Halloween is Coming!

Was just sitting here in enjoying my "break" that I get every M/W/F while Chloë is in school and the boys nap.  It's heaven!  A little ME time, which is such a rare treat.  There are always a million things I "should" do during this time, but I usually let myself take a load off and put my feet up.  I am pregnant, after all.  I have that excuse for when I feel guilty for ignoring the "should do" list.  I was just browsing around on my laptop and saw the HORRID news story about the nanny in NYC that stabbed two of the three children she cared for.  Absolutely horrific story.  It brought tears to my eyes and I just want to rush to Chloë's school and take her home to be with me. It makes me want to go wake up the boys and just hold them.  I can't even imagine how the parents are going to make it through such an awful and tragic event.  They had employed the nanny for two years and had even traveled down to the Dominican Republic with her to visit her family in the past.  The whole thing is just terrifying to even imagine.  I feel so sad for that family and what they are having to deal with.  It makes me never want to leave my kids again, no matter how fussy they are or how demanding they are or how nuts they are driving me.  Devastating.

Anyways, I won't end on such a sad note.  Halloween is coming up and all things Halloween are going on in our lives.  The kids tried on their costumes yesterday to make sure everything fit.  Chloë is going to be Spiderman.  She is super excited about it.  She's obsessed with all things Spiderman lately and she has never even seen the show, the movie, the comic book, or anything with him in it.  Who knows.  Must be popular at preschool.   Owen is also going to be Spiderman and Eli will be Superman.  Later this afternoon we have the Halloween Carnival at the PB Rec Center a few blocks from our house.  We go every year and it's always a blast (for me...and hopefully for the kids, too...and maybe Myke? Yah, not so sure about that one!).  They have games and a giant inflatable slide, moon bounce, cake walks, costume contests, a fire engine ride & food.

Some pics from the past week:

Chloë & Owen snuggling

Owen

Eli

Story time with Dad- they boys LOVE books lately

Apple the size of Owen's head

Costume try-on...No, Eli is not "sexy Superman" - his costume just came un-velcroed in the back - usually is a LITTLE more fitting!

Jax stopped by after preschool to help decorate some Halloween cookies yesterday

Giant Stuffed Pink Snakes

Closest picture I could find on Google images to what my snake looked like (but mine was longer...or do I just remember it being longer??)

Once when I was younger (not sure how old, somewhere between 6 & 10, I guess) I got the best birthday present a kid could ever dream of!  No, not a pony.  I was told I could pick ANYTHING I wanted from Toys R Us.  Any one item.  Anything!  

Side Rant: My parents must have been in a good mood to offer this because the only comparable offer I ever remember was when we were moving and sold our house when I was 7 and my brother was 5.  To celebrate the sale going through my parents took my brother and I to THE DOLLAR STORE and let us pick the same "any one thing"!  We were SO excited about it.  I laugh now because it was the dollar store...maybe we didn't sell the house for as much as we had hoped.  Either that or they were just smart.  Maybe both.  

Anyways, back to my original story.  So I got to go to Toys R Us and pick any one thing.  I remember walking in the store, looking up and seeing IT immediately.  It was shining and glowing from where it hung on display up above and calling to me to pick it:  IT was a giant stuffed snake!  If memory serves me right, I think it was 20 feet long...but may have been longer.  I didn't even want to look any further.  I had to have the snake.  So I got it.  Best birthday ever!!  I have fond memories of that snake.  I put it in my room, of course, and I remember it taking over 2-3 of the walls in length, draped over my bed, over my dresser and down on the floor.  My brother and I would put the snake on the stairs, head at the top and tail down at the bottom and attempt to slide down the body of the snake.  Ahh, good times... 

