Five Months and Model Material

Sy is five months today!

 

 

He is trying to sit up, but always falls over.  He loves to be on his tummy and will always roll from back to stomach.  We like to count down and see how long it takes him to roll over.  Sometimes it only takes to a count of three and he's done it.  He loves his brother and sister.  He will talk to them and be loud right along with them.  He will watch everything they are doing and they always get the biggest smiles out of him. 

Now that the weather is getting better, we sometimes get outside and go for walks.  We went out today and Q decided to try the sidewalk.  We don't usually use them because our little subdivision is still mostly undeveloped and there are weeds that stick out all over and whap you in the face.  Well, she wants to try it anyway.  It looked really cool with the sun going down and her in a maze of dead weeds, so I said, "Stop!  Let me take your picture."  Well, this is what she did (with no cues from me!):

 

 

I don't know where she gets it from.  When someone pulls out a camera, I usually run and hide!  She is just bursting with her own little personality.  It is so much fun to have her around.

Love to you all!
BBQOS

#1 Ducky

Oden has a very special blanket that he calls Ducky.  It was given to us when he was born by a friend at Bill's work.  It is a very typical boy baby blanket.  Blue with little blue baby booties, onesies and ducks on it.  Oden became attached to it along the way and it became his comfort object.  He takes it everywhere with him and it is the only thing he wants on him at night when he goes to bed.  I love it because it is a big blanket that still covers him up at almost 4 yrs old.  It is something I will hold onto in his memory box. 

In the spirit of preserving memories, I wanted to include this little story about just how important Mr. Ducky really is:

Whenever Oden gets hurt, even if I am standing right there next to him, he looks for Ducky first.  "Where's my ducky?  Where's my ducky?"  He will run around the entire house in pain and crying until he finds his duck.  Then, once he has ducky in arms, he comes to Mom.  His hierarchy of comfort looks like this:

#1 Duck
#2 Mom

There was one incident where he was very hurt and in pain.  I was scared because I had witnessed the accident.  I went for him to hold him and assess the damage, but he screamed at me to let him go, ran and grabbed the ducky, then he ran back to my arms.  He was crying the entire time.  I ended up laughing because if it were me, I would have wanted my mom.  He

The duck is there for us in times of crisis, times of stress and times of sleepiness.  What would we do without him.  Sadly, Mr. Duck is starting to fade into the background.  Soon he will be wrapped up in a box and forgotten.  Oden has started getting by without him more and more.  Last night he went to bed without him, didn't even ask for him, until about 1 am when he woke up from a dream.  I'm just so glad that he chose to do this in his own time and at his own pace.  I didn't have to be the mean Mom who took it away by force.  At least he will always associate happy emotions with it. 

I love you Mr. Ducky.






Brand New Ducky - Oden 3 Months



Ducky 4 Years Later (Today)



Going for a Ride with my Ducky

It's Kindergarten....

A Kindergarten teacher, not Q's, told me this the other day when I realized that Q's shirt was and had been on backwards all day:

"It's Kindergarten....ya just go with it."

I laughed.  I do have to say the more I pay attention to the little ones as they file out of the school the more you start to notice trends.  There are the ones who play hard and you can tell.  The ones whose mom's have infinite amounts of time to do their hair in intricate little dos...every day!! (I've since come to the conclusion that either they don't sleep and don't let their kids sleep, or they only have one kid).  The ones who don't fit in...those ones make me sad.  And then there are kids like my daughter.

My little Q is very much her own person, sometimes she might look like she has parents that don't care about her appearance, but I tell you honestly that we do care, she just knows what she wants.  Not saying that I let her do whatever she wants, but with clothing I figure I can give her some wiggle room.  As long as it is warm for the winter and it is appropriate and meets school code, I let her run with it.  For the most part I lay out an outfit the day before, but sometimes I don't get around to it before I'm so tired I drop.  Bill has been getting her ready in the mornings so that I can get a little extra sleep (gotta love babies!).  So on those days that I don't lay out her clothes it is always a surprise to go pick her up.  Kind of similar to biting into a chocolate from those Valentine boxes, always a surprise. 

Ooo!  Raspberry filled.....

Ooo! A bright summer dress over a sweater with two pairs of socks on each foot and rain boots! 

