[makingmyhomeinyourheart]

May 29, 2020

Bubba peed in the toilet for the first time.

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It’s been about a week since we stopped nursing. He was only nursing to sleep at night, but I already miss it. 14 1/2 months. Just wish all these baby things didn’t have to end all at the same time.

Last night we watched him stack traffic cones on top of each other over and over for 20 minutes straight! I love watching those gears turn in his head, but it’s also a reminder of how big he has become.

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Bubba took 16 steps today. Went from 1 to 16 and will likely continue to speed crawl like he prefers.

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Naptime: a break from potty training 🙌🏻

Adaline is killing it. Day 2 and she’s pooping and peeing in the potty without problem. The last 3 times she has taken herself without help. I’m glad I waited to train her. It has been exponentially easier than having to stop progress while we drive hours to and from appointments and school.

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Audra’s burning question today at naptime:

Is Santa gonna hug me back if I hug him?

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We are approaching one year of struggling with Audra and her encopresis. May 2018 it started. This has changed our lives so much.

We started closing off doors and hiding and avoiding to protect her. We have shut doors on friendships because they were either terrible to us or we just sadly couldn’t keep up with her issues and anything else.

Our marriage suffered greatly. We are still working on building it up, but it has turned into survival mode each day and we haven’t been feeling ourselves. We are exhausted after caring for the other 3 and trying to balance their needs with the extra load that Audra brings to the table now. There is no us as a couple. We are a team, but not a couple. It’s the most painful honestly.

Our personal selves have suffered. I am not who I used to be. I don’t like being social, I often take time off of social media to decompress (which isn’t unhealthy, but when lots of my friends are kept in touch because of my phone, we’ve fallen away from each other). I am anxious at all times. Did she pee? Did she poop? Am I going to have to wash her clothes tonight? How many pairs of clothes should I send to school? Will those girls continue bullying her at recess? Does she like her new environment? How will kindergarten react? I go to several appointments a week/month to keep things running. IT’S EXHAUSTING. Stephen is also struggling. He is depressed. He has no motivation to start or finish projects of his. He has lost all patience. He has stopped communicating. We both are just not who we used to be.

The GI specialist told us yesterday that it’s basically a dead end. He has no idea why this is happening. Her therapist was a good thing, but also dead end. She says she doesn’t think there is anything happening anymore and we don’t have to continue unless we want to. The chiropractor has done wonders, so we see them twice a month now.

All of this for one kid. And we still worry and go through things for the other 3. And we also have so much drama with our families. My sister is one thing. My brother is dying. His sister is in the middle of a messy divorce.

I’m thankful for the friends who have kept up with this. Who haven’t allowed me to fall by the wayside when I can barely keep up with things. This year has been hellish. Sometimes I didn’t think we’d survive. But we are still here.

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Next bathroom, here we go! Found termite damage and lots of things that shouldn’t have been done the way they were, but that’s what happens when the previous homeowner was a cheap dude who didn’t really know how to do things himself. 🤷🏻‍♀️

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I do not enjoy living on concrete. I do not enjoy living in a house caked with dust. I do, however, enjoy the money we are saving doing it ourselves. Our neighbor brought over an electric chisel and I chiseled the CRAP out of our house. 💪🏻 Stephen would come home and be shocked at how much I got done. Today we decided to move our island (we moved it to get the tile underneath) to a different spot in our kitchen, so we had to cut concrete to run the electricity conduit. Mama needs electricity in that island. I love to bake and my stand mixer can’t sit under our low cabinets. Stephen will be laying flooring down in the hallway tomorrow while I take all 4 kids to Disneyland alone.

Pray for me.

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First picture was my contribution to the kitchen demo. He knocked the kitchen out in a few hours and I helped shovel it up and vacuum the insane amount of dust. We. Are. Sore.

I spent 3 hours cleaning afterwards. I don’t know why. As we move to each room it’s only going to remain dusty, but something about the mess drives me insane.

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Here we go! My hardworking hubby worked all morning and most of the afternoon, came home and finished roofing his shed he built outside, helped load up our last chicken coop for a friend, and then started ripping up our tile. Gonna be living on concrete for the next couple of weeks. Should be fun 🙄 It’s going to be a lot of moving furniture around and around and around. But really, we are incredibly excited to start this project. It felt really good to grab that chisel and beat the heck out of it with a hammer. The novelty will soon wear off I’m sure. Almost our entire house is this tile. 😩 But all the money we are saving doing the demolition work ourself...so worth it.

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November 5 & 6, 2018

Baby Stephen learned how to roll from back to belly at 3 months and 1 week old.

