March -May 2010 – There are a lot of adjustments to be made when a new baby joins the family. Brinlee, Kimball, Sawyer and Caisen were so excited to meet our baby Daisy. About an hour after we brought her home, I said that she needed to eat. Kimball and Sawyer quickly started gathering up some play food to feed her. They came running into the room with her plastic feast and stopped dead in their tracks when they saw she was breast feeding. “WHAT ARE YOU DOING? WHY IS YOUR SHIRT OPEN?” They were horrified, especially Sawyer. Thus began the explanation of baby milk, breasts, and how babies eat.
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/Caisen has started making absurd requests at bed or nap time. As he’s laying down in his bed, he’ll say, “Can I have some cheese?” No. And then he’ll just shrug and laugh like it was a good try. He asks for all kinds of crazy things, usually food, just in case one of these days I say yes.
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/When Daisy was set to come home from the hospital, Sharon, the kids’ preschool teacher, offered to let Caisen go to preschool that day so I could have a break. I knew that would open a whole world of pain for me if I had to thereafter explain why he only got to go that one day. As we talked about it, we decided he could handle going the rest of the year. He was so casual about it because he totally deserved to be there and should have been there all along. The rest of us just finally clued in and gave him what was rightfully his. I was so excited and a little heartbroken about it and making a big deal about it, and he just kept looking at me like, “Mom, this is no big deal. Please.”
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/When it was time to go he shot out into the garage, climbing in his seat and just sat there like he’d done this a million times. He wouldn’t even look at the camera. This wasn’t special. This was righting an injustice.
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/And there goes my baby. That backpack was as big as he was. I cried. I admit it.
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/Only a few weeks after bringing a new baby home, we tried potty training again after a dismal failure in January. Kimball was the most resistant, but caught on the fastest. Within a couple of days, he had no accidents, and shortly after was staying dry at night. Brinlee and Sawyer were able to do it, but didn’t feel a lot of motivation, so I told them that whoever stayed dry for a week got to go ALONE with mommy to pick out any underwear they wanted. We started out just wearing the generic Gerber training pants. Kimball got to go a week later, and amazingly enough, Brinlee and Sawyer suddenly stopped having accidents. Amazing. Kimball chose Lightening McQueen underwear. When I took Brinlee and Sawyer, I started with Brinlee and showed her the Tinkerbell underwear when Sawyer exploded, “I WANT TINKERBELL!!!!” Oh please no. How will I explain this to Adam? To my dad? My brothers? “And there is also some THOMAS THE TANK ENGINE underwear…” Fortunately he went for that. I had a mini heart attack.
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/When I was in the hospital after having Daisy, we used Skype to help the kids feel more connected to us. Adam couldn’t go home because they started vomiting the day she was born. If he had gone home, he wouldn’t have been able to come back, so they were missing both of us, and it was hard. We held up a picture of Daisy because she was off with one of the nurses. Sawyer’s response was, “That kid needs a pillow. That kid isn’t smiling.” Suddenly he was saying “that kid” for everything. It was pretty funny.
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/By May we needed to get out of the house, so we took the kids to Callaway Gardens for the day.
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/Adam picking up a butterfly in the butterfly house.
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/Passing off the butterfly to Kimball
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/Brinlee and Sawyer having a good time
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/Caisen examining a specimen
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/Kimball, what a lovely waterfall you are posing in front of.
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/I have no idea how it happened, because I was taking someone to the potty, but Kimball fell into the waterfall he was just posing in front of. Obviously he is unhappy about it.
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/Cooling off inside.
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/A thunderstorm cropped up at bed time, so we all went to hang out in my bed. That black bundle on my chest is Daisy.
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/What is this? This is Kimball and Brinlee taking a picture of themselves playing with my camera. Busted!!
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/And this is them taking a picture of themselves getting into my wallet! Double busted!
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