At Long Last

It's a stone's throw away from April and this is, shamefully, the first blog post of the year.  Without committing to a schedule, I have loosely held myself to about one post a month but at this point I'm not going to be able to keep that up.  I do know that I want to have more than four posts a year though, so I'll have to dedicate time for memory-documentation.  In the meantime, I will maintain my excuse of LIFE IS BUSY because it is, and it has only become exponentially more so lately.

There have been some big changes percolating in our family in the last few months, changes which are exciting but also quite difficult.  After being approached for an application, Mike interviewed for and was offered a position as principal at his alma mater high school in Komoka.  With much prayerful consideration, he has accepted this new job and looks forward to taking on his responsibilities this coming August.

With this decision also comes a lot of preparation and work.  We are now in the process of preparing our home for selling, and we are planning to have it hit the market on Monday.  We had to move quite a bit faster on our renovations in order to have it in tip-top shape - installing a new window and front door, finishing the office and storage room, installing carpet, linoleum, and trim in the rec room.  I've been busy organizing, decluttering, packing, Kijiji'ing, cleaning, mudding holes, touching up paint, and what seems like a thousand other things.

I must admit some anxiety with the idea of last-minute showings when I have three children at home with me full time (Peter being at school is helpful) and a family to provide healthy home cooked meals for - how do you maintain any sense of schedule when people want to come see your home after work, dinner time, prime time, bed time?  The north-end of our city is a popular place to live, and we're really hoping that our home sells quickly.  I certainly like living here!

One lovely complication got parked on our street last night at suppertime - a backhoe and a large excavator. Exciting for the boys, but this means that our street, starting today, is being ripped up for the replacement of the watermains.  Not exactly great timing, but wouldn't YOU want to buy a house with BRAND new watermains?  It's a selling feature, right?

Besides selling our own home, there is the necessity of finding a new place for our family in the Strathroy/Komoka/Mount Brydges area.  It's a far distance from where we are now, so it's not like we can just go for a showing or two in the evening after work.  We've seen a number of homes already, but don't want to move too aggressively on anything until we've got our home on the market.

It's a difficult thing to leave a community where we feel so at home.  We've been here for eight years, and have settled into our church community, developing friendships and relationships that don't happen overnight.  All of our children were born here, and our family has grown alongside the families of our friends.  We have built many memories here and put down roots, and it hurts to pull them out.  I know we're going to a good place, a good church community, but it will take a long time to feel at home.  And then come the added things that need to change - finding a good family doctor, dentist, optometrist, etc.  Here I know where to go for ENT appointments, speech therapy, x-rays or bloodwork, chiropractor, osteopath, the best places to buy second-hand items, lumber, where to fix bicycle tires, who to call for electrical work, plumbing, mudding and sanding drywall, window installation, sand delivery, and on and on .  I know there are people who do these things all over the place, but finding ones who you can trust to do a good job takes time.

The kids were excited about the prospect of moving closer to Grandma, and they wanted to move the same day we told them about it.  However, they wanted to be sure that they could take their beds with them to the new house :)  I'm sure it will be an easier adjustment for the three younger boys than it will be for Peter, who doesn't do well with big changes and needs a lot of time to settle in.  He's quite happy at school now, building confidence and knowing his place.  It will be a big change for him to go from a large school where his Daddy works down the hall everyday to a split-grade where every face is new except his cousins.  He'll adjust in time and I'm certain it'll be an easier adjustment now than if he were a few years older already.  In that sense, it will be easier on all the kids to move before they're all full-steam ahead in the school system.

Peter is doing quite well in school right now - his inquisitive nature serves him well.  He enjoys math and reading and learning new things as long as they come without significant challenge for him, in which case he gets frustrated easily.  At home he gets absorbed in working on Lego sets and building his own creations.  He also fights with his brothers over who gets to take care of Stephen (seriously, right?).  They all want to climb in the pack and play with him to give him toys and hugs and make him laugh.  This is quite amazing and keeps at least three of us happy for a while- Stephen, the brother "taking care of him" and Mom.  Often the other two boys are upset that they aren't having a turn taking care of their brother.  This is probably a good problem for me to have.  Of course they are quickly distracted by the possibility of snack time, a book being read, someone going to play outside, but really, does anyone want to miss fun things going on around them?  Kinda leaves Stephen in the lurch but I guess that's the lot of being the littlest.  He certainly gets a lot of love.

