almost there!

Where has all the time gone? One week left before moving (well, technically five days), finished my first week off of child care, the house is mostly done. I have a friend coming over tomorrow to clean my oven (thanks SO much! You're an angel!) and my father-in-law is coming out Thursday evening to help load up and see us on our way.

Kinda scary, kinda exciting, mostly just want it all done and over with. I think that is the general consensus, at least.

We've had a little bit of excitement this weekend, though. I packed up most of the kids' art stuff. I left out markers, some sticker books, and paper. Saturday afternoon when I was doing dishes, the Boy ran up to me holding a pencil telling me that he made a triceratops in hims bedroom.

Uh, oh! "Can you show me?". So he took me into his room and pointed just under his bed. He had drawn his triceratops with pencil (thank heavens!) on the floor ( again, thank heavens!). The walls were all still clean. Pencil washes pretty easily.

We talk again about the use of paper and that if he doesn't know where to finds some to ask one of his parents. Then, with the floor clean once more, I go to finish dishes.

Not five minutes later, Hubby walks down the hall and sees a black crayon line down the hall to the boys' bedroom. We go in and the Boy is nowhere to be seen, but the crayon is on his bed and the sheet has been scribbled on too. We know the probable reasons for this behaviour, but it's still frustrating. Any little child who's move so many times in their short lifespan will be acting out at this point.

Boy2 has thrown more tantrums at hearing the word "no" than he has before. He wakes up yelling for me every morning sometime between 5:30 and 6. Then he either comes into bed with us for a little bit, or I have to go get him and invite him to snuggle. And we won't even begin to discuss his dependence on his Num (soother).

Even after the move things won't be normal. We'll spend a week or so settling, and then we'll be travelling for Hubby's Ordination and family visits. Then it'll be back home for his installation at the church, hopefully the birth of our next child will be somewhere in the first two weeks of September, the Boy wants to start preschool, so we'll try and get that going too.

Looking forward to starting the next part of the journey, though. Feelings of fear, excitement, and fatigue are all mixed up right now. Alot of it will be the unknown. Hubby has always been a student. For the first time he'll be able to focus on ministry and family without working a secular job or be writing assignments. Yay!!!! Last year on internship, I think, was a glimpse of what it could be like. Really, really looking forward to that.

regression

After posting about cutting down/out TV, we've been using it WAY too much this week. Understandably, though. Toys are mostly put away, the kids are grumpy and under stress anyway, most books are packed.

It's gonna be a long road to detox again in the fall. Maybe sooner if life settles. Cranky, grumpy children are not fun. Oh, well. Only eight more days and this part will be behind us.

killing time

I'm just sitting here, Hubby is trying to get a few extra minutes of shut-eye, the boys are making an awful noise (Hubby must be REALLY tired to sleep through this!), and I'm at the computer doing my best to ignore the fighting. Until someone hits someone else (Boy2 hitting the Boy cuz he picked up a toy the other put down). Whoever said that second children had to be tough in self defense didn't know my two monsters!

They are doing so well, though. Especially in light of all of the changes happening. They are still sleeping at night (even if we do have to snuggle and lay with them now), they are still eating, and they are still our mostly well behaved little boys.

You'd think, though, that after doing this four times in the last five years, my body would be a little more used to it. I'm just beat at the end of the day, I want to sleep later in the morning, and I drop off at nap time too. There's still alot to be done, but it's getting there.

I don't know what I'd have done, though, if Hubby didn't have this time off. We each deal with stress in different ways. My tried and true approach is to either sleep and it'll go away, or ignore it long enough and it'll either fix itself or disappear (not the most mature way to approach things, I'll admit). Hubby will buckle down and do whatever needs to get done to fix the problem. The Boy seems to be the same way. He started sleeping much better after he came back from Spruce Grove and told me all about the home he and Daddy found for me, Baby, Boy2, and them. He needed that to reduce the anxiety about the move.

