Evalynn at Five Months

Here are some things about our Evie at five months: 

1. She is taking 2-3 good naps a day. Is is easy to put to sleep. If you give her a pack and tuck her face into your neck she'll will be out in minutes. She definitely likes her paci when sleeping and to keep her asleep. If she wakes in the middle of a nap, she'll often go back to sleep if you get her the paci fast enough.
2. She likes to suck on her fingers. I've never seen her suck on her thumb. She's not a proficient finger sucker. She often gags herself and doesn't quite have it worked out on how to get her fingers to her mouth on purpose. She will settle for her fingers while sleeping if she doesn't have the paci.
3. She's noticing her hands and can bring them together. 
4. She's started to laugh. Not a lot or for long but you can hope to get a giggle or two out of her.
5. She loves to be talked to. She always has a smile for you if you talk to her. 
6. She is chunky! She's got some rolls.
7. She doesn't like the wind or sun.
8. She tolerates her car seat a little more this month. 
9. She sleeps at night really well. She does have some not only great nights but even those she does better than most babies her age, I'm sure. 
10. She is often awoken from sleep to take kids to school and she tolerates it wonderfully. Often after a 45 minute car ride round trip, she'll come home, eat and take an awesome nap.

January Post

There is a part of me that just dies whenever I think about the state of our very neglected blog. Most of the reason is I just don't have much time. Between five kids, my craft business, Curt's night school, my calling, keeping house and doing a scrapbook page a week to stay a "Babe" (creative team member) for my favorite scrapbooking site, I am busy! Plus I stopped paying to be able to upload pictures to blogger quite some time ago, so that discourages me quite a bit too. Oh and I can't be on the computer when Ruger's awake because he insists on "helping" me if I'm sitting at the computer. But I hate hate hate that I don't record Ruger and Evalynn as well as I did the older three girls when they were their age. And I hate that I don't record the older three girls as I once did. So, I'm going to attempt to do monthly posts now.

January was mostly spent being sick. Evalynn caught RSV early in the month and a day later Ruger also had symptoms. It definitely struck Evalynn down much harder than it did Ruger. He took naps and hated that his nose and eyes were runny, but he didn't let it slow him down much. He still played a lot and got into everything and tried to destroy as much as he could. He did however want more mom cuddle time and struggled that I was taking care of Evalynn so much. Having both of them sick at the same time was really rough. Ruger also struggled to sleep much at all during the night because of his cough and stuffy nose. Evalynn was barely out of my arms from day 3-10. She slept a ton but struggled to breathe and would have 10-20 second long coughing fits where she wouldn't be able to breathe at all. She would start to writhe around from lack of oxygen and start to faintly turn blue. It was so so so heart breaking and bad. So very bad. I'm so glad we are over that. It took a solid three weeks though. We went so stir crazy! Also during this time I continued to heal from my mid-December umbilical hernia surgery. It took way way longer to recover from that surgery that I predicted. I still had my belly band that I wore after the c-section and I could not go without wearing it for almost any time at all. It wasn't until the five week mark that I could finally take it off and not be in a lot of pain.

Other than that, our January consisted of few other things. Curt started his last semester of school. He's been waiting on the stars to align class-wise since we moved back to Fort Worth. He has four classes to take but we couldn't afford to take them one at a time and he has to either take them online or at night. One of the four is a major related class and has to be taken on campus, but it hasn't been offered at night since we moved back. It finally happened, so to school he goes. All of his non commute/work time is spent doing homework or working with wood for our business.

We spent a large amount of time designing and painting and staging new non-holiday products for our Etsy business. We applied to a really big craft fair and got in. To get in though we had to spend a lot of time coming up with non-holiday products and getting them photographed so we had examples of what we were planning on selling at the show. It's a juried event, meaning a lot more people apply than there is room for, so you have to be selected based on the quality of your stuff to get in and a group of people vote you in. We are thrilled to be accepted, but the stress with only having four and a half more weeks left to turn a huge investment into product to sell is really starting to make me have panic attacks. I love doing it and I work best under deadlines but I'm starting to panic with all I have to do and how little time I have to do it.

After almost a year and a half of having paint chips on my front door, I finally got my door painted. I wanted a blue door for a long time and I have quite the love for shutters and window flower boxes too. Curt's brother gave us a load of left over fence wood, so we jumped at the chance to get some free projects done. They were started right after Christmas, but since they didn't get done till January, I think they fit in our January post. The projects got done the day before Evalynn got sick, and I'm so glad as they make me happy each and every time I drive up to my house. We also pulled out the random two bushes that didn't match and weren't placed well and replaced them with five bushes symmetrically placed. Our HOA requires four-five bushes. We plan on keeping them short and letting our flowers in our window box be the prominent feature. We still have a lot of work we want to do to our front yard but time is severely lacking and the weather isn't the best either. We still have some of the free wood left and have plans for it and can't wait to see it all come together. I'm sure since the week after our craft fair is Spring Break, we'll probably get some of that done.

