Contentment

Life at our house is crazy.  No one's surprised by that I'm sure. 

I fall into bed at night completely and totally exhausted and ready for an uninterrupted night of sleep.  That doesn't happen.  Ever.  I spend my days doing anything and everything.  I fix meals, clean up toys, scrub toilets, do laundry, wipe noses, clean bottoms, put kids on the potty, take kids off the potty, etc...  I don't sit down, I don't rest. 

And yet, I've never felt this content in my life.  I feel such peace right now.

My house is full.  My hands are full.  My heart is overflowing.  My to-do list has never looked so crazy and I know it will only get crazier.  And yet when I sit down and they're all asleep, all I can think about is how blessed I feel. 

One kid talks my ear off all day long.  One kid melts down at everything, or nothing depending on the day or moment and refuses to just lay down and go to sleep.  One kid smiles and chatters happily all day long. And one child keeps me on my toes, protecting her from harm and trying to teach her boundaries each and every moment of the day.

And yet through all the struggles, annoyances, frustrations, and moments of surrender, my heart is happy. 

I've felt peace many times in my life.  Joy too.  But being the mom to these four beautiful children has changed me.  I still lack patience.  I still have trouble controlling my temper at times.  I still struggle to give up control.  And at the same time, I feel that God has transformed me in these last few months.  I've come a long way in patience.  I've learned more self control as I react to my children and their teachable moments.  I've given up a lot of control in a lot of ways.  And I've gained control in a lot of ways. 

This winter has been HARD.  The sheer volume of snow.  The fact that 10 degrees feels warm after months of negative temperatures.  The fact that school's been cancelled.  Getting 4 kids dressed appropriate and in and out of the car is nearly impossible at these temps.  We've been home bound for most of the winter.  And that's HARD for me.  And at the same time, our family has bonded.  Our kids are siblings through and through.  We have formed great attachments with our two newest girls.  Our family dynamics have changed and molded.  God has done beautiful things in our lives with the addition of Agnes and Mya.

And I'm looking forward to spring and getting out of my house :-)

In the Tundra

I haven't had time to blog.  Why?  Because the weather has been that bad.  I promise, this won't all be me complaining, but let me get it off my chest.  For real, it's so darn cold that we can't get outside at all.  The kids have nowhere to run off their energy.  I can't take them very many places because with the coats, carseats, strollers, running toddlers, we're all frostbit by the time we get inside.  So we stay home.  And we drive each other bonkers!  And preschool keeps getting cancelled for the cold.

3 of my children are very, very outgoing.  They have a need for getting out and socializing.  Agnes in particular is about to talk our ears right off.  She NEEDS preschool and the interaction with others aside from just us.  And consequently, I haven't done any preschool with Anna in a few weeks because I simply don't have time with all four kids running around!

Okay, end of rant.  The rest will be random updates...

- So we've been up to a lot of little crafts, we reorganized our basement (LOVE IT!), we've been baking and playing with playdoh and going to the Discovery Museum.  We've done about every winter activity I can come up with.

- Mya's also potty trained now.  She did awesome the first week, only one accident.  The next week was a disaster and I seriously contemplated putting her back in diapers.  But after that, she's been great.  She has an accident once in a while, although it only ever happens in her high chair when she's sitting still for an extended period of time.  That tells you how often she sits still...

- Mya also dislocated her elbow again last week, during Mass.  That was quite the fiasco.  Hopefully we can keep her from doing it again, but both times she did it by pushing us and twisting her arm at the same time.  So not really preventable, it's her own strength causing it...

- Related to all this weather nonsense, I'm sure, we're having some major bedtime challenges.  Mostly with Anna (what's new).  That girl needs to get outside to wear herself out!!  It's getting better, but man is she stubborn!

- I never update about Anthony.  My husband laughs when I tell him about the kids' day, I always leave him out.  Why?  Because he's good.  ALL. THE. TIME.  He's happy and friendly and helpful and loving.  His favorite phrases right now are, "Hi, how are you? I good", "Mommy, I yuv you", and "I goch you!"  He's just so darn sweet.  So basically, we can always assume Anthony's been my sweet relief each and every day.  He gets lots of extra snuggles and hugs just for being himself. 

- We registered Anna and Agnes for preschool in the fall!  They're going 3 days a week in the Pre-4 program.  They're both way excited.  I'm excited for them and also a little sad that my babies are growing up way too quickly.  The next year, they'll all be in preschool!!

- I had a lot of thoughts this week on the Roe v. Wade anniversary.  Maybe I'll get them written down.  Maybe not.  I have a lot of pictures I'd love to post too, so when time presents itself I'll get on that!

