Fantastic and Five!

My girl is 5 years old today! Isnt' she great? We all love her so much. We love her dancing, her fashion sense, her insightful questions, like "Why do people need to sleep? Is it because they have to have dreams?" ( she really got me with that one!). We love her passion, her imagination, her art work, her jokes, the way she loves and plays with her brother and new baby sister. She is our very most favorite Savannah! Happy Birthday my girl!

Weepy

For days now I have had this...well it can only be described as weepy. Anything and everything could very easily cause the tears to engage and the heart to beat at a heavy aching pace. I am emotional over commercials, tiny moments with my kids, seemingly "harmless" conversations with my husband. He continues to watch the smallest changes in my face to determine wether now is a good time to talk to me about weekend plans, work updates, or baby excitement. Three pregnancies with me has molded him into a cautious, overprotective, and gentle husband. I sure love that man! Its almost over honey!
But here is what I've decided...these symptoms of pregnancy: overly emotional, weepiness, nesting, fits of frustration are only a "symptom" because thats the natural resulting response when you take a perfectly capable, independent, attractive woman and turn her life upside down. You add 20-40 extra pounds on her already (not so perfect) body. This weight affects not just her self esteem but her ability to move and maintain her life as she knew it. Suddenly everything from the waste down can't be cleaned the way she'd like, the tiny McDonalds toys escape her practiced hand because well she can't bend down that far! But its not just the things below that confound her now. No! The things above her head, for instance cupboards...her belly actually shortens her reach now too! And forget grabbing a stool to get to the rarely used food dehydrator. The stool will be her demise if she risks her unevenly proportioned self on top of the tiny pedestal. And thats just the house cleaning overview. What about chasing after toddler children? Forget it....its not happening. Here is where the fits of frustration enter. She has lost her temper and her sanity...and her kids in terror slowly and cautiously approach what is usually their mom. Then the weepiness begins...guilt....oh the guilt! "Mommy just doesn't feel good and its not your fault. I'm sorry mommy scared you! Please don't run away from scarey mommy again!" Yeah right! And then that process repeats over and over again as that belly gets bigger and she finds herself limited even more. Until, like myself, she is reduced to mostly weepy because all the things she used to take pride in: her appearance, her ability to organize her home, to clean her home, her ability to be a good mom, a good wife, are not only compromised they seem completely gone! So doctors you call it a symptom, I call it a big mean trick! Thank heavens that within the first year of the new babies life you regain all those things again. Just takes time.

94 Years of Livin...Why am I in such a hurry??

As most of you know I am very pregnant right now and had to quit work as a precaution because of my unpredictable dizzy spells. These dizzy spells have interrupted a number of plans and goals I've had and have been a great source of irritation for me. Somedays they don't seem to happen at all and then other days its constant. So I've learned some tricks that help me cope. The most important of these (and the most often overlooked)is SLOW DOWN! How many times have I learned that being in a hurry makes the dizziness worse...I run out of breath... my body really can't go that fast right now and yet I still continue to push it. The phone rings I feel this urgency to answer it...why? So I don't get to it in time, isn't that why I have an answering machine. I wake up in the morning and take inventory of my wreck of a house and panic...."there is so much to do today I better hurry!" I tell myself. Does it all need to be done today? Is it so urgent that every dish is done by 10am ? If I do meet that goal by noon will they still be done??? Nope. So why the hurry?? So much of what I am in a hurry for is classified under general maintenance... which logic would tell you will always require you to maintain it...it can never be described as done. My nesting tendency has also kicked in a great deal much to my husbands amusement (and I'll be honest occasionally his irritaion as well) I feel this need to clean and organize the utensil drawer. Organize my kids dresser drawer and I hear this clock ticking in my head counting down the seconds until this wonderful baby will be here and I want it all to be done before she comes. Done! Not possible is it. What is the worst that can happen if I haven't cleaned behind the bunk beds? A number of socks will be missing their mates and the stale popcorn back their will continue its process of decay. But the funny thing is they'll be there no matter when I get to that. In a year those socks will still be there if I can't manage to get to it now. What is my hurry? I decided to repeat, as a montra, what I learned from working in a nursing home "Actually life is really long!" That doesn't mean procrastinate what you can do, but lighten up on the things you can't get to yet....life is long! So I got curious "How long?" I looked it up here at http://www.livingto100.com/ and answered some pretty easy questions and found out I'm expected to live to 94! I'm going to turn 28 in a week...I've got 66 years to get to that stale popcorn...easy does it Rachel....slow and steady wins the race!

