We have been living with my in-laws now for four months!! It is going by really fast, which is nice. I originally told myself it would just be for two months. It helps me to take goals by small chunks. I am trying very hard to always find the positives of my situation (my in-laws are so kind and helpful, my father-in-law is always offering to hold the baby, and he cleans up the kitchen and living room for me constantly, before I can even get a chance to do it. He is the most kind, loving, and charitable man in the world, no joke! I can run errands while the baby stays home sleeping with whoever happens to be there. I LOVE that. I also love that I have very little actual cleaning to do, and that there's someone else making dinner occasionally.
Truly the hardest part has been that I have an introverted personality. Not that I'm shy or anti-social. Just that I get very worn out by constant conversation. I have always put my kids to bed early, (usually by 7 at the latest). Partly because I am a huge believer in lots of sleep for kids, but also because by that time of the day, I am out of patience and don't want to talk anymore. I desperately just need the silence and the quiet. Even my husband has learned to give me my "decompress" time after he gets home. Silence is how I refuel. The hardest part of living here is that now I have two loving adults who want to talk to me constantly. They are fun to talk to. It is not a burden. The best way I can explain it is that it's like having a leak in your fuel tank. Now my fuel runs out twice as fast. So I end up feeling the need to hide from everyone by about 4 p.m., which isn't really an option. I push through til 7 o'clock, and REALLY need to hide from the world, but that's not always an option either. Sam has tried to explain to them this strange personality trait to them, but it's hard for them to understand because they didn't know I was like this before we moved in. Whenever I would see them, once or twice a week, I loved sitting down and chatting. But to expect me to do it day after day after day, well, an extrovert would probably love it. It's been really hard for me. If I don't get solo time, I end up getting irritable, nervous, agitated, extremely fatigued, and none of those are good things, obviously. So that's been my biggest challenge so far. We are considering staying here all the way until May when Sam graduates. Financially, it's the best option. Emotionally, well, it's not my favorite option, but I think I could make it if I can keep carving out little bits of time for myself, which I am trying to do, with Samuel's help.
The kids are are doing well. Kalia is extremely excited about her loose tooth. She went to her 6 year well-check and is 95% for both height and weight. She's so big for her age! She's solid muscle and needs more physical activity then she is getting by being in school all day. She just has tons of energy and is super duper loud. She is reading at a 3rd grade level.
Annie has far surpassed my expectations in school and is doing extremely well. I don't think anyone would guess that she is still four-years-old. She thinks school is a little boring. A strange and unexpected thing happened last week- a freak accident caused a little boy in her class, one that sat at her same table even, to pass away unexpectedly. She has been praying for him to get resurrected soon. It's so sweet. I've had to go through a little grieving process, and I just devastated for this family, although I didn't know the boy or the parents. My heart just aches for them.
Ella is fun, but her latest thing is that she has become a scaredy-cat. I don't know why or where it's coming from, and if it's anxiety based or what, but she has become really frightened of everything, from her Halloween trick-or-treat pumpkin, to Kalia "growling" at her, to hairs on her arms (my long hairs are shedding at 5 months post-partum so they are turning up everywhere)-- she was freaking out saying "snakes" were on her arm. I showed her they were hairs the second time it happened. She usually calms down pretty quick. But she is scared of all kinds of things right now and I'm concerned about it becoming a growing problem in the future, and not just a "phase."
Aria is trying to sit-up, but she topples over constantly. Like all her sisters, she has decided to start crawling instead, and she picked it up really fast. She's doing more of the half crawl, then collapse on the belly, then get up and scoot her knees under her again. She went from hanging out on her belly to getting around quite well in a matter of two weeks. This was exciting with child #1 and #2. But for the 4th child, it would have been nice if she could be a little lazier. Especially because once she starts crawling, the food allergies become a bigger threat, since she can have access to everything she finds on the floor. She is still doing great on the goat milk, although some mucus showed up the last few days, and some gas and belly aches. Since she hasn't had anything new, we are being as picky as what we put in her bathwater (we think the soap ingredients that she may have swallowed were the culprit) or the water that we mix with her evaporated goat milk. We use store-bought water but we switched to a kind that had minerals and possible fluoride added. So it could be that. We're eliminating anything it could be. Her eczema is under control, I've tried a million things but Baby Aquaphor really does the job keeping her really soft and basically eczema-free.
Samuel is doing pretty good in school, he is studying more and more and he always comes home from the clinical rotations with some cool stories. He has gotten everyone hooked on Tillamook ice cream, and I'm kinda mad at him for this. (Not really. Just more annoyed at myself for how many times I have given in and joined the ice cream party.) I always regret it afterwards, because it's just too frequent, and I never feel that great after eating it. He eats a bowl of ice cream probably 4-5 times a week. That's just not going to fly if I'm going to lose any more weight. I'm hanging out exactly at my pre-pregnancy weight but I am trying to get my body fat down. I've recently started running now that it's cooled off and it's feeling good. I just wish I could do it every day. I'm going to try to find a way to make that happen since I have people home to watch the kids frequently.
This last week was fall break. We didn't do anything or go anywhere (Sam didn't have a break) except we did a Family Home Morning (instead of evening, since Sam had to go in to school) and went on a mile-hike. The girls loved it and we had a blast.
One final note- in these last few days I've found a year-long gym membership for $100 (someone was desperate to sell it because they moved already) and I have negotiated with Samuel to let me go to the gym 6 days a week for 1.5 hours a day. Well, it's 15 minutes each way driving. So just enough time to do an hour class. I love the classes there!! They are SO fun and really push me hard. And this will be a great way to handle the stress and to get out of the house and have some alone time. I feel lucky to have this opportunity while we are living here with his parents. All right, I'm tired and it's midnight now so I'm putting pictures up later all at once. I'll just add the two that happen to be on my computer.
For now, this entry is getting published.
Peace out.
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| 6 months old |
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| 5 months old |
