The summer has flown by as usual. It has been an extremely hot summer and we’ve had some considerable thunder and lightning storms with which to teach our children to endure without unnecessary fear. One day early in the summer, Kelby & Bryler both freaked out when thunder began to rumble in the distance while they were playing outside. I made them go back outside to clean up their toys, but it was not a pretty sight with all their crying and distress despite my attempts to assure them that I wouldn’t send them out if it wasn’t safe. We had some really brilliant lightning storms, which are super cool to watch but very hard to sleep through. Bryler is doing much better now with his fear of storms and was able to sleep through the last big one without even using his ear protection headphones. Ender was fearful after the first loud thunderstorm, but after he saw us calmly going about our business during the next one, he visibly relaxed and took it in stride. He also slept through the night storms, which surprised me. Kelby, who isn’t such a heavy sleeper, did well once she had her headphones on. She is probably still the one most fearful of storms. (She is also afraid of loud toilets. She is 6 and still plugs her ears and runs out of the stalls of public bathrooms to avoid whatever pain the toilet might inflict upon her.)
We have also had a continuing problem with fear of bees. You may recall that Bryler got stung several times by a yellow jacket on his ear last year when he unknowingly disrupted a nest and was fearful of anything that flew for a while. With our encouragement that “bees” will leave him alone if he leaves them alone and Husband’s insistence that he face his fears – meaning he had to be around them whether he liked it or not – he was pretty much cured of the phobia within a month or so. (I was not sure Bryler was ready to face his fear of bees straight on like that but I have to credit Husband with doing it calmly and standing by with him and showing him that there was no danger. ) Not long after this “training”, he and Kelby were out using badminton rackets to whack and kill carpenter bees, which they have been taught to visually identify as being the bees that won’t sting them (to ensure that they not try to whack the stinging bees). Unfortunately, Bryler got stung again mid-summer this year, and we are not sure of what type of insect it was or what really happened. I was mowing the lawn and Bryan was trimming. Bryler and Kelby were playing outside. Bryler went in the garage to get something and came out with great distress with a welt on his neck, clearly from a sting. He didn’t see what stung him, he just heard the buzzing and felt the sting. We found a wasp nest and suspect he got too close for their comfort, so that’s what we told Bryler must have happened (to confirm our story that bees don’t sting unless you mess with them). But it traumatized him yet again and made him fearful of any flying or buzzing thing including such flies and gnats. We set up a large wading pool for Kelby and Bryler this year, and they were keen on playing in it until this episode and then they were afraid because there were always buzzing things around. Kelby wasn’t any help. She was affected by Bryler’s sting as if it had happened to her, which I understand. She’s old enough to know that if it happened to him, it could happen to her. The bee training has been expanded: Things that sting tend to leave you alone when you leave them alone, but things that don’t sting will bother you but they’re just annoying and shouldn’t be feared. And of course, that means teaching them how to identify the various types of bugs. Fun, fun…
Speaking of the wading pool, we set it up under our RV carport so that the kids would be shaded and because there was no grass to be killed there. Bryler was especially enthusiastic about the pool for the first few days. In response to, “Are you having fun in the pool?” he would exclaim, “I LOVE it!” After 2 weeks, the pool got a bad case of algae and we drained it and set it out to dry. There is one more week before Kelby’s school starts and there’s a good chance that we’ll fill it up one more time and hope the buzzing things don’t deter them from having some final summer fun.
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Stats:
Kelby on 1/28/11 (6th birthday)
- 43 1/2″ tall (45%)
- 42 1/2 lbs (60%)
Bryler on 1/28/11 (4th birthday)
- 40 1/2″ tall (55%)
- 36 lbs (50%)
Ender on 9/10/10 (4 months)
- 25″ tall (50%)
- 13.4 lbs (20%)
- 40 1/2 cm head diameter (10%)
Ender on 11/10/10 (6 months)
- 26 1/2″ tall (50%)
- 14.8 lbs (9%)
- 42 cm head diameter (10%)
Ender on 2/11/11 (9 months)
- 28″ tall (45%)
- 17.8 lbs (10%)
- 44 cm head diameter (15%)
Ender on 8/12/11 (15 months)
- 31 1/2″ tall (60%)
- 23 lbs (25%)
- 46 cm head diameter (20%)
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Ender is becoming a person with a personality as toddlers normally do around this age. He is definitely our least verbal child, but our best signer. The doctor says that kids who sign are learning two languages at once so we can expect it to take a little bit longer than kids who are just learning one language, and it’s nothing to be concerned about. He communicates very well with his limited vocabulary of signs: More (used for anything he wants), down (which he also uses for up and out), eat, milk (to mean whatever is in his sippy cup), that (pointing to whatever), please, and Daddy. We are working on the sign for thank you. He has done it a few times. I am amused by his down sign because he says “Guh, guh” with it. The Daddy sign is patting Husband on the chest because when we were trying to teach Ender the word Daddy we always patted him on the chest. Now whenever we say, “Where’s Daddy”, he reaches over and pats his Daddy on the chest. Really cute.
