Virtute.org

We made a big change this weekend.  We switched the playroom and the office.  The playroom was upstairs and the office was downstairs.  The problem was that I have way more chores to do downstairs (primarily because of meal prep and clean-up) and the children don’t like to be too far from me.  (plus sometimes they create big messes with things like water and baby powder when we’re separated from each other).  So they hardly ever played in the playroom for very long, but they got bored with the few toys in the living room.

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Grocery shopping has changed since having Thomas.  At first I just went after bedtime, but it didn’t take too long before I started going during the day again.  The time after bedtime is precious to me, it’s the first time all day that I can freely do whatever I want/need to do without lots of little interruptions.

This is what we look like when we go in:However, three kids don’t leave much room for groceries, so by the end of the trip, I usually have to pull Nicole out of the cart and let her walk:

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I was 4, so if my memories seem sporadic and youthful, there is your reasoning. 

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Whereas I remember the day of our accident in great detail, I remember snapshots of the months that followed. 

Grandma Bird came down right away to stay with us, but she was only there for a few days (I think) before my O’Bryant Grandparents came from Tennessee.

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I remember that I packed the back of the van for our trip home and I put the heavy stuff on the bottom and the lighter stuff on the top.  Lee complained about how I’d packed it, I think because he thought the stack was too high and he didn’t want it falling down on him during the trip home.  After the accident, he said that my crazy packing job saved his life because all the blankets and pillows fell on him and protected him.

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The Lithuanians
I don’t remember much of their visit.  I remember several different moments as if they’re photographs in my head.  I’m glad my mom included their visit in her record, because I couldn’t place their visit properly into the events of that year.

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My sister shared a note on facebook today that my mother had written for my brother who was seriously injured in a car accident as a baby.  I had to read it in bits and pieces today because I didn’t have time to just sit and read which meant that I would read a paragraph or two then think about it as I went about my day.  As my mind was drawn back to that time, I have been anxiously waiting for a time that I could sit and write about the memories that have flooded back to me.  I have had such strong emotions as I read my mother’s words, both as a participant in the memory, and as a mother myself imagining the pain and stress and depression that my own mother felt during this time.

I will share my memories in my next post, but first I want to share part of what my mother wrote:

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I know I’ve mentioned this before, but Ila adores her little brother.  Sometimes she is an overly solicitous big sister, hugging and kissing him when he’s sleeping, or climbing up into my lap while I’m feeding him so that she can gently pat his head and tell him she loves him.  I just love seeing her show affection for him.  She gives him long hugs and sweet little kisses on his head.  She tries to comfort and love him when he cries.  Yesterday he was laying on the floor and he started to get fussy.  When her hugs and kisses didn’t work I said that I thought he needed a “mommy hug.”  She tried to get him to tell me “I don’t want it, mommy hug” because she wanted to keep giving him loves.  Today when he started crying, Ila got to him first.  When I told her that I thought he needed a mommy hug, she insisted that he needed an “Ila hug” instead.At times she tries to put a pacifier in his mouth when he doesn’t want it, all I have to say is “Thomas says no thank you” and she will stop. Today I put a pacifier in his mouth and she told me “He doesn’t want it, pacifier.”Often if one of her siblings tries to talk to Thomas, Ila will run up and say “That’s MY Thomas,” then she’ll squeeze in between that other sibling and Thomas and start hugging and talking to Thomas herself.  If she’s strapped into her seat at the table and Thomas wakes up or starts to cry she’ll start yelling “finished” and “I need Thomas.” Here she is offering him a ball while he sleeps:

My camera broke on Saturday (lens error?)  Luckily Zach had a camera that I could “borrow” for awhile or I would be seriously depressed about it . 

Check out these adorable baby smiles!  I just can’t get enough!

I don’t mind the walk to the bus with all 5 kids in the mornings when it’s sunny.  Here are some pictures from this morning’s walk:

I’m not a fan of taking all 5 kids in the rain which occurs frequently.

After bedtime on the night before Nicole’s birthday, Isaac and Charlotte helped me decorate the living room and kitchen with purple streamers, balloons, banners, drawings, and other such things. 

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It’s hard to believe that Nicole is turning 4.  Four just seems so much more mature to me than three. Charlotte keeps saying that when Nicole turns 4 she’ll stop being a little girl and start being a big girl. 

Click here to see what I wrote about her when she turned 3. 

It’s always interesting to see how much my children change in a year.  Last year I wrote about her yelling everything she says.  This year she has started to learn about using a quieter voice, but it’s still hard sometimes to get her to lower her volume (especially at church).  She went through a phase of yelling Ila’s name that I’m glad to say ended a while ago (here’s something that I wrote about it).

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We have assigned each of our kids a color and we color code things as much as possible. The children have embraced their colors and excitedly point them out when we drive down the road.  “Look, it’s Ila’s color, orange, house!”

