5 Months Old!

Paigers, Smiley, Boo Boo, Sweetpea, Kicky McKickerson, Baby Blue, Number Three!

I often wonder why we spend 9 months debating on a name for a child, when 5 months into their lives they end up with 100 different nicknames anyway!

I'm torn between Kicky McKickerson & Boo Boo, both names provided by her oldest sister. Kicky McKickerson is 100% fitting for her, as the kids legs never stop moving. Not quite sure where Boo Boo came from, but Lauren started it and it's kinda stuck!

Call her whatever you want, I simply call her adorable! Following in her sisters footsteps, between months 3 and 5, she has successfully gone from a full head of hair to 100% BALD (aside from a few whispies here and there)! I'm not sure why all my kids come out w/ a full head of hair and proceed to be bald 4 months later!

We had our first big milestone this month. Paige rolled over! She can go from her belly to her back, but not vice versa yet, which kinda makes her mad. Especially at 4 am when she finds herself on her back, unable to reach her binki. (Yes, my kids are belly sleepers....sorry!)

She also started at daycare 2 weeks ago cause I unfortunately had to go back to work. She's doing great and is already the FAVORITE (kidding!).

Happy 5 Month birthday Boo Boo!

Update on the other girls:

Lauren has transitioned to Dyersville amazingly well. She misses our neighbors, but found a couple girls in our neighborhood to play with. She is doing great in school.....now! We got a note home from her teacher on the 9th day of school cause she was talking while the teacher was talking, and that was the best thing that could have happened to her. She is the type of kid that does NOT want to make you mad. Knowing how disappointed we were that she got in trouble at school motivates her to be better. She has yet to get in trouble again and has received the top two behavior marks everyday since this happened.

Reese on the other hand I think has struggled a bit. Now whether that's because of the move or Paige or it's just her personality is hard to say. Actually, I think it's a bit of all three. She's going through this lying phase that has seriously put me over the edge. I've taken things away from her, timeouts, early bedtimes, no snacks. Nothing seems to be working. She's getting good reports at school and daycare but once she gets home she just turns into this monster. I'm hoping this phase passes quickly and once we get into our own house, with our own routines, she will go back to "normal"!

Ok, that's enough for now. I hope to get some more pics take of all three girls soon. I've gotten a little lazy w/ the camera lately.

Back to Reality

Well, after losing the weekly lottery for the last 4 1/2 months, reality hit hard Monday morning at 5:15 am when my alarm went off. That annoying thing hadn't been set to go off since April 22nd. Talk about a depressing moment!

I started back to work Monday, but this time around it's with a 30 minute commute. Surprisingly tho, the drive doesn't bother me. I get to listen to some of MY music, have some ALONE time and I get to RELAX a bit. Notice all the capital words revolve around one thing for once. ME! Instead of listening to some random Disney movie or the girls argue or Sports talk radio, I get to do what I want, in MY car for 30 minutes each morning and each evening! Who would have ever thought 30 minutes of peace and quiet could do so much for your sanity!

Me going back to work leads to a whole new routine for us and the girls in the morning. They now get to ride the bus and boy do they think they are cool! Aside from a few boys making fun of Reese because they said her name was a boys name, it has so far been pretty uneventful. (Don't worry about her tho. Trust me, she can hold her own!)

I feel terrible, but I completely missed their first steps on the bus. The only pics I was able to get was them walking from the bus to school. One rule, they must hold hands. And I was happy to see that they listened. (Well, at least the first day they did!)

Besides starting back to work, we also had a birthday in the house this week. Troy turned 33 years old! Isn't that special?!??! He had a cake made out of love & egg shells waiting for him when he got home. (I'll give you one guess who caused the egg shell incident?)

Random snap shot of Reese & her light skinned, blue eyed sister that looks nothing like any of her siblings!!! HA! (Still not sure where she came from! But she sure is cute!)

Now don't forget, throughout all this we are also building a house! Yes, we love self torture! The house is coming along good. They should finish bricking next Monday and also started drywalling today. I'm praying we are done in about a month!

On a bit of a depressing note, the offer we had on our house in Dubuque fell through today. They have been unable to get their house sold, so decided to just take it off the market. So now we have two houses! Lucky us! If anyone is interested in a house in Dubuque, let me know. I'll cut ya a deal! So say some prayers that something happens w/ the house between now and when we move into our new one. I do not want to be stuck w/ that house through the winter.