Isabelle received a Top Hawk award at the end of the third six-weeks in mid-January. She didn't know she was getting it and she was so surprised to see me at her Hawk Huddle. We are so proud of her and that she is such a good student, a great example to her classmates and a friend to everyone.

Each of the girls got to go with Grandma (Whitworth) at some point to the Stock Show. They look forward to going all year long and hate that every time isn't their turn. They don't seem to love it all that much when they are there, but they love that they get to go on a date with Grandma, eat lunch out, get to buy a souvenir and go back to Grandma's house to get in the hot tub and then play. They're spoiled. :)

We have been struggling quite a bit as parents with Isabelle. She seems to be entering a new phase in childhood where she is consumed with what people say and think of her. Choosing her clothes is completely dependent on what the other kids at school will think or have said about them. I get the feeling it is mostly boys or even older kids comments that have made her this way. We have about an hour long fight several nights about picking out her clothes for the next school day. Let's just say her clothes are not up to par and she only has a few things she will wear still. I'm struggling in my relationship with her because of this and a handful of other things such as her attitude, how everything she sees as wrong or hard with her life is my fault, her mean-ness and physically hurting her siblings and the way she talks to everyone. We are really trying to adjust our own attitudes, ways we handle her and striving to encourage the spirit to be in our home more. It isn't going all that well, but we are trying. We have a couple ideas that we are trying to incorporate. I've spent a lot more time than normal in prayer and looking for inspiration on how to handle and change some of the bad habits that have formed in our family and have contributed, I'm sure.

Our hard 2015 has spilled into January and I was really hoping our luck would change. Our February has already brought on even more hardships...but I'll write about that next month.

Evalynn at Four Months

Evalynn has been four months for a few weeks now. She is really starting to make her presence known among her siblings as she is awake more now and interacting with us some. Here are some things about her at FOUR (sniff sniff) months:

1. She is transitioning from sleeping all the time to three to four distinct naps. She sleeps in till anywhere between ten and noon and then is awake for about two hours and then has a nap. The later she sleeps in the shorter her naps are during the day. She is usually down for the night at about eight.
2. She is sleeping a solid 8 to 10 hours straight at night.
3. She likes the paci to fall asleep with and for the first ten or so minutes into her sleep to keep her asleep. She cannot keep it in her mouth on her own for even half a minute. Ten seconds would actually probably be a stretch. 
4. She loves when you get close to her face and talk to her. She always has smiles for you when you do this.
5. She is so close to laughing...I can tell it's just around the corner. 
6. She's started "talking" some. Her coos are pretty short lived and she's only done it a handful of times, but she's starting to use her vocal cords.
7. She had her four month well child visit and she is most definitely behind developmentally thus far. I'm not worried and since she relaxes her hands, smiles at you and has good coloring, the doctor isn't worried either. I just blame it on her rough two week start in the NICU and laying in a box during that time. I have to admit I'm enjoying that she's hung on to the newborn phase so long. 
8. She doesn't like Ruger...even when he's not being mean she doesn't seem to like him much. Honestly though, I don't blame her. She's taken quite a lot of slaps, having his teeth pressed into her head, screaming in her face and feet to the head. Every once in a while she will smile at him when he's talking to her or let him hug her. It's getting rarer and rarer though.
9. When she wakes up in the morning she has about a 30 minutes to an hour time period where she's happy to lay on my bed and look around. This is pretty much the only time of the day where she's okay being awake and not held.
10. We just tried out the Bumbo for the first time and she didn't love it but she tolerated it for about ten minutes. She still doesn't have a super strong neck but she is getting better and I'm desperate for her to start being okay out of my arms when she's awake.
11. She had RSV for three weeks this past month. It was horrible. She would cough so hard that she would stop breathing and she'd writhe around because she wasn't breathing. It was soo so hard to watch. I barely slept. It was happening so much that I didn't trust not having her in my arms or right beside me. She slept on my chest when I did sleep and I would stay up with her half the night with her on my shoulder while I designed signs or organized the computer hard drive. She is doesn't much better now. The cough is gone and her nose is mostly cleared up.
12. She still has one goopy clogged tear duct eye. The left eye is never not yellow and oozing. She's old enough that she's caught on to how much I wipe it and has decided she hates it. I really hope it will clear up soon!
13. She will only sleep on her stomach or in our arms. She won't sleep on her back. Even in the car seat, if the car stops, she wakes up. It doesn't take long at all. Just being at a stop light will cause her to wake up and start crying. 
14. She doesn't have much tolerance for the car seat. She doesn't always cry, but I'd say it's about 50 50 chance she is.
15. She will not bare any weight at all with her legs. At all. No exceptions. I don't think she's done it a single time.
16. She's starting to try and suck on her fist. This causes her to drool even more than normal.