Oh, how He loves us.

Wednesday: Jack starts throwing up, throws up all night while I sleep on floor beside him.

Friday: I start throwing up, and continue to throw up all night.

Saturday: Evie throws up a couple of times, I still feel sick all day.

Sunday: Good day, everyone feels good, I get to play volleyball with Andrea. While I'm gone, Charlie starts running fever. Charlie runs fever all night, waking a couple of times.

Monday: I'm in an exceptionally bad mood all day for whatever reason (lack of sleep? Or maybe because of my entry-way and my daughter getting mucked up with toddler poo while I'm trying to get my kids out the door.) Charlie runs fever all day, and all night. High of 104.2 degrees. Doesn't sleep most of the night. Neither do I.

Tuesday: I take Charlie to the doctor-- has an ear infection, but Jack and Evie's ear infections from a week or so are healed. Jeremy comes home throwing up and continues to throw up...

So here I am. And that was my week, which, when combined with not getting to spend time with Jeremy and the stress of handling three children, it feels like a lot. And all I can think all week is "I have nothing to complain about." I want to complain (boy, do I want to complain.) And frankly, I'm a little annoyed that I don't feel I have the right to complain. But really, my life is easier than a lot of peoples' lives. I'm richly blessed with healthy happy children and a healthy happy husband, and a healthy happy self. Some days seem almost too much to handle, but that's because I don't know what that phrase really means. I know that this is what God is mostly teaching me in this season in my life. To be thankful. I thanked him when I was cleaning up Jack's vomit: "Thank you that he is a healthy child and that this is a rare occasion." When I'd throw up, when Evie or Charlie would wake me through the night, when Jeremy would be late at work, when I felt overwhelmed by my kids or my house. God kept showing me the blessings that are continually surrounding me and that I overlook. And really what it boils down to is this: no matter what is going on in my life, there will always been some blessing I'm not noticing or some good I take for granted, because God takes care of me.

Anyhow, that's just something I've had on my mind a lot all week. It's nothing clever or funny or stupid. It's not even well thought out. And that's why I like my blog. It can be whatever I want it to be.

Professor Quigley showed me how.

When Jeremy's mom and dad came to see us a couple of weeks ago, Tammy asked what toys she could get for the kids. I told her that Jack has REALLY been into the alphabet and remembering how to spell words, so any toy that involved spelling words would be great. She found the perfect things: this and this. She got one of those for Evie, but I can't remember which, and neither can Jack. Nowadays my house is covered with these letters ALL day long. I clean them up a few times a day, and then wonder why I did that. Today, after weeks of this craziness, I finally just put all the letters up on the mantle and told Jack he could play with them tomorrow. He went into the kitchen and started playing with the letters on the fridge. I tell you, he is obsessed. This morning, I was on the couch feeding Charlie. Jack wakes up and walks into the living room and I'm thinking "I know just what he's about to do." He says "Good morning, Mommy", sits in front of the couch, opens the drawer of the ottoman, opens the drawer where all of his letters are and says "I'm going to spell a word."

In the past, I have been completely amazed by Jack's insane memory and his attention to detail even at an early age. In fact, I'm a little ashamed because his memory is so much better than mine. When he was a little over three he had been asking me to "draw" a bunch of words and he would just watch me form the letters. He started writing the letter "H" and "A" on his own, but that's all I knew he knew how to do-- until one day, he was sitting in his room coloring. He came to me and said "Mommy, I drew Halliburton." I went in his room really not knowing what to expect. When I saw what he "drew", I was dumbfounded. He had written the letters H-A-L-L-I. I had never even told him how to spell the word Halliburton, he only knew that much from having seen it on Jeremy's work truck and his coveralls.

Basically Jack learned how to write all of his letters (upper case and lower case) on his own, from just having seen us write. Recently I realized that he can spell about 30-35 words from memory and even more recently I realized that he knows how to read basic three letter words, and he's not even four yet. He blows my mind, and that's the point of this blog. I didn't write it to brag on my son, although I am, of course, very proud of him. I wrote this because he's crazy smart and it baffles me and I thought it might baffle you too. That's all.

Sleepy-head, spaghetti-face.

(And speaking of sleepy bears...)

A little bit of sweetness

I have been wanting to post, and I don't have time, so I'm using this as an excuse to post. This is one of my favorite pictures of all time, and I only just realized that it is isn't on my flickr account, so I'm posting it here. SO THERE!