- On the adjustment front, everyone seems to be adjusted to our new family of 6.  In fact, my sister commented that she was looking through pictures and couldn't find any of Mya and Agnes from last summer.  She then remembered that they haven't been here that long.  It feels like they've been here forever.  They are just a part of our family.  And Agnes reminds us regularly how nice it is to be a family.  It melts us and reminds us how right she is.  We're thankful for the blessings of our four beautiful kids and we're trying to enjoy our time with them (although, I'd still like to enjoy that time outside instead of inside...).  Our families have welcomed them with open arms and I really can't believe it's only been three months.

2013 Recap

One of my favorite New Year's things to do is go back and read some of last year's posts.  That's one of the reasons I love having a blog.  I love be able to recall not just what happened, but the emotions, joys and challenges that went with big events or the mundane days.

But first of all, HAPPY NEW YEAR!  We hope 2014 brings as many joys and fun family time as 2013 did!  We had a great year, filled with lots of highs, and of course a few lows.  Our New Years Eve celebration was a little dull, as I was recovering from the stomach bug (thankfully it was a 1 hour bug, the recovery took all day though).  So instead of the party with my family that we were planning on, we had a simple pj party and went to bed early :-).

The kids made hats to celebrate!  And they started singing "Happy New Years and you know it, clap your hands!"

They drank my family's NYE traditional drink, cherry 7up.  The kids called it "spicy soda".

We also played a family Wii game, and Candy Land for the first time with the big girls.  They loved it!

Overall, it was a fun night and the kids enjoyed our celebration.  All kids were asleep by 8 and I was out around 9.


And now for the recap:

January:  
I wrote this post about Life and how blessed we are that our children's birthparents chose life.  I still mean every single word and with the March for Life approaching in a few weeks, it's always on my mind.

February:
We celebrate Anna's 2nd birthday!

March:
March is always busy with lots of birthdays and Anna and Anthony's birthday party.  Jeremy's birthday is in March as well.  We also enjoyed the process of electing our new Pope and Anna still loves to talk about Pope Francis!

April:
We celebrated Anthony's 1st birthday!  I also wrote a few posts about Infertility as April is Infertility Awareness Month.  This one on Isolation in particular.

May:
Jeremy had a big job change in May.  It has been an amazing career switch and a true blessing for our family.  I'm grateful that he had this opportunity.  It has given us better financial security, more time with the family, less stress about job security, and a much more "family" atmosphere.   We also started PT for Anthony to get him up and moving! 

June:
I wrote a post about answered prayers and rereading it, I can only smile as God did it again.  He answered our adoption prayers with a big fat "yes" after asking us to wait a short time. 

July:
We celebrated our 5th Anniversary this month!  Apparently I had lots of time on my hands because I wrote a few posts that month about things going on.  I wrote about motherhood and hair, a topic I'll have to revisit soon, as my life with three girls and their hair is a little crazy!

August:
August brought some trials as my sister miscarried her second baby.  We know JP's looking out for all of us!  I didn't blog about it, but it definitely was a challenging time for our family.  We still miss him and know he would've been a great nephew and cousin to our kids.  I can't wait for the day I can see him in heaven! 

It was also the month of my niece's first birthday!  Cecelia's such a sweet little girl and I'm so blessed to be her aunt!  She's an awesome cousin to the kids and they just love her.  In fact, this morning Anna said, "I have 1 brobro, 2 sisters, and 1 Cici!"

I also posted about our adoption wait and how that was affecting me at the time.  If I'd have only known how soon our precious girls would be joining us!

September:
My birthday month!

October:
This was a huge month for our family.  In just a few short days, we found out about, met and brought home our two newest daughters!  They have adjusted so well in such a short amount of time and we feel so blessed to be their parents.  We can hardly believe that we're the parents of FOUR children!

November:
November flew by as we tried to adjust as a family of four.  We also had Mya and Agnes baptized.  We celebrated National Adoption month with our four adopted children and went to our agency's Adoption Potluck.  I don't think I blogged about it, maybe I was jut too shaken up, but that day there was an F4 tornado that went through a town about 40 minutes from us.  That same storm passed right across the interestate where we were driving.  Thankfully we were about 10 minutes ahead of it.  On our way home, we passed lots of destruction.  We were thankful that we were safe, but we said lots of prayers for the many families whose homes were completely destroyed by the tornado.

December:
We continued to adjust (it takes some time, that's for sure!).  We also enjoyed preparing for Christmas with the kids, as they're finally getting old enough to understand a lot more!  We celebrated Christmas as a family of 6 and we're still trying to get our house back in order after the influx of toys, clothes, and treats!

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas!

We've had a very wonderful Christmas so far!  We can hardly believe that we have four kids this year!  We feel so incredibly blessed to be parents to these four beautiful children!  It's so fun to watch them experience it all.  Anna and Agnes could really understand the story of Christ's birth this year and we did a lot of fun Advent activities to prepare. 

I don't have any pictures to post at the moment, although we took some cute ones.  My cord happens to be upstairs and since all four kids are sleeping, I don't dare go up there!