Date Night on a Budget

We had the best time! I find that when we don't have our kids it gives us the opportunity to be kids ourselves! We are more spontaneous, and much more fun! We were at a loss for what to do with our freedom when some friends needed to borrow Joes truck to pull out a stump. Due to past experience with this we strapped on our protective head gear revved up the engine and had a ball. We even got the 100 year old dead maple out of their yard too! The thing behind us is the top part of the huge root ball we un-earthed!! Thanks for always showing me a good time honey! I'll pull stumps with you any time!

Happy Easter!

I went to run some errands and this is what my family was up to while I was gone. I think the kids were in good hands, don't you? I love that their daddy hasn't totally grown out of his childhood. He's an awesome dad.

Other highlights of today:
I counted how many times the phone rang today from 8am to 8pm.... 26 times. I hate the phone. I hate telemarketers. I hate when I answer the phone and no one is there because the automated system that dialed the call has failed and repeatedly wasted my time.

I decided to finally roast that turkey that I have had sitting in the freezer. I had never done it before 10 lb turkey according to my research should be done cooking in 4 hrs. We were supposed to eat at 6pm....no turkey until about 8:30pm I made tuna helper at 7pm....we'll have turkey tomorrow :)

And as a fine finale, Savannah took a dive off the bunk bed and landed on her face. I didn't see it happen but she screamed and screamed. Her nose was bleeding by the time I got there and it took it a good 10 minutes to quit. Poor thing, her nose swelled up and her top lip. You can kinda see it in the pictures. A little tylenol later and she was back to her bouncy self. Poor Chase got the raw end of the deal he was napping in the bed below her and woke up to her cries of terror and pain. He was scared to death, and all the blood, he was so worried about his sister and he kept looking at me like, "is everything okay mom? It doesn't seem okay?! Have you got this under control?"


All in a days work right?

The Honeymoon is over

I like to think that I have been a pretty involved mom since going to work for the last year. I told myself that I was in the know about their lives and demands and day to day behavior. It has been a year since I have been home with them full time. The last time this was the case, Chase had barely learned to walk and the brother/sister dynamic, only in the beginning phases. It turns out that while I saw them everyday in that last year and interacted with them as much as I could before and after work....I still missed a lot. I am going to show you a behind the scenes look at life at our house. You mothers (bless your hearts) will not be surprised by what you witness and I'm sure it will not phase you. But I, in truth, after having had children now for 4 years, suddenly find myself feeling a little green! Like I'm a rookie in the toddler on toddler brawl and have somehow forgotten just how hard the daily grind of life at home as Mommy really is. How do you forget that! At one point a couple days ago I said to myself, "I'm ready to go back to work I need a break!" So, heres to you Mama's, whose finest hours are spent in the care of the little ones you adore, and you may or may not be recognized for that on a daily basis. I salute your accomplishments, and am (after regaining my resolve) glad to be counted among you.

"C" is for Carebears, Camping, Cars & Chase

I haven't blogged in months and rather than try and catch up I'm just going to begin with today. I have recently been excused from work because .....SURPRISE! Baby #3 is on the way and I have been suffering from the usual dizziness that I have had with the two previous pregnancys. But don't offer sympathy yet because it has given me the opportunity to be at home instead of passing out at work Yay! I am so glad to be home I missed my kids! We have started the new routine off with a bang and have started "Alphabet Days" in honor of Savannah getting ready for kindergarten in the fall. She has had some resistance to learning in a conventional way and I'm not sure if that because I haven't been home or what. She is a quirky little thing anyway...so in order to accomadate her cute little personality we have instituted a practice of honoring one letter everyday, all day.

We began of course with "A". First we learned about air by playing with a fan and a balloon and other things that float. We made paper airplanes and had a race to see who could fly farthest. And then we calmed things down a bit and watched "Ariel" aka the Little Mermaid. For lunch we had apples and other non A foods.

For "B" day we rode bikes, played badmitten (mostly we just ran around with the rackets in our hands) we tried baseball (with much the same result) and at lunch we learned about Bees and had peanut butter honey sandwiches with some gummy bears for desert. We even went to the grocery store (something we had to do anyway) and identified the letter "B" all around the store not forgetting the Bakery where grandma is a Baker and of course she gave us a cookie. We wrapped up by Baking cookies of our own.

