(for all our family wondering how we’re weathering the storm…I’ll keep updating.)

9:45 AM – Ok, so I slept in.  (Thanks to Tim who took the baby.)  We are on the other side of the eye with electricity intact, minimal wind effects, and no flooding where our house is.  I know that there is flooding elsewhere, though.  I haven’t turned on the news yet this morning.  I was up around 3 AM with Zion, and we must have been in part of the eye then, because it was really still outside – no wind or rain.  At 8 AM, when he got up again, it was back to pretty vigorous gusts of wind.  It’s not raining anymore, currently.  I am SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO glad we still have electricity.  I think this should be completely through by sometime this afternoon.  

11:00 PM – According to NOAA, for Seaford: Tropical storm conditions, with hurricane conditions possible. Rain and possibly a thunderstorm. Some of the storms could produce heavy rainfall. Northeast wind 40 to 60 mph, with gusts as high as 75 mph.  Well, that’s better than a hurricane.  Just been raining and blowing some.  Really not the most exciting of storms here in our neck of the woods – which I have to say is a positive.  

8:15 – Tornado warning just expired for Sussex County.  Apparently one did touch down at five points in Lewes, which is about 45 minutes from us on the coast.  According to the news, tornadoes associated with hurricanes are a lot weaker and mainly a danger to coastal areas as opposed to where we are inland.  Still steadily raining and blowing.  Lights continue to flicker now and then, but thankfully are still on!!

In terms of my offspring, there is a lot of rambunctious rowdiness around here and has been all day.    Almost time for bedtiiiiimmeee…..

7:00 PM – Have branches blowing out of the tree in our backyard.  

On the news they were saying that we’ve had between 3-5 inches of rain so far, with 6-8? more inches expected.  Wind speeds are from 35-47 mph.  The eye is supposed to be at the Delaware coast at about 2-4 AM.  Still a Category 1.  

In other news, look what I found in my butter.

If anyone is looking for their knight in shining armor, he’s currently glistening on my counter.  In case you’re interested.

5:50 PM – Hmmmm.  The lights are starting to flicker.

4:50 PM – The daddy duck and the baby ducks go on an adventure.  

It’s raining pretty hard and starting to blow and gust.  All which makes a trip to see the street grate very exciting.  I was sort of surprised Zion didn’t lose heart, because he gets a bit overwhelmed by a lot of wind.  But they are all bundled up in clothing that should kind of resist the water, so that sort of helps, I think.  Wow.  As I’m writing this, the wind is really blowing hard.  Pretty sure Zion is protesting.  The boys arrive back, grouchy that they can’t stay out longer to play.  

4:00 PM – We break out the Play-Doh.

3:00 PM – Raining hard again.  Still under tornado watch until 8 PM, but no signs of anything like that.  Still under Hurricane Warning, with wind gusts expected of 74-95 mph.  (Tonight, not now.)

1:45 PM – Rain is currently mostly stopped.  The housebound-wildly-careening-let’s-all-wrestle-and-trip-each-other-and-giggle-and-almost-whack-our-heads-repeatedly-on-hard-objects-which-makes-mommy-yell-loudly-and-get-scary-eyes boys trudge happily outside with their daddy to go saw down more of my mulberry tree that is reportedly “close to the power line”.  Uh huh.  Tim and I have been arguing over this mulberry tree ever since we moved here.  It’s right outside our bedroom window and I like it very much, because it makes a nice little green corner of vegetation.  Of course I like all things vegetation and would sacrifice none of them.  Tim calls it a “weed tree” and accuses it of rubbing up against the house and damaging it.  Pshaw.  Is what I say.  I’m pretty sure that he is just p.r.e.t.t.y. stinkin’ happy to have a “real” excuse to do FURTHER pruning on it than he did yesterday.  Yesterday he and the boys were happily busy with hack saws and pruning shears.  Little punks, the whole lot of ‘em.  ;)

11:15 AM – Raining harder now.  Little bits of wind here and there.

10:30 AM – I get home from Walmart with LED flashlights all around.  The boys happily explore the house with their flashlights clipped to their hats.