Now it's a matter of "why?" as in "why is that going in a box?". I'm feeling a bit like a broken record. He's a smart kid, but he needs the reassurance. "We put it in a box, then put the box in the moving van, then take it to the new house, so we can play with it there."

So today, while Hubby is cleaning, patching, and moving things around, I'll be packing the kid's books and puzzles, going through cupboards to clean and pack for moving or donating, then we'll break for lunch and naps.

I think a family swim is on the agenda for sometime this afternoon, so we'd better get our butts rolling, or we'll have to put in some even longer, busier days later.

Busy Bees

Busy times. Only a day and a half left of having the extra kids here, then two more weeks until moving day. Yikes!

Hubby took down all of our picturesand filles in the nail holes this morning, I packed two more boxes, Hubby went and did a Sally-Ann run, sorted through some junk, got a bunch of stuff for garbage, and now is out for a walk with the Boy (he WAS NOT having a nap today).

The house looks bare and sounds echo-y, but it's starting to feel more real.

Tomorrow I have my last prenatal with my Saskatoon doctor and I've already set up an appointment with my new one for the Tuesday after we move. Then I'll pack and start carrying around my hospital bag (since that seems to be the best way for me to ensure I won't go into labour early:).

Boy2 seems to be relying on his nums (soother) more (he absolutely HAS to have two to go to bed. One in his mouth and one in his hand). The Boy has started sleeping less in the day, but more heavily at night (we seem to do every other day for a nap). Stress certainly affects us all in different ways.

television

I don't like the effect that television has on my children. It's not the commercials (they don't really like TV TV, they prefer the kids DVDs and movies to watching alot of kids programming). I think it has something to do with thee way a child's mind is engaged. Little or no interaction with what is going on, it's almost as though even a half hour of TV time is too much at times.

Focus flies out the window, and I have to allot myself at least half an hour after TV to get the kids in any semblance of their normal self.

Now, we used to let them watch more. It wasn't uncommon, especially when I was preggers with number two, to let the Boy watch while I dozed on the couch (I was working a 2-11 night shift at a call centre to help make ends meet). Not that he'd let me. As soon as I drifted off, I'd get whacked in the head with a block, book, or some other toy.

With baby #2, I knew I had to cut back, so I did for a while. Then after naps became our TV time so I could catch a few extra winks. But they were still watching over an hour a day. Not necessarily the best thing for a baby and a toddler to be doing.

After we moved to Calgary, we cut back even more, but it's difficult to do when you get new movies and they want to watch the whole thing, over and over and over again. (The winter months are always the worst!) I'd like to think I got better after the move here to Saskatoon. With having the extra kids here, not everyone's attention would be held by the TV, so we wouldn't watch as much.

After Christmas last year, though, we'd had enough. (I guess it doesn't really help that we would sometimes use the TV so Mommy and Daddy could "sleep" more) After the Boy soiled himself for the third time in two days while watching cartoons, we decided to move the television down to the basement.

Our basement is unfinished. It got really cold down there during those Saskatchewan cold snaps that always come January, February. So they'd get TV once or twice a week for about an hour (MUCH better than over an hour a day) and they'd put up a big stink when the TV would be turned off. They'd ask to go down to watch, and we'd say yes or no. Usually no. Now they largely stop asking.

So, this morning, when I asked the Boy if he'd like to go downstairs to watch some TV, he got all excited, told his brother, who then got very excited. The Boy then told me it was a good surprise. I love having what alot of people/kids think of as their right as a treat.

I remember one little boy at the daycare I was working at before I had the Boy. He was I think four at the time, but he once told me that too much TV turned your brain into mush. It was probably something his parents told him, but I think it's pretty accurate. Why else would groups of people invest more emotion into the programs and fictitious characters they like to watch than they do into the actual relationships they have with real people?

Me? Anxious?

I've never been an anxious person. Those who know me can attest to the fact that I'm a fairly laid back, things will happen on their own kind of girl. Drives my Husband NUTS at times.

