CABIN TRIP

Gasp! Two posts in two days! I bet your heads are spinning. I just figured it is nap time - with all four of my littles asleep for a good 2.5 hours. And I may or may not be procrastinating with photo editing and curriculum building. Not to mention, I just discovered a super quick way to edit and upload photos. Blink of an eye. So why not?
About a month and a half ago, my parents rented a cabin in Pinetop. Invited us up for the weekend. We figured it would be a great experience prior to our Cali adventure. Kids learn how to travel. Parents learn how to handle kids on vacation. Plus, Mimi & Papa were paying for everything. Win/win. To say we had a blast would be an understatement. No plans. Just played it by ear for the entire trip. We took walks. Picked flowers. Watched storms. Even played with some friends. Seriously, a slice of heaven. And Nene surprised us by becoming an over-night walker. It was fantastic.

HMM

Well. It looks like blogging isn't in the cards for me for 2013. Which is weird because when I DO things, I totally write a blog post in my head about it. Like the trip to the cabin we took in July. Or when I was accosted about my 5th pregnancy at the grocery store. Or the beach vacay in Cali that we just returned home from. Or the fact that I am doing preschool in my home for my two oldest. Things are definitely happening here. I am just not blogging them. Or really photographing them (luckily, I AM journaling them). I can't even give you a good excuse as to why. I'm just not. And I am cool with it. I DID stumble across this video below. And I'd like to think that this is my reasoning. Pretty powerful. Social media isn't bad. It's just a huge distraction. So we will see. I WANT to blog. I WILL blog. Just not when it interferes with my main focus: my littles.

ZOMBIE

Guys, I am a zombie. Not the flesh-eating walking-dead kind. More like the non-functioning human-being kind. I have had about six hours of sleep over the last three nights. A certain 2 year old has seen to it that I don't sleep. He screams for hours at bed time. AND when he wakes up in the morning. Annnnnnnnd sometimes in the middle of the night. All of our children have had wonderful sleep habits since day one; I made sure of it. So the first couple nights of screaming we were at a loss. We tried everything we could think of OUTSIDE of sleeping with him or allowing him to sleep with us. No way we are going down that path; it can destroy healthy sleep habits instantly. But last night, after I cried it out in the hallway, I stumbled across supernanny.co.uk and an article that talked about separation anxiety at bed time. Going to try out the Gradual Retreat Programme. Mainly because it is British. Just kidding. Mainly because it is the only advice that I have found besides giving them a new toy or blanket to snuggle. Bubs is not one for snuggling objects, so that one is out the window. We'll see how this retreat program goes. All I know is that I cannot average around two hours of sleep a night without turning into a real monster. So until we see some improvement in the sleep department, I may be a bit of a ghost online. Books and movies and naps may be what gets us (ME) through this. Fingers crossed...

WELL CHECKS

Bubs and Nene had birthdays recently, so we had a double date with the doctor. I WAS planning to take pictures, but things didn't exactly go as planned. Yesterday, during our daily "reading time", Jojo accidentally hit Bubs in the face with a book. We didn't think much of it until Bubs started complaining about his eye. Mother's intuition told me to take him into urgent care to have it checked out, so the mr. did just that while I took the other 3 to church. Turns out Bubs has a corneal abrasion or, in layman's terms, a scratched eye. A fairly large scratch at that. Poor guy has not been himself since. Clutches his little rice owl cold pack for comfort. Covers his eye with his hand for a bit of relief. Falls asleep instantly throughout the day when he closes his eye for a rest. It's so sad. And maybe a tad pathetic. The doc checked it out today to see how it is healing. Slow going, but there has been some recovery. We just need to keep an eye on it. Ha. No pun intended. Otherwise, Bubs is a healthy 2 year old.
Nene was below the charts in weight last time we were in. And on her way off the charts for height. I am happy to say that she is back on the charts for weight, albeit in the 7th percentile. She is nearly 50th percentile for height. Yay. Her eczema is out of control, but there is not much we can do outside of what we are already doing. I hate seeing the sores all over her little body, but looks like it is just going to stay that way for a while. Poor girl got 3 shots today. Was all out of sorts about it, too. But she is a healthy 1 year old, which is all I ask for. I am glad my littles are growing right on track.