She is amazingly good at the layer thing, but still doesn't understand that sometimes pink doesn't go with orange.  I figure that since she has a lot of friends and multiple little voices yell, "bye Quickyn" as she hops in the car, that she is doing fine.  If she were to get teased I can so see her either crying and then never wearing it again, or shrugging it off because, in her own words, "I know and they just don't, their not as special, well almost as specialist as me, but I'm specialer!" 

Oh!  I just love my little girl and hope against hope that those terrible rotten "not specialer" kids don't ruin her beautiful ideas, and her beautiful imaginative artistic world.  Because, unfortunately, they do exist and no one can escape their visible mass, just their gravity if they have the rocket boosters already built in.  I'm sure trying to help my kids build those boosters and thanks to all you wonderful family and friends that are helping them too! 

Love you all so tremendously much!

High Five Club

Q made it into the high five club at school a little while ago. She learned all her letter names and sounds. Today she got to walk the Kindergarten hall and get high fives from all the kids. She also got to pose for a picture with the Panther!  She is so happy with her accomplishment!  Especially since we got stuck on what sound "w" makes for quite awhile.  Way to go Q!!!

Enjoying Syver

 

We are enjoying Syver.  Just wanted to add more photos of the little man.  He is so soft and so warm and so cute.  We love him so much!  He sure soaks up the love too!  He was held almost the entire time we were at Grandma and Grandpa Buff's for Thanksgiving.  Talk about spoiled.

 

 

 

 

 

And on another note, I've managed to blog about 20 times since I made a goal last October to blog more frequently.  No, I didn't make it every week, but I'm pretty happy with the 20.  That is almost twice a month.  For me, that is a big deal.  I'm going to pat myself on the back!

Halloween Fun

Our Halloween was fun this year.  We had our new little guy with us and we were terribly tired, but we managed some decent spooky time with our kids.  We took them to the Pumpkin Walk in North Logan.  They enjoyed taking their pictures in all the character boards more than the pumpkin displays and they got to meet a witch.

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 On Halloween we managed some last minute pictures before the trunk-or-treat.  I was able to stay with our car and pass out candy while Bill took Q and O around.  They made off with a good loot and were quite happy.  I was happy that Syver stayed asleep the entire time!

 

 

 

Hope your Halloween was spooky fun too!  Love from us all.

Baby Syver

Syver Ladd Chandler

Born:

October 21, 2013

2:01 am. 

7 lbs. 10oz.

19 inches long. 

 

 

Little Syver decided to make his debut very early Monday morning.  He came after only two hours of labor and about 20 minutes after we arrived at the hospital.  Not a lot of fun for Mommy!  We are so lucky and blessed to have him in our family.  He has two very adoring and ready to help siblings.  He doesn't seem to mind all their "helping" unless he is hungry.  He puts up with the noise and love they share with him, so I know he will fit in just fine.
A big thanks to all those who helped us the past few days, especially Grandma and Grandpa Chandler for taking in Q and O at 1am and watching them all morning, and to a dear friend, Jessica Smith, for watching them all afternoon!  It is wonderful people like you that make things go smoother for the tired and stressed parents. 

A little background on his name.  Syver is a Norwegian name we found in my mother's family history.  We liked it so much and no other name seemed to speak to us.  After he was born we found out that it means "victorious defender".  So, not bad considering it could have meant any number of things.  We like that we can call him Sy for short because it sounds like the sci in science.  Science being one of the reasons Bill and I met in the first place.  Ladd is my brother and father's name.  I also feel that is partly my other brother's name too, Landon.  So he is named after my father and two brother's who have had a very positive male influence in my life before Bill.  If Syver can grow up with even half the attributes that these three men have then I will be content.  Not to say Bill doesn't bring a lot to the table!!  That is why Oden was named Oden William Chandler! 

Speaking of Bill, he has been so special these past few days.  I would never have made it through that last 30 minutes if it weren't for his strength.  I was having such a hard time staying present in the moment and having a very hard time breathing.  Having his hand constantly in mine and his face flash before mine every few seconds were the only things that got me through.  He's been taking care of the kids, care of me, and being so patient and great.  I can't repay him for the three beautiful children he has given me on top of the love, support, and entertainment.  He keeps me smiling!  A big big thanks to Bill.

We love you all.  Can't wait for you to meet Syver.  Until next time....