Finally, I found this video from about a month ago of Dad and Paige. Priceless:

The Oster-House!

It's not rocket science, there are certain known factors in life that can lead to stress. For example:

• Having a baby can be stressful.
• Moving can be stressful.
• Trying to sell a house can be stressful.
• Starting a new job can be stressful.
• Building a house can be stressful.
• Living w/ your parents can be stressful.

No wonder Troy and I have been a bit grumpy the past couple weeks.....this is our life! We are excited about all of the above bullet points, but if they weren't all right on top of each other, it might allow for a bit of breathing room these days. And to top it all off, I have to go back to work in T minus 9 days! Beyond depressing.....

But, all of our hard work is startign to pay off. The house is coming along great, should be in by mid-October (hopefully).

Two of the youngest contractors in Dubuque County....did I mention they work cheap too!

This is the dining area:

This will eventually be the kitchen area:


This is the girls replacement for Maggie.....Birdie the Frog:


And this is a recent picture of the cutest 4 month old in the Tri-State Area:

1st Day of School

The girls started back to school this past week and I'm not quite sure who was more excited, the girls or me!!! We have had a crazy summer between moving, building and Paige being born. So for me, having them start back to school has brought back a much needed normal routine to my life!

Dropping them off for the first day was very strange for me, as this is where I went to grade school. My parents also moved to Dyersville from Dubuque when I was in Kindergarten, so all of this seems very familiar!

Anyway, Lauren started 1st grade and Reese is in Pre-school. They were both very excited to start school. Lauren's teacher is Mrs. Gleason and Reese's is Mrs. Riniker.

We also had another big milestone this week...Paige turned 4 months old! This was a very bittersweet milestone for me. 4 months ago when she was born, going back to work was an entire summer of fun away. Well, summer is now over, Paige is 4 months old, and I have to go back to work in 2 weeks....sigh! I am so grateful to have had this extra time w/ her and the girls, but it is only going to make leaving her that much harder!

She had her 4 month check up last week and did great! She weighed 13 lbs, 15 oz (70%) and was 25 1/4 inches long (90%), following right along the same path as her big sisters.

She is still an amazing baby, sleeping like a champ. Although last week she came down w/ a nasty head cold. I finally took her in yesterday cause the poor thing just looked terrible. I felt so bad for her. Ends up she has her first ear infection.

She will smile at anyone that makes eye contact w/ her. Even last night sitting at the pharmacy waiting for her medicine, she had 4 sick people smiling from ear to ear! About the only time she screams bloody murder is when she's hungry. And it seems she goes from this smiley, happy baby to Ethiopian starvation in a matter of seconds, it's kinda funny!

She still loves her swing, although her toes are starting to hang off the end a bit. I'm seriously not sure what I'm going to do w/ myself when she outgrows that thing. That is the only place she will lay by herself. She does like her exer-saucer, but only for about 15 minutes at a time. And she HATES laying on the floor. Will scream the second you put her there. (She might be a little spoiled...good luck daycare!)

As you'll see, she's still a happy little baby, full of smiles....breaks my heart to see how fast she's growing!

As a side note, I wanted to document a pic of Lauren at this age. Everyone says they either don't know who Paige looks like, or that she looks like Troy. I have said from day one that she is a spitting image of Lauren w/ blue eyes and white skin. Here is a pic of Lauren at 4 months old. You might not agree, but I think she looks alot like Lo Lo!!

Boo Bats!

We officially started our move to Dyersville Monday. Mom and dad were going to be gone on vacation all week, so we thought it would be alot easier to invade their home w/o them present! After a long day of attempting to organize complete unorganization (if that's a word), with 2 girls a bit confused about life and a baby so off her schedule she didn't know if she was coming or going, this mom was TIRED!

The girls are sleeping upstairs in my brothers old room and Paige is in my old room. With the girls upstairs, I refuse to sleep in the basement bedroom so I'm camping out in my parents bedroom. Kinda weird, but this is life as we know it for the next few months. Troy refuses to sleep in there (can't say I blame him, it is kinda weird), so for the next few months, he'll be camping out in the basement.

So it's our first night in our "new" home and after a long day all I can think about is sleep. I finally get to bed about 11ish and as soon as my head hit the pillow I think I was out. Little did I know that this tired mom was only going to be getting about 3 good hours of sleep that night.

It's 2 am. I'm fast asleep. All of a sudden I hear something hit the window followed by the sound of wind. My initial thought was more storms. So I tried to roll over and fall back asleep.