I guess what made me think of this is that Chloë has earned the chance to pick out a toy at the toy store with her reward sticker chart we have going on.  I made the chart about a week ago a few days after my mom left.  If you read my last post, you recall that Chloë spent a month sleeping in Myke and my closet in our room.  Well, when my mom left we put her right back in her room and in her own bed without skipping a beat.  The first night she woke us up to ask for help using the bathroom (which she can very well do on her own), then the second night she woke us up to ask for help getting a tissue to blow her nose.  I needed an immediate stop to this.  I definitely don't want to be woken up at 2am every night for things like this.  I need to enjoy my nights of sleep before baby #4 comes along and throws the whole concept of sleeping at night into the toilet.  Sooo, I decided to do a sticker chart for Chloë and each morning that she gets up in the morning and HASN'T woken us up the night before, she gets a sticker.  I told her after 5 stickers she would get a to pick a toy at a toy store.  I was thinking this would initially take awhile to reach.  I'm sure it must be somewhat scary/intimidating to wake up in your dark room alone at night and go use the bathroom alone.  Chloë's bedroom isn't even on the same level as ours so it's not like she has comfort in knowing mommy and daddy are just a room away or anything like that.  But hey, that's her reality and always has been since she was 7 weeks old and we booted her downstairs a level to her own bedroom (tough love, huh?).  Soooo, she ended up doing AMAZING with the sticker chart and hasn't called us down for help one night since we started it.  She totally prides herself in her independence and loves to tell me how many times she got up to use the bathroom BY HERSELF at night.  It's great!!  She's already up to 8+ stickers and we owe her a toy.  I wonder what she'll pick.  Hopefully not a giant pink stuffed snake!  Maybe I'll just take her to The Dollar Store :)  

The Goin's Ons

So we're back on our own after nearly a month of visitors here in San Diego.  It was fun to have everyone out to visit.  My Dad came for a week, my mom stayed for 3 1/2 weeks, my brother was here for a week, my aunt came for a long weekend and our friend Heather came for a weekend.  There was a lot of overlapping of people but we made it work, even without an official guest room!  Well, I guess Chloë's room served as our unofficial guest room.  She has a nice twin bed with a pull out trundle bed beneath it so that works well for visitors.  The only "bad" part is that she gets kicked out of her room.  Fortunately, toddlers are very adaptable creatures and she hasn't had a problem going back and forth (at least thus far).  When visitors are in her room she gets "promoted" (or "demoted" is probably the better word) to the third level and gets to be Myke and my room mate for the duration of the visit.  She sleeps in our closet.  There, I said it.  Yes, she sleeps in our closet.  It always causes people's mouths to drop open when I tell them so I've stopped mentioning exactly where she sleeps for the most part.  It REALLY isn't THAT bad.  We have a good sized walk-in-closet with a pocket door (which we leave open!).  We put her old crib mattress (which is the same size mattress that a toddler-bed uses) on the floor in there and she is snug as a bug in a rug.  She loves it.  It's her own cozy space and she gets to be right by mommy & daddy all night.  What could be better??? 

Anyways, tonight she will go back to her own room and big-girl bed so fingers crossed that she doesn't protest too much.  

All else is going well here.  Myke is busy with work, which is good since he's a contractor.  Elijah started walking...FINALLY!  At 16 months old (Chloë started at 15 months and Owen at 14 months so all my kids were relatively "late" bloomers in the walking arena).   I've been more than ready for Eli to start.  It was getting to be a big challenge going places with him as he always wants to be down and on the move...but he would crawl all over the ground, getting his hands filthy and scraping up his little knees on the cement.  He literally would crawl with bleeding knees and would sometimes throw a fit if you tried to carry him instead.  He has scars on his little pudgy knees.  I should have gotten him baby knee-pads.    

 Anyways, time to close....  I'm going to try to keep this updated on a more regular basis (for realz this time!!) to keep distant family in-the-know and for me to just vent and/or ramble when I need to.  

Some pics, in no particular order, of the past few weeks:

The 3 kiddos looking out the window.  The boys LOVE climbing up the step stool and staring outside.

Chloë & her godmother, Heather

Watching football with Dad

Rubber duck races at Pacific Beach Fest.. Chloë caught cheating!

