Buds

Have I mentioned how very much I love these boys?

Or how very much they love each other?

Well I do. And they do. And I'm pretty blessed, if I do say so myself.

Higher-level mathematics

She calls it "Daddy Math" and it's what happens when Daddy works from home and has a little extra time to spend with us in the morning, or if I'm sick and Daddy takes over homeschooling for the day.

Sometimes, it's parenthetical equations. Today, it was decoding. Soon, I've been told it will be some simple graphing and basic calculus.

As far as I'm concerned, the Fisher Preparatory Academy for Excellence in Learning is going to stay focused  on reading, writing and basic arithmetic for now.

Daddy Math is an extracurricular activity. And I'm leaving this one up to Daddy.

Ask the experts

My kids are a little obsessed with paper airplanes. Abby started it, and armed with an instruction book on how to make hundreds of different types of airplanes, she and her brothers could easily spend an hour folding and throwing and tweaking and testing to make the perfect plane.

And when the planes don't turn out just the way they hoped, my kids do what I've taught them, and ask for help.

It just so happens they have two retired fighter pilots named Papa and Granddaddy to turn to for assistance. 

It's good to have friends in high places.

Life imitates art

As it turns out, a smart phone has nothing on a muddy yard, a perfectly shaped stick, and a stuffed Angry Bird ball.

For the record, Caleb says his backyard version of Angry Birds is a lot more fun.

I'd have to say I agree.

The end of the tunnel

It's official.

The playground is way more fun when you can scoot.

(Especially for mom, who no longer has to wear 20 pounds of baby on her back while chasing everyone else around.)

Big sister and the big brothers are pretty pumped about having another playmate at the park.

Who needs play dates when you have all these siblings?

Oh, brother

Jacob will share his toys, he'll share his room, he'll even share his seat at the soccer game.

But he will not share his Thomas the Tank Engine Sunglasses.

Big brothers have to draw the line somewhere.

Breakfast of champions

The biggest problem with fourth babies? They get treated like fourth babies.

In the beginning, I read every book, knew every recommendation, anxiously anticipated and documented every milestone, and even introduced foods at appropriate times.

That was almost six years ago. And if I have time to read a book these days, I promise you it will not be anything about what my baby needs in his first 12 months of life. It feels a little like being a first time mom again, only with some experience. I don't really know what I'm doing, but I know I've done it before, so I'm working on the assumption that my instincts will guide me in the right(ish) direction.

These days, I'm worse than a first time mom. I'm a first time mom who's never read BabyWise or What to Expect The First Year, organizing naps around my schedule and feeding my infant frozen chicken nuggets and graham crackers because that's the best I can do in a pinch.

So nine months may be too early to introduce bacon and cheesy scrambled eggs to Levi's diet. Or maybe not. I'm sure it's in one of those books somewhere.

What I know for certain is that he loved breakfast this morning, and had no problem devouring more than his share of the bacon.

That's my boy. We'll figure this baby stuff out together.

Not sharing

The question was, "Jacob, may I have one of your waffle fries?"

The answer, apparently, was no.

And for the record, he can fit one entire small serving of waffle fries in his mouth at once.

Just in case you were wondering.

Chalk and crayons

For a four-year-old with no formal instruction, I think Caleb's doing pretty well with his letter writing. Why just today, he wrote his name on the driveway all by himself.

Upside down and backwards, I might add, but all by himself, nonetheless.

What he lacks in penmanship, Caleb more than makes up for in heart. The kids wrote thank you notes to the neighbor who shared his crawfish boil with us, and since Caleb couldn't figure out how to draw a crawfish, he decided to draw a picture of the neighbor's dog, Arnold, instead.

This is Arnold, pooping. (I asked, just to be sure, before sharing his artwork.)

It's all right. Pre-K is just around the corner, and we're going to straighten those letters right out. But something tells me that pictures of animals pooping are here to stay.

Jill of all trades

At 11:15 this morning, I was just finishing up giving the baby a bottle and preparing to get started on lunch for the five of us. Not because we like to eat lunch early, but because it takes a minimum of 45 minutes to actually get lunch on the table these days.