It took me about 1 minute to realize that the so called "storm" I thought was outside, was actually INSIDE MY BEDROOM!

I had left the hall light on incase the girls needed to go potty, and just enough light was shining into the bedroom that when I opened up my eyes, I shit you not, a BAT flying around in circles directly over my bed!

So there I am, 31 years old, married mother of 3, laying in my parents bed w/ the sheets up over my head like a scared little school girl. I had no idea what to do. I tried to reach for my phone to call Troy in the basement but I couldn't reach it. After about 3 minutes of laying there crapping my pants, I finally decided to make a run for it.

I slithered out of bed to the ground and crawled as fast as this body would go. I slammed the door behind me and ran to the basement to get Troy. I turned on the light and screamed, "OMG there's a bat in the bedroom!" To which his response was, "Jen, there is not a bat in the house. Go....to....bed!" (My hero!)

After assuring him it would be pretty stupid for me to make something like this up at 2 IN THE MORNING, he slowly got up, looked for a pair of shorts, scratched a bit here and there, and went to the bathroom. He took his jolly ole time coming to my rescue, but finally made it upstairs to the bedroom door. He opened it up a bit, turned on the light, looked in and yelled, "Holy shit, there is a bat in there!"

REALLY!

Over the course of the next 10 minutes, looking back on, are pretty hilarious. Troy's strutting around the house, trying to muster up the courage to get his manly self into the room to "deal w/ the situation". He puts on my dads coat, wraps a scarf around his neck, puts another scarf over his head and in he goes w/ tennis racket in hand.

And this is what I hear:

WHIFF ....... "Damn it"
WHIFF again ........ "Damn it"
WHIFF ...........again......... "God Damn it"

Bam Bam Bam.......THUD! THUD! THUD!

Me:
"OMG...Did ya get him? Troy.....TROY? Did ya get him?"

Troy:
"Well, I'm not in here for my health Jen! Yes, I got him!"

I have yet to step foot in my parents bedroom. I have since been sleeping on the couch in the living room! Sigh! What a great way to start our Dyersville adventure!

Take Me Out To The Ballgame!

Let me start by saying this trip to St. Louis was well overdue. We haven't been down to visit Eric and Di since Chloe's baptism (she's 4 now!). But I do know this, judging by the amount of fun had, this will definitely be an annual trip from now on! As much as I enjoy the simplicity of our small town life, there's so much to do w/ the kids in the bigger cities. If my self diagnosed road rage disorder weren't one of the worst cases doctors have seen since the Flintstones, I think I might like that big city stuff!



The girls had a blast and surprisingly did amazing on the 6 hour car ride. I was anticipating 6 of the most painful hours of my life because Reese struggles sometimes on our trips to Dyersville which only takes 25 minutes. Paige yet again proved to be the best baby known to man by sleeping and cooing 5 out of the 6 hours of the trip both ways.



We got in late Friday night and just hung out. Ben, Lauren, Reese and Chloe don't get many chances to play together due to the distance, so we just let them play. On Saturday, we woke up and went to Grants Farm. Eric's house is w/in walking distance.

The girls favorite part of Grants farm was feeding the baby goats. As you approach these cute little creatures, you quickly come to realize these sweet looking babies are more like vulchers, anxiously waiting to attack sweet innocent children at an attempt at 2 ounces of milk! Even the sign before entering the gates state, "Warning: Goats may be aggressive!" Slight understatement!

Here is a pic of the girls before the got up the courage to enter the gates of mass ciaos!

And here are pictures of the kids after they entered the gates....ha! All I heard was Reese laughing hysterically saying, "DAD....HELP!"

Our second adventure for the weekend was the girls first professional baseball game....and they loved it! Since it was their first game, I wanted them to truly experience everything, so I caved and bought them St. Louis Cardinal t-shirts (to which my husband almost divorced me over!) Rest assured, we reminded the girls over and over again, we only where these ugly shirts ONCE a year when we come to visit Uncle Eric in St. Louis! Go Cubbies!!!

I was a little apprehensive taking Paige to the game but she did great. She was asleep when we got there and slept through the 6th inning.

Heck w/ those Budweiser Clydesdales, THIS is the new face of Bud!

This was the last pic of the night. We took this one as we were leaving the stadium. Think the girls had a good time?

Thanks Eric and Di for a great weekend. We can't wait until next year!