I can't even fake it

Sometimes, when I'm in a really pissy mood, I try to just fake my way through and I eventually get in a better mood. When I act like I'm happy and that I don't mind being asked for the eleventy hundredth time what's for dinner, then I actually start to be happy and not mind.

But right now, I don't even care enough to fake it. I'm too tired to even want to try. To make matters worse it's melt-your-makeup hot outside (not that I actually wear makeup most of the time, but if I did, it'd melt anyway) so there's no hope in getting outside to get some fresh air and let the kids get some energy out. They can play for about 30 minutes first thing in the morning, but after that, their cheeks get scary red and they even start begging for the A/C. So they run around the house sounding like elephants, yelling and carrying on and waking up Evie, which, let me tell you, makes me oh so happy. And that really lifts the mood. *insert eye roll here*

I must really be in a pissy mood to be using sarcasm on the blog.

So.

Blah.

What's your mood lifter when you can't convince yourself to get happy?

I nearly cried when I heard

This makes me happier than I've ever been about a movie coming out. It's my most favorite book EVER and I've been waiting for a year and a half for the movie to come out. After every comic book movie and guy flick I've seen with Sweet Hubby on opening day, he is taking me to see this movie on the day it's released. And I'm going to hope hope hope that the movie does the book justice.

I'm a bad, bad blogger.

Sorry I haven't been around this blog o' mine much. I really don't know what to say. Life marches on and I'm not sure what to share about it.

Sweet Hubby went back to work last week. He worked one night on Monday night, then went to an all-day class on Thursday, and then went back on Saturday night. I was really nervous about handling the evening/bedtime without him, but so far I've only done it on my own once and it went well. I'm on my own the next two nights, but I think we'll be fine...as long as Marc-Adam is sufficiently tired.

Stephen's lost his two front teeth. The grown-up teeth are already coming in, but his grin is so.cute. and it's so funny to hear him talk.

The boys are VBS at a church in our town this week. I'm not quite sure what to do with my mornings...it's strange only having one child to care for. It's a wonder that I thought it was so hard when Stephen was a baby! :) Now, having only one child is slightly boring even though I love having that one-on-one time with Evie. But Evie likes to sleep through our one-on-one time.

That's all I got.

Wait and See

I love this song...it's become one of my favorites. It gives me so much hope to know that I'm still a work in progress. :)

Photo Shoot!

I'm not sure if you've seen these yet, but here are some more shots from Evie's photo shoot. If you live in the Houston area, be sure to visit the Evermore website to see the work of the photographer that did these photos. She's really talented and we enjoyed working with her...can't wait to have her back out again to get shots of all our kids. I can't imagine how cute those will turn out (she has some REALLY cute subjects to work with)! (Oh, and Evie's featured on her website as well, which makes me just puff up with pride for my baby girl!)

Here are just a few of my favorite shots...there's more that I may post later.

At one month

Sweet Evie turned one month old on Sunday. Here's what's going on at one month old:

• She's getting really good at lifting her head. She lifts it up and looks around any chance she gets. She can even lift it and turn it while lying on her tummy!
• She's focusing on our faces longer, but she keeps going cross-eyed while trying to focus. Hasn't grown out of that, yet, I guess. She can sort of track me if I move to one side of her while we're making eye contact.
• I think she may have smiled at me on Saturday. It was brief, but beautiful, and I haven't gotten another out of her since.
• She's going bald. That makes me laugh and cry. The hair is getting incredibly thin on top which I try to cover with a headband, but I worry that might make the problem worse.
• We were swaddling with a Miracle Blanket for the first few weeks (we used it with Marc-Adam for months...he loved it!). She kept pee-ing through it, so I bought another to have an extra. They aren't cheap. A $30 blanket. Then she decides she doesn't like to be swaddled. Seriously, I started having trouble getting her to sleep, then I tried taking her out of the swaddle. Since then, I haven't had half the problems with her sleep as I had for several days before taking her out of the swaddle. Little stinker. Now I have this $30 blanket we can't use.
• The boys still love her. They ask to hold her several times a day and get so excited when she wakes up for a nap.
• She slept in her bed in her room for the first time on Sunday night. She actually only spent a couple of hours in there before I brought her to bed with me because she was having a hard night. But last night, she stayed in her room all night except for the one time I brought her in to bed with me to feed her. Then I put her back in her bed and she went straight to sleep!