8:10 AM – The rain has started, big drops, but not too heavy yet.  Kind of steady.

7:00 AM – The boys are awake bright and early on a weekend morning.  Yawn.  Outside, it is grey and very cloudy.  No rain, not really any wind.

Gabe started back to school this week – first grade.  

I had planned to take Israel along too, but he was still sleeping, so it was just me and Layla. (Who screeched unhappily most of the way home, the little buggar.)

Gabriel was quick to show his friend Jacob his little sister, Layla.

And here is school for Gabe this year:

I told Tim that somehow something feels more school-official in first grade than in kindergarten.  Gabe was looking forward to going back to school and seeing his buddies, but by the end of the first week he was not too excited AT ALL about having to get up bright and early every morning.   So far he is enjoying it though.  His first day he had said that he was just a “little nervous”.  

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So apparently this is the week that we get to experience both an earthquake and a hurricane within the span of seven days.  The earthquake was just kind of exciting.  I was standing in the kitchen holding Layla with my shoulder pressed to my ear holding my cell phone, and looking through the phone book when I suddenly thought – am I feeling the house shake??  I readjusted my stance and still seemed to feel the shaking, and the juice container on the counter was sloshing back and forth…but sometimes I get a little dizzy from not drinking enough and the boys were bouncing around in the living room.  I thought maybe their jumping had somehow shaken the house enough.  I looked outside and Tim was talking on the phone, unfazed, and our neighbor was working like nothing had happened, so I thought it must have just been my imagination.  Instead it was a 5.9 on the Richter’s scale and centered in VA.  How cool.  :)  (Since no one was hurt!!)

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We are “battening down our hatches” (mostly just figuratively) in preparation for Hurricane Irene.  My form of battening is cleaning the house so that I can relax and prop my feet up and watch the rain pound the windows and the wind lash the trees.  We have talked about going to VA just to avoid power outages in the light of the four wee chillun’s we have…but kind of also don’t want to miss all the fun.  Highway 13 is packed from the evacuation of Ocean City.  If we did go, we would probably leave early Saturday morning.  The Bay Bridge closes with wind speeds of 40 mph, so will probably be closed by noon tomorrow.  Soooo….we’ll see.  I dunno.  Four hours of no electricity is fine.  Two days of no electricity seems to significantly dim the excitement.    I’m such a city slicker at heart, craving my hot water and fans and stove top….

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Here’s Layla Love for the week.  She has been happily hanging around in her door thingie lately.  

Here she is looking at her toy dog.  Every one of my kids has LOVED this dog.  Thanks, Aunt Melody.  

The child has been particularly difficult lately.  I’ve started to glumly believe that perhaps my (sometimes excessive) consumption of fresh Bing cherries and/or mango drinks/dried mangoes may have something to do with this.  I’m trying to abstain for a few days to figure out if it helps.  And longingly gazing at my bag of fresh cherries sitting on the refrigerator shelf.

She has also changed up her sleeping habits again and won’t take her pacifier to get to sleep.  She wants only to nurse to sleep, so as to plump up those skinny little legs.  Sometimes she forgets herself and falls asleep on one of our shoulders.  :)

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The juice fast continues for Tim.  The boys, especially Zion, really love to help.  Only 5 more days.  :)

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Thinking of and praying for Tim’s sister’s (Lynette) husband’s (Rusty) mom, Colleen, who was just diagnosed with a major brain tumor and had surgery yesterday.  

http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/colleenpolinder

The air wafts in from the open windows as we go down the hall.  The summer evening is cooling, and the breeze whispers of fall.  I help a pajama-ed Zion get into bed, tucking his sippy cup of water between his two pillows and pulling his quilt up over him like he likes, while hoisting a squirmy Layla on my hip.  She’s wearing a ducky outfit.  I pray:

“Jesus, thank you soooo much for Zion; I love him so much.  Keep him safe and healthy and give him a deep, deep hunger in his heart for You.  Amen.”

“I wanna give you a kiss, Mama,” Zion says, looking up at me from his bed.

