Saying hi

Life is go, go, go these days... not really in a "we're overly-scheduled" way, but three little ones is just busy. If Jackson is awake, I'm occupied by nursing and holding him. If he's asleep, I'm usually preparing food or cleaning up food, sweeping for the umpteenth time, cleaning up the house, doing apps for Michigan, laundry, exercising, or playing with Parker and Austin. Then Jackson wakes up and we do it all over again. Not to mention if we go anywhere, it takes forever to pack up all our stuff, put on everyone's shoes and socks (socks are the bane of my existence), get all the kids in the car and buckled (I can't wait til Austin can buckle himself), and then I'm exhausted. 

But life is good. The only extracurriculars we have are church, soccer (which is now over), and elective playdates. It's a good life and I'm thankful that I've seen the value in creating margin in our lives. While the days are chock full of activity during the day, my calendar remains mostly open, which is great for this phase in our life. Daylight savings has made it so the boys are still waking up about 5:30am, but then they go to bed about 7pm. And in the mornings, Parker does an excellent job taking care of Austin. I heard one morning as they were emerging from their room and Austin started yelling for me, Parker said, "Don't worry Austin. I'll get the cereal for you. Let's let mom rest." No joke. I have it pretty good. Jackson is still getting up 2-3 times a night, so 5:30am is not my ideal wakeup time. 

Another funny thing... Parker is a smart boy. We've always believed him to be intelligent as he figured things out easily and had an extensive vocabulary. He asks a lot of questions and retains the information he learn. It's super cool. We were saying the other day, "Parker, you're so smart." He responded, "Is Austin smart like me?" Pete responded, "Well, we don't know yet." Matter of fact. I was like, "What the heck? How could you say that about your child?" Pete just said, "He's young and we don't have enough evidence yet to determine how smart he is." haha. But of course no matter what, we hope all our kids are hard workers, regardless of how smart they are:) 

That's our boy!

Now for some pics

 From Halloween night. It was a miracle that we found a bat hoodie/jacket the night before Halloween for Austin, fulfilling his dream of being a bat for Halloween.

 Aunt Abbey sent us the Magic Sleep suit which was a miracle for getting her sweet Madison to sleep. While he looks awesome in it, it didn't have quite the same magical properties with our little one. haha. Still, he does a pretty good job sleeping and we're to the point I can lay him down awake and he'll mostly put himself to sleep. I love it once we've arrived at that point.

 Another one from Grammy and Papa's visit.

 After my little hospital stay, Jackson was pretty traumatized from being abandoned by me. He was not himself for about two weeks. I think he was afraid of being left and being forced to take a bottle. This was a common sight at our house for a while there.

 But thankfully, now we are back in business. He is such a delight. 4 months on the 13th!