FIVE

Let's clear the air. I posted a cryptic photo on Instagram yesterday and received quite the reaction. Got to admit, it was fun to sit back and smile as more and more people added their confused comments. To clarify, yes. It IS what you think. We will have five in a little over the same number of years. Crazy, I KNOW.
To satisfy your curiosity:
We were pretty confident Nene was our last. But then the Big Man made it known that someone was missing - a feeling that was difficult to swallow. You see, I have been quite the opposite of baby hungry.  We were balanced with four kids. HAPPY with four kids. And dang if I didn't get my body in the best shape ever! But I knew how I would feel always wondering about that other one. The one we could have had. So we gave it a shot. Said we would try x number of months. After 2 weeks, I grew selfish and decided if it didn't happen THAT month, it wasn't happening. I had plans for the next several months; hiking the Grand Canyon, doing a triathlon, running a marathon, participating in a Ragnar. BIG plans that would not be possible if pregnant. Guess what. The Big Man was listening. And I am pregnant. Guess He knew I was serious. The good news is, ALL of those things will be around next year. Bad news is, I have to wait. But now I wont have to wonder who is missing; they will be part of our family in December or January. Fingers crossed Nene gets a sister; we have zero boy stuff... oops.

HALF MARATHON

Since I currently don't have anything exciting to talk about, lets go back several weeks. Well, several months. Back in October or November, a friend said we should sign up for a half marathon together, so we did. She told me I had better not back out. I swore I wouldn't. Fast forward to January. I asked my friend how training was going. She informed me she would be running 6 miles that weekend, so I did what any logical person would do: I ran 6.5 miles. Every week, I pushed myself about 1.25 miles further. When I had completed 12.5 miles, I sent my friend another text inquiring about her training. "Um... I haven't been running." WHAT?! "I'm pregnant." SERIOUSLY?! I was excited for her, but sad I would be running alone. With the race being less than a month away, I pushed myself harder than ever. Ran 15 miles without stopping, which was a couple miles further than necessary. Clearly I am a bit excessive.
Race Day. March 2nd. I was beyond nervous. I was dropped off at the finishing area and rode the buses to the starting line. I had an hour to kill, so I struck up conversation with two awesome ladies. One was running her third half marathon. The other was running her eighth. The butterflies in my stomach tried to tell me to use the bathroom before starting, but the lines were 50 people long. Pass. Besides, I knew adrenaline would carry me the whole way without a problem. We got into places and the race started. It was insane. Thousands of runners racing as a pack. I jockeyed for position ahead of the 9:00 min/mile pacer. I felt great. About 2 miles in, the need to go to the bathroom intensified. I kept an eye out for port-o-potties, but nada. When I finally spotted some, it was 3.5 miles into the race and the line was 2 deep. No way; it would kill my pace. So I kept running. Before I knew it, I was passing my family at mile 4.5. The kids were yelling out encouragement which was awesome. With that lift, I ran another mile and a half before I realized just how badly I had to go. At mile 6, I finally got my break. The line was 4 deep, but I didn't care. I HAD to finish, so I HAD to go to the bathroom. The wait was FOREVER. I just watched as the racers I had passed slid by me. Once I was out of the port-o-potty, I took off as hard as I could. Bad idea. My intercostal muscles (right under the ribs) started pulling. I knew I couldn't run fast enough to make up my lost time. With a gloom and doom attitude, I continued on. I realized that I was nearing one of the girls I had befriended. When I was along side her, we offered each other much needed encouragement. An unspoken agreement was made at that moment to continue running together for the last 7 miles of the race. I couldn't have done it without her. When I hit my wall at mile 10, she told me that she knew I had it in me to finish. 100 yards from the finish, we said goodbye and she sped off at her top speed. I dug as deep as I could and followed behind her as close as possible. We finished within 4 seconds of one another. I ran 13.1 miles in 2:05:21, just over 5 minutes slower than my goal pace of sub 2:00:00. I kick myself about the bathroom incident. If I had been smart about the race, I would have gone beforehand and would have finished within my goal time. Oh well. For my first half marathon, I think I did pretty dang well. The race was more emotionally exhausting than physically exhausting, but I want to do it again.

BACK

Hey look, guys. I AM BLOGGING. It's only been like three months... Sorry about that. I wanted to redesign my blog. And the blog for my kids. And my photography site. My OCD brain mandates that I must shut everything down during the design process. Lame, I know. Now that [almost] everything is good to go, you can expect me to have a blogging presence once again. No more disappearances. Promise.

I am not even going to try to catch up. Well, scratch that. There will be a few things I blog about. Like running a half marathon. And maybe Easter - only because I have a BILLION photos. But I thought I would start back up with something sweet. A video I made of Nene. I can't believe my baby girl is already a year old.

I promise you there are no surprises in this video. And I apologize for the camera shake. Stupid iMovie wouldn't apply stabilization when I saved it. UGH.