Calgon, take me away!

I don't know if it is my preggo hormones, or the cabin fever from all this too-cold weather, or that I just finished reading Eat, Pray, Love about Elizabeth Gilbert's traveling the word alone for an entire year (my friend, Jen, forewarned me it can make you a bit stir crazy) or just the mere fact that I have really loud kids, but I have been feeling on the verge of going nuts the past couple of days!

Ugh...

Right now, I am sitting in my PJ's ALONE listening to CoffeeHouse radio and LOVING the almost-silence around me. Kevin is at a neighbor friend's house tonight and I "volunteered" to stay home with the kids instead of getting a sitter.

I know there are lots of people out there that hate to be alone. But, I really enjoy my time alone. Kevin is the same way...which is good because neither of us gets bummed when the other needs some time. It's funny, because my mother-in-law has a condo in Florida on the beach that is such a great place to visit, but she doesn't want to go unless there is someone to go with her. I have such a hard time understanding this! But it just goes to show that everyone is different.

Especially with another child on the way, I feel like I am so far from a time in the future where I can just (for example) go to the beach alone for the weekend and stare at the water and walk on the ocean-edge and have a glass of wine at sunset, and just be quiet. If that time ever became available, I would want to use that time to get away with Kevin for the weekend, but it is a very enticing thing to think about being alone for a whole weekend...no diapers to change, no plates to cut-up, no 5 yr. old arguments to referee, no carpooling, no baby alarm clock----can I get an AMEN???

OK, so I am venting a little bit, but it feels good to get it out.

So, tonight, I had planned on having the kiddos bathed and in bed by 7:30 (since they can't tell time yet) and I have rented Twilight to watch on DVD since I recently finished reading the series. I also have a pint of Ben & Jerry's in the freezer with my name written all over it. But, it's funny how God has other plans. My impatience with my girls was wearing me pretty thin and it took a lot of willpower at 7:45 not to say, "no story tonight, girls, Mommy's really tired." But my plans backfired in a really good way. I asked the girls what they wanted to read and they said they wanted to read the Bible. (Thank you, God, for such precious little ones) We are reading through the greatest children's Bible called The Jesus Storybook Bible (amazon.com). I think I may like it better than my "grown-up" Bible.

So, we crawled under the covers on Mia's bottom bunk and opened the Bible to where we had left off. We normally read 1 or 2 stories, but tonight, we picked up where Jesus and his disciples were having the Last Supper and we just kept reading all the way through the resurrection. It was so beautifully written that I was choking back tears through Christ's crucifixion and my girls were spell-bound.

My annoyed and impatient heart began to soften and I just felt so much love for my children (diapers, cut-up food, arguments, carpools, early mornings and all) as I read to them about God's love for His children.

Awesome.

Like I said, God knew what this tired Mama needed tonight...besides my chick-flick and ice cream.

Haircuts and attack of the marker

Mia and Chloe have new haircuts and I (biased) think they look just precious...if you ask Mia, she says she looks like Kit Kittredge :)

Chloe

Mia

And I have to also post a picture of Baby Sissy from later that evening:

No, she's not all of a sudden into all things goth. She got a hold of this:

Thank goodness it's washable AND non-toxic!

Who's a Big Girl???

My almost-18-month-old is at that age where she wants to do EVERYTHING by herself. Case in point---trying to feed herself yogurt:

Mmmmm....

Who's a Big Girl??? "MEEEEE!"

(notice the yogurt hanging from her hair on the right side of the picture)

Is February too late to blog about Christmas???

I was out of commission for awhile (2 months?) due to my 1st trimester exhaustion, so I thought I'd go ahead and post some pics from Christmas 2009...better late than never!

Christmas was a blast this year! Quinnlan had no clue what was going on, so that was pretty funny, but Mia and Chloe knew full-on what this great holiday is all about and it was a thrill for this Mama to hear them talk more and more about the fact that we were celebrating Jesus' birthday (along with the super-fun Santa stuff too).

Decorating the tree:

Mia wearing ladybug wings while decorating :)

Quinn "collected" ornament wrapping paper (a.k.a. newspaper)

Miss Chloe

Quinnie loved Santa Claus

All girl cousins--Katherine, Mae, Mia, Quinn, and Chloe

Chloe, Mia and Katherine

A Christmas Eve gift---Princess tents!

Waiting to see what Santa brought Christmas morning

Present overload---Christmas night with Kevin's family

Does it look like chaos?

Chloe needed to escape for a little bit---her hiding spot

SNOW! SNOW! SNOW!

I was so happy last Friday that:

a) our girls didn't have to miss school on Friday because of the snow---they were too excited about their Valentine's party! And I also knew that they were going to be out of school Monday AND Tuesday, so I wasn't up for a 5-day weekend :)

b) it snowed during the afternoon instead of overnight. Picking up Mia and Chloe while it was coming down was so exciting.

c) it wasn't 9 degrees outside like the last snowfall we had (much too cold to stay out in it for too long---especially for Quinnie)

But it snowed and snowed and it was just gorgeous! We southerners don't often get to experience snow once a year much less twice a year!

We all enjoyed it so much...

Here are some pics of the fun day:

sledding down the big hill behind the girls' preschool

Deja Vu

Well, I have had relatively no bleeding since my big scare a couple of weeks ago, which is an answer to prayer. I had my perinatal appointment last Tuesday to have the 1st trimester Nuchal Translucency tests done. This is the test where they measure the folds in the baby's neck to test for the odds of my having a baby with Downs Syndrome or Trisomy 18. Because of my age, my odds are higher, obviously. But when I had the ultrasound (which they pair with bloodwork) everything looked great. (I received the official news today that our baby passed with flying colors!) My OB wanted them to get a good look at the "bleed" area to see how it has progressed and with the high tech ultrasound machine, we had a really good look at it. I told the ultrasound tech that the area looked like a second sac (having seen an extra sac with my twins as well as the extra sac that I had with Quinn's pregnancy, I knew what it looked like). She said it looked that way to her too, but she'd have the doctor come in and have a look. The doctor agreed, that yes, it looks like an extra sac where nothing developed in it and when I told her this is the 2nd pregnancy in a row where this has happened, she said this was odd and that I must be a powerful ovulator! Well, I guess so! Almost 3 sets of twins??? Oh my... I guess we would have stopped at 2 sets, though :)

I am just so thankful that everything is going well and that I am finally beginning to feel better than I have over the past 2 months or so!