7 Quick Takes Friday

So in an attempt to get my blogging juices going, I'm linking up with Jen for...

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Gianna got her haircut last Saturday. Other than a few trims here and there, it was her first big cut! When I talked about getting her haircut, she was apprehensive and didn't want to do it. While I love her long hair, this was not acceptable, as I was done brushing the tangled weave of curly locks. To help calm her nerves, I took her the week before when I got my haircut, so she could watch and accustom herself to the idea (she is a child who does not do well with new experiences). After that she was excited...the moment she woke up Saturday morning, she got dressed, went to the bathroom, brushed her teeth, ate breakfast, and put her shoes on almost without us having to ask a single time. She was ready to go! I told my hubby we have to do these single dates with them more often, she was so excited to go out with Mommy and get her haircut!

I tell you though, if you saw her in the chair when she got her haircut, "excited" would not have been the word you'd have used to describe her. She barely cracked a smile the whole time. At the end though, when we left, she was jumping up and down and couldn't wait to show Daddy, Dom, and Emma...such is our life with our very shy child.

Before

After

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Thursday was Dominic's first day of 3 year old preschool... He was so excited! He kept saying "I'm going to school all by myself, just like Gianna!" He did so great, I had to steal a kiss from him before he went in. Not a tear was shed (which was quite the contrast from Gianna last year who I had to pry off me and leave her screaming, while I fought the tears myself)!  When I picked him up he said "Mommy, that was so much fun!" God bless my sweet little guy, I hope he always has this much fun learning!"

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Today was Gianna's first day of 4 year old preschool. She was excited too, but not nearly as much as Dom. She's an old pro at this school thing now! She went right in smiling and giving her teacher a hug! No tears this year, woohoo!

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Emma is a 3 year old trapped in a 18 month old body, she tries to do so much more than she physically can and it frustrates her most of the day. Should I or should I not help her...you just never know what she will allow! 18 months...it's a good thing that children at this age are so cute because the screaming fits are enough to drive a momma crazy!

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I have spent too much time for my liking this week helping my children making little felt bears... Thank you Creative Galaxy! It wouldn't have been that bad if I would have made the effort to get my sewing machine out instead of choosing to hand sew them.

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Dominic happened to be using our bathroom the other night and was sitting waiting for me for a few minutes because I was ironing on patches to their school bags.

Dom: Hey, Mommy, do these fings shoot fings out?

Me: Huh? What things?

Dom: (holding up a box of "women's products") These fings, do they shoot fings out of thum?

Me: Ummmmm... no...

Dom: Then what do they doose?

Me:            ....... I don't know, Dom...put it down.

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Has anyone heard of Accountable Kids? It's a positive parenting program helping to teach children accountability, responsibility, and good behavior. I am very drawn to trying it, as it is very organized and I need a little organization in my life. I'll let you know what I think after I have tried it.

For more Quick Takes, visit Conversion Diary!

Making Moments into Memories

I mentioned in my last post that I would write about what inspired me to re-start my blog. As some of you may know, a few weeks ago a young mother, Sarah Harkins, died unexpectedly. I did not know Sarah, but she graduated from my alma mater, Franciscan University. You can read about her life here. As I said, I didn't know Sarah, but she has very much been a source of heartache, inspiration and prayer for me these last few weeks since her death. She was a woman of great faith, strength, and hope striving every day to lead her family and others to Christ in any way she could. She wrote about her life on her blog The Clay Rosary Girl.

Mother's Day 2014

The sudden and unexpected death of this young mother really struck deep in my heart. As mothers, we are called to be the heart of our family and the heart of this family was just ripped from them with hardly a moment's notice. I ached thinking about having to leave my children without their mother at such a young age. How confused and sad they must be. These children's whole lives were just turned upside down and there was nothing anyone could do about it. Nothing.at.all. Except pray. Prayer and faith is the only thing that saves us in these situations. We beg God for explanation on how such a tragic event could really be His will, yet we don't always get one, except for the answers we get in just having faith. Faith in God is the only answer that we can lean on. Faith that He is writer of the story of our lives. Only He knows how are lives are going to go. He will take care of us as long as we give our lives fully over to Him in complete trust. Needless to say it opened my eyes to how precious and fragile our lives really are and to how quickly life can change, and more importantly how much I need God.

