Zoo day

Might have been a little too much as I'm paying for it now with aches and pains but I braved the zoo today with all 6 kiddos for the 1st time. (Candace and her boys were there to help me keep track!) Had a good time but should have grabbed the sunscreen. Can you tell?!?! (Bad Mommy!) The gorillas were probably the highlight of the day but I also got a good picture of this bobcat (or cat-something). And, as always, I love to take pictures of the fish. This one is my favorite of the day.

Not much to say

Now that Lydia's here, seems like I don't have much to say....I survived my first 3 days with all 6 kiddos without any help. The only real big adjustment (other than dealing with lack of sleep) was what to do when both Timothy and Lydia were crying or Timothy was crying and I was tending to Lydia and couldn't get to him. Nathan continues to be a big help. In general, though, the older 4 were pretty much the same as before Lydia came home. A friend at church told me that Timothy stood unassisted on Wednesday night so hopefully walking is just around the corner. Physical therapy is definitely a "no" for us unless he's not walking by his 18-month check-up. From the research I've done, 17 months is considered the high end of "normal" for walking. Lydia is doing really well with the exception of last night when she was really fussy and wide awake after midnight. She definitely sleeps better and longer during the day. Hard to imagine with this crew running around but it's true!

School -- We're going to try and slowly work our way into a school day routine starting next week. Caleb is a little behind where other kindergarteners are -- which we expected with all that's been going on here and, no, that's not as terrible as it sounds. We're homeschoolers and while we don't like that Caleb is behind and desire to have them as close to their public school counterparts as possible (in core subjects), we have more time and more flexibility to "fix" issues as our school year doesn't have to end on Memorial Day. The goal is to get Caleb reading by the time we go for portfolio evaluations in early August. I'm sure he/we will do just fine. Nathan is doing just fine, if we could only find his math book......."Summer" goal for him is to (finally) memorize ALL his multiplication tables. He's not that far off.

Many thanks to all our friends who've sent packages and church friends who've brought such yummy food. We really appreciate it! While I've been blessed all 6 times with relatively easy recoveries after babies and could cook on my own, it's been really nice to not have to worry about it. It's helped me adjust and get a sense of what my "normal" day is going to look like now with 6. I love my children and am so thankful that I've been blessed to have absolutely zero problems conceiving (we've only ever really tried once!). With several friends around us who are unable to conceive, I certainly don't take that for granted. And I tried to be grateful for being pregnant which wasn't hard the first 3 times but was a struggle the last 3 babies with the different aches and pains and complications. I definitely feel like our home is bursting at the seams -- which we're so happy about -- but I'm ready to focus on being a successful homeschooler. While I'm a little sad at the thought of not having any more new babies to snuggle up to, I'm ready for the next stage(s) in life. After all, I'm about to be a mom to a teenager in a few short years! (Nathan so graciously informed me that he has only 2 more school years before he graduates to the youth group -- yikes!) And the thoughts of eventually being completely done with diapers makes me very happy! :)

Guess I found a few things to say, huh?

Timothy, 15 months

Timothy's check-up was okay. Overall, things look good. He weighs 24 pounds and is 31 inches long. That's not much of a gain in weight but that's a gain of 3 inches since his birthday. Both of those measurements are perfectly on the 50th percentile mark. We're only on day 4 of him not having a bottle at all. Thanks to Grandma for helping with that battle 'cause I just wasn't feeling up to it in the last weeks of pregnancy. He's only tried a time or 2 to go after Lydia's bottles. Having some sleep issues with him but with all that's going on, the dr said he'd be surprised if Timothy didn't have issues. So we'll ride this out for a while and it should get better. Not too comforting, though, with 2 babies up during the night. The not-so-great part was that our dr wants Timothy to go through physical therapy since he's not walking yet. This bothers me for 2 reasons -- 1, Timothy is days younger and days older than 2 other boys in the church nursery, neither of them more than 10 days away from him. Now I know you're not supposed to compare children but these 2 boys are just recent walkers, too, so I don't think Timothy is that far behind. 2, it's not like I have tons of time on my hand to take him to therapy appointments. Between what will be Lydia's frequent check-ups, Timothy's audiology, ENT, and orthopedic appointments, his soon-to-start speech therapy, and life with homeschooling and 6 children in general, 1 more appointment is not what I need right now. I haven't called yet and don't really plan on getting in any big hurry with it. Hopefully he'll be walking soon.....

