The latest around here

First, the boys' bunk bed are in! Getting them up the steps was quite the feat. To our good fortune and to Craig's misfortune, moving day landed on a weekend that Seth'as younger brother was home hunting.
5 of the 6 pieces went up our annoyingly twisted staircase without too much trouble. That 6th piece, though, was slightly too big. Slightly too big can be much worse than way too big. "Slightly too big" gives you this hope that you can fit it if you just get the right angle...which is how we got it completely wedged in our staircase...and Craig wedged right along with it. Once he said, "Yeah, I'm completely stuck here," we tried taking it back down, but that was no longer an option either. Luckily there were portions that could be sacrificed to a sawzall, which freed Craig but did not make enough of a dent to get it upstairs.
By 10:00 that night, however, Seth had cut the whole thing into 2 more manageable pieces and put them back together upstairs. I's still awaiting drawers, but the boys are sleeping in it and loving it!
I will try to get better pictures when it's all done.

Secondly, Olivia is almost 4 months old and smiling regularly now. Like the rest of our kids, she is waking up more frequently at night as she gets older. She doesn't keep me up for long, but she's up every 2 hours now instead of every 4-5 hours like the first few months. While I was hoping for a better sleeper, I wasn't holding my breath. Still I can't complain. My work schedule and Seth allow me to get sufficient sleep. The older 3 kids are a big help, too. Seth was gone on business last week, and they got themselves ready and off to school every day without my help - it felt pretty good! 

Lastly, here are a few of Frankie's latest quotes:

Several weeks ago, Frankie found a (dead) pet fly. He named his fly "Fishy" and carried it around for most of the morning, talking to it and asking me if I wanted to pet him. Then Seth hit a fly with the flyswatter one morning recently and Frankie was excited to have a new pet fly (also named Fishy). He quickly realized it wasn't completely dead, though, and said, "Oh! His legs are still moving.....Kill him some more."

As Seth was bringing Frankie into daycare one day, he realized he was low on gas. Seth told this to Frankie and told him that he might have to get out and push the car if the gas ran out. Frankie thought about it for a bit and said, "Well....I think with my superpowers I can do that." Once they arrived to his daycare, he was pretty relieved: "Phew! We made it!"

While Frankie frequently refers to his super speed powers and super strong powers, he informed me the other day when I told him it was time to clean the living room:"I don't have any cleaning up powers."

And this is what occurred in the back seat of the car right after we pulled into the driveway when I had MPR on the radio and Frankie heard a familiar name. I would like to add that no one taught this to him. He saw this person's picture on the front of the newspaper awhile back and said, "Ha! Look at that guy. He's doing like this." We told him who it was and ever since he does this impression every time he hears his name.

The gooseberries are ripe!

All in perspective

They may look like shoes...

but really they are Walkie-talkie holders.

How is this possible?

We have one serious sock monster lurking somewhere around this house. I had a quiet moment today so I decided to sort through and match up the huge pile of the boys' socks. (Mind you, these are just Sam and Charlie's socks - I still have another pile of the other 4 sock-wearers of this house's lonely socks to match.) The experience was not as rewarding as I expected.  

Total matches made: 5

Total single socks still left unmatched: 51

I do not call that a win. 

Also, I have no recollection of buying several of these socks so I'm thinking several of them belong to neighboring children. The question remains, however, of how they managed to leave just one sock behind. But if you recognized any of these as your own, let me know and I will deliver!

As a side note - those of you who have been in our home might recognize a new and exciting development. We now have a rug in our living room! We've tried cheaper & smaller area rugs but have never been happy with the results. I have been wanting one for years, and we've decided not to force Olivia to learn how to roll over and crawl on hardwood as two of her brothers had to do. 

No wonder I'm always behind

Like most moms with multiple children, I am forever falling behind. Today was particularly tough to get anything done as Olivia pretty much made me hold her and walk around for a solid 4 hours (off and on) - and she doesn't allow me to multi-task at all. She does not like to be held one-handed so she cried every time I used one hand to grab a bite of food, make a phone call, open a door, help one of the other kids, blow my nose (stupid allergy season!), etc.