Although he isn’t very verbal yet, he seems to understand a whole lot, especially commands. I “count” him now. He obeys sometimes after 1 and almost always after 2. Problem is that he keeps trying whatever it is he shouldn’t be doing. Like standing up on the couch. We’ll say “sit down”. He’ll obey. A few minutes later, he’s standing up on the couch again… and again… and again. At this point, he gets a spanking because we know he’s testing our limits and counting doesn’t define the limits. Counting just means, I’m serious and I’m giving you 2 chances to do the right thing. Spanking means, if you do this it will cause you pain. Much more effective. So far, he’s very sensitive to spanking which means we don’t have to spank hard. A light slap on the bottom or leg and he’s offended and crying.
When I say he’s testing the limits, I mean that he is pretty intentional about it. Example: when I empty the dishwasher, Ender is drawn to the dishwasher’s silverware compartment like a magnet. It is right at his hand level and he is oh-so curious. But there are often knives in the silverware compartments, so I cannot let him touch. I tell him no when he reaches for them. He puts his hand down. He reaches again, I smack his hand “No”. He cries but stands his ground. He stops crying and looks at me and looks at the silverware. He reaches with one finger slowly…. smack! Crying…. looking…. he touches with a finger and puts it down quickly to see if I noticed. Smack! It may go on for a few minutes. Finally, he knows he cannot win and either runs away crying or grabs onto my legs crying. He has other testing areas right now: Daddy’s laptop, the nightlight in his room, the power button on the washing machine, the hand-activated automatic trash can. Today I was amused to see him run by the nightlight and barely touch it as he passed, a smooth move if I ever saw one, and then glance my way to see if I had noticed.
Ender takes a LOT of energy to watch. Just ask Husband, who has spent many more days at home with him than I have. Ender is active, constantly moving here and there and everywhere, and loves to climb and to get as high up as he can, just like a cat. We had to get a child-proof door handle for the stairs because as soon as he could reach the handle, he could and would open it. He loves to throw things: balls, toy cars, blocks… We used to keep a container of blocks in the living room but Husband moved them to higher ground because they were being used to see how far they could be thrown instead of building towers.
Ender just recently started throwing fits. He has actually laid down on the floor kicking and crying a few times. Usually, it is when he is terribly tired and frustrated about something. So far, we have ignored the fits completely (except to comment to each other “look, he’s throwing a fit”) and he’s given it up after just a few minutes.
But he is remarkably pleasant during the meals, which I credit to the sign language. Instead of grunting and fussing or whining for whatever he wants, he claps his hands together (“more”) and points (“that”) and he is happy to sign “Please” whenever prompted.
So far, he has been less clingy than the other two, for which I am grateful. I remember Kelby and Bryler clinging to my legs constantly while I was in the kitchen, but Ender is more happy running from room to room carrying long objects. Yes, this is another interesting facet of Ender’s personality. He likes to carry long things that are almost as tall as he is. It is no wonder that we rarely take him outside to play. He’s either putting rocks in his mouth, running as fast as he can with long sticks, or climbing up or down whatever steps he can find. Fortunately, he has finally learned that stepping directly down the steps is not a good idea. He still scares me every time, but he gets down on his hands and knees and crawls down the steps backward. Here’s another interesting thing about Ender: he is not a hand-holder. I remember when Kelby and Bryler started walking, we would walk with them holding their hand, which was always very sweet. Not Ender. He doesn’t want his hand held. It is too restricting, I guess. He wants to be able to go in any direction he feels like going.
When Kelby was a baby, we spent our best quality time with her when we changed her diaper. That’s when we talked to her and taught her sounds and words and made faces at each other and bonded. I realized just a few days ago how different Ender is. Diaper changing time with him is a constant struggle to keep him from wriggling away, poo-poo and all. He is finally getting better about staying still long enough for us to change him, but it’s still not the best time for bonding.
Ender hasn’t formed any attachments to stuffed animals like Kelby and Bryler did, but he loves soft blankets and Nuk sippy cups. I let him have water in his sippy cup at night. He is cuddly when he first wakes up, grabbing his blanket and sippy cup before reaching for me and then snuggling against me with his face against the blanket and drinking from the sippy cup. He also gives hugs if you ask for one. He’ll put his head on your shoulder and say “Mmmmmm”.
