A Diamond for my Anniversary

The pregnancy and birth of #4 caused us to strike out on another year of attempting to sign Eli up for t-ball. 

Jeff took matters into his own mitt and took the boys out for their first baseball lesson.

They all had a ball.

The evening was a home run.

Jeff and I celebrated 9 years of wedded bliss this month.

My sister took (ALL!) the kids while Jeff and I snuck away on a hike + a nice, quiet meal at Texas Roadhouse. 

Eli has been suffering for a whole month from a loose tooth. I say suffering because he's been very embarrassed, nervous, and paranoid about the whole losing-a-tooth process. Jeff was able to help Eli come to terms with the fact that losing teeth is a natural phenomenon by showing Eli videos of other kids yanking their teeth out in creative ways. Eli went from one end of the paranoid spectrum to the other in 10 minutes' time. Before we knew it he was running upstairs to grab a pack of floss and a nurf gun to creatively part ways with his dangling chomper.

Sadly, the tooth remained stubborn and withstood our attempts to shoot it out with a styrofoam bullet. It did manage to finally fall out a couple weeks later, the day just after Eli, in the throes of an hour-long (unrelated to teeth in any way) rage ended it by slamming his bedroom door, then opening the door and shouting, "And I KNOW YOU'RE the TOOTH FAIRY!"

Way to stick it to me, Eli.

This is the first tooth being lost in our house and the magic of the tooth fairy is already under intense scrutiny. I will say when that dollar appeared under his pillow, he did seem to question his tooth fairy related doubts.

We've had such a busy summer. We had activities every week from the second school got out until the beginning of August. Then nothin'. Nothin' but a lot of time to get the boys nice and feisty with each other.

On a particularly feisty day, Carson was in a downward spiral of brotherly destruction that was causing him to spend the majority of the morning up in his room to cool down. Over the summer we started a new rule that if you hit someone you have to do a service for them along with your apology and Carson CANNOT for the freedom of his soul from time-out ever decide what to choose for his service.

His time-out sessions involve a lot of me suggesting service ideas and him telling me they're all dumb and then me telling him he wouldn't have to bother with service if he didn't hit and him rolling his eyes at me while trying to negotiate his way out of the service part. Scream, hit, repeat.

I was diligently trying to follow through on Carson's consequences in a loving, caring, and understanding way which was taking a lot of time. The blessing of my efforts is that poor little fourth child put himself down for his nap right on the kitchen floor.

I get my work done in the afternoon while both Jonah and Lincoln nap, so it makes for a much more efficient day if I can get them both sleeping at the same time. I ran up to put Lincoln to sleep after I found Jonah mid-nap, and then I ran back downstairs and turned off all the lights and brought Jonah's sound machine to try to increase the longevity of his kitchen floor nap. Moments later while I was sneaking a quick lunch, I saw two little eyeballs had excitedly found me and my nap plans for the day had been foiled. We gave it a good try though.

Our afternoon shaped up and the boys finally decided to start getting along.

I sent them out back for a craft while I enjoyed a few moments of silence on the other side of the window.

Every morning Carson's first words are, "Give me breakfast." His life is at a complete standstill until he has his morning metabolic spike. He will not even go to the bathroom in the mornings until he has had a bite of breakfast.

I had to laugh one morning when he demanded his breakfast, took his first bites, and then I looked over at his plate while he ran to the bathroom. He knows where the good stuff's at:

I keep thinking, "Oh it will be so nice when school starts! The kids will have something to do! We will be productive again! We will have a routine, order, happiness, and peace."

And then I remember the source of the majority of my current chaos isn't goin' anywhere. :)

Two babies. TWO BABIES! I am such a baby with two babies. Two in diapers. Two that love to be held. Two that need constant attention. It's hard! It's exhausting! We are kind of in survival mode as is evident by the number of diapers you can find lying around the house at any given time. (Answer: always at least 5.)

We had a couple of rocky weeks but we've been enjoying the last week of summer. These boys are super sweet when they're sweet which is a lot of the time.

Eli can't wait for school to start and I think Carson is understandably a little nervous. We'll see what the school year brings!