With all that time walking around just comforting the baby, I started thinking about all the other tasks that were calling to me. And it started dawning on me that every day after school, I have a good 10-12 hours worth of work to do between 3:00 and 9:00. The baby & 3-year-old certainly don't help. Although as the kids get older, the baby responsibilities will likely be replaced with running to and from activities for the older kids.

Broken down my evenings look like this on an average school night:

Feed/hold/entertain/change baby = 3-5 hours depending on naps
Miscellaneous cleaning/laundry/dishes/garden harvesting/etc = 2 hours
Put a decent supper together = 1 hour
Eat supper  = 30 minutes
Clean up from supper (including help from kids) = 30 minutes
Various extra tasks (check email, sign papers from school, phone calls, etc) = 30 min - 1 hr
Listen to each child tell me about their day for 15 minutes = 1 hour
Run kids to and from activities practices if necessary = 30 minutes
Fix & clean-up snacks (after school & bedtime) = 30 min
Clean-up/bath/teeth brushing/etc. (my role is to continuously prod the kids to move along) = 30 minutes
Help kids with homework as needed = 20 min - 1 hour
Read stories to the kids = 30 min - 1 hour
Say prayers with kids = 15 minutes

If you add all of that up, it totals about 11 hours of activity that I have to squeeze into 6 hours every day if the kids go to bed at 9:00, which is what we aim for - and that's using the minimums. If you throw anything extra in there like a trip to the store or a long phone call with the phone/insurance/etc. company or a clogged toilet - which pretty much happens daily - that jumps up to about 14 hours of stuff squeezed into 6.

If Seth were home on school nights we could split all of those to-do's in half, making it just barely possible as long as there were no interruptions (which there always are). But since he works weeknights, this is all on my own.

As I haven't figured out how to bi-locate yet, I have no choice but to cut corners daily. Elena and Sam help quite a bit (more than they would like and less than I would like). Some stuff gets pushed off until after bed time, but Frankie is frequently awake until 10:00 or 11:00 and I'm pooped by 9:30 anyways.

Often the whole meal prep thing just gets forgotten about until it's pretty much too late when Seth's not home. So 6:00 rolls around and we either eat late, pushing everything else back. Or I grab kids as they walk into the house and make them eat something that's passable for a meal. And sometimes what they end up with could not fit the definition of "meal" by any stretch of the imagination. Charlie had a big bowl of baked beans for supper tonight. (I did try to make up for it by giving him apples and cheese for his bedtime snack).

And I wish I could say each kid got a full 15 minutes of my undivided attention to tell me about their days, but that's often doubled up with some other task or missed altogether. I often end up having 2 or 3 of them tell me about their day at once so I just get snippets of what everyone wants to tell me.

Cleaning also gets pushed off to "tomorrow's list" quite a bit as well. Thank goodness I have a super understanding husband who doesn't expect the impossible!

Not to leave you with an entirely boring post about how busy my life is, here are some completely unrelated pictures. Below is a baby picture of me and one of Olivia wearing the same outfit. I gave up trying to get her to smile like I was. There were more pressing things for me to get to :)

And here's a video of Charlie doing a magic trick:

And last but not least: here are some creepy pictures we made using an extremely mediocre face swap app!! They are about 2 years old. 

Teresa and Elena

Charlie and Sam

Seth and Elena

Frankie and Elena

Want some fat with your fat?

At the Lyon County Fair,  Frankie made French fries a high priority when ordering supper. He wasted no time digging in once they came.

Once everyone was settled and all food had been distributed,  I looked over to see this:

In case you can't see what's going on here, I'll explain.  Frankie was dipping his fries into ketchup like a normal person. But then, unlike most people,  he was following that up with a dip in butter before eating each of his fries. I suppose the butter dish looked like it was made for dipping.

I guess it's a good thing he has room to grow....