sailing picture of Amanda, Nana Boo, and Bradley

Couldn't figure out how to put this on the other blog. Technical difficulties.

best baby in town

When the babies came home, we had so much fun.... making fun of Kennedy. If you remember the blogs from back then.... my mom was furious that we called her YODA. She had these huge eyes, and red hair, and she was...well....funny looking.
She has grown into her looks finally. More importantly, she is the best of the 4 babies.
She was the last one born. Our youngest child. She is the last up in the morning, and the last to go to sleep. She is the last one held, the last one fed, and the last one to get a bath. This has been a problem for me since, well, she came home. I felt like she wasn't getting love, or wasn't loved, or liked the least. You know the squeeky wheel always gets the grease. SO, lately, I have chosen to have it different.
Kennedy is the good baby. She is the only one with multiple nick names. Really the only one with a nickname at all. We call her, Kinneroo most of the time. I call her so many names that I can't list them all. Just this week I have been calling her the good egg....which is probably not very nice. Cuz , really they are all good eggs. Obviously. But, all kidding aside... She was born last, because she could wait. She is held last, because she is comfortable with just being...just laying there, and watching all her fussy siblings get fed, burped, changed. She waits. She waits until they are all asleep in their cribs. She waits until we are all in bed. SHE CRIES. She gets her alone time when the rest of the house is asleep. I love my time with her in the middle of the night. It is so WONDERFUL! I wouldn't trade it for the 30 minutes of sleep for anything! She has proven to all you red hair haters....she is quiet, and mild, and waits her turn. RED HAIR ROCKS! And so do you Kennedy.

Bed time

Some of you know that I lay with the big kids when they go to bed at night. This has always been a point of contention between Mandy and I. It takes a lot of time at night to go up with them, read with them, and lay until they fall asleep. I chose this years ago. Here is why...

I get uninterupted conversation with them. I get hugs, I give hugs, we talk about how much we love each other....usually the conversation goes like this. " I love you to the moon, around space 10 times, and back". It is about who loves who the most. It is fun. We sing, tell stories, what ever the kids want that night is what we do. We usually spend about 15 minutes with the fun stuff, then close our eyes and see who can fall asleep first. Sometimes it is me!

Here is last nights conversation. Let me set the stage. My parents have a sail boat. On Saturday night I talked with them - their plans for Sunday was to go to the boat and spend the day. Probably together enjoying the quiet. Well, When I hung up, the kids screamed "I wanna go!" I called Dad to see if it was ok, Grandparents usually don't say no, even though I felt a little guilty about it. The kids were on a natural high!

Here is our conversation:

Amanda: Mommy, I love going sailing.

Bradley: Me too

Amanda: That is one of my favorite things to do.

Bradley: Mommy, that ocean was so beautiful

Amanda: Was that the ocean mommy, or the sea? Or was it a lake? Karley and I got so sea sick today.

Mommy: That was a lake. It is Lake Monroe

Bradley: Well then Amanda, you got lake sick, not sea sick!

Amanda: BRADLEY!!! (huff and puff) It is always called sea sick. If you are on a lake, you are sea sick. If you are in a creek, or a lake, or a pond...well, you can't really have a boat in a creek, so that doesn't count. But it is always SEASICK!

Bradley: OKAY!

Amanda: Is it possible to still feel that way? Cuz, I kinda still feel like Im on the boat!

They are so funny. Is this funny to anyone but me? Or do I just have the best time laying and listening to how goofy they are?

camby school answering machine

School.mp3

in honor of kerry sheckles

bradley and i let my mom draw widows peeks on us in honor of my brother. today is his b-day. he would have been 36. karley is picking where we are eating dinner.