Baby Blanket

I started learning how to quilt a few months after Oden was born.  The first full quilt I made was for my sister when she had her son.  The second full quilt I made was for my mom.  I've made myself two table runners.  So, when I found out we were expecting I decided I wanted to make our baby a quilt. 

I finally finished it!  When I was first putting it together I wasn't so sure and thought it was going to be a disaster, but it has grown on me.  Once I got the binding done and the prairie points stuck out, I fell in love with it.  It is the bright and happy quilt I wanted for our new son.  I am so tickled with it!  Maybe because I get to keep this one.  Yay!

This is it...the baby is coming!!! Oh Wait....Nope. Nevermind!

I think the title speaks for itself.  You can guess what happened, but in case you are more curious, here is the rest of the story....

I got a terrible stomach ache on Wednesday and tried everything I could think of to get it to go away.  It would come and go in waves for awhile, but then by 5:30 pm it was much worse and not getting any better.  Once Bill got home he called Labor and Delivery and the doctor on call recommended some safe over the counter medication I could take.  Of course, we didn't have any of the ones he suggested.  He also said not to wait too long, because it could be an indication of something worse and to come in if it didn't go away within an hour of taking the medication. 

So, we packed up the hospital bag, the kids bags, and headed out the door.  We stopped at the store, got the medicine, I took some and we headed to the hospital just in case.  (The pain was bad enough that we were both concerned).  We parked at the hospital, the kids ate dinner in the car, and waited.  Within 45 minutes of taking the medicine the pain was slightly less intense.  Then the contractions started!  So fun.  We started timing them to see if they were regular.  They bounced around and never got worse or better, the stomach ache was slowly going away. 

I was tired of sitting in the parking lot, so we decided to go for a drive.  By this time it was going on 9:30pm.  We drove around and then found ourselves close to Grandpa Bill's when the stomach ache came back with a vengeance and the contractions started to get worse, still irregular, but worse.  We decided to drop the kids with Grandpa, who was so very understanding and helpful around 10:00 at night.  They kids stayed asleep as Bill moved them into the house.  We drove to the hospital and checked in. 

They got me hooked up to the baby monitor and confirmed that I was actually having contractions and now they were quite regular.  The baby was doing fine.  They ran blood tests and had me drinking a lot so I could avoid having an IV.  The blood tests came back normal, but with a slightly elevated white blood count.  My labor wasn't progressing despite the continued contractions every 2 to 3 minutes.  This went on for 3 hours.  The stomach ache finally just went away!!  The contractions didn't.  I still wasn't progressing as of 1 am, so they decided they could send me home.  At least the stomach ache was gone!  Dealing with both forms of pain was no fun.  It was determined that whatever had upset my system had also set off the contractions.

We went back to pick up the kids.  Poor Oden had woken up, but Grandpa was there and according to Oden he was "silly Grandpa."  Quickyn slept so deeply, she had no clue she'd even been moved in and out of the car twice.  We went home, the contractions slowly died down and by 5 am were basically gone.  What a night.  I was so exhausted from dealing with a stomach all day and kids, so I was actually relieved that the little guy wasn't ready to make his debut. 

Bill was the only one disappointed.  He was ready.  Bill is always ready for anything.  He was great, even though he was tired too.  I love that he sat by me the whole time (he even dragged the more comfortable and heavy rocking chair over to the bedside.  It squeaked every time he pushed it, I just laughed), held my hand, changed the TV channel constantly (for some reason the channel changing was a great distraction.  I never would have thought of that, it usually drives me crazy), and he was fascinated with the computer and graphs of the baby's movement and heart as well as my contractions.  In his strange way, Bill made it comfortable, safe, and even fun at times. 

So, that is what happened.  I chose the title because of how excited Bill was.  Once he started seeing my contractions on the hospital computer he said, "this is it, he's coming."  I had reservations about it.  He was surprised when it wasn't the real thing because I've never had contractions that lasted for 5 hours and didn't result in a baby in his arms.  He was genuinely disappointed and that was precious in its own way.

So, the baby is still safe in my big belly and hopefully will get stronger and stronger.  I am hopeful he'll stay in residence there for at least another two weeks.  I so want a Halloween baby!

Love to you all,
Bri

Catching Up

I've missed a few months and thought I would "catch up" on things that I wanted to post about but never got the chance.  Life is busy even with only two kids.  I'm still amazed at my parents, Bill's parents and everyone who has kids.  We get stuff done and we survive.....somehow!