Must get busy! Had a major plumbing problem (and a nice $550 bill to go with it) so I've got to go help my Mom clean up now that the plumber has left. Lydia seems to be off schedule today, was up every hour and a half to 2 hours last night and has slept all morning so I'm feeling pretty run down, too. Ah, life....

Movie night!

The Stevens family is self-quarantined tonight. As you know, John was diagnosed with strep on Monday. He's back to his normal self, mostly. Still not much of an appetite and is coughing a lot but other than that, typical John. Timothy was diagnosed with strep today. Please say a prayer for him. It bothers me that he's not eating. I know that's to be expected with him being sick but he's just starting to look so very, very weak. We went ahead and gave him his 2nd dose of antibiotics for the day even though he didn't get his first one until 3 this afternoon. Hopefully he'll be feeling better by tomorrow. Elizabeth is very congested, coughing, and running a low-grade fever, exactly how both boys started. So, we'll see how she feels in the morning. Think I have any chance at all of getting our pediatrician to call in antibiotics for her if she's sick tomorrow morning? This body of mine is tired! I wasn't feeling well at all this afternoon so my poor husband had to come take Timothy to the doctor. I couldn't ask him to do that again tomorrow and I certainly don't want to expose Candace and her boys to this so I'll be stuck dragging them all in to the drs office tomorrow if she does have to go in. And Timothy's still so miserable! So.....what to do? Can't say for sure what we'll do in the morning but we took the opportunity we had at hand tonight and popped in a movie! And I have to say "Journey to the Center of the Earth" hit the spot! (Talking about the 08 remake here, not the original which we have seen.) Great, clean, exciting movie but not too scary for the little ones. We highly recommend it!

And a note -- with all the sickies and the fact that my NST looked good on Tuesday (not to mention I go back on Monday), I'm going to call tomorrow and cancel my NST for Friday preemptively. Don't want anyone to be expecting an update! Oh, and did I mention that Jonathan feels like his throat is a little sore?!?! We'd really appreciate your prayers!

We're alive...but busy!

We're here, I promise! Life's been kinda crazy. Here's some brief updates:

7.26.08 -- Nathan's 9th birthday party. A good time was had by all! His actual birthday was 7/28.

8.4.08 -- Nathan's first trip to the Ohio State Fair and his first concert, TobyMac. Great concert, the 3 of us had an amazing time, although we don't have any really good pictures to share. Thanks to the Bauer's and May's for providing the babysitting (and filling in the hole at the bottom of our driveway!)

8.7.08/8.8.08 -- 2 day family wedding event for Jonathan's brother, Fred. Jonathan was a groomsmen, John the ring bearer. Will post pics later (or at least I'll try to remember to do that).

8.9.08 -- After the wedding was over and since we had to pay for the 2nd night of the hotel, we decided to explore to Allen County region to see what we could find. Will post pics on this later, too (maybe). We saw some old trains, a military park with a helicopter, tank, massive ship anchor, and something else I can't remember right now. We also went to the Allen County museum which was interesting 'til our kids nearly got us kicked out. Elizabeth decided to jump a few ropes....

8.11.08 -- Yes, I did go for my first dr's appointment. Not really much to say. Ultrasound looked good. Temporarily lost the ultrasound pictures but Jonathan found them this morning so I'll try to scan those in and share them soon. On target for a 3/29 due date. Will start out at the preterm labor clinic and might go back and forth between that clinic and the gestation diabetes clinic, depending on how my 9/19 appointment goes.

8.16.08 -- Attended a birthday party for a friend that we hadn't seen in a really long time. That was nice. But the day was marred by the beginning of what has turned out to be a massive stomach flu bug for poor Caleb (our sincere apologies if anyone at the party has gotten sick!). He finally started eating again last night after having not ate since Sunday but he still isn't eating that much. He's finally acting like himself again, though, and is on the road with his grandparents. (Nathan and Caleb are with my parents for their annual summer visit. They'll be there until 9/12. We're going down on 9/8 to visit and pick up the boys.) Mom and Dad arrived on Monday night. We had planned on taking the kids to Chuck E Cheese last night but Caleb was so weak. We finally got some pudding in him last night and he started to come around. Almost didn't let him go with Mom and Dad but he's looked forward to this for so long and I figured he could recover laying around on their couch just as much as he could recover laying around on our couch, if he could just survive the trip down. Talked to Mom a little bit ago and she said Caleb ate some frosted flakes and drank some milk at Cracker Barrel this morning and was talking 90 miles a minute. So, I guess we've made the right decision. As for everyone else, Timothy, Elizabeth, and myself seem to have avoided that dreadful bug. Jonathan and John have definitely had it but not nearly as severe as Caleb. I don't think I've ever seen any of my kids that sick before.