In the dim light from the hallway, I get down and he puts his mouth against mine, then carefully puckers up.  I think he is done, and start to pull away, but he fusses for me to let him finish.  Ok.  I resume my place, holding an interested Layla a few inches from the blankets, and he resumes his pucker and finishes with a little smacking kiss.  Oh my.  So dear.  

“Do you want to give Layla a kiss too?” I ask.  Yes, he does. Layla gets the same careful treatment on her plump cheek.  

“Can I have one more kiss?” I ask, and receive one more.  Mouth, pucker, kiss.  Melt.  Melt.  Melt.  ”I love you very very much,” I tell him as I turn to walk away, smiling warmly at his sweet face and blond curls.

“I love you bery bery much too, Mom,” he says, quite earnestly, as he lies on his pillow with his quilt pulled up to his chin, greedily cramming his fuzzy green animal blanket under his nose like he does, looking at me with dark serious eyes.  

Lately, his thing has been to fling his arms around my legs and say, “Mommy!!  I love you SO MUCH!!!”  He does this with all of us.  

I love you, too, my son.  SO very much.  

“Mom?”  Gabe stood in the doorway of the room where I was working.  ”There’s mail in the mailbox.”

“Yeah?”  I continued to work.  ”You can get the top one out and give it to Daddy.  I think it’s a birthday card for him.”

“I think that one is from Yew Nork,” Gabe stated, his eyes looking sort of excited.  ”I think it’s from Yew Nork, because it has the Stackshoot of Liverty on it.” 

These things make me laugh.  I heart mispronunciations…. 

“I like my tomato,” Zion says, before popping his piece of potato into his mouth.

“It’s not a tomato,” Israel said, disagreeing. “It’s a tornado.”

“Mom,” Israel said, with a trace of disgruntlement in his tone as he climbed begrudgingly into the minivan, “I wish we had a bigger car.”  

“A bigger car?” I asked dubiously, quite content with the size of our minivan, thank you very much.

“Yeah, the kind that shoots fire out of the back when it drives.”  He continued on back to his seat, the poor deprived child.

Ohhhh.  I see.  THAT kind of car.  Well then.  I’m sure it’s only a matter of time.

So, I must say.  Life with four children ages 6 and under is…is…is…an awful lot of work.  Lol!!!  Phheeewwwiiiee, dog!!  I feel like I roll out of bed and get to work in the morning and work all day and then work really hard to get everybody to bed and then half of ‘em keep coming back out of their beds and then when I finally get to bed at night it’s with a low level hum of anxiety about how many times I’m going to have to get up before morning.  And here’s the thing: if you stop and rest…ain’t nobody else stopping and resting.  Everybody else is just making more work for you to do when you get up.  Makes a body tired just thinking about it.  

One project we tackled in the light of all this was the boys room, with their piles of strewn toys that were repeatedly trampled over.  Lately, Tim had been helping them clean up, and his strategy was to dump everything all together.  Well, that meant that they weren’t playing with any of their toys, because they couldn’t find them, and were busily racing around with ribbons tied to sticks, sticks, boxes, and pieces of random objects they used to pretend with.  I decided, if that was the case, then half of their toys could go anyways, since they didn’t seem to miss them.  The boys helped decide which toys to keep and which to give away, and we ended up with one toy box full of big toys, one toy box full of small toys, a costume basket, and stackable crates to keep their Legos, bristle blocks, Lincoln Logs, blocks, and TinkerToys separated.  Because those are things they play with a lot if they have access to them.  So anywho.  I’m always busily coming up with new plans that are supposed to keep the house PERMANENTLY clean…none have worked to date, but everyone does love a nice clean room, enh?  

These crates make me happy everytime I look at them.  Let’s look at them again.  

Pleased sigh.  I had quite the little organizing bee in my bonnet.

SPEAKING of things to keep and things to give away…there is a wisely nodding, benevolently gesticulating 15 year old-ish Santa out on my porch.  

