Sleepy

Lately V has been refusing her naps all day until she just can't stay awake any longer, which is usually right around dinnertime. She takes a nice long nap and then wakes up right when we are trying to get to bed. We usually end up staying up with her until past midnight. It is so frustrating. So, the past couple days that she has been refusing her daytime naps, I made her stay awake at dinnertime and don't let her sleep until 7pm when the rest of the kids are going to bed. On Tuesday, she just couldn't stay awake any longer. It was quite funny watching her.

Predicament

Our little explorer is getting around everywhere now. I love it! I think it is so funny to see what she chooses to spend her time doing. Just this morning, I found her in the kitchen with the griddle cord hanging out of her mouth while she was trying to crawl out of the kitchen. Didn't really work since it was stuck in the cabinet, but it was definitely fun to see. She also likes to go through obstacle courses in our dining room. She'll squeeze between the legs of the table and chairs. I found her high-centered on a chair and she was yelling for someone to come save her. The wonderful mom that I am, I found my camera first before teaching her how to crawl out of the chair. I love discovering my child's personality during this phase of their life!

Tags

Every time I turn around, V has found another tag. It doesn't matter how fun the toy is that she is playing with, if it has a tag it goes straight to her mouth. So hilarious! I though I would outsmart her and get her a tag toy to suck on, but she won't suck on those tags. Nope, she is a tag snob. She has to have just the right tag in order to satisfy her need.

Jerome, Tuzigoot

Finally! Two months after our summer vacation, I am actually getting around to documenting it. Our goal this year was to visit everything of interest in Arizona so that when Ryan graduates we won't have any need to sight-see in AZ. We would come to AZ purely to visit family.

We stayed at a cabin just outside of Prescott and took daytrips to our different destinations. Our first day sight-seeing included going to Jerome and Tuzigoot.

Getting to Jerome was quite interesting. The mileage from Prescott to Jerome is pretty insignificant, but it took us nearly an hour to get there. The last few miles of the trip were heading directly up Mingus Mountain on very tight switchbacks. Not a pleasant trip, especially when the kids in the back start saying they feel like throwing up. Even in the front seat, I was getting really sick of all the turns. There were several points along the road where I actually thought we might slip off the edge of the road and fall a thousand feet to our death. The road was incredibly narrow and I did not like being on it at all! I'm sure Ryan was just laughing at my silliness the entire time.

Once we got to Jerome, we went to the old miner "museum". I actually think it was a junkyard that was organized a bit and people wanted to see all the old "junk" that was there so they started charging people admission. Either way, it does have a nice view of the valley below.

   This little girl enjoyed her ride in the backpack. She started out resting on Dad's shoulder and chewing her hat strap, but she quickly realized that Dad makes a great pillow. That is how she spent the rest of the time at the Jerome museum.

 The boys had been really interested in carving with their pocketknives during this vacation, so when they saw this carving they got really excited. 

 

On the way out of the museum, we saw this car. Jayke was so excited about it that he wanted us to stop the car and run over there to get a picture. Must be a boy thing...I don't get it.

After we got back to the actual town of Jerome, we were driving down the streets, just completely amazed at how all the buildings are hanging off the edge of the mountain. Seriously some scary buildings there. This picture pretty much sums up the entire town. Tall buildings with a few feet until tall retaining walls which connect to the next level of tall buildings. Forget having a yard, you're lucky to have a back porch!

On the way to the state museum, we saw an old car that had gone off the road into a ravine...that was still there. I guess there just wasn't any way to pull it out so they just left it there. From the state museum, you can see just how crazy all the buildings are. They are literally just sitting on the edge of the mountain. We learned at the state museum that there have been several landslides in the town. The mountain was being mined and it is even on a fault line, so the chances of having your house destroyed were pretty big.

 
You can see the storms just rolling in over the mountains. They were incredible! They seemed to just appear out of nowhere.