Aaron is just a few short weeks away from turning five!  I've said it before but I'll say it again - he will be SO ready for school in September.  With everything else that has been going on, I haven't had (taken?) the time to sit down with him regularly with his workbooks, and that kind of challenge would help him.  However, he also gets frustrated quickly and escalates into an unreasonable state which at the moment I have short amounts of patience for.  Just a few days ago, he lost his first two teeth!  He had a few weeks with a double-row of teeth in the bottom front which was kind of funny to see.  He was very pleased to have a visit from the tooth fairy but a little disappointed that she didn't leave a receipt like she did for Peter.  Coincidentally, our printer is broken, so I guess we should get a new one before we have any more dental occurences in the family.  He loves to spend time building Lego, forts, and drawing pictures.

Nate is a happy-go-lucky three year old.  He thinks it's great fun to argue with me about who loves the other one more.  He can play quite well alone and gets absorbed in his own little world, building train tracks or playing with Playmobil.  I've packed away the Playmobil for the next little while so there aren't as many toys to deal with for showings, but he'll be pretty happy to get it back.  He also loves to draw and spends a lot of time at the kitchen table with a box of pencil crayons and a stack of paper.  Any time he hears me pull out the mixer he is eager to help me "make".  He listens carefully to the music we play at home, and the other day he had a big problem with a song from The City Harmonic.  The lyrics include a repeated refrain of "God is love" with the last word occasionally quite drawn out and the enunciation not quite perfect.  Nate told me, "This song is wrong, because God is NOT slow!  He is singing God is slow but He is not!".  I explained to him the words, but listening to the song it does sound an awful lot like Nate's interpretation.  I helped him write a short note to them admonishing them for their theological errors and hopefully giving them a bit of a chuckle.  Just have to find their address now and drop it in the post box.

Stephen has changed a lot in the last three months - he's definitely the child who is least-well-served by blog posts three months apart, since there are more milestones that can potentially be missed.  He's rolling over regularly and while not scooting around doing any useful crawling yet, he gets places and occasionally gets himself unhappily stuck under couches or chairs.  He babbles more than the other boys did but he's still a fairly quiet baby.  He sleeps well through the night and has for quite a while now - it is pretty rare to get up with him unless he's sick. He's still only got two teeth on the bottom and I keep checking for more but I don't see anything coming.  He's doing pretty well with eating now, still a lot of pureed dinner things but he has oatmeal and applesauce for breakfast, and often a banana, yogurt, or slice of bread torn up in pieces at lunch.  He can handle Cheerios as long as they're one at a time, and he can hold his own bottle as long as it's warm enough.  If it's not warm enough, he starts playing with it and squirts the milk all over himself.  Stinker!  I don't remember how old the other boys were when they could handle milk straight from the fridge but I can't really expect Stephen to do that now yet since he's been sick off and on for the last little while. Right now all of us are in some stage of the same yucky bug, bringing fevers, a nasty cough, aches and exhaustion.  I picked Peter up from school at lunchtime since he just came down with it.  No fun!

Well, that just about brings us up to date on our immediate family.  We've learned some extremely exciting news from our extended family, however, bringing more changes this summer.  Timothy and Danielle were thrilled to announce the expected arrival of Baby DeVries in the middle of July.  We rejoice with them in this gift of new life, and look forward to meeting the little one in due time.  There will be lots of change in the near future for them, too now, adjusting to being Mom and Dad and making a new rhythm of life as a family.  We are so excited for them!  Shortly after this announcement, Tom and Lauren also announced the happy news that Benjamin will be a big brother at the beginning of August!  So exciting to see their family growing.  Tom is a little sad to now be in the market for a minivan... Benjamin and the baby would fit in the back of their current vehicle but not Benjamin and TWO babies!!  Twins!!  A boy and a girl.  How extremely exciting, daunting, and amazing all at the same time!  We look forward to meeting our three growing nephews/nieces in the summer.  It seems that July/August will be a very busy season for us all!