With a lamp that lights up.  The tape player on the back of this establishment died during the brief time he has resided with us.  He is a gift from our neighbor.  If anyone wants to be blessed with him, I will bless you.  In the dead of night, so the boys won’t see.  :)  They are quite taken with this stellar new part of our household.

By the way, I’m not really meaning to complain about all the work in life.  In a way it’s satisfying.  I would be a little bit more pleased about all the satisfying work, however, if I felt always on TOP of all the work.  Seems that there’s not quite enough hours in the day.  I know that the intensity of life right now is a phase, and soon enough Layla will be older and everything won’t feel quite as stressful.  She’s the one that makes it the most stressful, because she requires so much carrying.  And it’s hard to get things accomplished with one hand.  It seems like with each child after Gabe, when they are about three months of age, I am trying to find out which carrier I can use that will work the best, because I need to get things accomplished!!!  And I’m in that stage now, but I’m sort of tired of carriers.  I’m mostly just holding her.  

Things that make me happy lately:

1.  Israel’s underarm fart noises.  :)  He is SO pleased with himself, and he is SO STINKIN’ ADORABLE hopping around on one foot with this big pleased grin on his face, flapping his arm.  He’s such a cutie.

2.  Zion’s pronunciations.  ”Do you see the moon, Zion?” says mommy.  ”Yes, I see the loon!” says Zion.  Or, as he zooms in from the sandbox, “I need a life, Mom.  I need a life.”  (A knife.)  Or, “Is the pa-sketti ready, Mom??” (Spaghetti.)  

3.  Layla. Just Layla.  Her little hand resting on my neck, as she peers happily over my shoulder and quietly watches the world go by.  How she cranes down when I’m holding her facing forward to look at the ground.  And she just looks and looks, very fascinated.  Makes me laugh.

4.  Seeing Gabe get taller and older and hearing him process life.  Also, when something funny happens and he “gets it”.  It’s fun to share humor with your kids.

Israel plops down beside me on the couch, his brow furrowed with perplexity.  ”Mom,” he says, “why is Jesus’ first name ‘Cheese’?”

“Cheese?” I asked, confused.

“Yeah, Cheese!”    LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hee heh.  

So, the other day Layla and I went to the eye doctor for a check up for me.  When I was leaving, I gratefully slapped these nifty-cool lil’ sunglasses onto my face.  They were quite the snazzy things, adhering themselves to the sides of your face.  I commented to the receptionist that my boys would be very intrigued by my new glasses, and she suggested I take some home for them.  So here we are.  In all our coolness.  Our uber coolness. 

Do you see this child??  Do you see him??  Oh. my. goodness, this child.  THIS DAY, he rummaged in the refrigerator freezer at some point during the day, and came out with three bags of coffee, one which he partially poured out and busily stirred in the hall bath and in the bathroom in the boys room, and the rest which was emptied onto the boy’s floor.  MAJOR. SIGH.  So he comes to find me, with coffee grounds stuck to his stomach, and hands which he complains of being sticky.  I go send him to the boy’s bathroom to wash his hands, as I am having a major life crisis over the state of the hall bathroom, and much later, he comes out of the bathroom with clean hands, coffee grounds still stuck all over him, and a LARGE portion of their hand soap in his hair, plastering it to his head.  I had to laugh out loud.  He looked like a wet, bedraggled little mouse.  

Kudos to the husband for walking in the door at just the right time, and putting the child into the shower, however, before I was too totally overwhelmed.  And for vacuuming up the coffee grounds.  

By the way, the other two bags of coffee I found placed carefully into the dollhouse and situated next to the coffee maker.  

Can I just say I love this girlfrien’?  She is my dollbaby.  She is just so beautiful to me.