The timer was beeping on the oven to alert me that my two loaves of delicious homemade whole wheat bread were ready. (It had been one of those rare productive mornings, and I was feeling pretty good about all the schooling and baking we had accomplished so far.) I slid the loaf of delicious homemade gluten free bread aside and was removing my two newest loaves to the cooling rack when cries of panic alerted me that I was needed upstairs.

I tucked Levi under my arm and dashed up the stairs to Caleb's room, where I found Jacob gleefully tossing the little sponges we use as quiet time blocks high into the air.

"Jacob broke my tower!" Caleb calmly and quietly informed me.

No, actually he screamed it. But I wish he had calmly and quietly informed me, because then his screaming wouldn't have upset the baby, who proceeded to scream along with him.

I took stock of the situation and noticed that not only had Jacob completely demolished whatever Caleb had been working on, he had also torn the corners off of most of the sponges and left them littering the floor like tiny pieces of confetti.

With the baby still under my arm, I headed to get the vacuum cleaner while calmly instructing my children to put the sponges away.

No, actually, I barked orders at them over my shoulder as I ran down the hall. But looking back, I should have calmly instructed them instead. There's always next time.

When I returned, the sponges were miraculously put away, leaving only the confetti for me to vacuum up before I could get back to the lunch-making that had been interrupted.

I made one pass with the vacuum, then listened as it sputtered and died. A faint smell of smoke filled the room.

Turns out not all the sponges had been put away, and one had managed to wedge itself into the belt in my vacuum cleaner.

I know this, because that is where I found it when I disassembled the machine to find an explanation for the smoke and smell of burning rubber.

A moment later, Justin called to see how my day was going. Unable to put it into words at that moment, I took this picture to try to explain.

Eventually the floor was clean, the family was fed, and naptime came, as it always does, to reset my afternoon.

And now I've kept my promise to myself, the one I made to write all this down so that one day I'd look back and remember: it doesn't just feel like I'm taking one step forward and two steps back. Some days, I actually am.

The trouble with bookworms

Oh, Abby. I know you love to read. And I know you love to sneak out of bed and read until the last slivers of daylight have slipped through your blinds.

And honestly, I have trouble reprimanding you for staying up way past your bedtime reading Alice and Wonderland and The Boxcar Children and your newest Encyclopedia of Astronomy. That's why we bought you the book light, Abby.

So that on nights like tonight, when you simply can't go to sleep until you've finished the whole book, you can read in your comfortable bed and nod off on your pillow, not on the floor where you collapsed when your eyes tired of straining to read by the dim light of the moon.

It's 10:30, Abby. Go to bed. Your book will still be there in the morning.

Multitasking

I didn't catch anything.

But I also didn't lose anybody.

You have to admit, this is pretty good parenting.

Life lessons

I learn something new everyday.

Like some days, the guys just need to get to the river and wet a line.

Petting trout is optional, but always preferred.

Desperate measures

How do you get one kid to her kindergarten co-op, another to his pre-k co-op and two kids to childcare so that mommy can go to her sewing class?

In one trip, that's how. Because walking back to the car is for sissies.

I'll admit, I feel a little like a pack mule once we load up two backpacks, two diaper bags, four lunch boxes, one sewing machine, one giant Ikea bag, one purse and one awesome stroller onto four kids and a mom who found parking two minutes from the door.

It's just proof that I'll do anything for a morning off.

Threadbare

Learning to crawl is hard on this baby.

And on his clothes.

Might be time for some new pajamas soon.

On not giving up

I argued. I second-guessed. I patronized. I refused to back down. I refused to give up. Often, I refused to leave a doctor's office until the doctor finally told me he had nothing more to discuss and I could come back in a few months.

I listened to first opinions, to second opinions and to a lot of really good guesses. I retrieved more stool samples from dirty diapers than should be required of any one person.

I subjected my son to blood tests, elimination diets, an exam by speech, language and food pathologists, and one particularly awful barium test to scan his GI tract.