Well....that's only the tip of the iceberg. But I think that's enough for now. Hope all is well for our readers!

Blessings abound

Lots of cool stuff going on around here! God is great!

1 -- Mentioned casually at a picnic several weeks ago of the things we need for the upcoming baby. There's a couple at church who has a crib mattress (one of the things on our list) that they said we could have....

2 -- A co-worker of Jonathan's just gave us a backyard play thing for the kids. Kinda like a slide and club house type of thing. We've got 90% of it here in pieces but we should get it put together this week....

3 -- I had said for maybe a year or more that I'd like to have a desk for Nathan to do his school work at since he has problems with distractions if he's sitting on the couch and I need the table to work with the little ones. Friends of ours are moving and gave us an old desk earlier this week....

4 -- Our next door neighbors are preparing to move. On a family walk a few weeks ago, they asked us if we needed bunk beds and we said no, that Nathan & Caleb just got bunk beds and it'd be 2 years, maybe longer, before we'd need another set. The set they were going to get rid of is currently in our attic waiting for those 2 years to pass (WITH the mattresses -- will they survive their time in the attic?!?! Hope so!)....

5 -- I just said to Jonathan about 8:45 this morning on the way to Sunday School that I was going to have to buy some of those plastic drawers to start putting baby stuff in since we're out of drawer/closet space. We had talked about buying a new dresser or some under-the-bed drawers but don't have the money for something like that right now. Same friend moving that gave us the desk walked up to me at church today (less than an hour and a half later) and said "You wouldn't happen to need a dresser for anyting, would you?" I about fell over!

We were also able to get Nathan some much needed new shoes tonight, thanks to Jonathan's parents. God is so good to us (maybe one of these days we'll tell you how we came to be the owners of a 2000 Buick). You don't think some fall/winter maternity clothes could fall from the sky, do you?!?! (hee hee!) =)

Our poor children

They've inherited their allergies from their Dad (everyone but Nathan, that is) and they are all (Jonathan, too) having a very rough week this week. Caleb, in fact, started having trouble several weeks ago and just wasn't getting better. That, coupled with a rash on his leg and something on his feet, we decided it was time for a trip to the doctor today. The cough is just allergy related which is the good news but the bad news is that since it's not getting any better, that means the OTC Claritin isn't working any more. So, now we switch to prescription Zyrtec. The good news there is that our kids have complete prescription coverage so we don't have to pay anything for that. The bad news is that Zyrtec will be OTC within a year, the doctor said which, of course, we'll have to pay for. We found out the hard way that the kids (Caleb, Elizabeth, and John) are allergic to something in the generic brand of Claritin so we have to use the name brand which runs $10 a bottle. With 3 kids getting a tsp every night, we were running through a bottle every week. So, this will lighten that load some, at least for a little while. The rash on his leg is excema which we know how to treat. On his foot, however, is athlete's foot. I've never heard of a child this age getting that! No one else in the house has it so why does he? Where did it come from? We don't know....but, we'll treat it and hope for the best. He just has sensitive skin.

Speaking of feet, though -- could someone please tell me how to keep my children from wearing out their shoes so fast??? Caleb and Nathan are both in desperate need of a new pair and John and Elizabeth really could use one as well. Elizabeth, in fact, could use church shoes, too, as she's out grown all her dress shoes except for 1 pair (which happens to be black -- all the ones she out grew are white or sandals). We used to save shoes for hand-me-down play shoes but now that Nathan and Caleb are starting to wear shoes longer because their feet aren't growing as fast, they're not leaving us much of a chance of saving them. Oh well, comes with the territory, I guess you can say!

Milestones

Can you tell what our latest milestone is? Praise the Lord for keeping the ol' van a running!!