I wanted to start taking monthly pictures of her during her first year to be able watch how she grows. I kept thinking that I wanted to take her picture with something that I could use every month to see how she compares with it every month. Then I remembered something we got for a shower gift, and so this is what we'll be taking a picture in every month to see how she grows into it. We had a few issues in the photo shoot.

She looked too scrunched down in this one, so I sat her up and tried again.

Well, that won't work, obviously.

Then she started squirming...I think the headband part of the tiara was poking her. Beauty hurts sometimes, Baby.

The Incredible Disappearing Tiara!

Ah, well, maybe next month will be more successful.

Der.

Baby Girl turned 1 month old yesterday. Eesh. It's going too fast. I'm enjoying this newborn time MUCH more than I ever have before. I guess I'm just now figuring out that this stage goes so quickly and since it could possibly be the last time we have a newborn in the house, I'm trying to soak up every second.

Anyway, I intended to get a post up yesterday about what Evie's up to at 1 month old and to post a special picture, but she had such a hard night/day/night that I completely forgot until just now. We've got an appointment for her this afternoon to see if we need to adjust her reflux meds (you really have to stay on top of making sure they have the right dosage since they grow so fast at this age), but other than that, nothing else is going on. So hopefully I'll have a post up this afternoon for her. Stay tuned.

Not boring, just not interesting

Aside from day to day details and me getting high from sweet baby smell (oh, and sweet baby breath), there's really not much going on around here that's worth blogging about. Nothing terribly funny or interesting or worth sharing. But I certainly wouldn't call what's going on in our home boring. So here's just a little brain dump, so I don't go too long without blogging:

• Evie's doing just swell. She's waking up a little more each day and starting to really look around. I think we might get a smile out of her any day now. She's doing FANTASTIC at night, which makes me want to dance at about 5am every morning. Um, but can she stop with the growing...? She's getting so big, and will be a month old on Sunday. I didn't think it would be because things have been so calm and easy, but the last month is a BLUR.
  

• Marc-Adam has been quite the challenge. He's still sweet enough that's it hard to stay mad at him for long, but oh my, that child makes my head hurt. We've tightened the reins a bit on him, and that seems to have helped...he's listening better and we're able to make it through an entire meal without having to put him in time-out *sigh*. We recently moved him to a twin bed and now the trouble he caused from his crib can now be caused anywhere in the room or hall. It's been quite the battle and Sweet Hubby and I are desperate to find a way to make bedtime a little more calm.

• Zachary has just been so funny and so sweet (but seems to have contracted a case of selective hearing). The other day, he wanted to sing a lullaby to Evie and he sang, "Little giiiirrrrl....with a head! I love you, sweet little girl!!" And then later at dinner, he started a conversation with, "Next time, when I grow up, if you're still my mom and dad..." Wha...?

• Stephen's *thisclose* to losing one (or maybe both) of his front teeth. 'Bout darn time. The things have been lose since Thanksgiving. It makes me slightly nauseous to think about it. I wish it would just fall out already. I've tried pulling it, but it's not ready so I've been telling him to wiggle it any chance he gets.

• I'm starting to get homeschooling back on the brain and am starting to plan out our next year. I think I'm going to try to relax our school schedule a little bit and not try to do every subject every day with Stephen. I plan on starting grammar this year (using First Language Lessons) and keeping up with our same math and writing curricula. So I think that maybe we might try doing math 2x a week and writing/grammar 3x a week with reading every day. I think he can handle that, but we'll see. For Zachary though, we'll be working on the same things every day because he doesn't have as much to do as Stephen. I also plan on sticking with Five in a Row...it's just a really good curriculum and we all enjoy it. There's a homeschool conference in August that I plan on going to...I just hope I don't get sucked in to trying something new. But I'm really excited about it. I didn't get to go last year.

• Next week is Sweet Hubby's last week home with us. I'm slightly panicked about it. I think, though, that if I plan it right, it might be a whole 'nother 2 weeks before I'm actually all on my own after he goes back to work. The good news is that he only ever works for 4 days at a time, and once he goes back to working days (instead of overnight), he'll only be working for 3 days at a time. Logically, though, I know that I'll be just fine on my own with all 4 kids, it's just scary to take that first step, especially since I have 2 very high maintenance children.

I think that's about it for now. Any questions?