And the views from the town were spectacular. I can see why people still want to live there, even if it is a crazy, sliding down the mountain, halfway into the mountain, little tourist town.

 

After Jerome, we drove a few more miles and saw the Tuzigoot National Monument. It was pretty much what I expected: a bunch of Native American ruins.

What I didn't expect was how high they were. The ruins sat on a little hill, but even from the little hill, you can see everything around it.

 

It's location was right next to the river, so everywhere around it was covered in huge trees and green bushes. Ethan kept telling us how he wants to live somewhere that has lots of green.

 

 Jayke just wanted to take pictures of everything. Even if he already had twenty pictures of it, he wanted more. There was a point during our vacation that I told him to put the camera away. He was getting a little shutter-happy.

Up next: Montezuma Castle and Well...

She crawls!

As of yesterday, V officially crawls rather than rolling and scooting to get where she wants. Today she has been practicing her new skill and is getting rather good at it. I am so excited that she is finally crawling!

 

First day of school

There are plenty of wonderful things to do for the first day of school. Wearing your favorite outfit, fixing your hair just right, eating a hearty breakfast, getting plenty of rest, remembering your backpack and sack lunch, having your picture taken in front of your house or at the bus stop, having your best smile ready to meet your new teacher and friends...yes, there are plenty of things to do on the first day of school. One of those is not becoming best friends with your snooze button for an hour and twenty minutes unawares. Nope, things like that should not ever be done. That would only leave you 10 minutes to shower, get dressed, eat breakfast, brush your teeth and hair, change a diaper, dress a baby, pack a lunch, enforce the "everyone must brush their hair and teeth" and "nobody can wear all black" rules, remind 4 children that they must wear shoes, remind a 4 year old that she must wear socks with her shoes, remind 9 year old that he still hasn't filled out his paper that needs to be turned in today, run 5 children out the door, and get their picture taken before piling them all in a minivan. Then, driving the speed limit for 17 miles to get to the school crowded with excited children and hoards of parents begging for one last hug or kiss, just in time for the teachers to escort all the students from the playground to the classrooms. No, doing something like that on the first day of school would not be a good idea. Not at all. Not that I would have any experience with that, though. Happy first day of school!

July

Oh, boy! It has been a long month! Or rather, it has been a long week! One could even say it has been a long night and be completely justified in saying so. Ugh. I am completely exhausted and at my wit's end. Sadly, I have realized that I am just a human and not superwoman, like I previously thought. ;-) Actually, I probably couldn't even qualify as human this week. I'm just tired.

I am so glad that Ryan took his boards a few weeks ago. I am even happier that he passed. (Go, Ryan!) He is just awesome. I am especially glad that I have a husband again. He even helps me in the evenings. (Swoon!) I even get to sit on the couch with him after the kids are asleep and just be us. Heavenly! Those six weeks of his studying were seriously hard for everyone.

Ethan's allergy shots have been going great. His allergist even officially said that Ethan no longer has asthma. He is finally up to 50 pounds, which is fantastic for him. He will be getting braces on in the next few weeks to help give his teeth some room to come in (one tooth has no space at all to come down, so it is just sitting there in his gums) and also make it so that his back teeth can actually touch when he eats. Right now he makes edge to edge contact on his front teeth (very dangerous for those teeth) and cannot chew unless he pushes his bottom jaw forward. Thankfully Ryan is in dental school, because it gives us a pretty good discount on the braces. It will end up being about 1/3 of the cost of the other quote we received. He will also probably be getting new glasses soon. He had 20/70 vision with his glasses on. (Sigh.) 

When we were at Ethan's orthodontist appointment, Kate had an incredibly runny nose. Like pour straight from your sinuses runny nose. After a few trips to get tissues, I noticed her face looked a little odd. Her eye had swelled halfway shut. Thankfully we always have an antihistamine with us, so she got a dose pretty quickly. Even a day later, her eye is still puffy.

We have no idea what caused it. Hopefully it doesn't happen again. That would suck having another severely allergic child in the house.