Me and Anthony

As a stay-at-home mom of 4 little ones remembering to "enjoy every moment" is a challenge. The days can be very long and the endless demands of 4 little lives who are completely dependent on me in so many ways can be draining. Since Anthony's birth I have been in "survival" mode. It's that time after a newborn arrives that you do what you gotta do to get through the day.  I am always nursing, changing, holding, nursing, holding, changing. It's a hard time for everyone and doesn't always make for fun days for my bigger kids. Holding a baby (who is no small load at 14 lbs 10 oz at 2 months old) all the time often makes it hard to do things with the older ones as easily as you did before. Sarah's death has jolted me into being sure to enjoy as many moments and memories as I can with my children, if they may not be enjoyable, then to appreciate them for what they are because at least they are moments that I get to spend with them. I want to store these moments as the memories that they are whether or not they are the fun, joyful, inspiring moments of motherhood or the oh so tiring, draining, make you want to cry moments of motherhood, because that's just what they are. These are moments, whether good or bad, I have with my family and I don't want to forget them, so I better write them down. I better bring myself to the foot of the cross with trust and thanks for the time I have with the ones I love, especially my babies.

kissing babies never gets old

Trick-or-Treat

Well, I think we have another year before Gianna really gets into Halloween.  This year she was less interested in dressing up and trick-or-treating and more interested in the people coming to the door and our candy were were handing out.  Before we left she was loving going through our box of candy and moving it from the box to a bowl she was playing with.  Seeing this, I thought she was going to love trick or treating and getting her own candy... Wrong!  She didn't want the candy people were giving her, she just wanted to run as fast as she could down the sidewalk.  Once we got home, she did end up liking the candy in her bag.  We tried to get pictures, but didn't really succeed.  Gianna was a cat.  I made her some ears to attach to her pigtails because I didn't think she would keep a headband on.  They worked pretty well at the beginning, but with all the running they kept falling off.  She was pretty cute, even if we didn't get a smile (she pretty much hates the camera).  Oh, and we had one very cute giraffe too!

 

This is the best one, and I like it because Gianna is holding Dominic's hand.

This is when  I gave Gianna the first box of candy I could find to try to get her to sit still so we could get the candy.  There is a sequence of pictures where Dominic discovers the box, grabs the box, Gianna realizes it, yells at him, and then pulls the box away.  It's really funny, but there are too many to put them all up here. Here are a few of the key pics to give you an idea of what took place.  

Dominic spots the candy

Dominic grabs the candy and Gianna notices what he is doing

Gianna yells and pushes him away

Oh, and right after this, I realized I gave her Dots, the worst candy I could have, said aloud to my husband "what did I just give her?" I then quickly subbed them for something else.

Here are some more pictures from the night...

         cute little kitty cat

best Mommy and Gianna picture we could get

Family picture

Mommy and our sleepy giraffe

Gianna running with her bag made by Mommy

We stopped to see Pearl!

All 3 cousins - the best we could get!

This is harder than I thought

Well, as it has been a few months since I started my blog (and even posted anything), I feel like I failed at blogging.  It has proven to be hard when there are so many things to pick from to do when I have free time (I recently discovered Pinterest, and if you know what that is, you understand how it can suck you in).  Well, I'm not giving up!  I think I am going to set a new goal to try to post at least one time a week, even if it's a few sentences.

So, here are a few updates on the kids.  Dominic is 5 1/2 months old and a very good and happy baby. He is very laid back and just goes with the flow. He loves to smile and cuddle, such a momma's boy, I love it!  He started "scooting" across the floor about a month ago.  Well, just this weekend he started really crawling!  5 1/2 months old and crawling already!  I thought Gianna was an early crawler at 6 months.  He is also sitting up, still a little wobbly, but doing pretty good! I think he is going to give me a run for my money!