Binky Related topics

Mandy asked me about 2 weeks ago.... "where the heck did all the binky's go?" We laughed about it ... Mandy blogged about it. That day she ordered 75 binkies. The kind you get from the hospital. That was the only kind the kids would use. Just as well, they are really the cheapest to buy. So, we have 3 buckets of binkies (I know I changed my spelling) pink, blue, and orange. They are everywhere! Well, today I cleaned our bedroom. There are 2 cribs in the sitting room of our bedroom. There are also no binkies in our room, I picked them all up today to take to the dishwasher and clean them. Tonight, I brought up new crib sheets. When I lifted the matress of one of the cribs to put the sheets on I heard... Bing, Bing, Bing, Bing, etc..... I looked down on the floor, and 7 binkies were laying on the floor! I laughed out loud!
10 minutes later I was giving the babies a bath, Mandy was sitting on the bed dressing a baby and she started horse laughing. I came out to see what was so funny. She was laughing at all the binkies. We only have 2 1/2 babies who use them now. Harper won't take one. Kerry would rather have her thumb, but when she can't find it I will help her out with a binkie. Kennedy likes them but doesn't "yearn" for it. It sure helps her fall asleep. TILLIE....ok, she is a binkie lush. She can suck on anything to sooth herself. Yesterday I was holding all 3 girls in the rocking chair and trying to settle them all. I got Kennedy asleep, got Kerry asleep, Tillie came at the end and she was kind of laying on top of Kennedy on my lap. I heard "slurp...slurp..." Tillie was sucking on Kennedy's ELBOW!!!! It was so stinking cute. It finally put her to sleep, no harm done...all 3 girls were happy!
Amanda and Bradley gave the babies baths tonight. They washed them up like an assembly line. They are really good to the babies. Ahhh, wanna hear something so sad? Yesterday Bradley came home from school and said... "mommy, you know that bus driver of mine ? Well, she doesn't know very much. Today when she picked me up, she told the other lady that rides my bus that people shouldn't have babies because they are to much work".... "they're not are they mommy. She just doesn't know!" So, I take a deep breath, because this particular bus driver can't seem to make it to our house when a road is closed....??? and I know that I shouldn't talk bad to Bradley about her, but I just took in a deep breath ..... IN......OUT..... and I explained to him that not all people love kids as much as WE do...and that what the bus driver said was a really "dumb" thing to say to anyone...cause no body knows what love and joy all 6 of our kids bring to us. He was very happy with that answer. When Mandy came in the house he told her the story... She told him the exact answer that I had. Good minds think alike.
Harper has started standing in my lap and pushing with his legs. Tonight I had him laughing at me. Kerry, Kennedy, and Tillie won't do that yet. They are all growing at such different speeds. One week I will see Harper do something, and the next week one of the girls will do it. Funny, how everyone will grow when it's their time.
Mandy just told me this blog was too long. Better go before you get bored and quit reading.

save you some money

post by mandy
i keep forgetting to blog this and i'm thinking of it now so here goes. For those of you out there that are storing sperm. I have good news. Long term storage is an option. It's $100 bucks a year vs. $400 a year. Are you aware at how many snacks i could have bought with that money? We were ignorant to the fact of cheaper storage so just when we found out it was even an option after paying for it for 7 years. we donated our little guys to research. yep you guessed it. were done. it was a hard, hard, hard, 2 weeks for me to wrestle with amy over keeping the sperm, but i knew there was no way to trick her into more kids not in this lifetime anyway. not sure if we are slated to be together next lifetime. maybe we'll be sisters next time around and i will torture her. if we are sisters i want to be the annoying little sister;)

trainer

post by mandy
so i wondered how people would react that don't know me to my shaved head. i can honestly say strangers look at me with lovingly eyes and compassion because they wonder my head is shaved. That's says alot for mankind:) i bought tanning lotion to put on it now my head is orange. NOT so cute. I started working out today again with a trainer. but get this. it's for one day a week 20 min a session. now that's my kind of working out. let you know how it goes:) i signed up for 12 weeks. 10 weeks of bedrest really took a toll on my body. i am out of shape. but not for long. this is an ironic. shaving my head was on my bucket list, right. and i have felt so compelled to start and complete my bucket list because my brother died suddenly in his sleep at 31 of sleep apnea. so i get my head shaved with mara. well her dad is a sleep expert. i have never met him in person. he sees the picture of mara and i and our shaved heads and wants to see me based upon how i look in my picture for sleep apnea. He is very concerned for me. Now if that ain't some twisted shit right there. so i don't feel like i have sleep apnea but i guess it can be silent killer or concern.

a new day

babies have made up for being so rotten last night. I was home alone with the 6 kids while Mandy got her head shaved. The babies cried from 8 to 9.... amanda and bradley turned the tv up loud enough to hear it over the cries. It was a little hairy....hahaha....
they slept through the night and today have been in great spirit.
tonight the babies will go to bed at 8, so that we have an hour with the older kids to get them in bed and have some sanity with the process. I'm learning., and figuring this 6 kid thing out.....
thank god.

