a timely manner. And then you grow up and have kids and realize that YOU HAVE NO SAY...

Before starting to try to conceive, how did you imagine your future children? If you now have children, how did your expectations fit reality?

I guess I did have this vision in my head of how parenting was going to be like - that my children won't misbehave in public. That I'd be able to control them and they would listen and understand when I needed them to behave. While at the same time, I rationally knew that I was going to have times that this wouldn't be the case. After all, my sister has 4 kids. I was a teenager when my brothers were first born (or close to it), so I knew what was reality. But you still think things are going to be different for you - but it turns out, my children will have breakdowns in public and they will not sit quietly at the restaurant table the whole time until it is ready to go. People used to say our children were well-behaved - well, that was before they turned 2.


Hop along to another stop on this blog tour by visiting the main list at Stirrup Queens (http://stirrup-queens.com). You can also sign up for the next book on this online book club: The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster. I got my copy today!

The Cuteness that Melts My Heart

Earlier today, we are at the park. At one point, Benjamin came down the slide and ran toward me to give me a hug. :-D He then started running away, but turned around about halfway to the slide to blow me a kiss. :-D :-D :-D

How cute is that? It just makes my heart melt, it's so cute.


In other news, Nicholas is doing the get-up-on-hand-and-knees-and-push-both-knees-forward-then-fall-down crawl. It's gets him around to where he wants to go. There is no containing him in one spot for too long.

The other day, Ella said "I love you" to Jon (there might have been a little prompting) - I don't know if he actually heard it though.

Earlier, Ella insisted on taking a shower with me even though she hates the water falling down on her head.

Nicholas has pretty much had a lot of the fruits and veggies. He seems to like squash and applesauce the most.

Benjamin is very, very good at puzzles. We have a u.s. map puzzle that he has absolutely no problems with. He knows Indiana only because we thought we had lost it for about a week or so. Currently, he is asking "where did Indiana go?" I need more challenging things for him. Ella is doing better at the puzzles too.

About 1 1/2 weeks ago or so, we saw that Nicholas has his first tooth popping through!

How?

How did it get to be over a month since I last posted? I used to be such a good blogger. I was so much better at it after the twins. I'm not even a good blog reader anymore. I'm sure people have written lots that I haven't seen yet - including my own husband.

Well, now, Nicholas is 7 months old. He is a little chatterbox sometimes - including at 3 a.m. as he was last night as we changed a stinky diaper. He will say dada as well as mooommmmmm - I'm not sure if he knows what those mean, but he is saying those sounds. However, he did say "mommmmm" one day and reached toward me, so maybe he does know that means me. He also says other sounds too.

He is doing a little army crawl, as well as a crawl that involves one foot - a little 3 legged crawl - sort of. He is eating all sorts of solid foods - veggies and fruits. He has slept through the night only a handful of times - I hope he gets better at it soon. I'm tired.

As for the twins, they are acting like 2 year olds. Ella really, really likes to be more independent and pick out her own clothes and not have a lid on her sippy cup, but when it comes to potty training - she has only done that a few times. I think last night I might have gotten to her to realize a little bit that going in the potty will help it so she doesn't have a sore bottom. Hopefully, that works - diapers are expensive for 3 kids.

Benjamin & Ella both like to be the teacher. Ella taught Benjamin how to jump and climb up certain playground equipment, while Benjamin teaches Ella how to put a puzzle together (though sometimes Ella doesn't want to be the student and will yell at Benjamin). Ella also likes to teach Nicholas - telling him that Jon is papa and also lifting up her foot and say "baby, this a foot, a foot, baby!" She still calls him baby or baby guy or baby dude. Benjamin will say Nicholas (Nichas).

One day we went to church and they had a bouncy house for the kids. Ella wasn't sure about it at first and sat inside the house while everyone jumped around her, but she eventually starting jumping along with the other kids. Benjamin definitely wasn't sure about it and observed from my lap on the lawn. When Jon came out from helping clean up, he decided to go in there and Ella told him what to do and he started having fun. They really liked it - I'm thinking their 3rd birthday should be at a bouncy place.

This weekend, Nicholas and I are going to do the Heart Walk - I hope the weather cooperates for us! Also, this past weekend I was a seller in the local multiples group's sale and made a bit of money. I didn't sell everything though. I'll probably participate again at the next sale. As a seller, you get to buy stuff first, so that was really helpful as I got some Halloween costumes and a single jogging stroller that I'll be using this weekend. The twins would not stay in their stroller the whole time, so it is just going to be me and Nicholas.

I started a book club and we have had one meeting so far - I think it's going to be fun! I can't think of anything else going on right now.

Well, I'll write again here again soon as I'm involved in a book club online this month so I'll be writing about that soon.