Thank God for Charlie

We recently had to put Evie in a toddler bed because she discovered how to climb out of her crib. I was pretty glad too, because I really wanted Charlie in the crib instead of the pack n’ play. A few days before her 2nd birthday, she made the transition. We weren’t really sure how this would go because Evie has always been an amazing sleeper. She rarely cried when she woke up or went to sleep. She usually seemed grateful to be laid down for a nap. But that first night of sleeping in her toddler bed, she woke up around 1:45 and would NOT go back to sleep. No crying, she just wouldn’t stay in her room. I was up with her until 5:15. Then she woke up crying at 6:30, (because for some reason, Jack and Evie always wake up around 6 or 6:30 no matter what time that go to bed the night before.) That was the worst of the nights, but I really haven’t been getting much sleep since then. Well last week I felt like I was at my wit’s end. I was tired and my patience with Jack and Evie was worn thin. And I realized that no matter how difficult life was at that point, the happiest I was during the days (when Jeremy wasn’t here) was when I was looking at Charlie. I felt a renewal when he smiled at me. That little face and those little coos really helped me get through and I thanked God so much for such a little treasure of a baby—and he really is. He doesn’t fuss unless there’s something to fuss about and I find that I almost never get irritated with him. I think it is wrong to have favorites when you have children, but surely there isn’t anything wrong with having day-to-day favorites? In fact, I think it’s impossible. I always love my kids equally, but I definitely favor specific ones on specific days. At night I used to always say “thank God for Evie” because she was the only one not waking me up at night. Then during the day I would say “thank God for Jack” because he would be so sweet and Evie would be—well, not so much. And really, in the end, it doesn’t matter because they all go through stages. Of course I’m going to prefer some stages over others, and no matter what Evie is putting me through right now with her terrible twos and her difficult sleep transition, she’s always going to be my sweet little Evie-Bear, and the sweetness of her hugs and her precious little voice is enough for me to forgive her of all of her transgressions. And really, that’s the only reason I have three children. God knew he had to make them cute and sweet or no one would want to populate the earth.

Note: while writing this, I have been trying to get Evie to take a nap. I’ve been trying to get her to go to sleep for two hours. I’ve been in her room countless times, and one of those times was spent cleaning up a mess she made of trying to change her own dirty diaper. I think it’s time to go look at a sleeping Charlie. Sometimes having a third child can actually make life easier.

Accept this video and pictures.

I really don't even have time to post this, but I thought I would go ahead and do it since it's been so long. My regular camera is broken, so I apologize for all of my camera phone pictures. Maybe I'll get a camera for my birthday? Pretty nice timing for my camera to die, I'd say.


Anybody that sees regular pictures of my kids may notice that Jack is almost always just wearing his underwear and no pants. That is because he still frequently gets his pants wet when he needs to go to the bathroom. If anyone has a suggestion on how to help him with this problem, don't be shy. I'm all ears.



Camera phone or not, this is one of my favorite pictures of all time. The way the sky is reflecting in her all ready blue eyes. The way she is sweetly holding her apple. The way her shirt is so accurate.



Jack loves Looney Tunes now. This was taken a week or so ago. He has now gotten better at placing his letters in the right spot. He does that-- just practices and practices doing things until he gets it right.



I walked in to see Evie placing diapers on top of Charlie. One by one... "here ya go, Charlie. Here ya go, Charlie. Here ya go, Charlie..." Yesterday she killed my head when she comforted a crying Charlie "don't cry, Charlie. What's wrong, Charlie? Don't cry, Charlie."



And there's Charlie, being too sweet, as always.

I like my life.

Evie saw Jack playing with his drawing board. "I heppoo, Jack."(I'll help you, Jack). He tugged it away and said "no, Evie. This is for grown-ups."

All this has happened before...

Quick, Jeremy... the camera!!



One thing you may notice in this video is Evie dropping her food on the floor. She is such a stinker. She gets in trouble when she does this, but she TOTALLY took advantage of us focusing on Charlie to drop the remains of her food on the ground. Even though Jeremy is filming, he didn't realize what she was doing until we watched the video together. We looked at each other and exclaimed "that little stinker!" (This behavior is not unlike her OLDER brother- who did something similarly scampy when we filmed Evie's first laughing video.) Man, I always underestimate the sneakiness of children.

(I may as well post a link to Jack's first laughing video.)

"They look the same."

You may have heard us talk about how much Charlie looks like Jack when he was a baby, but I thought you might like to see some photographic evidence.

Jack


Charlie


Jack


Charlie

Inside guitars and under houses

It's so hard to imagine how three-year-olds see the world. What's even stranger is to imagine what they think of dreams and how they relate to that world. To my knowledge Jack had never told me about anything from his dreams, so I had never thought to explain to him what dreams are.

A few nights ago, Jack woke up in the middle of the night, crying. I went into his room to see what was the matter. He was crying and yelling something about "pop monsters". I thought that maybe he had a bad dream about monsters (which I thought strange since the only monsters he knows about are nice monsters-- Grover, Cookie Monster, etc.) Then Jack started yelling "I want my pop monsters!!" I said "OK, Jack. Where are your pop monsters?" He said "in my toy box!!!" I turned on his light, walked over to closet, opened the toy box and said "there aren't any monsters in here, Jack. Just Cookie Monster and he's a nice monster." This only added to the fury of his crying. "I WANT MY POP MONSTERS!!!!" I said "Sweetheart, I don't know what you're talking about. Where are the pop monsters?" He said "in my guitar". Well, I wasn't going to get his guitar for him because I didn't think it would help anything and also it's kind of loud. I just wanted him to go back to sleep. Jeremy came in the room and told me that Charlie was crying, so I went to tend to him. Jeremy held Jack and calmed him by saying that he could play with the "pop monsters" in the morning.

Well, 6:30 rolls around and Jack strolls into my room. "I found my guitar, Mommy." I yawned and said "oh, good, Jack." He walked over to my side of the bed and said "can you open it and get the pop monsters out?"

"Um... Sweetie, I can't open it. See? It doesn't open."

[Starts screaming and crying] I WANT MY POP MONSTERS, MOMMY!!!! GET MY POP MONSTERS OUT!!!" (By the way, Jack isn't prone to crying and screaming when he doesn't get his way) It was very alarming and I wondered if he ever went to sleep or if he just sat in his bed waiting for the first sign of light to get his pop monsters out of the guitar.

I started trying to calm him down.

"OK, Jack, well tell me what the pop monsters look like."

He calmed down and said "red, green, blue and yellow."

"Are they small?"

"No, they're big."

"Do they have eyes?"

"No, they have music notes."


???

(Later when I looked at his guitar he showed me the buttons on it. They were different colors and had music notes on them.)

He was still upset so I tried to explain to him what a dream is, and I found it a very difficult thing to explain. He seemed to accept it, but for the rest of the day, continued to tell everyone about the pop monsters.

Moving on from one crazy child to another...

Later on, we went over to a lady's house so our kids could have a "playdate." [Shudder.] (Can I just say how much I hate the word "playdate." I HATE IT. This lady, -we'll call her "Mrs.M"- asked us over for a "playdate." If you use that word, that's quite all right. I don't think there is anything wrong with you. Just try not to use that word around me. Or do.) Back to my story.

When we first got there I was talking to Mrs.M, asking her if there was anything my kids could get into, explaining to her that if there was, then my kids would get into it. I said "they're kind of wild." She said "oh my kids are very wild." (Maybe she meant to say "mild", because I never saw evidence of any wildness in them.) Later the kids all started playing outside. I saw Evie spot the three outdoor cats Mrs.M owned and she got so excited. It was her first time to see a cat in.... person? (Oh, okay. Definition: in one's bodily presence.) So her first time to see a cat in person. She ran over to the side of the house. I'm so used to my kids getting into all kinds of mischief that I have to think about the worst things that could happen. I thought about their house and how it was situated and I thought it seemed likely that the cats were running over to the side of the house to climb under the house. I immediately asked "is it possible for Evie to climb under your house?" She said "yeah, but I doubt she would." Her saying those words only confirmed it in my mind. Evie was under the house. I ran over there and sure enough, she was crawling in this extremely dark damp muddy place under the house. She was just crawling around with the cats. It would have been extremely amusing if it hadn't been so so very terrifying. I tried to sound calm and not think about the possibility of broken bottles and snakes that could be under that house. "Evie, sweetheart. Why don't you come over here to mommy? Maybe we can get some juice in your cup! Mmmm. OK? But you have to come over here to mommy."

..... Nothing.

Fortunately, she followed the cats to another opening at the back of the house and even though the open space was small, I was able to grab her and pull her out. Man, just typing that out and remembering how scary it was really stressed me out.

Maybe Mrs.M now knows just how literal I was being when I used the word "wild" to describe my children.

Au contraire, 'Etagere.

Thanks to my mother-in-law for educating my mind this past weekend. I had never heard the word "'Etagere" before, but apparently it is another word for bookshelf. And so I post it here for all of you readers, to add another word to your vocabulary, if it wasn't there already.

We had a great time (as always) with Jeremy's family. Jeremy had training in Spring on Tuesday, so we used it as an excuse for a long weekend... a really long weekend because we added two days to Jeremy's days off. We were able to spend five days in Texas! Very nice. And since I am a complete doofus, I forgot to take pictures while we were there. Maybe I have some on my camera or my phone. I'll have to check on that. Anyhow, it was very delightul (it is extremely difficult typing the letter F on this laptop, so forgive me for any F related typos.) As I was saying it was very delightul, except or the last day. Little Evie got pretty sick (high fever, vomiting, some sort o mini-seizure...) No bueno. So we drove back home and she has been eeling much better. Now we are all ive o us dealing with colds.

On the way back from Kingwood, Jeremy got to experience an embarrassing parenting moment. We stopped at a gas station to use the restroom and Jeremy took Jack to the men's room. While Jack was using the restroom, a man came in and occupied the stall next to them. When he sat down, Jack, upon seeing the man's shoes said "who's that, Daddy?" (Mind you, Jack only recently became a potty-trained citizen so using a public restroom is a bit foreign to him.) Jeremy said "That's a guy." Jack said "Is he using the bathroom?" Jeremy tried not to laugh and said "yes." Soon after that, I guess the man started really taking care of some "business." Jack said "Is he tooting?" And before Jeremy could say anything Jack said "he's tooting really loud!"

Sorry, I don't mean to turn my blog into one of those humor sections from Reader's Digest. I just find some of these situations too amusing not to share.

In addition

Yesterday, as I was giving Charlie a bath, Jack was climbing around on the bathtub. Jack started touching my back with his pointer finger, and each time he did, he would count "1,2,3,4,5..." I didn't think much of it because he always does random stuff like that. Then he did it again and said "I can count on you, Mommy." An amusing interpretation of the phrase, which he undoubtedly learned from Handy Manny.

No, YOU spell it!

Jack has been very interested in spelling lately. Or rather, Jack has lately been very interested in spelling. He actually knows how to spell halliburton because he frequently sees it on Jeremy's truck and coveralls.

Sweet enough, I'd say.

Me: (after saying something regarding Jeremy) You know, Jack, Daddy is my best friend.
Jack: Evie's my best friend. (Looks at Evie) You're the best, Evie.

I want my baby back, baby back, baby back...

My mom kept Evie for a couple of days this past week. I was having a hard time letting my mom keep her for very long because I knew I would miss her, but I never really thought of how much Jack would miss her. I am very grateful to my mom for keeping Evie, but Jack is almost more difficult to keep when Evie is gone. It's like he didn't know what to do with himself. His room never got messy because he didn't want to play in his room, or Evie's for that matter. Finally, yesterday morning he said "I miss Evie. We need to get her." Fortunately I had already made plans with my mom to pick her up then, so I said "OK." We met Mom and Sonny in Longview. When Jack and Evie saw each other there was much joy and kissing and hugging. I had the kids all out of their car seats while I did some rearranging. I put Jack in his car seat first and as I went to retrieve Evie from Sonny, I heard Jack from the back of the van in a desperate crying voice "we need to get Evie! we need to get Evie!" I looked at him and said "of course, sweetheart, we're taking Evie home with us." After I had Evie fastened in, I went to get Charlie from my mom, and Jack started crying again "We need to get Charlie!!" It was really very touching how he was so anxious about our family being separated again.

Jeremy has been working on a weird job the past few days, so the past couple of nights have been hard with just me and the kids. It was a bit of a shocking thrust into this new type of motherhood-- seeing as yesterday was my first day alone with all three kids. Tonight was better and I really enjoyed watching Jack and Evie chase each other around, laughing, and then watching them both so excitedly run over to Charlie and kiss him every once in a while. You know, there's not much that is easy about having three children this close together, but, my gosh, it's worth it.

And then along came Charlie...

Charlie Emerson Butler
Born January 18th 1:48 pm

Saturday night I started having contractions. We went to the hospital at 8:30...they admitted me and in about five hours, Charlie was born! He weighed 9 lbs 3 oz and was 21 3/4 inches long. It was all way too easy. After it was over, I felt a bit guilty when people said "good job, Amy!" I really didn't do much. I got an epidural when I was at 6 cm and the pain wasn't even that bad. Then before I knew it, they said it was time to push. He came out and I wasn't tired or in pain. I just kept commenting on how it shouldn't be that easy. I'll take credit for enduring the discomfort of pregnancy and the pain of post-labor recovery (ouch), but the labor and delivery itself was a complete cake-walk.

Charlie is such a handsome little guy. Now that he is a couple of days old, he's really starting to look a lot like Jack when he was a newborn. Jack and Evie are very excited about him. Jack particularly. He kisses him all the time and is constantly saying "I love Charlie." Whenever he sees me walk into the room, it seems new to him that I am no longer pregnant. "There's not a baby in mommy's tummy anymore!"

Here is a video and some pictures. We didn't take many at the hospital with my camera. Hopefully I'll be posting some from Tammy's camera soon. But for now, I'm gonna go take a nap.


(Particularly great is the 3:54 mark)

More like a "don't" date...

Today marks the eighth day past the baby's due date. It's so annoying because really, the "due date" is a midpoint of a four week period that you are most likely to have your baby. No matter how many times I tell myself this, I still think of myself as being "late" when I go past my due date.

Earlier this week I called to ask my OB's nurses about some back pain I was experiencing. I was basically wanting them to tell me whether or not I might be in labor. Instead they wanted me to come in so my doctor could check me and make sure everything was OK. He said that the baby was fine and that I hadn't progressed any. (I have been dilated to a 1 1/2 for three weeks.) I told him to go ahead and schedule me to be induced on the 19th (Martin Luther King Jr. day!) I'm not sure why I did this. I guess because the baby is going to be big, and I felt like 10 days was a good amount of time to wait after the due date. I know that a lot of doctors don't want you to go much longer than two weeks past. I also felt that if I scheduled the induction that I would be more likely to go in labor. That's silly, I know, but Andrea and I both went into labor two days prior to being induced. I was only six days past my due date with Evie so I've been surprised by this baby being even later. Everyone says that the more babies you have the faster they come and the shorter the labor. Well, I think it is a good idea to never listen to anyone, no matter how tempting it is. I'm such an optimist that I just hear all the good things people say about third babies and assume that will be the same for me and my third child.

So, here we are. Two days until the baby's very possible due date. Whatever the case, I'm glad that I'll be seeing his face soon. I can't really wrap my mind around it, but I am excited all the same.

Please pray for me if you think of it. I would be very happy to go into labor on my own before Monday. Pitocin is some seriously vile stuff and I want nothing to do with it.

A Quest for Charlie

One thing that is good about the baby taking his sweet time, is that we had more time to procure a vehicle that he too could fit in. We had been sporting these wheels but now we are sporting these.
The first thing you may have noticed is that they are the same color. Jeremy and I are very much boring black/gray color type people. Both times it just seemed that the red vehicles were the best deals.

A lot of people seem to have this odd association with mini-vans. Like owning a mini-van means you are old, or lame, or old and lame. But to me it just means that our family finally got big enough so that a mini-van was actually a necessity. I like the way it looks, and I like the way it drives. It seems so much lower to the ground than the Jeep that it really feels more like driving a car. Jeremy just bought this yesterday, and I am really happy with it. So, I may look like a soccer mom (or a mom with a soccer ball under her shirt,) but I don't feel like one, and that is really what is important... I guess.

Well, I guess that's all. Obviously no baby yet. Now that I'm past the due date, I feel rather like a ticking time bomb.

Birth-day guesses that are still in it for the big prize:

Andrew- January 13th
Anna- January 14th
Andrea- January 15th
Hannah- January 16th

I'm still taking guesses... so don't be shy. You could be the winner of a grand prize... or something really stupid. Curiosity should be enough to entice you.

Breakfast conversation

After a lot of noise-making and laughing

Jack: Evie, what does a cow say?
Evie: Moo!
Jack: Yeah!! Hey, Evie, what does a horse say?
Evie: Moo!
Jack: No! That's a cow, not a horse!

Birth-day predictions, anyone?

Go ahead: leave your prediction in the comment section. If you win, I'll give you a prize. I don't know what, but you can bet it will be pretty lame.

The year of Charlie

I figured a follow-up blog might be nice for some of you who were probably sitting there in suspense. "Did she have the baby? Didn't she have the baby?!"

No baby yet. Last pregnancy I was SO ready for Evie to come out at this point. But now I feel somewhat comfortable and energetic, so I say "take your time, little guy." However, I do feel very excited to meet him. I'm usually too busy to think on it, but when I do, I shake my head in disbelief. Then I stop thinking about it because it seems too crazy that we could have another child in just a matter of days. Another child! Saying that doesn't begin to relate the feelings associated with it. When I think "we're having another child" I think "there is going to be another person in this world with his own personality and his own face-- a whole new person that Jeremy and I will love as much as we love Jack and Evie." It really just makes my head hurt thinking about it.

Whoa, Charlie is salsa dancing in my womb! I just looked down to see my stomach jolting around quite violently.

Okay, then. I'm off to bed.

To bed, I said.