Pre-Halloween Fun

Every year Kacean has a pumpkin carving party right before Halloween. Ethan was counting down the days until we could get our pumpkins and carve them. This year, he was all about carving a traditional jack-o-lantern, which made it MUCH easier for Mart to help him with! Mart was on a roll and was plowing through our pumpkins. He ended up carving all three of ours before everyone else finished their first one.

I was holding my sidekick. The last few weeks she flat out refuses to let anyone but me hold her. She will scream her lungs out the second anyone (including Mart) touches her or tries to take her from me.

Lincoln didn't care what his pumpkin looked like, as long as he got one to put on the porch. Mart chose to do Jack's pumpkin face from the opening scenes of the Nightmare before Christmas.

And Mart made his a mustache pumpkin with hipster glasses ... which ended up (without meaning to) looking like the pringles man when it was lit. :)

Linc's pumpkin

Mart's pumpkin

Ethan's pumpkin

All lit up (and Kace's angry bird pumpkin)

The boys were so excited to go home and light them up on the porch!

We also made our yearly trek up to the pumpkin walk! Ber was able to come with us this year. It was super convenient this year to just walk out the house, walk up the block and catch the shuttle. We didn't have to worry about driving and parking. It was awesome!

The boys love Ghostbusters and loved the Ghostbusters scene. Lincoln was a little nervous of the marshmallow man, but soon figured out that he wasn't real. They also had a great time looking for the hidden star in each scene. It definitely made it so we spent more time looking at each scene.

They also really liked the Wreck it Ralph scene.

Ethan got really excited when he saw all the Star Wars pumpkins.

While looking at the wall of scenes from the past, I saw one that looked quite familiar. It was one of mine! :) This was one of three sections I did with MaryEllen that year.

And, what's the pumpkin walk without some cute little heads sticking through character cutouts? The boys think these are always super awesome and can't help but stick their head in each and every one of them.

Ethan Potter

Lincoln-credible!

Ethan (Jesse), Lincoln (Buzz) and Ber (Woody)

And wise Ethan Yoda

and Lincoln Yoda.

It was fun to celebrate 30 years of the pumpkin walk, I hope it keeps going for at least 30 more!

Look who's three!

My sweet little man turned three! I had asked him several times what he wanted his cake to be, and he told me he wanted Jake the Pirate from Jake and the Neverland Pirates. It was a really long week leading up to his birthday and I wasn't feeling well. I definitely could have done better, but I kicked out a Jake pirate cake the night before his party in just a few hours. It wasn't perfect, but Lincoln LOVED it! He kept talking about his pirate cake and wanting to take pictures next to it. Every time I would leave the room and come back in, he was sitting on a stool staring at it. :) His birthday fell on a Monday this year, so we had a small family party on Saturday for him at my mom's house.

Ber and her nephews

Ty and his BFF Jenna.

Kace and Ryan

Ber and Dallan

Everybody seemed stumped at what to get Linc for his birthday, so they all stuck with the Jake the Pirate theme, and he ended up rolling in Jake toys! He was more than thrilled!

Grandma, Ethan and Lincoln

Me and my birthday boy! I still can't believe he's three ...

Monday morning, I made my sweet birthday boy sprinkle pancakes and green smoothies (ice cream!) for breakfast.

They must have been extra delicious and special, because I think Ethan ate like 8 of them!

After breakfast we walked Ethan to school and came home for some alone birthday time! Lincoln wanted to watch a movie or netflix or something and so I turned it on and went to feed Jade. When I peaked back around the corner to check on Lincoln a little while later, he was laying on the couch with his blanket talking on his phone (the dvd player remote) to Grandma.

 

We asked him what he wanted to do for his actual birthday, and he chose bowling and pizza. Everyone had something going on, so we headed to the bowling alley with just our little family. It was empty, and we were the only ones there for a little while! It made it so nice, Jade was able to fall asleep before people showed up.

I forgot my actual camera, so I only had my phone for pictures. Some of them are blurry, but it shows the fun we had. Linc doesn't look all that excited in any of these pictures, but he had a blast. He couldn't wait for his turn each round and was so sad when we finished. I loved these tiny bowling shoes on his little feet!

Jade is a little small for bowling, but she was there too! :) She just took a little snooze instead.

Ethan was so funny and dramatic! The older he gets, the funnier he is when it comes to certain activities.

 

"I did it!"

Toward the end Grandma showed up to celebrate with us for a few minutes.

After bowling, we headed over to Jack's pizza and had some awesomely delicious pizza!

When we got home, we broke out the leftover cake and ice cream, lit up a candle and sang again. Lincoln loved the singing! He sang to himself.

I love this little man so much. He is so tender hearted, and loves his brother and sister so much! He just idolizes Ethan and looks up to him. He misses him when he's not around. He has such a sweet spirit and we are so lucky to have him in our lives!

Happy birthday little man! I love your face!

