St. George or Bust!

I know what you're all thinking, "how can she go on vacation with all those kids?" Well the answer is...you take your mom. Since summer is the time for vacations, I didn't see any reason to be left out. But the traditional vacation would not work for me this year, obviously. Fortunately for me, my parents have a second home in St. George, with a pool and plenty of room for me and my brood. I guess the only real problem we ran into was The One Who Works had to work. So I was on my own, I packed up the clothes, diapers, swimsuits, stroller, playpen, and breast pump and loaded up the car seats with kids and off we went. My mom rode with me and the kids and we had a great drive. Everybody made it to St. George without much trauma. We had a wonderful time, Peanut and Walnut loved swimming in the pool and loved their own "room" at grandma's house, which really consists of a giant loft with beds and toys. Peanut brought glow in the dark stars, so now the loft has the night sky as well. We played and swam all week. It was fun to hang with my little Bros and sis who live down there.

On Friday, The One Who Works flew in after work and spent the rest of the weekend with us. It was a great visit. We even attended a birthday party for my nephew who turned two. Unfortunately, we got a late start back home and so we tried to drive straight through, a hard thing to do with two nursing babies....my solution, pump as you drive and then feed the babies bottles, I brought my big double electric pump and plugged it right into the car, it worked great.
My strategy was to look straight ahead while pumping, if anyone noticed what I was up to, I'll never even know about it!

Kiddie Kandid

There comes a time with every new baby that you finally want to have their pictures taken. With my first child I could not wait to get to the studio and capture my beautiful baby in pictures, I remember it vividly, I had him all clean and had several changes of clothes to get the best shots. The One Who Works and I both took him and fussed and adjusted our little newborn to get him looking as perfect in the pictures as we were sure he was in reality. Needless to say things have changed a bit, I still wanted to get pictures of our latest additions but I was dreading it this time. I'm not sure I even bathed the babies before we went this time. We left the big boys at home, knowing full well their presence would make a difficult situation impossible. First problem, we had to wait nearly an hour and a half before they could even get started...I think this was where the trouble really began. When we finally did get into the studio, Little Red was already screaming. I was hoping for a couple of quick shots and to get out of there by feeding time, I was seriously mistaken. First we tried to get a of picture of the twins together, no luck, Little Red was screaming nonstop, so we got a shot of Princess that was pretty good. Just then the camera breaks, and we loose the one good shot we got of Princess. We probably just should have left at this point and tried some other day, but how often are we going to find ourselves at the mall without the big boys...never, so we stayed. We tried various shots, we tried holding him, rocking him, nothing seemed to work, then after a couple of hours we finally got him to sleep, I think it was more a 30 second break from crying due to pure exhaustion, but whatever the reason we finally got a picture of the babies together sleeping, YEA!

By the time we were finished, the mall was closed, and we were tired! I was wet down the front of me, because Princess peed on me after striping her down for one of her shots, but I was the lucky one, Little Red pooped all over The One Who Works.

Thankfully they were able to retrieve Princess's one good shot they had lost earlier, so we left with our three good pictures it took us only four hours to get!

The Long Sunday

This past Sunday, I decided it was time get back to church. Unfortunately, The One who Works had to work all day, and there was no way I was going to attempt to drag all four kids to church by myself, so I drove down to my mom's ward and went with her. Needless to say despite having two grown adults to juggle all the kids it was still a nightmare. Walnut is finally old enough to go to nursery with his brother, so we dropped both of them off there before heading off to our class. Walnut screamed, but I felt sure he'd settle in after we were out of sight. We survived our first class, but I had to hold Little Red the whole time, he's very temperamental and it was all I could do to keep him from screaming louder than the teacher. Princess was her usual perfectly behaved self and just sat quietly in her bucket...thank goodness!

Anyway off to our second class, one my mom happens to teach. So there she goes up to the podium, leaving me sitting there to fend for myself. I sat next to a nice lady and her husband I know pretty well, I knew she would help me if things got out of hand. Before the prayer had even been said Little Red was up to his usual fussing, so I was bouncing him just as Princess started to cry. I handed her to the nice lady to deal with and kept bouncing Red, just then a frustrated nursery worker slipped into class caring a screaming, blotchy faced, snot running down his face Walnut. I guess he didn't settle into nursery as well as I had hoped. So the nice lady passes Princess down the isle to her husband and I pass Little Red to her and take the slimy Walnut from the very relieved looking nursery worker. As I look down the pew at my screaming/fussing children in their arms, I feel so bad for these nice people who had the misfortune to sit by me. Finally an hour later, we're all back at my parents house feeling exhausted, I can't believe it's only noon. We have dinner and the boys play for a few hours and I pack everybody up to leave and pick up The One who Works from work so we can all get back home at a decent hour. Everybody ready, but where are my keys? At first, I was sure I had just misplaced them, but after looking in all my usual places I was beginning to worry.

At some point we realize Walnut must have taken the keys off the counter and done something with them. My Mom, Dad and myself search the house for the next couple of hours, no luck. It's at this point I realize that we only have one key for the minivan, we had not gotten around to making another yet, what's worse is, the minivan keys are coded and the vehicle must be present at the dealer before they can make another key. We don't have a lot of options, it's late on a Sunday evening and the boys car seats are locked in the van. I finally decide to take my Mom's car home with the twins (I did have their car seat buckets) and pick up The One who Works.

I left the big boys at my parents house. We finally got home around 10pm fed the twins and crashed into bed. Early the next morning we packed everybody up again and drove the hour back down to my parents. We had the van towed to the dealership and $140 later we had a new key! Whew, I've decided not to leave the house again for a while, I don't think I'm up for it, I'm still recovering from last Sunday.

Sunny side up

OK, so after sitting home, hiding in my air conditioned house for weeks we finally decided to take an outing. Peanut was going to ride his bike in the local July 4th parade so we decided to pack everybody up and go cheer him on. We had a great time, and thankfully the parade was early so we beat most of the heat. He rode his little heart out, and was so proud of his decorated bike, he wouldn't let walnut anywhere near it!


After the parade we headed back to the comfort of our beloved air conditioning. It's been hot here, and unlike the babies I don't enjoy the heat. The babies however love to sun themselves outside. Our little guy, we'll call him "Red" (for the hair he was born with) was born with a case of jaundice and so we took him into the sun daily for his 3 minute sun bath. He would just lay there his eyes closed basking in the sunshine, it was a welcome change from the screaming our little Red often does when we set him down....I think he has the temperament to go along with his red hair. Princess seems to enjoy sun bathing as much as her brother, so we've made it a ritual of sorts to sun bathe the babies each evening. I think they look so cute, laying there all snuggled up to one another, like little eggs cooking sunny side up.

Our big boys play in the pool and I hide in the shade eating a Popsicle. So overall things are good here. Our Princess got her oxygen off last Friday, she still has the breathing/HR monitor but it's so nice to see her little face without all those tubes. Hope every one's summer is as nice as mine!