MEOW

This is what Maddy, Josey and I did last night. We went and experienced......CATS! We had so much fun!I had so much fun with my big girls. We drove into the city and had some quick dinner and took our seats. Maddy was in HEAVEN as she has been obsessed with real cats for about a year now due to her favorite books "Warriors". She leaned over to me during the play and said, "This just makes me want to be a cat even MORE!" So cute!

When I asked the girls which cat they wanted to be it was so funny the ones they chose. Josey said that she would like to be the Siamese cat that was rally graceful and pretty and Maddy wanted to be the leader Tiger cat that was taking care of everyone and got to be in a few fights. Please keep in mind that the baby is only a month old......don't look at me too long.

So Josey pooped out a little after the intermission. And I mean she was sound asleep by the time it was over. After all is was about 10:00 which is WAY past her bedtime. So when I had to shake her awake she wasn't in the best mood. I insisted that we take a few pictures before we headed to the car and that was VERY unpopular with her. We really did have a good time and they loved their new t-shirts.

Here we are waiting for it to start. See we were all happy at the same time.

This was my early birthday present. When I saw that CATS was coming I knew I wanted to take my girls. I have wanted to see it for years! It was really good and have you ever heard a note come out of someones voice that just makes your eyes well up? It doesn't even matter what the song is! When the old Grisabella the Glamour Cat sang the last verse of "Memory" it was almost all I could handle to not just start crying it was so beautiful and moving. I can't wait to go see another one with my girls. Maddy already has said that she wants to see as many musicals as she can. I just wish the tickets weren't so expensive....especially since I have 4 girls. It is going to get harder and harder to take everyone to a play! I guess we will just have to take turns.....but I get to go everytime!

Thanks for staying with a VERY cranky baby last night Dustin and letting us do our girl thing. Love you!

More of baby Ivy

Again these are in really random order because my new computer won't let me move them around and it is really annoying me! But here are some more pictures of our little cutie.

Hanging out with Maddy. And I ACTUALLY caught a real smile on camera! Can you believe it? It is so hard to do that with little babies!

This next picture is my new favorite picture. This is in between a smile and a huge yawn and it is ADORABLE! She looks like the most jolly baby ever.

Here she was thinking about giving me a smile. Can you see it in her eyes?

Does she not look so incredibly disgusted with me in this picture? It makes me laugh.

I swear I wasn't strangling her here. Even though we were having one of "those" nights.

Everyone keeps commenting on how nice and tan she looks. I don't know if she still has some residual jaundice going on or if she is just going to be darker than my others? She never had major jaundice and yet has looked fairly tan, it is very odd to me considering my translucence!

Her first experience in her crib. She just looks so little in there!

Spring Campout

Well maybe we were still a day shy of official Spring but I don't think anyone cared. Dustin brought home this tent the other day that was on sale somewhere and told the girls they were going camping! We have never been camping together. I took Maddy and Josey once years ago with my dad but we have never been camping as a family. And we actually don't even own a tent. So the girls were SO excited about this. They were even excited when daddy explained that they were just going to camp-out in the backyard. They thought that was pretty awesome because as Maddy said, "If we need to go to the bathroom or whatever we can just go inside! This is WAY better than having to go anywhere". Whatever you say!

How cute do they look though. I did not camp out with them. ivy and I roughed it in the house together. Here they are all ready to head to the tent. Decked out in their warm jammies and head lamp.

I love this picture of Maddy. She is just growing up way too fast.

My cute Joselyn.

And my silly Lilly.

Oh there she is!

We recently got a new computer and it isn't letting me move pictures around for some reason so these are all out of order. But the next few are actually before they headed to bed. We roasted hot dogs and made smores and had tons of fun together.

Here are my other tow daughters, Sara and Emma who live next door. My girls and these girls practically live at each others houses. They were over jumping away as we were setting up the tent.

And Lilly was just chillaxin'.

I am not sure if Dustin needed someone to remind him how to actually assemble a tent or if our neighbor just happen to be walking by?jk Dust.

And Ivy stayed alseep inside and let me hang out with everyone outside which was very thoughtful of her.

mother's worries

Why is it as moms that it is in our genetic make-up to worry so much? Okay at least it seems to be in mine when it comes to my kids. I remember having the epiphany after giving birth to my first daughter that the worrying never stops. I had thought that if I could just get through labor and have a perfectly formed baby that all my worries would be over. Then as she got a little older I realized that there are an infinite amount of things that could happen to my child as she grew up and that as her mother I would never completely be free of worry. It is no wonder I already look like I am 40 when I have a good 10 years (okay a few less than that) to go to reach the big 4-0.