SO today is "C" day and we so far have had the remaining cookies which Chase decided to mash up into the couch and so in honor of "C" day he helped me Clean it up!! Little stinker. Then we collected all our Cars and had races we ate Corn dogs and Cheese sticks, and Crackers for lunch and the finale was camping on the living room floor with a makeshift tent and we even invited our Carebears and Cat stuffed animals. The great things is this has really jump started her enthusiasm and really given us all something to look forward to everyday. I love that it is applied learning for her and that because there are activities she doesn't feel like shes learning all day even though she is! The part I love best of all is that I haven't spent any money and have managed to still find fun things to do with things we have at home. Yay! Mostly I'm just glad to be home.

Earth to Planet Stanek????

Wow where have we been??? To quote a favorite movie of ours "Lovin' life 24/7" (anybody seen Elizabeth Town?) Heres a brief summary of our lives over the last few months.

We have had quite a year so far. Lets see where to begin. The beginning of the year was rough no work, no real security in where our lives were heading. Lots and lots of prayers later I began working full time as a CNA at Valley View Estates a local long term care facility and have learned so much there. Joe switched gears for the first time in our marriage and became a stay at home dad for a couple months. He took on the many roles of playmate, chef, housekeeper, and errand runner. I experienced the pressure of providing for a family and knowing what I made never seemed to be quite enough. What a tremedous blessing that has been to our family. We have literally been able to walk in eachothers shoes and been able to appreciate eachother so much more. That is an understatement. We went on our first family vacation to The Museum of the rockies AKA "The Dinosaur Museum" as a reward to Savannah for finally mastering that potty training!!! What a big girl! And then in May we went to Washington to visit the Sagan's (our wonderful friends that moved away) for three days and they showed us the ropes. Somewhere in there Joe started working nights stocking shelves at Super 1 Foods a grocery store in Hamilton. Practically the same week he started there in April we got all kinds of calls for masonry work. Feast or famine right? SO he suddenly had a very busy schedule. I cut back on hours a little and he worked everyother night stocking shelves and every week day doing masonry. He slept every couple days. I'm not exaggerating. We did that for the entire summer. I worked 6 days a week (still do) mondays off and tue-friday 5-9pm and weekends 2-10pm. On week days we'd pass eachother on the way out the door give a quick hug and kiss and then be off to either work or child rearing. I know! It sounds crazy doesn't it. Joe turned 28 so we celebrated by doing kid stuff and spent the day at Qwivals (an amusement park) then I turned 26 and he orchestrated a surprise BBQ for me and gave me a bike for my B-day. Around the spring sometime we planted a garden and named it a successful learning experience. We finally bit the bullet and started that food storage. We ripped out the ugly juniper bushes in front of our house, and we got a puppy named Nitro. Joe impressed us all by pulling off a "Tour of Homes" home on little sleep and made it through smiling. Chase has a love for eating food off the floor or off of his sisters bed (see picture). Savannah is learning her letters, and is full of imagination. Chase is beginning to talk and among his first words used to communicate are eat "eeeh" and hungry "uuhry". Hes is really good at saying no and giving his sister advance notice before he retaliates physically by saying "owie" before he pulls her hair. That one makes me laugh so hard and I really need to hold it in. We went to 2 parades, braved the roller coaster at the fair and caught a chicken. Savannah had a Cinderella birthday party complete with a Cinderella cake (courtesy of our local Baker and cake maker Grandma Stanek). The cake was such a big deal to Savannah we planned the party around it. She talked about it for 2 months previous to the big day.

That pretty well brings you up to date I think.

Its been pretty nuts but I think we lived life to the fullest and enjoyed almost every minute of it.

OUT with the Old.....IN with the...uhh not so Old.

This is our old fridge.
It has done a good job for us over the last couple years. It has kept out milk cold and our ketchup frozen. It has endured our squeezing and squishing everything inside it just to get the door closed. It was brave when it was time to defrost the shoe-box size freezer. At which time I would literally hammer and pick the ice inside to make the process go faster. It has been the best it can be.




This is our new fridge.
Let me tell you all of its amazing features. First please notice that all the stuff in the new fridge was packed tight in the old fridge! I got it all in there and was like "I have to go shopping we have nothing to eat! It has a place for all of the condiments. It has ample room for 2 jugs of milk and with even more room for juice! I can put my butter in the door along with who knows what else! A bin for meat/cheese items. And then 2 bins for produce of all sorts! But the absolute best part..... is
The Freezer! We have a freezer. I had to go buy a huge thing of ice cream just to feel the joy of putting it in there.


See how excited Savannah is? This is a big deal at the Stanek house!