In your darkest hours

Who's there for you? (apologies in advance for the long post but I need to vent a little)

It's been a very rough couple of days. It's been one financial crisis after another.... My faith being weak as it is, I felt we NEEDED to use the a credit card this week and my husband was dead set against it (as he should be -- I have a very wise husband)...well, let's just say that's how it started on Tuesday. Then, last night, I came home to an email from the bank....well, the bank doesn't email with good news, let's put it that way. Bad news last night turned into even worse news this morning. Someone once said to me "If you have a problem(s) that money can solve, then you really don't know what it's like to have a problem". At that time, I was hurt by that comment. But, I thought about that comment last night as I lay crying in bed in the realization that I had screwed up yet again. Confession -- I have a HUGE problem with spending money wisely. Translation, as I came to see it last night -- I have a CONTENTMENT problem. I can't seem to let myself be content in what I have. Mind you, we're not rolling in the dough -- but that's not an excuse. We use Microsoft Money software -- all our bills and my husband's deposits are there and I can see the cash flow forecast. I KNOW if we were to stick to the budget as it appears on that screen, we'd be just fine. Sticking to said budget is a problem and it has been for years. Please don't misunderstand -- this isn't a situaiton where I handle the money completely by myself and my hubby is oblivious to what's going on. What I am saying is it's not his ATM card that's making the transactions that run us out of money -- I'm admitting my fault here but I don't want people to think that he doesn't "manage his household well". He has faults, yes, but we're trying. BOTH of us are trying and it's not been an easy 2 years since I stopped working. BUT, incidents like we're in the middle of now are becoming less and less frequent.

So, in my original question, I asked who was there during your darkest hours? For us this time, I'm thankful to admit that it was my parents. My Mom flew in last week and my Dad arrived Monday and they just left. Other than these last 48 hours or so, it was a great 10 days and I'll definately post more on their time with us later. What they left here has touched me more than I can say. I stink at emotional issues and saying what's on my heart and I'm not sure why that's so. But, not only did they put gas in our van, not only did they pay for my oldest 2 to sign up for their homeschool co-op today, not only did they give monetarily to help clear up things at the bank -- they also just left a huge pile on my table. While I was out registering N & C for co-op, they were at Sam's Club. Laundry detergent, dryer sheets, toilet paper, fruit sancks and animal crackers for the kids, macaroni & cheese, mayo, peanut butter, corn, green beans, pizza kits, crackers, bisquick mix, trash bags, dish detergent, dishwasher tablets, and spaghetti, and you know Sam's Club's sizes!

Someone may stumble across this blog and wonder why I would post something so personal. Let me explain -- first, I know my Mom reads the blog every now and then and I hope she sees this so she knows how truly grateful we are even if I can't seem to say it. Secondly, I'm hoping putting all this into writing will give me something to look back on and remember so we don't end up here again. This hurts -- very, very badly. Third, maybe there's someone who can read this and learn from the lessons I'm learning -- 1) not being content with what you have is a sin, 2) not using the blessings you have been given as God would have you use them is a sin, and 3) I have to be more careful about what I'm teaching my kids about what money is (a blessing given to us by God) and how it should be spent. We are entrusted our money to steward the way God leads and spending every last dime you have is NOT a good plan -- eventually, you will overspend and not realize it and then you'll be where we are. Again, my apologies for a long post. If you've read this far, please pray for us as we're talking about going to a cash-only system for groceries and those type things (we already pay 99% of our bills through automatic debits). Please pray that we'll come out of this different people -- ready to manage our money in the will of God, not our own. Thank you.

Hi ya'll!

We're moving in! We were blogging on a different blog site -- you can catch up there at www.HomeSchoolBlogger.com/StevensFamily. After seeing many of our friends' blogs on this site, I decided we needed to change homes for our blog.

Lots going on this summer in the Stevens' household. Right now, my parents are visiting. My Mom flew in last Tuesday and my Dad got here yesterday. They're leaving on Thursday. My Mom go to be here when we found out that we're expecting our 4th son (we've got 1 daughter). That was the first ultrasound she's been to since I was pregnant with our oldest who just turned 8. I know she enjoyed it. We still haven't picked out a name yet. We're just beginning soccer season for our 2 oldest...we're getting ready to start school in 2 weeks...we're putting on a Medieval Feast to kick off the school year on 9/1...pretty much, we're just busy, busy, busy but we're enjoying it (most days)!

If you're out there or are finding us from our old blog, please drop a comment and let us know! It's really nice to know there's someone out there "listening"!