And now for your "Monthly Maust Update"....=) It's a long one...so sorry for the long post!
HELLO MARCH!...and HELLO spring!! SO excited for spring to officially be here! These couple of warm days are getting me way excited for spring to stay. For good! I'm so looking forward to going on walks while it's still light out, for my tulip bulbs in my flower bed to start sprouting for the first time....and for the kids to finally get to have their daily play outside! Most of all, we're looking forward to busting out the trampoline that the kids got for Christmas. It will make a nice addition to the backyard play! Ready for the windows to be open and for that winter stuffiness to escape! So bring it on!
Life is once again going non-stop, especially with track starting. I'm officially a track widow once again. Brock and the boys started their 1st official practice on Valentine's Day. Nothing like telling the wifey I love you more than his track boys shouting "Happy Valentine's day!!" over Brock's cell phone! (sheesh:)) He tries, right?:) He definitely showed it by sending me flowers to school that day...what a sweetie:)
So, now that that's in full swing, our after-school days consist of me going to get the boys after daycare and waiting for Brock to get home to greet us at 6 pm. It's gotten better, and he's trying to get out of practice no later than 5:30. So it's coming around! He has over 100 kids that tried out this year, so once the numbers dwindle down a little more, hopefully it gets into more of a consistent routine. They had their 1st indoor meet at the Culver Relays and won for the 5th year in a row....great job boys! I'm looking forward to going to a couple of their home meets this season!
As you could see from the above pic of Brock and I, we went on a belated Valentine's Date night to Olive Garden! Nothing like a meal with free gifts cards! (Thanks mom and dad!) I feel like we don't get out much on our own lately on the weekends, so this was a real treat and a nice break from our busy routine!
Winter brought on a couple of new side projects for myself....
Project #1. Trying to get in shape again! I'm really striving to drop a few pounds and just feel better about myself again. I feel like the 3rd baby pounds are not shedding near as fast as the 2nd! So I started a little bit of working out by going to boot camps in October and November, then took a break in Dec. and Jan (which was a no-no!) Then started back up taking Boot Camp again at the women's retreat. I love it when I get to go! I've been going once a week and really enjoy it! On my days off from that I try to fit in P90X Ab Ripper or Jillian's 30 day shred work out. It's just SO hard after school with 3 kids to work it in. I know I can do better! I just can't wait to get outside and start walking/running again when Brock gets home from his practices. I hope that works out in my favor, anyways:)
Project #2. Planning my 10 year class reunion! This is a lot of fun, although a lot of work! I've enjoyed getting in contact with old classmates and planning out our shin-dig, so I hope it's as fun as we're expecting! The meetings have been pretty fun anyways! What did you guys do for your reunions, if you had one? Any advice on what to do/not to do? I would love any unique ideas!!
Kids' Update:
I'll start with Mr. Isaac. He is showing wonderful progress still with pre-school. Even though his school year is coming to an end, he'll still continue to go a couple times this summer and will attend that class again next year. Like I mentioned in my last post, we have his evaluation coming up and yesterday I recieved a form to sign and fill out regarding his upcoming observation with his pre-school teacher, his OT, speech therapist and last the Autistic consultant. Brock and I will both be present at this evaluation, and basically it will overall decide whether Isaac has a "developmental delay" or if he falls on the Autism spectrum. The educational test is a lot like the medical test, so that's why we're choosing this route with the expenses and such.
Recently he's been doing very well with new things like finger painting...which he used to HATE...because of the funny texture. (I remember as a kid I never really enjoyed it either!) So he's shown progress with that. He's really back into liking his cars again, and he ALWAYS has to carry them with him. If I let him, all he would run is race his cars back and forth on my countertop the entire day. That's when we've been interrupting his play so he doesn't get in "the zone". He even tries to take the cars to bed with him at night. He's now undertanding that the cars have to go "night night" and I put them in his dresser drawer to sleep. Not 5 minutes after he wakes up in the morning does he go get his cars out of the drawer! They even go on the car ride to day care every morning, but he knows he has to leave them in the car to to go to day care and church. So it's an improvement:)
Isaac is also reciting his ABC's a lot more fluently. He's even knowing the sounds of all the letters now...which is awesome! I'll say "the A says ____" and he'll say "AH!" "The B says ____" "Buh".....and so on. It's like a little song for each letter's sound. He does it right on cue and is showing his true intelligence! It makes me excited!
Saying things on cue is happening a lot more frequently. We love hearing him sweetly say "Hi" to us when he first sees us, and "bye bye" and "c-ya" when we're leaving somewhere. He even repeated "I wuv you" to me a couple of nights ago. Melted my heart:)
Now for Sir Kahler....
The kid continues to crack us up! As a 2 year old, he's still the most up and down emotional character! He's very demanding with what he wants, yet can make us laugh a second later. He's really into showing off his muscles, growling at himself in the mirror and running around like a crazy man in circles all day long. I get really funny reports from his teacher, Kelsey at daycare. I think she laughs at him all day long! So I'm glad he's so entertaining:)
Our struggle with him has been his sleeping arrangements lately, like I also mentioned in my last post. He INSISTS on sleeping on the couch still. It drives me crazy. We constantly fight him on staying in his room with Isaac, but they keep each other up with Kahler throwing a fit if he has to stay in his firetruck bed. The ONLY solution we found a couple nights ago was to let Isaac and Kahler sleep together in Isaac's bed. Since it's a twin, it fits them both easily in it, and the past 2 nights, they sleep all night! I think they both just love to cuddle anyways, so it must help them sleep. Until we get the new mattresses and frames up for their beds, this will probably be his temporary sleeping situation from now on=/
And last but not least....Miss Maylin!
My little lady is going to be 8 months this month! Can you believe it?! As of right now, she's rolling over and loves to be sitting up (with support or assistance )and is holding her own bottle very well! She's 14.1 lbs, which put her on the weight charts a month ago at 3 %, so I'm hoping that made an increase this time!
I'm still nursing her when I can, but she's starting to get a lot of formula now since I can't fill her up. So we're starting the weining process. I can't believe that either. My last time:( It's a good thing though. I'll enjoy the freedom once it's here I think, but just the detachment itself will be a little sad for me.
Maylin continues to be the sweetest, happy baby ever! She's hardly ever upset unless she's hungry or just wants our undivided attention! Even when she was sick with pnemonia a couple of weeks ago, she was still happy. It was hard to know that she was seriously sick until it got to the point where we could see her having a hard time breathing. The chest x-rays confirmed that pnemonia settled in her lungs after her coughing for 2 weeks straights. Luckily we caught it early, so we just had to do a strong antibiotic to rid it. It worked and now she's happy as a clam!
I'm realizing now, and maybe a little too late, that I need to get her on a better sleeping routine. Especially at night. Since I was nursing her before bed, she was doing really well sleeping through the night. This was going very well until she had gotten sick, and hasn't slept through the night since. I started her on rice cereal finally since she was able to sit in the high chair well enough, thinking that would fill her up. But she still manages to wake up around 2 am every morning=/ So, I'm afraid I'm going to have to start putting her down on her own and maybe cry it out. Kinda scares me honestly, but I need to start somewhere and hope she can comfort herself to go back to sleep. So we'll see where that puts us with the sleeping situation! Wish me luck!
Stay tuned for her 8 month pictures with Darcy! I want to do some fun funky ideas for her, but I feel stumped! Any fun girlie ideas any of you have?