how'd this happen

post by mandy
9-2-09
so tonight i went with my friend Mara and we got our heads shaved together. we had a great time. i was really sceeeeered to do it. now that it's done it's very liberating not to have my hair control me. Mara has breast cancer and started losing her hair. When she first told me she needed to go through Chemo i asked her to please include me when she shaved her head because that was on my bucket list and I would like to do that with her. When we were on our way to the hair place she asked if there was anything else on my bucket list we could knock out tonight:) She is freakishly afraid to find hairs on her pillow. She is in her second round of Chemo and it started falling out so i got the text yesterday that we were doing it very very soon. so christy stayed late for us tonight after her shop closed at 8pm. It was just the 3 of us cuttin up and having fun. Christy wasn't quite sure how to act i think. Christy shaved our heads and when it was time to pay. She refused our money. Mara tipped her in $2 bills. I love $2 bills. When Christy started drying my hair she gave me little fuzzies from the towel. so mara and i went to CVS and i bought a box of Sham Wow's and split them so we can dry our bald heads. i also bought tanning lotion. i rubbed it on in the store and it made my scalp flake. Mara and i were laughing our asses off in the store. The lady that helped us find the Sham Wow and tanning lotion had a 8 inch rat tail. Maybe shaving her head should be on her bucket list cuz that rat tail was U-G-L-Y she ain't got no alliby. Mara was more brave than i was, i think. See the difference between our situations was she had no choice but to be brave, which kinda sucks. I'm not so sure i ever would have been able to mark shaving my head off my bucket list if mara hadn't been there to support me. Mara has said many times throughout her wrestling match with cancer that she just can't wait until whatever process she is currently in she can't wait for what is next to get it over with. That's how she acted tonight too. Like just hurry and shave it so i can kick this motha fuckin cancer in the balls, BIATCH.

shaving heads

shaving heads

shaving heads

shaving heads

shaving heads

milestones

First let me start by saying....there is no love like the love you have for your child. In my case children. 6 of them. I have such a different relationship with all of them. I want to share.
I wake up with Amanda every morning to get her ready for school. The rest of the house is asleep. Sometimes it makes me feel bad for her that she gets up and ready and only has half an hour with me before starting her life outside this house. The other part of me is glad that the house is asleep and I get her all to myself. We talk. This morning she asked me if she could invite a friend over to take to the children's museum. After we talked about it, she told me it was a boy. She has been friends with this kid since kindergarten and I really think he is the cat's meow. He is so outgoing and friendly. I was having lunch with Amanda at school 2 weeks ago, he got out of the lunch line to come talk to me. He asked me what I had been doing, and spoke to Amanda like an adult. I believe they are both old souls. Probably friends for a long time now!
I took Bradley to get a hair cut this morning. We loaded all the babies in the car and headed out. When we got there he told his barber that he wanted his head shaved. We agreed that we could burr it and shave it after his pictures on Friday. He was ok with that. Such an easy going kid. We came home with Chic Fil A. He brought lunch inside and sat at the island. He turned and said to me..."pull up a chair mommy, let's have lunch". A lover, a fighter, he warms my heart.
Now, when Mandy had the quads, It took some time for me to bond with them. I knew they were mine (biologically) not that it really matters. I love Karley like my own, but I've also had Karley for 7 yrs, and have grown to love her this much. The quads are only 5 months old. It took me awhile to get to this point of LOVE .... the love that hurts when you think about it. Today I have that hurtful love for the babies. For all of my babies. I have been taking turns holding and feeding the babies, and each time I pick one up, I feel like I can feel the exchange. This blog may be a little deep for some of you, but if your a parent...you know the feeling.

So the milestones this week are.... Tillie no longer has Retinopothy. Tillie has rolled over. Kerry has found her thumb. She is going to town on it. I love it. Love that she can soothe herself. Kennedy and Tillie were talking to each other yesterday on the bed. Laughing and talking. Harper slept the entire night last night. Went to bed at 10 and took a bottle again at 8 this morning!!! How many hours is that? 9 hours!!! Holly cow!!!