Shaners

When I ask Shane to smile, this is what I always get:) 

So I have to make him laugh, then I can get a semi real one.

Shane man had his first day of pre-K here on Wednesday and is loving it.  He has a girl teacher AND a boy teacher, and a bunny rabbit who is kennel trained and hops among the different classrooms.  He is also very happy that his buddy Carter goes to the same school.

He goes Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays from 12:30 to 3.  I am holding onto my lazy mornings while I can until he goes to all day kindergarten next year!  It is right down the road from the Y, which is great because we can go before or after.  Yes, I am the trashy mom who took her kid to his first day of school in my sweaty clothes.  But the good news is, there is a carpool line so I don't have to get out of my car anymore!  (I thought I'd be nice and walk him in on his first day:) )

A few things about Shane:

  -We were a little worried wondering how he would do with the move, but it is like he has blossomed since being here.  He tells me all the time out of the blue that he loves it here and wants to stay.
-In case you haven't caught on, he LOVES animals.  He is of course into the dangerous ones, but really all animals and wants to know everything about them- where they live, what they eat, and he is especially interested in extremes- who is the biggest bird? cat? tallest? fastest? most dangerous? etc. etc.  I have learned quite a bit myself trying to answer all his questions and if I forget the answers he will remember them for me.
-He is the world's best big brother... to Sadie:)  He fights a lot with Marissa and likes to bug her, but when they are getting along they are pretty cute.  The other day they were playing at Burger King and Marissa wasn't quite tall enough to climb some of the things so I asked Shane to help her and he was able to lift her up enough, much to my surprise.  They got all the way up the top and I heard him tell her in a loving voice, "Marissa I will always be here to help you!"  But he is always good to Sadie and it has been so helpful when I am busy doing something to have him there to talk to her and keep her entertained.  Here he is telling her all about sea creatures:)

      -He is at such a fun age and I love to here all his thoughts.  Here is a recent conversation that made me laugh:
Shane: Why haven't we gone to the zoo with Cameron?
Me: Well, he doesn't have a zoo pass.
Shane: Why not?
Me: It costs a lot of money.
Shane: Does he only have one money?
Me: Yeah, I guess so.
Shane: Oh.  He should shop at Tree Dollar!  Everything there costs one dollar!
-He is still pretty much the sweetest boy ever and wants to please.  If he knows I am upset with him, even if I do not raise my voice or anything, he will tell me "Mommy I just don't like you feeling that way with me!!"

5 Months

Sadie turned 5 months last week.  She is really a very easy going baby.  We like to get out and do fun things while the weather is so nice, so she just kind of sneaks in her naps and feedings on the go.  With each baby I think I have gotten to be a lot less of a schedule type mom and more of a go with the flow mom. Here she is practicing sitting up, she is getting pretty good now but not good enough that I can walk away from her.

And here's a better look at all her chins.  I have to be vigilant at cleaning them out!  The #1 comment I get is "what a cute chubby baby!"  She weighed 16 1/2 pounds a month ago so you can imagine I get a pretty good workout lugging her around, though I think she's smaller than Marissa was.  Oh, and she has 5 teeth now... of all the milestones to achieve early ha ha.

 You wouldn't think she'd be particular about eating but I kind of forgot to give her a bottle for a month or so and now she will have nothing to do with it.  I thought hey, maybe Marissa could get her to take it, she's pretty forceful!

 Her siblings sure love her, though Marissa still needs help learning how to channel it.  Needless to say, she is one tough baby, but she loves her brother and her sister.

And Josh and I are pretty smitten too!  We love you Sadie Badie!

Last Week

Last week was one of those weeks where we had something going every night.  Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday were not so fun for me with Josh working til 9, Young Men's at church, and a practice board exam after work.  But Monday we went to see Planes,

 and Friday we went to a Fort Wayne Tincaps game, our minor league baseball team.  His work has a set of tickets you can sign up to use.  When the game got a little boring,

 Josh got the kids a bat and ball, and some chocolate chip cookies

The ball quickly went back in the plastic for her to hold after she threw it down the aisle twice.

 We had fun teaching Shane more about baseball, dancing to the music,

and watching the fireworks afterwards.  

Josh and I are going back without the older two tomorrow night because the physician recruiters from one of the local hospitals got a box for all the residents.   Have I mentioned it's nice to be treated nicely?  And to have a little room in the budget to feel like we can a get a babysitter sometimes!

Lots of Dettingers in Indiana

We've been spoiled to have lots of visits from Josh's family this summer!  Josh's brother Jake had a work conference in Indianapolis in May shortly after we got here so we went down to hang out with him for a little bit and swim in his hotel.  They love their Uncle Jake!

 And Rachel came out to visit in July and spent a week with us.  The kids were in heaven with her and Josh and I got to go on a date!