And other times smiley guy

Sometimes he can be Mr. Serious

Gianna is almost 21 months old and getting so big!  Now she is my little girl, no longer my baby.  In the last few weeks her vocabulary has taken off!  She is putting two or three words together to make sentences now.  It is a lot of fun trying to figure out what she is saying!  She still loves her brother, they are best friends already!  She loves to sing songs and dance.  She doesn't get all the words, but you can tell what song it is because she sings with the tune.  She says prayers with us and sings the "Hail Mary" with us every night.  It makes Joey and I smile each time!  We are trying to catch it on video and if we do, I'll post it on here.  I have been trying to do some fall painting activities with her, so I will post those pictures soon! It's fun to see how she is very proud of her artwork!

It's hard to get Gianna to look at the camera and smile at the same time.  This was close!

Chunka Monka

Now to introduce my sweet baby boy, Dominic Joseph!  He is 3 months old (yes, they are only 15 months apart) and such a joy in my life!  He has a smile that melts my heart each and every time.  He is a bit of a Momma's boy, but I don't mind.  I just love how cuddly he can be!  He has the chubbiest most kissable cheeks, and I take advantage of that many times a day!  He is quite the chunk, at his 2  month visit he was in the 95 percentile, weighing 14lb 9oz.  I wouldn't be surprised if he is 16 lbs by now!  He is quite different from his sister who was/is pretty petite.  He loves Gianna, by the way!  He is really starting to watch everything she does and smiles at her all the time!  I look forward to watching them interact together as siblings.  It is already so amazing to watch their love for each other forming and growing!  They are going to be best friends!  I bet they get mixed up for twins some day.  He is going to catch her on weight, I think, and many people have commented on how much they look alike.

 shy grin

Cheeks!

Dominic has already been through the wringer in his short life.  Before he was born we were told that he had hydronephrosis (a dilated kidney).  We were hoping that it would correct itself by the time he was born, but it didn't.  When he was born they did an ultrasound and it showed that it was still dilated.  They did a test and determined that it wasn't reflux, or a valve problem (which were both good things).  We saw a pediatric urologist when he was one week old.  She told us that it was probably a blockage, but she wanted to do another test when he was 2 months old to determine the severity, but it was a good possibility that he would need surgery to fix the blockage.  It was heart wrenching for us to think about such a little baby, our baby, having to go through surgery.  The doctor told us to go home and enjoy our baby for 2 months and not to think about it.  This was a bit of a reassurance to us, as life for the week he was here had been chaotic and full of worry.

Over the two months before his test we kind of came to grips with the fact that he was probably going to need surgery.  It was really hard, but we knew that once this was fixed he would be okay and would be able to live normally.  I just wanted him to be healthy!  Even though we were accepting it, we were also praying really hard (and everyone we know was praying) for a miracle that he wouldn't need the surgery.

The day after he was born.

Two months past by and the day of his testing came.  It was not a fun experience, Dominic needed to get an iv put in his arm, they strapped him down and he screamed the whole time.  It was torture as a mother to not be able to pick him up and comfort him.  I held back the tears as I rubbed his head and whispered in his ear how much I love him.  Finally, they got the iv in (the 3rd try) and the test began.  Dominic was so worn out that he fell asleep during the actual test, which was a relief.  During the test, he laid under a machine that took pictures every 60 seconds, watching the fluid go through his body.  After the test and an ultrasound, we thought for sure he was going to need the surgery.  We could see how his left kidney was bigger than right and there was a lot of fluid in it.

Gianna meeting her little brother for the first time.

We went to see the urologist after the tests, we prepared ourselves to hear "he needs surgery."  She walked in the room and said "great news, there is no blockage, NO surgery!"  Our jaws dropped and we asked her to please explain because what we saw didn't look good.  She explained that they measure the rate at which the kidney empties.  The cut off for needing surgery is taking longer than 20 minutes.  Both of Dominic's kidneys drained in 9 minutes, which was normal!  For some reason his left is holding more fluid, so that is what we saw on the ultrasound.  It is holding more, but there is nothing blocking it from draining!  It was the miracle that we were praying for!  The doctor told us she wants him to have an ultrasound in 6 months to check on everything.

A recent pic.  He has gotten so big, and changed so much!

That was a lot of information, I know.  But, I feel like it is an important part of his life, thus far.  And shows why Dominic's life is such a added blessing to us!