Yesterday, however, I experienced my first ever anxiety attack. Not bad, first one at 27, and I don't even know if I could even technically call it an attack. The kids were all quiet, eating, playing, actually getting along, and I suddenly had to sit down. Heart rate went up, and I got a panicky feeling. Where did that come from?

I mentioned it to Hubby, who said something along the lines of "Welcome to my life", and then we started talking about what these feelings could be about. We'll have a roof over our heads, a doctor to catch the delivery of Baby #3, money coming in, so what is there to be anxious about? We've moved with the kids before, so that's not it. There's three weeks left to clean and pack, two of which neither myself nor Hubby will be working, so there's no real time concerns.

But who said that rationality had to play a part? All I know is I found it difficult to wind down last night, but that could be the fact that I'm eight months pregnant, too. Oh, well. I seem to be doing better today. I'll drink some herbal tea tonight and fall asleep nice and quickly. And if I don't, I can alway pack and/or clean until sleep arrives.

Hooray for success!

Well, Hubby did it. He (with the Boy's help, of course) found us a place to live for the beginning August. Now we won't be homeless. Everything is coming together the way they always do. It doesn't matter how much you worry or stress about things, they will work out.

So, Hubby and the Boy will be travelling home this evening and will likely get home around nine or ten tonight. It's only been a couple of days, but it feels like so much longer.

When Boy2 woke up from his nap I had just gotten off the phone with Hubby, so I told him that Daddy and the Boy had found us a home. Boy2 sat up straight and went off in search of them. The look of disappointment on his face when I told him they wouldn't get back until after bedtime! He's really missed them too.

I think I'm going to have to walk to the store tonight with Boy2 and pick up a treat for us all for tomorrow morning. That and to replenish the snack supplies. I've been snacking out of boredom WAY too much these last couple of days. Luckily alot of it was fruit:)

Long day

Well, it's officially July, there are just under four weeks until we move, and Hubby and the Boy are currently out of town searching frantically for a roof to place over our heads.

Since last weekend when we got the official word that Spruce Grove, AB would love to call my wonderful, one-in-a-million Hubby to be their pastor and that we agreed it would be a nice fit, we started planning when a trip could be made out to look for a place to live. Because of the stress that travel and being out of routine does to the kids, we decided it would be best for Hubby to go by himself.

The Boy had other plans. He threw fits whenever Daddy making this trip was mentioned, adamant that he come too. When explained that Daddy would go, find us a new house, then come back, help us finish packing and cleaning, and then we'd all go to the new house, he was sure that he had to go too. I think that it's because he likes to be part of fixing problems and that he feels a string sense of responsibility for the family (even though he likely doesn't realize it). Hubby thinks it's that he doesn't trust Daddy not to mess it up.

So, after church we quickly fed the boys, Hubby loaded up the van, and they took off. With Boy2 yelling and screaming that he wanted to come too. I told him that Daddy and the Boy were going in the van and that he and I were going to go for a walk. That worked for two seconds and then the howling started again. Half hour, a bowl of chips, two sippies of juice, and an ice cream sandwich later he finally stopped crying.

We left the house (the landlords were doing a final showing this afternoon, so we tried to keep the place clean and stay away for long enough). We weren't able to go home for an hour. Since Boy2 napped in the morning for a little bit, I wasn't over concerned that we were two hours later than normal for his afternoon nap, but his little legs were dragging something fierce by the time we were home. He fell asleep moments after hitting the pillow.

But we've survived the afternoon. It's been very quiet (reminding me why I like to have music playing all the time) and we read lots of stories and did lots of puzzles. Boy2 got to say goodnight over the phone to Daddy and I got to do the same for the Boy.

Now all that's left for me to do is close up the house and go to bed. Tomorrow I have one extra child coming (her sister has an emergency dentist appointment, so it was a last minute thing), then Tuesday night Hubby and the Boy should be back shortly after bedtime if all goes well. They may stay an extra night.

In the meantime, we're suppose to get more rain and thundershowers over the next 24 hours. Yay. (can you tell I'm excited for an even more soggy backyard?)