So first thing that I want to remember, yet don't want to remember at the same time was the earwigs!  Really!  Last year it was hornets and box elder bugs everywhere.  This year not a single hornet, not a single box elder bug, but hundreds of earwigs!  So gross.  We discovered the earwigs one night when we were enjoying a cool breeze coming through the screen door.  The kids were asleep, it was dark,  we finally had a few minutes to talk.  The screen door doesn't have a perfect seal on the bottom.  We flipped on the lights to clean up the kitchen and there were earwigs crawling in from the bottom corner.  They were in this massive pile around the door base and floor.  I screamed!  Bill grabbed the vacuum.  We got a lot of them, but didn't realize until later how many had escaped into the house.  I think I killed at least 10 earwigs a day for the next two weeks.  Now I find maybe one a week.  Yuck! Yuck! Yuck!.  Bill went and bought a really good bug repellant for earwigs and spread it all around the house.  That really helped.  We found out that it wasn't just our house, but the entire city that has been dealing with them.  So strange.  Can't wait to see what next year brings.

I made the kids each an apron.  It was a fun project.  They got to pick out the fabric at the store and when we were done we made bread.  Oden has his out for every cooking endeavor.  We make pancakes every Sunday to last through the week and he loves to put on his apron and help me measure the flour. 

Quickyn fell in the lake!

Bill took the kids on a bike ride around the loop in our neighborhood.  There is a dock at the top of the loop.  The kids love to throw rocks and watch the fish.  Well, Quickyn was leaning over a little too far to see the fish and SPLASH!  Bill was sitting right next to her when it happened, so he just reached over and pulled her out.  He said her helmet kept her from going down too far.  So, now she likes to remind us that her helmet floats but she sinks.  This picture is what greeted me when they got home.  I have to admit that I bust out laughing when I probably should have been more sympathetic.  It was just so funny to see her little scrunched up mad face on this drenched rat body. 

Oden has a silly side that reminds me of my youngest brother soooo much!  He gets into these goofy moods and doesn't get inhibited.  He also has some really good dance moves. 

We setup our little pool for the kids to cool off in this summer.  They had so much more fun when Bill jumped in with them.  According to him it was much easier to be out there with them in the pool than out of the pool.  It was really hot.  They also loved going to Grandma Grandpa Buff's house and playing in their new pool.  In fact I keep getting asked if we are going to go splash in their pool anytime soon.  Oden wants to put ours back up!  It's fall, its cold, he wants to go swimming!

Daddy makes everything fun!  He spent a lot of time this summer getting ready for labs and demos for his science classes.  One day he was playing with bubbles.  He got the kids involved too.  They had fun trying to make the most bubbles.  Quickyn gave up the minute she got too sticky.  Oden played for hours and soaked through three towels.  I'm surprised this bubble ball got so big when he was giggling with every breath.

Before school started we spent a day at the zoo with my sister and her little family.  I love that we have kids that are close in age and they enjoy playing with each other.  I love these pictures.  I remember the laughing, the screaming, and the excitement by looking at them.  Good times.

We grew tomatoes, corn and pumpkins this year.  I tried to keep the garden small because I knew harvest time would be during my last month of pregnancy.  I remember planting the two pumpkin plants and crossing my fingers that at least two big pumpkins would grow so the kids could carve them for Halloween.  Well I got my wish.  Two big pumpkins grew.  We might have one or two more little ones if the frost doesn't get too bad.  Last year we planted six tomato plants that never grew a single tomato.  This year we planted 8 and have them coming out our ears!  So glad our friends have taken some off our hands.  The corn turned out delicious too and the dried stocks are great decorations for the front porch.

I started my own little preschool with Oden when Quickyn started school.  We go over a letter a week.  He's known for awhile now that his name starts with and "O".  So his art and papers always have O's on them.  But he started showing an interest in writing because Q is learning to read and write.  So, I taught him his name.  He LOVES it.  This is just one example of the hard work and concentration he puts into his name.  He does this at least once a day if not more.  I get handed lots of "name" papers.  This was one of the first ones when he was writing Oben instead of Oden.  Now he writes it with a "d".  It is so amazing to watch him focus on writing his name.  I am so proud of him.

 

So that sums up the last few months.  It sure has been fun and challenging.  We have about 3 weeks until little number three joins the fun.  Love you all!