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10/27/18

Baby Stephen laughed for the first time at 2 days shy of 3 months old. His dad had him going for a little bit. Ugh. My heart. So cute.

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Little man went to his first wedding at 2 months old. He was a cute little date, but the poor kid couldn’t nap at all with all the commotion.

The time has truly flown by. He is sleeping 6-8 hours straight at night and I’m so thankful. But here I am at 1 am pumping because I don’t want to lose my supply (and about a million other reasons like laundry and cleaning house).

Here is a sneak peek into our family Halloween costume. Stephen is going as Captain Hook, me as Mr. Smee, Audra as Peter Pan, Abigail as Wendy, Adaline as Tinkerbell, and baby Stephen as the crocodile that ate Hook’s hand. I just started on Audra’s.

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Baby Stephen has the cutest little dimple. He is super flexible and is really getting into a groove. We have been blessed with a baby that seems to enjoy his sleep and is sleeping in his crib already. I know that’s all going to change haha (this ain’t my first rodeo), but I’m enjoying it while we have it. There’s something about the last baby to really put things into check. I’m not as frustrated with the night wakeups and moments of only wanting me. These days will soon be over and I will long for them back. He is almost 8 weeks old. The time just flew. It always does.

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Baby brother came 2 days before my due date!! He has been a dream of a baby. A perfect completion to our family. Labor was intense and a bit traumatic for me honestly. It really sealed the deal for him being our last. He has more than made up for the trouble he caused me. ;)

Water broke at 9:30 pm. I got to the hospital at 10:30 pm (I was home alone, remember?) There was no question of it being my water by the time we got there. I soaked my shorts in the car. Contractions weren’t crazy, but they were there. She checked me and I was at 4 cm dilated, but they kept me because of my water breaking. My nurse was incredibly sweet and respected my wishes of no pain meds. But shortly after arrival I was crying out for the epidural because my contractions were coming every minute. I requested to move around during labor and in order to do that she told me I needed wireless monitoring. The kicker was I had to lay still for 15 minutes to have it calibrate to my body. That’s what did me in. 15 minutes of having to lay still and in that time I went from 4 cm to 8 cm and I was screaming that I had to push. She was concerned to check me so often, but I knew my body best. She started to get concerned because my body started bearing down at 8 cm because of the immense pain and no relief between contractions. She told me I was going to destroy my cervix and Stephen tried his hardest to slow me down. But minutes later with all the screaming I was complete and pushing him out on my own. This is where it got too intense. Stephen said I started losing consciousness and my eyes rolled into the back of my head. The doctor was a prick and did not guide me at all because I was “a pro” at all this. But I was freaking out and couldn’t focus. Stephen had to snap me back to reality several times and get me to focus on my breathing. He said he was terrified I was going to die because I kept losing consciousness and there were times I just went completely silent and started staring off into space. Needless to say, I’m done birthing babies.

He was born 1 1/2 hours after I arrived to the hospital. He had trouble clearing the gunk out of his throat and they took him away from me to suction it out. He was by far my biggest baby. He weighed a whole lb more than Abigail. But he has been so sweet and such a love bug. The girls are obsessed with him. He is never left alone. Poor thing can barely sleep in peace. He was severely lip and tongue tied. Had two tongue ties actually! So nursing was a pain, but now it’s going seamlessly. I wake him every 2-3 hours at night (when I can) to maintain supply, but he gets a good 5-6 hour stretch at night naturally. I have no clue what he weighs, but he skipped newborn diapers and he wears 0-3 month clothing and it’s a bit tight sometimes. We are all so in love.

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Adaline is also growing so quickly. She’s talking more and more. Although she’s quiet, she picks up on everything going on and she is LOUD when she wants to be. She’s almost 2 1/2 now and is benefiting so much from being alone with mama a lot now. She is incredibly sweet and loves her new sibling. We have been fortunate to have transitioned well with her. No jealousy that I can detect.

She recently moved out of her crib into a big girl bed with Abigail. They share the bottom bunk of the girls’ bunk beds (queen size mattress on the bottom). That transition went well, but she’s less of a great sleeper now that she has freedom, so that’s a bummer. But on days that the two older at school, we can usually get away with sleeping in. I’m sad because we have transitioned out of regular naps. It’s during preschool pickup and she hasn’t adjusted to an earlier one. So now she’s a little cranky, but it helps her go straight to bed at bedtime. We moved that up by an hour to help the girls adjust. It has been glorious for my mental health.

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For our wedding anniversary, Stephen gifted me with some girl time with our firstborn. It was Audra’s first (professional) mani pedi. She was so excited. Of course MooMoo was there with us. 😉 Can’t believe we have been married for 6 years already! His sister watched the girls and we went to dinner!