Isaac = green, Charlotte = pink, Nicole = purple, Ila = orange*, Thomas = blue

The kids were inspired by a sharing time activity to make prayer rocks for family home evening.  They each picked out rocks and decorated them.  I spray painted some of the rocks for them. 

Ila ended up with a very large orange rock.  It’s so heavy that she has trouble picking it up or carrying it, but she insisted on brining it everywhere with her.  Only it was so big and heavy that she kept dropping it.  My solution was to spray paint a few smaller rocks orange and have her big rock stay in her bed.  I’ve found her cuddled up to her big orange rock on several occasions when I’ve peaked in after bedtime.  One time when I was putting away laundry,  she turned in her sleep and bumped her head on her rock.

Today, like most days, she carried two small painted rocks everywhere with her.  She took them to the bus stop, in the store, and into the school when we dropped off and picked up Nicole.  For some reason, she adds an extra ending and calls them her “rockets.”  So several times today as we were out she said: “Oh, No!  My orange rocket!” which meant that she had forgotten to bring one or both of her rocks with her.*Ila’s color is orange because she was born in Knoxville, Tennessee (home of the Vols) and if you’re ever in Knoxville on game day you’ll see “a sea of orange.” 

This is a longish narrative about one of my experiences being a parent.  It’s not a particularly exciting story, so I’m not really sure why I’m posting it, other than the fact that I haven’t written much about my bigger kids lately.  I think all parents stumble along sometimes and really struggle with what to do and how to be good parents.  I know I certainly do.  So here’s a story that reads like a journal entry (because that’s probably what it should be instead of being a blog post).

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Maybe it’s just me, but baby smiles just make you feel good:I love that baby face!

Ila is still the sibling that shows the most interest in Thomas.  She loves to climb up next to me when I’m holding him and give him hugs and kisses.  When she hears him cry she says “it’s ok, Thomas” and hugs him or puts his pacifier in his mouth.  She hugs and kisses him all day long whether he’s in the swing, on the floor, or in the bouncer.  Unfortunately, she doesn’t just hug him when he’s awake.  He often sleeps in his swing and she regularly wakes him up with her hugs and kisses.  The other day she was buckled into her seat at the table when she heard him cry and she said “I need Thomas!”  Which meant that she needed to be unbuckled so that she could comfort him and help him stop crying.  She is always so gentle and loving towards him, I can’t wait to see their relationship develop as he grows.At Church, Isaac heard me telling someone about how affectionate Ila is to her little brother and I think he was a little jealous because since that time, he has been asking to hold Thomas more and he has been talking to Thomas and trying to make him smile more often.  I want to foster a good bond between my boys and help Isaac feel like he doesn’t need to compete with Ila, so I have been making comments about how Thomas will enjoy playing with his big brother when he gets older and how Isaac will be able to teach him about all sorts of boy things.  I can tell Isaac likes those ideas because he usually contributes to my comments and says things like “you’d be really happy if Thomas was just like me when he’s my age, right?”Nicole is the child who has shown the most jealousy towards Thomas.  The following scenario has happened more than once:  Nicole is playing happily when Thomas starts to cry.  She stops playing and comes between me and Thomas and says “I don’t want Thomas.” (meaning she doesn’t want me to go pick him up and comfort him).  She also likes to tell me to “put Thomas in the swing,” when I’m holding him and she wants something.  I try not to be unavailable to her when I’m taking care of him and to help her show affection to him, but she is often so rough with her affection that I have to moderate her interactions for fear that she’ll hurt him.  She has had some moments when she has seemed to like him (or has at least treated him like a really fun doll).Charlotte generally likes Thomas, but she doesn’t interact with him as much as Isaac or Ila. 

Thomas is starting to smile a little more, but I have not been very successful at getting a picture of his smiles, instead I end up with pictures like this:Isaac even tried to help:

Isaac and Charlotte went out to play this morning and before I could stop her, Nicole went out wearing this:The weather was so nice that I didn’t demand that she come back in and change before playing outside.  In fact, I even allowed Ila to go out in her PJs (which I had been in no hurry to change her out of since we weren’t going anywhere today):Here she is trying to pick up an ant:The End

(not because I don’t have more to say, but because I have to go to bed while I still have a chance to get some sleep)

 

Name:  Thomas Deane Cochran

Age: 2 months, 3 days

Weight: 11 lbs     10th percentile

Length:   22 inches       25th percentile

Head Circumference: 15 1/2     50th percentile

Last well check (11 days) comparison:

Age = +almost 2 months, weight = +3 lb 4 oz, length = +1 3/8 inches, head = unkown

Here are some fun pictures from last time I did laundry.  I love that Nicole and Ila are interacting with each other more.  They are both in laundry baskets:Trying to kiss each other:

Then they sang “Ring Around the Rosies” and “fell” over: