Our Little John Deere Bison Elf

Our nephew/cousin Matthias got to visit last week. There will be a copious amount of pictures including him in the next couple of days, but since Mighty Mouse has decided to make up for his comfortable tummy last Thurs-Sun by having an upset one for the past two days, I'm not sure when I'll get around to another post. I wanted to get these up for my sister without too much procrastination, though!

 

I'm getting rid of as many hats as possible. If you want one, let me know, and I'll let you know what colors/sizes/styles I have! As you can see, Matthias is modeling a Christmas elf-style hat. He was pretty okay with it!

 

In the above picture, he is doing what my sister calls "looking down his nose at you". It's really very funny.

 



I see my Grandpa Don and my Great Auntie Elsie in him in these two pictures. Otherwise I always and only see my brother-in-law! Well, I do think Matthias has my sister's pretty mouth, but I told him (Matthias) that I won't keep telling him, "You have such a pretty mouth!" for too much longer!

 



 

More elf hat. I think he's getting a little tired of it in the picture below....

 



Since he was tired of the elf hat, I grabbed the Bison hat. My Mom pointed out that it is also a John Deere hat, making it more acceptable and appropo for a child of my sister. Ahem. Cough. Cough.

 



It would be more fun to see my nephew in a Bison hat if my sister had actually enjoyed her time at the other school. Still. I'll do what I can to create another future Bison.

 



Grandpa Bob got this smile, I believe.

 



Pretty sure that I earned this stare. He was done and tired, but he's such a sweetie! He and Mighty Mouse are going to be such good friends! And the girls just absolutely love on both of them like crazy. Both girl Mice listed Matthias as one of the best parts of their weekend, which was really fun. He has taken a lot of "their" time with Auntie Laura away from them, but what he's given them is going to be beyond measure. It's so fun that they already can sense that.

 

Speaking of the weekend, we had a marvelous one in which we welcomed little Mighty Mouse into the family of God and celebrated with both of our families. Because I got just a little stretched thin on Sunday, none of the baptism pictures are on my camera, except some nice ones of the amazing (A.M.A.Z.I.N.G!) cake that my sister-in-law created (she didn't "bake" this thing - she CREATED it!). We were so thankful for great travelling weather so that all of Mighty Mouse's awesome and faithful sponsors (his Auntie Stephi, Auntie Laura, and Uncle Jon) could make it as well as all of his grandparents! The girls and I even got to swim with both aunties and one grandma (Mighty Mouse's only water usage was his baptism).

Bond

Bond. James. Bond.

 

I'm told this is how most little boys feel about wearing suits.  In my defense, I did leave the adorable (and comfy-looking!) little coat off. This time.....

 

 

 

 

 

 

After asking him repeatedly, "who's my little munchkin-bunny?" I got this hint of a smile. He is such a tolerant and easy-going little guy, but he does not care to smile at me with a camera in front of my face.

Smiles for which I am thankful

Happy Halloween!

Punctuation and Astronauts

 

There's an awful lot of "big girl" going on in our house these days.

 

Can you see the camo-boots in this picture? Yep, a trendy headband (thank you, Auntie Stephi!), a skirt, a sparkly shirt, a pink kickball....and camo boots. That's our Miss Mouse, and we love it!

 



 

We had one great kickball game going that afternoon. Mighty Mouse napped for hours in his crib, so the girls and I hung out in the front yard, enjoying what might have been one of the last sunny, fall days.

We've been a little preoccupied this year with a certain smallest Mouse to get our leaves raked. The elder Mice haven't minded a bit!

 



I love these pictures because I think Miss Mouse looks like such a nerd in them!!! Hopefully anyone reading this knows me well enough to know that's a compliment! The little girl descends from two of the biggest nerds she'll ever know, so she's fitting in just fine with her sparkles and camo. If she wasn't so incredibly sensitive, I think we could already have a Star Wars geek on our hands. As it is, I think we'll wait on that awhile....VeggieTales still isn't setting very well with her.

 



Notice the boots? Notice the squint of pure autumn joy on her face? I love it!

 



 

I'm not sure there are words for these!

 

 

She raked up her own pile since her parents weren't going to be doing it.

 

 

It's been so fun having a kindergartener around! We had a great summer. It wasn't one without challenges and bumps, but we figured a lot of things out and were clicking along pretty smoothly by the mid-summer point.  It was good to get a break (a "break"!) when Mighty Mouse arrived; I think we were all ready for some time off, even though we don't spend an entire 6-7 hour period sitting at the table everyday or anything.  Three weeks, though, was enough, and we were back at it. It was as good to get back into kindergarten again as it was to take a break. It's trickier, for sure, with a newborn around, so we're dealing with other bumps and challenges. We'll get through them, though, too; I keep telling myself there will be a time again when we wake up one day and realize we're "clicking along" again instead of chugging and huffing and puffing along! It's been especially fun getting to go on two field trips lately through the local homeschool group that we [finally] joined. The first was to a nature center about an hour away and took my mom's assistance while she was here for me to get a kindergartener, a preschooler, and a two-week old out there. We were "only" fifteen minutes late! Miss Mouse didn't miss much, and she was so, SO proud! The next field trip was last week, and I did it on my own with all three. We visited a fire station. It definitely freaked Sunny out leading to some wild behavior later (Miss Mouse would have thrown an inexplicable 45-minute fit; Sunny gets wild), but it was totally worth it. The girls have been really excited about fire fighters and fire stations ever since. It was great for them to get to see a fireman in his full gear, and it was ridiculously fun for ALL of us to see them slide down the fire pole! The only thing that could have been better would have been to get to try to slide myself.....but, of course, that's not allowed.

 

One fun thing this fall has been seeing how Miss Mouse is stretching her vocabulary. It's always been decent, but she's getting so much more "adult". My Mom took her to pick up Applebee's carside-to-go one night, and they drove by a chiropractor's office where Mike and I have both gone from time to time. Miss Mouse pointed it out to my mom and said, "That's where Mommy went to get punctuation!"  My Mom is so good with things like this! She covered her mouth until she could stop laughing and then gently said to Miss Mouse, "Oh! I think my chiropractor calls it accupuncture; do you think that's the same thing your mom had?" Of course, Miss Mouse said, "Yes! THAT'S what it was called!".

 

The day we were playing kickball outside, Sunny decided to start stealing the kickball and running under our neighbors' bush with it. The girls were having quite a high time being silly. Suddenly, Miss Mouse says to her sister, "You are like an astronaut!" I started laughing (because I'm not quite as quick as my mom!) and asked her what she meant. She said it again. So I asked if she knew what an astronaut was. She said, "Well, like someone at a football game who gets the crowd excited!". I told her an astronaut is someone who goes to outer space like Neil Armstrong - she knows him from our preschool unit on him. She looked confused, but after some thought she said, "Oh, I think I meant 'mascot'".  Have I mentioned I love this???!!

Smile!!

A contemplative Mighty Mouse

 



 

A smirking Mighty Mouse - he started last Wednesday

 

 

I'd count this as a definite smile....

 

 

 

Here, though, is the all-out grin! He looks so much like his sister Sunny and his Great Grandpa Don and Great Auntie Linda who both had/have wide, infectious smiles.

 

*Even in these not-technically-spectacular photos you can see how broken out the little guy's face is. I actually took him in for a doctor's appointment today to find out what was going on with his face since he was red and sore looking from ear to ear, behind the ears, and from forehead to chin. It turns out that on his cheeks he has "infant acne" which was a relief since it will just clear up on its own, but on his forehead, eyebrows, nose, ears, and behind the ears, he has cradle cap. I was so bummed! Miss Mouse had it really badly in her hair, and she lost a lot of hair when I combed the scales out. I'm not sure if it is recommended to do that anymore, but hopefully we can get control of it now when it is "just" on his face and not yet in his hair so badly. His doctor recommended a healing ointment that is supposed to show lots of progress in three to five days. Otherwise he might have to go to a medication to clear it up, but hopefully that won't be needed. On the one hand, I'm really glad it is not attributable to anything I'm eating or doing to him (food, laundry soap, etc.); on the other hand, I'm really hoping that this cream works quickly because he just looks so sore and raw. My usual mommy-guilt was pretty much alleviated when I asked the doctor if I had contributed to the cradle cap; she said that it is more common and often worse in breastfed babies because of their moms' hormonal fluctuations. Even I am not going to feel guilty about hormone fluctuations! It's not like I can do much about them! So hopefully we'll have lots more smiling pictures in the near future without sore-looking cradle cap present!

[Finally] Introducing Mighty Mouse!

 

Though in these pictures I took on September 18th before we left the hospital, he may look like Mighty Sleepy Mouse, he really is "Mighty Mouse".

 

 

Mighty Mouse was all of ten minutes old, and he grabbed onto his Daddy's hand and held on! Tightly! It was both amazing and incredibly precious.

 

At the hospital, he was too long for the blankets, causing terrible difficulty in keeping him swaddled 'properly'.  He was born at 21.5 inches and 9 pounds, 2 ounces. For a baby, there is a lot of him to love! I've explained to the girls that in a room of ten babies, he'd be taller and heavier than nine of them. It was rather fun telling our friends and family his weight and height. After three babies all around the upper-six-poundish mark, no one really expected Mighty Mouse to be a whole lot bigger than eight-or-so pounds. No one, that is, except his Mommy and Daddy! His three pound head start on his sisters explains so many things about our experience with this pregnancy that it really was more affirming than shocking to hear his official stats.  With all the excitement about his size, I should add that we are completely and totally in love with him - every last ounce and inch - and think he is just perfect!

 

So many blog posts have rattled around in my head these past few weeks. I have one on why I am so very thrilled (and terrified) to have a little boy to raise; I have one on our adjusting to this family expansion; I have one on the way Miss Mouse confuses a few words here and there lately as she is expanding her vocabulary into larger and larger words.

 

I hope I remember some of those posts when I have a bit more time to type. I really do. For now, it's taking every ounce of my energy and time to keep our house running now that Mike is back at work and my Mom is gone. Mike got two lovely, amazing, incredible weeks off this time. It was unbelievably great to be together as a family of five for this adjustment. The day he went back to work, my Mom came for a week. Between the two of them, they got me through most of the evenings where I would cry for literally no reason at 9 p.m. My sister did the same thing in June after the birth of her first baby, so I think I'll blame it on hormones or heredity! Whatever the reason, it was a good stage to get through with support around! This past week, on Monday, we started back up with kindergarten, albeit a scaled-back version for now. We're hitting the basics - math and phonics along with some sciency (is that a word?)/social study type fun. We're trying to do lots of projects, too....definitely my way of handling the guilt I feel for all the time that is necessarily devoted to the newest member of the household and, thereby, taken from the older members (mainly of the three- and five-year old variety). I think it's probably best to handle my guilt by project-overload rather than by going out with a credit card to buy them their little heart's desires, but I suppose time will only tell!  So far the guilt is pretty much completely unfounded since Miss Mouse and Sunny adore their little brother and would stand on their heads (have attempted this, I should add!) to help him.

 

Welcome to our family, Mighty Mouse!