There is no exciting look-out for the "first robin of spring" in our neighbourhood. This flock of robins is gorging on crab apples in -20 degree weather.  Crazy birds!

I thought with the extremely cold weather we were having in January that we should try some cold-weather experiments.  You can see from the picture that my kids were really excited by this (not).  Really, they were just SUPER grumpy in the morning and I was trying to do something to cheer them up.  Here my little scientists are holding a frozen shirt straight out in front of them - we made it wet and laid it in the snow for 4 or 5 minutes and it was frozen solid. 

I asked Peter to go downstairs while I was making lunch one day to grab me a jar of peanut butter.  He came up a few minutes later, very upset so I went down to figure out what happened.  I assured him he wasn't in trouble, don't worry about it, I'll clean it up, etc.  The scene that greeted me did not fill me with much joy, though, and the hours of cleaning were not my most enjoyable use of time.  A glass jar of olive oil had fallen off the shelf, shattering on the concrete and spreading olive oil and glass shards everywhere in the cold storage room.  I couldn't think of a jar on the shelf down there that would be worse to clean up.

 Aaron is pleased as can be to give little Stephen his bottle

 Another cold-weather experiment, which the boys were a little more excited about.  We filled up balloons with food colouring and water and then put them outside in a snow drift to freeze.  The next day we cut the balloons off and were left with multi-coloured ice marbles, fun stuff!  We won't mention how much food-coloured water spurted around the kitchen while we were working on this. 

 Our ice-marbles in the snow

 Close-up

 This kid can have some pretty funky hair!

Aaron and Nate helping me fold the laundry one day.  They were so happy to help me...

Ahh the things a Mom does for her kids.  As the kids get bigger, the toys get smaller and they don't always heed my warnings to keep the stuff off the floor or else it will get vacuumed up.  This is a lovely collection of dust and dirt from our home in the past while.  Nice eh? 

These are the "treasures" I recovered from the dust - a handful of Playmobil coins, some Lego pieces, some beads and part of Aaron's pop can tab collection.   

Peter putting his 100 Keys poster together for 100 Day in Grade 1. 

Handy spot to keep the baby

I've never had one of my kids fall asleep in the exersaucer before, but I can't say that anymore.

Can you believe how cold it got one day?  

Aaron had a row of shark teeth going on for a while.  His two adult teeth at the bottom were already coming in before the baby teeth were wiggly.  I didn't know this could happen!  He was very proud to have more teeth than anyone else. 

 Apparently Nate does not like falling in the mud.  However, I think this is hilarious!

 Just in case you didn't catch the facial expression... he's a little sad

 Announcement of the Twins!  Lauren made a blue and pink cake for us :)

Stephen and Benjamin having a cuddle with Opa

 We really need to cash in on these Tim's certificates eh Dad?  Really.  We do.

 Pretty pleased to be having a bath in the sink

 Painting himself with milk

 Watching his brothers play in the backyard

 Boys and mud, a natural combination.  Just wish the mud wasn't so... muddy.

 The kiddos

 Tooth #1 came out, followed shortly the same evening by tooth #2 with Daddy's help.  An exciting day for Aaron, who was happy to be visited by the tooth fairy.

 Peter parachuting on the wall display on 100 Day at school

 Four Boys on the Couch

 Yes, I believe this qualifies as a "mountain" of laundry.  I think there were still two loads to add to it

 Rub a Dub Dub!

This is not exactly what fills the heart with joy - seeing an excavator and backhoe dropped off on the street across from your house less than a week before it's scheduled to go on the market. 

 Boy #1

 Boy #2

 Boy #3

 Boy #4