So when I can get them loaded on our (new!!) computer hopefully soon, I'll post a Christmas post about all of our fun activities and travels.

For now, I'll just say that my youngest child has decided that she is no longer okay with wearing a diaper and simply holds it until we take her diaper off and put her on the potty.  I was hoping for another 6 months before I had to walk the potty training walk again but Mya had a different idea.  Without any kind of formal "training", Mya's already going on the potty 3-4 times a day (after telling me she need to go) and unlike Anna who wouldn't poop in the potty for a long time, Mya is a pro at pooping on the potty.  At least Anthony's no where near ready, he'll be the one in diapers till he goes to preschool.....

Christmas Program

We had our first school Christmas program as parents this past week.  Agnes was in her preschool program and man was she cute!  She's a total ham on stage, not a single bit of stage fright in that child!  We're not surprised!  During the first verse, her voice is the one you can hear the loudest!

Not only did Agnes have a blast and look super cute, but her siblings very much enjoyed the show.  Anna was so excited to sing along, since Agnes had been practicing, Anna knew all the words.  Anna sat so nicely and listened to all of the kids and she can't wait for her turn next year!

Anthony loves anything or place where there are lots of people.  We joke that he's our little politician.  He walks around saying hi to everyone.  And kissing babies.  He's especially fond of babies (one in particular, who happened to be sitting behind us that night).  Before everything got started, he walked up and down the aisle waving and saying "hi, how are you?" More than once, people said, "well, he's got my vote, I don't know what he's running for, but I'd vote for him!"   He also enjoyed the concert, but was upset that we wouldn't let him go on stage to dance...  So he improvised.

Mya was her usual, not so easy to handle self.  The silly little girl just gets into everything and cannot sit still at all.  She's a challenge in church or anywhere else where we have to be quiet and sit for any length of time (2 minutes would be too long...).  Hopefully that phase passes quickly...  She did enjoy seeing Agnes on stage and she most definitely enjoyed the cookie afterwards.

I've loved having Agnes in preschool.  I went to this same school as a kid and I couldn't wait to be a part of the school again.  It's been nice to get to know some of the parents and I've enjoyed getting out of the house those days with the kids.  It's also a nice break, having only 3 to run errands with those two hours and I get to do "school" with Anna on Thursday mornings then.  I'm always very ready to go pick her up by the time it's over though.  I miss her when she's not here and frankly, my house is too QUIET without her around.  The sweet girl talks pretty much nonstop...  She keeps things lively and a few hours a week is the perfect break for me to just have the three others.  She LOVES preschool and is thriving big time.  Her progress report last week was wonderful, she's apparently very liked by the other kids and she talks about quite a few of the kids all the time.  It's so nice to see her adjusting so well and thoroughly enjoying her family and school.

Ballet

 The girls are finishing up ballet for the semester.  They've had a blast doing it and they've learned so much.  We've decided to go ahead and sign them up for next semester (in the 3 year old class, instead of the 2s) using some Christmas money that they get.  I can't believe how much they've learned in this short time!  Even Mya's learned a lot and repeats stuff at home and she spends the whole class on my back in my carrier!  And I can't forget my little handsome son.  He loves dance class too.  He just loves chasing the girls and watching them dance.  He's a total ham and has every mom in there wrapped around his little adorable finger!

They've been dancing to the Nutcracker songs the last few weeks and they've learned quite a few of the steps to the dances.  In fact I hear the big girls in the basement practicing their Nutcracker moves.  So we decided to get tickets to our local Nutcracker.  I took the two big girls and since the tickets were cheap, I decided that even if they didn't sit still through all of it, we could at least stay for the first half.

Well, they surprised me and sat great!  They absolutely loved watching the ballet and they are still talking about it.  I was in tears at the beginning, just in awe that I was sitting at the Nutcracker with two of my daughters.  It was so wonderful and such a sweet time with them.  

Look at that smile, think she enjoyed it?

She's constantly doing ballet moves like she saw!

Not letting go of their programs.

Baptized!

The girls were baptized the Saturday after Thanksgiving!  We're so grateful that they allowed us to baptize them so soon!  Agnes was so very excited about it and she still can't stop talking about it.  We feel blessed to have four souls to look after and raise!

Waiting for Dcn to start!

Clean soul club for Mya!

And Agnes

Agnes and her Godparents, my brother-in-law (Jeremy's brother) Joey and my sister, Julie

My and her Godparents, my sister and brother-in-law (her husband), Sara and Kel

Our Catholic family!  I just love this picture!

With Jeremy's family.  I love that there's a new almost-sister-in-law in there!  Joey and Sela got engaged a few weekends ago!

My family, including my grandma who was able to make it up for the baptism!

The highlight of Agnes' day... the cake...

And I couldn't resist.  Jeremy was excited that him and Cecelia matched.  Cecelia is completely obsessed with her Uncle Jeremy and if he's around, she's with him.  Just look at that adorable niece of mine!