V is driving me crazy. She won't sleep. I can't figure out if it is the food or just the age. I do notice that her scream is more shrill on the days that she has solid foods. But even on days that she doesn't have solids, she still screams all day. We did feed her carrots again and she didn't throw up. She did end up screaming a long time and arched her back a lot that night, though.  She screams when I nurse her, she screams when I try to put her to sleep, she screams when I set her down, she screams when she sees me. It is sounding very similar to Ethan at that age. That is why I ended up weaning him at 9 months and then found out he had food allergies. That is why I think I am going to pull her off solids again for a few weeks and see what happens. We ended up moving her crib to the girls' room. I just couldn't sleep with her in our room anymore. She wouldn't take her nap today so I let her scream herself to sleep. So sad. She has actually been asleep for almost 2 hours. Longest nap she has had in a long time. I am just tired. I hope we figure out what is going on soon. I really could use some sleep.

I am still trying to figure out how what I will teach the kids' this year. I am probably just feeling overwhelmed by V, but I only have a few days left to figure it out. I honestly can't believe that school starts the first full week in August. What ever happened to a summer break? Since we live in Arizona, I think we need to have our break in winter rather than summer. That way we can actually let the kids outside and let them be kids during their long break. It probably also didn't help that we were gone half the summer and I never really got a chance to organize my house or my brain for that matter. Or maybe I did get to organize a lot, but I just had SO much to organize that I still ran out of time. We are definitely in need of a yard sale! I am so tired of having piles of baby stuff in every open corner of my house. I just need it out! I even got so tired of the messes that I went through the boys' room and organized their closet. It took for.e.ver! I took away half of the girls' books. I even went through the school stuff my mom gave me 6 years ago when she stopped teaching. I went through all the kids' clothes. I went through our shoe pile. I have not touched the hall (toy) closet. It really needs to be gone through! I even started to wash the mountains of laundry. It really is amazing how much laundry a family of 7 will go through in 8 days! I still need to make up chore cards for the kids so they know how to fully clean a room from start to finish without me nagging them the entire time. I think once the house and my brain are all organized that I will be just fine with the kids' school this year, even though it is a little daunting teaching 4 kids at all different levels all at the same time. Someday it will get easier. It has to get easier!

We did have a lovely summer vacation after Ryan's boards, even if it was cut in half because of a crazy recluse-like spider crawling right next to Ryan and Ethan's bed. I will get around to telling about it...after I have a little more time. Wish me luck on getting through this next week of screaming baby, trying to get ready for school, decluttering craziness. :-)

Altoid travel sets (thanks Pinterest)

Knowing that we would be on the road a lot this summer, we decided to make travel activities for the kids using Altoids tins. We have been diligently eating Altoids for months and we finally had enough tins right before we left on our official summer vacation. We made tic-tac-toe, don't eat Pete, checkers, chess, and have plans for a felt fishing game as soon as I can find the right magnet for it.

We used vinyl stickers for the game board parts, Sculpey clay for the game pieces, and magnetic sheets to hold the pieces to the tins.

The boys decided they needed to try out the chess game before we actually went on the road, just to make sure it worked. We realized that the game pieces for chess were too small and close together to grab with just fingers, so we even included a pair of tweezers to move the pieces with. The boys loved their new travel chess set!

Squeek, squeal

When we were eating lunch the other day, the kids started to sing the Barney song. No, they don't watch Barney, but they do know the song. V decided that she loved the song. :-) She screams a little chirp every time I sing to her. I think she likes singing. Her squeal is so adorable! I just want to squeeze her cheeks when she squeals like this!

First story

Jayke decided to read to V today for the first time. I know I should read to her everyday already, but I don't. I'm not ashamed to admit that I am not a perfect parent. I have five kids to keep up with; I can't do everything that I know I should! Anyway, V loved the pictures... and the pages. I think Jayke will be in charge of her daily reading time from now on. :-)