A few weeks ago, the boys attempted to camp out in the back yard.  However, after numerous trips back insides, and “emergency alerts” by Gabe on the monitor (“Attention, Mom.  Attention.  Zion is hitting Israel.”), I found the three of them at the back door looking a bit plaintive and like they were rather longing for their beds.  ”Mom,” Gabe said, “I think that tomorrow I will like to have my fan on inside.”  ”Would you like to come sleep in your beds then?” I asked with studied casualness, my heart leaping hopefully, as I was quite done with all of the back and forth business.  ”No,” Gabe said doubtfully, but his feet stayed planted.  Zion looked at me cheerily.  ”Yes!” he exclaimed, and surged forward.  The two other boys were caught up in this wave of comfortable beds and blankets and fan noises (the lack of fan noise was really the major deterrent) and sleeping, and followed immediately behind him.  ;)

A few nights later, their lovin’ Daddy set their tent up in their bedroom for them, where they had a SPLENDID time watching a video and eating popcorn on their sleeping bags.  

(Zion didn’t make it too long in there.  He entered his “I’m destructive when I’m tired” phase, and his next door neighbor, Israel, was getting the brunt of it.  He was ushered back to his own bed.  And fan.)  Gabe and Israel slept all night quite happily.

For the past week or so, Layla has been very grabby.  She will diligently paw the wall or the chair behind me when she is over my shoulder.  She works very hard when she is on Tim’s lap at the table.  Muuust.  Geeettt.  Muuussstt.  

I LOOOOVVE this picture:

Zion just still loves to crawl into our laps and cuddle.  This time, Tim laid down on the couch, and Zion immediately made a beeline and crawled right in next to him.  He chattered happily away to him for a long time.

Then he had to rummage around in Daddy’s shirt, just because it feels so nice to slide your arm into something like between the buttons of a shirt.  He called them his “pockets”.  :)

Layla was being so sweet the other night.

She just laid her head right under my chin and gently twirled and patted her little hand and was just so sweet and soft and dear.  I love my baby.

This baby gets LOTS of attentions around here…

This is what you would call “smothered with kisses”.  :)  I have to constantly keep backing them off, because she starts to get fussy.  Israel is really good about staying back far enough.  Gabe just simply can’t RESIST all her sweetness and will be right in her face like he is.  Zion you just have to keep a beady eye on, because he could easily give her a happy whack with his hard skull or pull her leg the wrong direction.  He likes her a lot though, and spends a lot of time talking/cuddling with her.

The other day they discovered the basket of baby toys I had sitting in the bedroom and played and played with them.

Then they gave Layla all her toys to “play” with.  She wasn’t very impressed.

And one last picture to leave you with, just because it’s so sweet:

Have a good day, ya’ll.

Stress is what happens when you have sat down in front of the computer after finally getting the baby to sleep and suddenly realizing with a start that the sopping wet two year old has climbed out of the tub where he was previously playing happily and gone in search of you into the room where the baby is sleeping, and has tromped right past her crib mattress on the floor.  As he returns from the closet where he went to look for you, while talking to you in an unmuted tone, he trips (loudly) over the fan sitting in front of the closet door and falls onto the end of the baby’s mattress.  Stress.  Stress.  She didn’t wake up though.  Phew.

He’s awfully cute, though…

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My work around here has encountered a bit of a stockpile, what with recovering from last weekend’s trip, a fusser baby who seems to NOT LET ME PUT HER DOWN EVER, and a dishwasher that’s on the fritz.  This is unfortunate, because there is nothing that I feel like doing LESS today than cleaning.  My current motto is “Slow and steady wins the race”.  Or at least makes a small dent.  Which Zion can promptly fill in.  Versus “Speedy bunnies crash and burn.”  Thas’ right.  Thas’ right.

Stockpiles are wearying, in case you’re interested.  

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After watching Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead the other month, Tim is on a juice fast to lose weight.

He’s planning to do it the entire month of August.  I am very impressed with him.  By impressed I mean that I ooh and ahh while I’m eating my cheese puffs.  :) He is on day 5.  He has been losing about a pound and a half a day.  Stay tune for some chiseled abs.

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Israel has been making this face a lot lately.

 

He likes the feeling of his mouth under his nose.  It makes me laugh.  

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Little Bit has been drooling like a…a…I don’t know what, but she often is covered with this glistening sheen of saliva from her lower lip to halfway down her chest, and is often contentedly blowing lots of spit bubbles on top of that.  My shoulder gets sodden from her chewing on it whenever I carry her.