Eli

Owen

Chloë giving Owen a ride

Playing with Uncle Hale

20 week photo (taken almost 2 weeks ago now)

Out to dinner with the fam (no kids!)

Local Habit in Hillcrest

I see a resemblance here...though no one ever says we look alike!

Gramma took the kids for donuts - a first for the boys!

It's a GIRL!

So we FINALLY found out the sex of the baby:  a GIRL!  I had a hard time waiting until the detailed anatomy scan when I was 19 weeks along to find out.  I was chomping at the bit!  I have no clue how people wait until the actual delivery to find out.  I just couldn't do it.  Curiosity always kills this cat!  In my mind it's a surprise either way- I'm either going to be surprised at 18-20 weeks pregnant at the ultrasound, or surprised when I give birth.  Why wait!?  But hey, that's just me.

Anyways, I'm absolutely OVER THE MOON that we are going to be adding another girl to the family. I can't wait to see what she is like- Chloë is so NOT a girly-girl that Myke and I will have no clue what to do if this one is.  

Trip to the Library

I took all 3 kids to the PB (Pacific Beach) Library on Friday afternoon after picking Chloë up from preschool.  I've been starting to try to go regularly - at least with Chloë so she can pick out some new books every few weeks.  She's more excited about the computers in the kiddie area than picking out the books- so she grabs her 10 new books and then races over to play computer games.   Eli & Owen enjoyed playing in the kiddie area, too, and all went smooth until they both realized how fun it was to pull all the books off the bookshelf.  It is one of Owen's favorite past times at home as well.  At least at home he also enjoys PUTTING back the books.  Oh well, in the end I attempted to clean up the disaster zone and high-tailed it out of there.  

Fun at the library

Her father's daughter!

Eli looking out the kiddie size windows

Big Boy Owen

Owen throws them to Eli and Eli reads them

Back to School!

Chloë's first day of preschool at PB Presbyterian- March 2011

Only 2 years old!

Chloë's 1st day at St. Paul's Preschool

3 1/2 years old

Chloë started her new preschool today and new schedule today.  We really liked her first preschool (Pacific Beach Presbyterian Preschool) but over the summer started looking into another nearby preschool at St. Paul's Lutheran Church, which is right on our street.  We took a tour and really liked it so we decided to switch.  Not that we had any problem at all with her original preschool.  We liked the staff, we loved walking her there (it's only about 2 blocks away as well, but in the other direction), and had no issues with it for the most part (I won't go into the "for the most part" part right now, but nothing too big or that would have made us look elsewhere).  The clincher that made us decide to switch was that St. Paul's offered 3 different schedule options instead of having to choose between only two.  At her first preschool she could go either all day long or from 9am-12pm for the "enrichment period".  Those were the options.  I think that after noon and after rest time the rest of the day was more like daycare than preschool.  I'm not sure because she never went, but that's the feeling I got.  At St. Paul's on the other hand, the options are 8:30am-noon, 8:30-3pm, or all day.  The BEST part is that the tuition for the 8:30-3pm (MWF) schedule is only $8 more A MONTH than the 9am-12pm (MWF) schedule we were paying for at PB Presbyterian.  So that was a no brainer in my book.  Three and a half more hours, three times a week for $8/month.  Sign me up.  That's about 19 cents an hour for those extra 42 hours a month.  Yes, please.

HOWEVER, on the flip side of things, I feel so sad today with Chloë being away from home for so long!  8:30am-3pm is like a real school day!  It's only 3x a week, but still!  She's only 3 1/2 years old and I don't want to hurry her off into school for long stretches!  On the other hand (again.  I know I'm going back and forth here...) now that the boys aren't going down for their nap until noon, I will actually get a break and some time to myself instead of putting them down and then having Chloë come right home from school.  PLUS, she'll have rest time at school with the other kids instead of here.  That's a definite PLUS in my book.  Getting her down for rest/nap time at home has been a challenge for me.  She never wants to go into her room since the boys are just up from their naps and playing, very rarely does she actually nap, and she comes out about 5x in the our asking if it's wake-up time yet.

