Wednesday, June 11, 2014

Monthly posting, then a catch-up on E-yi-ya

A perfect visual for my life right now: chaos and action

Honestly, who has time to blog??  Apparently not mothers of four boys ages one through eight years old.  Holy smokes.  I have totally fallen off the bandwagon.  

I miss the out-processing, reflection, and connection of blogging, but feel completely unsure of how to fit it back in.  It seems impossible.

Summer is kicking into high-gear.  My weekly plan is to spend one day at the lake and one morning at the library, with the rest of our time hunkered down at home: playing, working, schooling.  Our school schedule completely derailed this spring, so we are just starting our third term, approximately two months behind schedule.  Ah well.  We'll just finish in August instead of June.

I also plan to have the neighbor boys over a couple times a week.  They are twins, a year older than Diego, and ideal playmates for our fellas.  They are kind, thoughtful, sweet, and love to battle.  It's a war zone every time they come to play, with all the fellas choosing teams, bellowing and running all around until everyone is red-faced, in severe need of water.

Meanwhile, Baby Eliah turned one year old.  Amazing.  I am surprised by the fact that I am not at all sad about this.  This has not been the case in the past, particularly with Baby Jamie when I was almost heartbroken at the thought of his baby year ending.  Perhaps there isn't time to be sad.  I've also wondered if he still seems like such a baby compared all his older brudders.  Whatever the case may be, it still stands to reckon: I'm not mournful this time 'round.

All about E-yi-ya

He is Franken-baby right now, complete with the unintelligible utterances, tottering all around, and the smashing up of everything.  He climbs up and over the baby gate, loves to climb to the back cushions on the loveseat in the sunroom, and makes a bee-line for any unblocked you-name-it.  If he's not allowed, he's all over it.

I can't set him down without him wandering off and getting into mischief, so he is either confined to 1) his booster chair or 2) the baby backpack while I keep the household in running order.  He protests, and loudly, hollering, "Da-dow!" ("all done!") almost as soon as I sit him in his seat, or cries the second I pick up the backpack.

Other tactics include sitting him in the sandbox with 1-2 brudders keeping an eye on him while I work and supervise from the kitchen window, keeping him caged in the bathroom if/when I'm working there, or requesting a'nudder brudder tail him while I quickly finish whatever I'm doing.

He has chocolate brown hair in tight curls, the cutest thing ever.  I also noticed just last month that he has a lip-tie, where the frenulum attaches all the way down to the bottom of his gum in between his front teeth.  How have I never noticed this??  Lip-tie babies are supposed to have trouble with nursing, but out of all my babies, he came out nursing like he'd been doing it for months.

He says / signs
  • Hiiiiiiii-dere (Hi there)
  • Da-dow! (All done!)
  • Dada
  • T-ts (our cat, Toots)
  • Sign: More
  • Sign: Milk
  • Sign: Potty/poopy
  • Sign: All done

I sit him down on the potty every morning (and sometimes other times too) and he pees and poops on it almost without fail.  He seems to really love cooked carrots.  He love-love-loves his brudders.  He hits when he's mad (mostly mad flailings, but he had a few calculated whacks on Diego & Jamie the other week).

This fella calls all cats and dogs "T-ts" and is loving the chase-and-tickle game, particularly on the stairs.  He adores his daddy.  Just this morning, Eliah went to his Da and didn't want me back, even pushing my face away from him when we attempted the hand-back.  It was the cutest thing.

E-yi-ya.  What a fella.