 And we are going to get lots of visits with Josh's parents because they moved just a couple hours away from us for Greg's new job as a principal at a high school near South Bend.  We are excited to be able to see them more often!

 Uncle Matthew may get sick of them real quick:)  But they sure love him.

Alright who's next?  

Free Fun

I am always on the lookout for good free fun, and thankfully there has been lots of it for us here this summer.  One weekend there was a festival at the local university, where there were all kinds of bouncehouses and kiddie rides and activities for the kids to do, all for free.  I didn't bring my camera, so this crappy phone pic is all we got.  

 They had another free children's festival there a few weeks later so I took the kiddos again.  Here is Marissa being too wussy to go in the bounce house with Shane.  And a good shot of chunky baby legs.

 But she got to go on this airplane ride that he was too tall for.

 The county fair was free for kids 5 and under.  I walked up to the booth and said, "They are all under 5.  Wow, for once that is a good thing!"  There were of course lots of animals there, rides, games, and face painting.  When I asked Marissa what she wanted, she said "a shark!"  I tried asking her if she wanted a butterfly or something like that, but she was adamant about having a shark.  The lady had never gotten that request so she did her best.  Marissa thought she was pretty cool.  

And Shane picked a tiger.  And roared at everyone on our way out.

 And we live by a Chic-Fil-A now!  You know we dressed up like cows to get our free meals on Cow Appreciation Day.  They also have free kids meals on Wednesdays with purchase of an adult meal- I might just be taking them when Josh is working.

Lucky Kids

We had a great vacation in Nashville, Tennesee with my parents, siblings, and their families.  Since my sister Shannon lives in North Carolina, my sister Jamie lives in Missouri, and I live in Indiana, we thought to find a place that was equidistant that we could all drive to and spend the week together.  We all stayed in a big rental house together that had a pool and had a lot of fun swimming, going to the zoo, Cheekwood botanical gardens, the Loveless Cafe, the park, and of course good old Chic-fil-a (my family is slightly obsessed).  As I looked through the pictures and tried to decide what to post, I realized just how lucky my kids are to have so many people who love them so much.  Josh was the only one that couldn't make it (next year hopefully!), and everyone was so great to step right in and love on my kids.  They had a blast, and it was so cute to see how much they loved being with everyone.

 This series of pictures is entitled "Shane making himself comfortable with everyone..."

 and this next series is "Shane getting every capable person to read to him"

 including his cousin Kate, which was really fun to see.

 She is growing up so much and was so good with my kids!

The next pictures are entitled "Me and Jamie had entirely too much fun dressing our daughters alike"

 

 These ones are "I'm so glad my family still loves Marissa in spite of her being "crusty" sometimes, in fact sometimes I think they might love her because of that"

 "My dad is a superhero because he volunteers to wear my hefty 4 month old,

 and answers 5,000 questions during dinner, all while getting him to eat his chicken"

 And of course my mom is a rockstar.

 I love my family.  And Nashville.  The end.

I'm back!

Well hello again.  I am attempting to dust off the ole blog and hope to keep the posts coming in the next little bit.  I just got back from vacation with my family in Nashville, and am trying to somewhat get back to normal, whatever that is anyway.  I will post a bit from vacation and a bit from the posts I have been wanting to do for awhile but haven't gotten to yet, and there will probably be no rhyme or reason to the order of the posts.  That's kind of a reflection of the way things go around here lately anyway- I kind of have a vague plan of the things I want to get done and I know they will all get done sometime but I kind of end up hopping around from one thing to another often before one is even finished, depending on who is crying the loudest or what/who smells the most.  I was so frustrated a couple days ago because I made a point to stay home that day instead of taking the kids somewhere fun so I could get some things done around the house.  Only at the end of the day we hadn't really done anything very fun, and I still hadn't really gotten a whole lot done!  Sadie had been a little bit more needy, Marissa was in tantrum mode, and Shane had asked approximately 1,800 questions, most of which he already knew the answer to.  There were definitely a lot of ugly moments, and I was feeling bad about myself, but I thought Hey, there was that bike ride/walk I took them on.  That went pretty well.  Shane rode all the way to the lake and back without whining while Sadie slept in the stroller and Marissa rode happily.  So I counted that part as a win and tried to not focus so much on the other parts.  And that has been my strategy lately- try to find at least 1 thing out of the day that went great and feel good about that, even if the rest of it was a little hairy.  Yesterday it was Marissa deciding that she liked slides again.  And today it was that she walked our whole bike ride instead of riding in the stroller.  I guess when I think about it, a lot of my greatest joys as a mom are seeing my kids do the things they thought were hard or couldn't do before.  And I guess that goes for myself too.

(When you ask him to smile this is what you get, I think he honestly thinks he is smiling)

 (She rode her bike when we got back because there was no way I was going to carry that back with me when she got too tired)

(I already had this little chunk to carry)