Feelings

I'm going to start off by saying I'm not sure if this is the appropriate outlet for my feelings, but as I use my blog as a journal for myself, I suppose it is. This may get a little long, but hopefully it'll help.

When I had my boys, the struggle for me came during my pregnancies. It was a 9 month battle to get them here physically and mentally. Once they were here, I was so relieved and seemed to go back to normal. I always wondered what people were talking about when they talked about having postpartum depression. Why weren't they so over the top happy about this new little baby that they just brought into the world?? With Little Jade, my pregnancy was a nightmare of sickness up until week 14 or so and then it went away just like everyone says it's supposed to. (I never believed that with my boys ... it never happened with them). I had aches and pains and normal pregnancy symptoms, but it felt a lot easier than my previous two. I went into have her and I wasn't nervous or scared, I was just happy to be there and be able to meet my sweet little lady. She was adorable, feisty and one of a kind and I loved her immediately. In the weeks that followed, I started to feel like I wasn't quite myself. I didn't know if I was just tired and stressed because suddenly I had three little people to care for instead of just two. Maybe I was stressed about being a new parent again and being homesick, I didn't know. I started to wonder if maybe I was getting the baby blues and hoped that it would just pass by quickly.

I felt okay and through stressful nights of Jade screaming non stop in my ears, I was able to just tune the screaming out and just rock her until she gave up and fell back to sleep. I never felt like I wasn't in control or like I might hurt her, but I did start to feel like a prisoner in my own home. I didn't have a car to go anywhere even if I dared to with three kids. (I still don't ... our second car STILL needs to be fixed.) I swear Jade had colic up until 7-8 weeks and I wasn't about to take her out screaming non stop all the time. The only time I had to recover and re-coop was nap time, and I made sure that my boys both took one so I could try and have some sanity.  Ethan got increasingly more difficult to handle and we fought almost daily for a month or two and I just couldn't take it anymore. I finally figured out his trigger and it made life SO much more pleasant for both of us! After I figured out how to chill him out a bit, life seemed to settle down and I felt like it would just move forward and get better from there. I thought I was fine and maybe I had just been stressed.

My stress levels have just seemed to increase lately, to the point where my milk suddenly dried up out of the blue the other day. I had plenty in the morning when Jade woke up and then I wasn't able to really feed her for two feedings in a row, which just added a huge amount of stress and anxiety onto my shoulders and I knew there was no way my milk was coming back without help at that point. I researched online quickly and found something I thought would work, and thankfully it did. Within 45 or so minutes I had gotten some essential oils, and by the time Jade woke up (about 20 minutes after I used the oils) I had enough milk to feed her. Thank goodness.

I realized the other night that I'm pretty certain I am just one of those unlucky people who have had to deal with postpartum depression, and that unfortunately this time around, I got it. I haven't talked to my doctor or anything about it yet. I really did hope it would just go away and get better. So far, it hasn't. I have felt pretty lonely and again just stuck in my own world and in my house. Mart has been stressed and working a lot and isn't much help when he gets home and tries to get himself to unwind. I realized that apparently I have been unconsciously pushing people I love away from me without ever meaning to or even knowing I was doing it. Hearing about it just made me feel even more awful. I have definitely not been the mom that my children deserve or the mom that I want to be, and that makes me feel even more guilty. 

Now that I think I understand better what's going on, I am going to try and find a new perspective. Maybe I need to find something positive to focus on each day, even if it's just something small. I know that this too shall pass, but I just hope it's sooner rather than later.

Here's to a new outlook on life and hopefully some much better days to come! 

3 months

I cannot believe that my baby girl is already 3 months old! She's growing so fast and getting so big. Why can't babies stay small for longer?!?

Miss Jade at 3 months:

*She is still wearing a size 1 diaper
*She is wearing 0-3 month clothes and they fit her well now instead of baggy
*She has been consistently sleeping through the night for the last few weeks! (AWESOME!!) She will only wake up once every now and again.
*She loves her Mama! I can almost always get her to smile and coo at me, which is so much better than the constant screaming she used to do.
*She likes her binki more than she used to, but she prefers her fingers. Not her thumb, usually it's her pointer and middle fingers at the same time. Sometimes I'll catch her with her middle and her ring finger. 

*Sometimes I'll go check on her during a nap, and she'll just be laying there sucking her fingers. She doesn't make any noises, she just patiently waits for me to come get her. She's also figured out how to turn herself around and kick her legs until she hits the button on her crib noise maker. Little Miss Smarty Pants.
*She loves Ethan! He can almost always make her little face light up with the biggest smile!
*She still has greyish eyes
*Her hair is starting to grow back in and is getting thick
*She just fits right in with our little family!

Before pictures this month, I decided to girlie up the t-rex, Rexanne. I made her a Jade signature headband so they will always match. :)

Now on to the pictures of my sweet 3 month old!

Love this little peanut! Now we just need time to slow down a little so we can enjoy her tiny for a little longer. :)