Here is my point. When Ivy was born I was worried because for the first time with one of my children I wasn't sure if she was getting enough milk from me. I haven't had major problems nursing my girls before and whether or not I had enough milk was for sure not the concern. But with Ivy it has been a concern. She had been so fussy and seemed hungry all the time and didn't sleep great. And when I took her to her 2 week appointment and they told me that she was 2 ounces still below her birth weight I wanted to burst into tears. Who knew that 2 ounces could cause that much worry in a woman, but it did. We started supplementing occasionally with a bottle when she just seemed starving even after I had nursed her for hours on end. And I was sure to get up as many times as she needed at night to be feeding her because I have been concerned about those 2 little ounces.

Last night little Ivy slept 6 hours! And between other children crawling into my bed and yet other children wetting the bed I probably got a good 4 hours of sleep which is MARVELOUS considering the amount I have had the last few weeks. So instead of relishing this new energy I have this morning what am I doing? WORRYING! Why is she sleeping so much? Why did she not wake up starving to death and NEEDING to eat? Why is back asleep this morning for another couple of hours? Did someone switch my baby?

I remember a sister-in-law telling me that her doctor was telling her that mothers are so funny. They worry when the baby doesn't sleep enough and they worry when they sleep to much. They worry when the baby doesn't eat enough and they worry when they eat too much. I guess it is just our genetic make up to find something to worry about!

And by the way Ivy started smiling the other day.....it is a bit early......there must be something wrong with her.;)

What I wouldn't give to have some baby pictures of Ivy like these! You have to scroll down to Allie Quinn (an old friends baby born on the same day as Ivy). GORGEOUS and SOOOOO JEALOUS...you have to check it out.

Little Miss Ivy Mae

Here is my attempt at doing some sort of cute artsy photo of Ivy.....she was having NONE OF IT! I kept trying to feed her and calm her down and just get ONE shot!

But I have a feeling that this may be a look at what's to come. She seems to have a mind of her own already.

This is the only semi decent one I got and it isn't that good. Maybe I will try again another day when I can muster up the strength!

Joselyn and Lilly's room

I realized that I never really posted pictures of the girls room after we finished it. Granted it has taken up FOREVER to finally finish it off but here are a few shots. I grabbed the camera the other night because girls looked so cute in Josey's bed together and I wanted to document that they didn't always fight sharing a room together. This is what they love to do at night until it's lights out. I know they should be reading and we do some of that too but they just love playing the DS and watching each other play and it is just too cute.

random....

Josey my little baby whisperer. The baby was pretty fussy and I was trying to get dinner made and I passed her off to Josey who.....got her to sleep for me! I was so happy!

This is one of the biggest baby yawns ever!

Dustin's "funny" face

Lilly's beautiful eyes and sporting a day old kitty face and Harry Potter self inflicted scar forehead.

We woke up to this the other morning. The girls were so excited. We have only had snow 2 days this year and it has been only a little bit. They were so sad that it was gone so quickly. We have had the most mild winter and it was been really nice to have lots of sunshine!

Maddy's school project

Okay....does anyone else hate school "projects" that their kids have to do. I don't hate the concept of them but here is what I hate about them. The teachers comes up with a project and sends it home for the PARENTS to complete. Because come on! Is my 9 year old girl REALLY going to create some sort of useful product made entirely from recycled materials? NO! And it isn't that I hate working on projects with my kids but I guess actually I kinda hate working on projects with my kids. It just always seems to end up that the parents are doing the whole thing or finishing the whole thing. That is my experience anyway. Maybe it has to do with the fact that we have new baby in the house making everything hard to accomplish within a timeline. So here is Maddy's project.

She came up with making a bird feeder. Here are some of the pictures of the work "in progress".

I will say that Dustin had fun trying to use is new tools to help cut things etc. However we still had to call in re-enforcements to get the job done.

We didn't get a picture of the finished product because literally it wasn't done until about 10:00 the night before she had to turn it in and give her speech. She was practicing it with me at 10:00 when she came down and reminded me that it was due. Maybe having the baby was been good for my girls. It has made them much more accountable for their own things because really it is checked out of mommy's brain!