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So now that we’ve had three kids for over a year now, you might wonder how it’s been. If I am to be honest, it’s been hard. Ender really is a great kid: good natured, happy as long as he’s not bored, friendly, curious, eager, obedient, healthy, adorable. We love him dearly. But it’s been hard. When we went from one to two kids, that was a huge change and we decided that two was enough. In time, I felt that we were not done, so we took a leap of faith and had Ender. Some people say that it’s not a big deal to add more kids after you’ve got two. That has not been our experience. I’m not saying for one minute that we regret having three kids. I’m just saying that the logistics of three is much more difficult.
Like going to the grocery store as a family, as we like to do on Saturday mornings. Now we use two shopping carts and split up so we can divide and conquer our list more quickly, and the kids still end up driving us crazy before the job is done. Husband usually takes the kids back to the car while I go through the checkout line. I prefer standing in line to waiting in the hot car with the kids.
And when you have two kids, you can occasionally ask a family member to watch them for a little while. But it feels much different to say “can you watch all three of my kids?” for a few hours, especially when one of them is Ender’s age and a handful. And if you split them up (one here, one there…), you start running out of family to ask. This summer was especially hard because we had several events with the youth group that we couldn’t take the kids to. Our family has been very kind to help out and we are so thankful to have family nearby, but it is still stressful working out the logistics. You never know if they really enjoy doing it or if they are helping because they are too nice to say no, so we always hate to ask. We got a babysitter for the first time one Friday evening when we had no other options. The time flew by and it cost us $45 but it was nice not having to trouble our family and felt that the babysitter was happy to do it. The babysitter was Megan, a girl from the youth group who just graduated from high school, has babysitting experience, and knows our kids pretty well, so we felt comfortable that she could handle it especially since they would be in bed about half of the time. Turns out they spent most of the time watching Nickelodeon on TV.
We tried to go on a family vacation on May 27 when we went to Wilderness at the Smokies, an indoor water park in Pigeon Forge. We cleared our schedule for two nights but only made a reservation for one night since we weren’t sure how nice it would be. The place was actually very nice and Kelby and Bryler loved the water park, but it was just too difficult and stressful and we ended up returning home at lunchtime the following day. Ender was the trump card. He is just not at a good age for travel. All five of us sharing a hotel room was terrible. Kelby and Bryler ended up getting spankings because they wouldn’t quit touching each other. Ender took forever to fall asleep and only after we turned out all the lights and TV at 9 PM. He clearly did not like the playpen he was sleeping in. He woke up crying twice during the night and woke us all up at the crack of dawn. At the water park, Kelby was the only one old enough to go down the slides but one of us had to go with her, obviously. So we took turns riding the slides with her (which really was fun) and watching the boys (which really wasn’t much fun). By lunchtime, Ender finally started falling asleep but that was not all that helpful because then we were tired and hungry and had to take turns holding him while the other took a child to change clothes, trying not to wake him as we passed him back and forth so he could get a little nap. We went to Rafferty’s for lunch and I had to take Bryler out to spank him for throwing a fit because Kelby got chocolate milk and he got water (they take turns getting the chocolate milk at restaurants and it wasn’t his turn). We stopped by Menchies on the way home as our last attempt to make it a special day, and that turned out alright, but we were much relieved to get home and put them all in their own beds for a nap that afternoon. I believe Husband and I took a nap, too. After that, we decided not to go to the beach this Fall as we were hoping to do. Maybe next year.
It is more difficult to enjoy the special little moments when I am so worn out from being Mommy. I try to, but the time I spend with Ender is so much different than the time I spent with Kelby when she was our only child, and the realization makes me sad. It takes that much more effort to spend 5 minutes playing with just him or to take a few minutes to snuggle instead of preparing that extra lunchbox in the morning (yes, I now have 3 lunchboxes to prepare) or to smile at him in the morning at 5:30 AM when he decides it’s time to get up. I think/hope the logistics will get easier as the kids get older. In the meantime, I’m afraid I will forget to enjoy them now.
I don’t want to end this on a sad note, because we really are so blessed to have such wonderful kids, so here are some pictures of our grand adventures over the summer!

5/19/11 End of School Bash
5/30/11 Ender Taking a Dip

6/3/11 Kelby Jumps off Diving Board

6/4/11 Taking a Walk Around the Block

6/13/11 1st Day of Soccer Camp with Layla

7/5/11 Visiting the Bookstore

7/5/11 Ender Enjoying a Balloon at Cousin Jack's Birthday Party

7/15/11 Kelby Graduating from Karate Camp

7/21/11 Taking a Walk with Pa

7/21/11 Pa's Mower

7/21/11 Roasting Marshmallows for S'mores!

7/21 Picking Squash & Tomatoes Pa's Garden

7/22/11 Visiting the Lake

7/25/11 Dressed up for VBS

8/7/11 Our First Wading Pool

8/19/11 Bryler under a Bridge

8/20/11 Water Balloon Fight with Cousins Jack & Daniel