Well, Spring is here and we are having some lovely days.
We got a big dumping of snow Friday evening, which caused us to be shortstaffed at work, so I stayed and worked a double in exchange for Saturday evening off.
Sunday, Ry and the kids spent three hours in the back yard building a snow fort. At it's height (it's been shrinking everyday) it was probably 3.5 ft tall and is sort of circle shaped with an approx diameter of 4-5 feet. They made snow bricks with two big tupperware containers and used those to build it up. Pretty cool!
Monday, Ryan came home at 8:30 and I thought he had forgotten something, but actually his work for the day had been cancelled so we had an unexpected day all together with nothing scheduled. Before we were married we would call days where neither of us worked, "Ryan and Katy days" and we would make an effort to do something special (though back then the most we could usually afford was to ride our bikes around the lakes and end up with a cone at McD's).
So, we declared it a "Ryan, Katy, Jossy, Zeff and Keian day"! We packed the kids up and headed over to the Science Museum. We got there at 10:30 and didn't leave till 1:45 which is an incredibly long museum outing for us, but the kids were perfect. We spent some time with (of course) the chinasaurs. This time we brought a roll of kite string and rolled out and cut a length of string as long as the Mimenchiasaur. We checked out some other stuff and caught an awesome movie, "Stomp's World Beat," that the kids and I absolutely loved but Ryan and the baby literally fell asleep to.
Yesterday (Tuesday) my friend's kids (g5,b3)got dropped off around nine. We played inside till we'd had snack at ten then we went to play in the backyard. The big kids were having a great time with the fort but baby was just really trying to get covered with mud. So we kind of moved to the front yard, then all agreed to take a walk to look for signs of spring. We had only gotten 1/2 way around our block when I passed my friends house and she came out to say her friend was over and did we want to go to the coffeeshop with them. Well, I wanted to, but baby was wet and muddy and our stroller had broken so I wasn't able to take him that far. Fortunately, (she has 3 kids too) she had a snowsuit he could wear as well as a stroller that she let me keep! So we all went to the coffeeshop where grownups could talk and kids could play in the toy area. A little after noon we headed home so we could have lunch. Ryan was home so he had lunch with us and then agreed to stay with the sleepy baby while I took big kids to the zoo. We had a great time on the Minnesota trail, again as well as the Kid's Den. I am always a little nervous that I am going to lose other people's children, so I had the kids holding hands while we were anywhere that was crowded. These kids are all pretty obedient, but of course they were forgetting to hold hands from time to time. So, I had the boys and girls each come up with a team name and we had a competition to see which team could hold hands with the least reminders. The girls were the princesses and the boys were the godzillas! It worked really well and I only had to give two or three more reminders to hold hands for the rest of our trip!
I just love having a pile of kids around me. I am really starting to feel like I know what I am doing as a parent (sometimes) which is not too bad since I have been working at it for almost 6.5 years! It seems that I pretty regularly have 4 or 5 or 6 kids with me and I just love it. I wish we could afford, and my body could handle having a really large family. There is a nurse at my work who was pregnant a little before I was with Keian with her fourth child. Well, that turned out to be twins! And now she is pregnant again! With twins! For a total of 7 kids! Am I weird to be totally jealous? Everyone I tell this to is horrified but I am just so happy for her and want it to be ME! Actually the thought of being pregnant with twins scares me (pre-term labor, c-section), but I am kind of hoping that our next baby could be twins. Her last twins were term, born vaginally, breastfed, etc, so it can be done! I have actually gotten emotional thinking about what if I was in labor with twins and I was trying for a vaginal birth and they made me have an epidural cath placed just in case. Literally, tears have come to my eyes regarding that. Typing that makes me realize that is a titchy bit irrational, but I never put off worrying about something to tomorrow that I can worry about today! Okay, I must be hormonal. And having pregnancy jealousy, because other people with babies the same age and younger than my baby are having subsequent babies now, and we are supposed to be waiting for another 15 months. Waaah! Maybe if I like kids so much I should get off the computer, turn off the Barney and get these kids outside!
Peace.