And I got no where. And I got no answers.

I was told to just let it go. I was told (by experts, no less!) that my son's problems were probably nothing. That they bothered me more than they bothered him. That he would probably grow out of it.

But I wasn't buying it.

So in the end, I listened not to the experts, but to the good advice of a good friend, and to my mommy instincts, both of which I've learned to trust very well.

"Don't let it go," my friend insisted. "You are Jacob's best and only patient advocate at those appointments."

She was right. And so I pressed on, through multiple visits to GI doctors, through nine months of severe stomach issues that came at the end of almost two years of various eating and digestive woes. I pushed for answers, and finally met a doctor who was willing to help me help my son.

"What do want the outcome of all this to be?" she asked me during one particularly frustrating visit. "What answer do you want?"

I want it to be nothing, I told her. I want my son to be fine. I'd love it if the GI specialist was right, that this is an issue my son will outgrow. If that's the case, then we'll know soon enough, I told her. But if there is something wrong, and I don't do everything I can to find it, then I've failed him.

She agreed to look over his paperwork one more time. Since his problems began almost at birth, giving his patient records a second glance is no small task.

She pointed out that he had tested negative for Celiac, but that we had never tried a gluten-free diet with him to see if it led to any improvements. She told me it wouldn't be easy, and asked me to prove to her just how badly I wanted an answer.

"Forty days," she instructed me. "For forty days, I want you to eliminate every trace of gluten from his diet. If you see no change, there are two tests we haven't done that we can try. If you see any change at all, I think you might be on your way to an answer."

Within two days, we noticed a marked improvement. We agreed it was too soon to tell, but we were excited nonetheless. The change stuck around, and after a few weeks, the marked improvement had become our new normal.

After forty days, we went back to the doctor.

"Don't tell me anything yet," she said. "I want to weigh him first."

And my son, for whom weight loss and slow or no weight gain has been the norm since birth, had gained two pounds in 40 days. I nearly cried when I saw the scale.

I shared my observations with the doctor, and she agreed with my findings.

"Based on everything we're seeing," she said, making notes on his chart, "I'm going to mark this down as a diagnosed gluten intolerance. You have your answer, mom. You should always trust those mommy instincts."

So we're learning how to eat gluten free around here. It's been an adventure for a family that loves homemade bread and cookies. Justin has perfected his buckwheat pancakes, and I've finally come up with a gluten free bread recipe that actually tastes good. We've learned to live without Starbucks' cake pops, for the most part, and Jacob is learning to ask "Is it gwooten fwee?" when someone offers him a cookie or a cracker.

I wish we had tried this much sooner, but I'm thankful to finally have a remedy for Jacob's stomach woes, and an answer to our prayer for a diagnosis.

And I will always trust my mommy instincts. And I will always be my kids' best patient advocate.

Jesus is God, not a balloon

Caleb has a lot to say throughout the day, but his most profound moments always come at bedtime, after we've said our good nights, and when he has his dad or me all to himself. Tonight was no exception.

"Mommy," he explained, for no apparent reason but to delay my departure, "Jesus is God."

Yep, Jesus and God are one in the same, I told him.

"And Jesus was God, but with skin on."

The Bible says Jesus was "God in the flesh."

"And Jesus was born as a little bitty baby."

And then what happened?

"He grew bigger, and bigger, and bigger."

And then what?

"He grew even bigger."

Then what? 

"He did not pop. Because he's not a balloon."

Right, Jesus did not pop, because he's not a balloon.

"Then he died on the cross to save us from our sins."

To save who from their sins?

"To save me! Then he came back alive and went up to Heaven, and you'll be there one day like you told me, and you'll see me there!"

The Bible says that if you say with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, then you'll be saved. And then you get to go to heaven one day and be part of His forever family.

"Just like that!" 

Yep, just like that. And God will take your sinful heart, your heart of stone, and he'll make it into a heart that can love him, and serve him, and worship him. And he'll send the Holy Spirit into your heart at that very moment to be a helper for you.

"That's all true, Mommy. And God will do great things through me!"

He absolutely will.