Anyways, I'm going back and forth on reasons why it's OK for her to be in school that long...and I guess we'll just see how it goes. It's bittersweet...but I think a tad more sweet for me so far. Hey, I even got to bake some pumpkin bread (from this new cookbook called "Gluten Free Vegan Comfort Food"-- did you know that kind of food even existed??!  I didn't!) AND post this blog entry.  Well, we will see how she liked today.  The good thing is that we can always switch to the 8:30am-12noon schedule if this is too much for her (or for Myke!  lol- he has been "missing Chloë" all day and can't wait for 3pm to come so we can run down and pick her up.  I have to admit I feel the same way today!).

Signing off at 2:45pm--time to go pick her up!  The boys are STILL napping (to my dismay) so Myke and I will be fighting over who gets to go pick her up on her first day!  :(

UPDATE: Myke won... I let him.  Chloë had a GREAT first day!

We ALL walked Chloë to preschool for her 1st day this morning

Chloë was a bit nervous at this point

Owen got his first pair of "real" shoes over the weekend now that he is a regular walker

Big smiles from my big boy, Elijah

A girls' night out with a friend...cupcake and milks...and I wonder why I've gained 10lbs so far this pregnancy!

I snuck up on the kids all playing nicely together with Chloë's pirate ship

Raspberries!

Future Firefighter?

I'm Baaack

Gazing at the Richmond skyline

Here we are at the end of the summer already...and I have to say I'm ready for it.  Mainly, I'm ready for the end of the summer weather!  It has been so hot here the past few weeks...and by hot I mean in the 80s which is hot for us.  Poor me, I know!  Chloë and I went to Richmond, VA for a week earlier this month for the wedding of one of my best friends.  Well, the wedding was up near D.C. where I went to college but we flew in and out of Richmond so we could see my parents and friends there while we were in town.  Who plans a wedding in Virginia in August??!!  That would be Vanessa- one of my college room mates and best friends :)  Actually, the weather wasn't bad at all.  Definitely was survivable and it was actually HOTTER here in San Diego when we got off the plane after the trip (to my dismay).  Too bad for me that soCal stays pretty warm through October while the rest of the country eases into the cooler weather of my favorite season: Fall.   Ahh, the crisp air and changes of leaves.  I love that.  I definitely miss that out here--but when I'm outside swimming in February under the palm trees I don't miss a thing...  It's a give and take, I guess.  For now we'll be staying here.   

Oh, and  I just had my 10 year anniversary of when I moved out to San Diego this summer.  I can't believe I've been living out here 10 years.  When I moved out I had plans to stay a few months visiting Myke and then travel on to New Zealand for awhile.  I was pretty set in those plans, with NO intentions of staying longer.  I actually took a nanny job for that reason, thinking it would be a pretty easy position to just drop when I was ready to leave...not a "serious" job  (I was WRONG there about the "easy to leave" part--you get attached when you have a job like that--the kids ended up in my wedding a few years later and I still talk to them regularly--the little girl who turned 1 when I was her nanny is now turning 11 next month!).  Well, anyways, here I am 10 years later with a dog, 3 kids and a minivan.  I would HAVE NEVER BELIEVED it if I had been told that would happen.  To be honest, if someone told the 22-year-old me that future life that was in store for her she would have run for the hills!  (mainly at the idea of a minivan!).  

Okay, well, I just wanted to put SOMETHING on my blog since I have completely neglected it for most of the summer.  We have been super-busy this summer and on top of that I was super-sick for about 6 weeks of it- I think the word is pretty much out by now: I'm pregnant!  It was a BIG SURPRISE for us but we are very excited about it (with a side of freaking out involved).  I'm finally not sick as a dog anymore and life is feeling "normal" again.  We found out on Father's Day.  Happy Father's Day to Myke!  haha