First day of school!

 Oh  my goodness, I am so far behind in blogging!  I'm just now getting around to the first day of school, now that it is the last day of the month!  Because of Annie's birth we decided to start school the first week of October, to give me some breathing room.  Little did we know that Annie girl would be so difficult and we would be running to the doctor a couple of times  a week.  If I had known that perhaps I would have put it off even longer! :)  But it is actually going well, if you're talking about the basics.  I'm so proud of how well Noah is doing with his reading and handwriting.  If you had asked me last year if he would be progressing so quickly I would have definitely said NO!!  Love it when they surprise me!

 So it is a German tradition to give a schultute on the first day of a child's school career - in Germany I think they don't consider that till first grade, but obviously we say kindergarten!  I got one as a little girl - I still remember it in all its shiny purple gloriousness!  They hang it in the tree and it is there when you get off the bus after school. 

Well, in my research to buy one off the internet I discovered that these days people make cones for the little kids too - just a smaller version so they don't feel left out.  So my sweet momma made these both for the boys, and Josh and I filled them up with goodies!  Noah was so funny cause he couldn't find his in the yard - you can see Wyatt found his right away.

I cannot get these italics to go off.  Seriously.  I have no clue why it is doing this.  Sorry.  Yes, I am aware that I have HIDEOUS ghost ghoul things hanging in my tree.  Noah found them at US Toys for a dollar two years ago, and he suckered me into buying them.  Now he INSISTS on hanging them up every year.  The boy seriously loves scary stuff.

They had so much fun going in the house and getting all the goodies out - and then they wore the cones around on their head!! :) Poor Wyatt had a hard time cause just about everything in his broke - his pens, his pencil sharpener, and then he even dropped his lollipop on the kitchen floor and it shattered into a million pieces.  He was so sad!!

Wyatt has also been doing his school, which he loves.  He also wants to do Kumon workbook pages ALL day long, so it gives me a few minutes of peace to work with Noah.  I am pleased with Noah's phonics and math curriculum, although I still want to add in another math program.  When we get to science the kids like it and I am very pleased with the curriculum, but honestly it has fallen by the wayside as of late.  Hopefully we'll get back to it this week.  We're also working our way through reading the books from the booklist in this book.  And our favorite part of the school day is our Bible lesson - I just love this curriculum!  Can't wait for the kids to learn more - I'm way impressed with all of the details they have picked up already.  It has been much harder than I anticipated to get everything done, but the hardest part has not been school - its finding the time to get the normal life stuff all done.  But I wouldn't trade this precious time with my babies for anything in the world!

Bath time!

 It may be hard to tell from Annie's face, but she has actually started to love bath time!  She was smiling like crazy and then we got the camera out and all we got was this concerned face, of course!  If she is frantic and hysterical with all this reflux madness, the bath is seriously the only thing that will calm her down.  Of course she loses it again as soon as you dress her, but at least we get a few minutes peace, right?

 She is extremely concerned with what is going on outside the window - which is nothing, of course, cause the window looks straight into the fence.  Who knows! 

And, bath time for Annie would not be complete without the boys there shoving toys into her face!

The things we let our children do outside

 Yes, they are in their underwear.  Yes, they have McDonald's Clone Wars tattoos on.  And yes, they are outside.  It's how we roll over here at the Marlatt house. 

 They got these tool boxes for Christmas last year, and they are still such a hit.  For some reason they like to put on all the accessories and then just dig up stuff in the flower beds.  Not quite their intended use, but still fun to do, right?  We're still not quite sure why a tool kit has rainbow suspenders in it, but we just go with the flow.  I didn't even realize how absurd they look until Josh ran in to get the camera.   And as a side note, the reason they are always naked outside is that they get in the sprinkler and then take off their wet clothes!

And here's how Annie spent the afternoon, as usual! :)

What happens when I sleep in...

 Can you tell that Josh loves Star Wars just as much as the boys?  He took some duct tape and made double bladed light sabers.  It is pretty scary around here with these two flipping these bad daddies around.  I think it is easy to see why they love their Daddy so much and can't wait for him to come home every morning!

Annie has toys too!

Yes, the day finally came for Annie muffin to get a toy down from the closet!  Can you tell how excited the boys were about this?  I swear, Wyatt has asked me every single day since we got home from the hospital to get this down for Annie to play with.  So I got it out just to humor him, but she actually really liked it!  I remember when we got this toy down for Noah J.  He must have been around 4 weeks old or so, and he was able to deal with it for about 30 seconds, and then he just broke out into frantic crying.  He was so easily overwhelmed, and still is!  I'm happy to say Annie did much better.  Maybe just because she is so used to being overwhelmed by these two boys all day long!

 I had a teeny tiny happy window, between all the crying and trying to get her to eat, so I wasn't really sure how this would go.  She surprised me so much cause she just loved it!  She even loved the boys getting in her face and talking to her.  Wyatt cracks me up cause he is obsessed with the idea that she needs a toy to play with at all times.  He ran off and got her little pink elephant off of her carseat and laid it down next to her.  He's so sweet!

I love this last photo cause you can see how she is so seriously concentrating on the zebra toy.  Like she just can't quite figure it out.... :)  She was so incredibly chatty that I made a video of it.  Neither of the boys were chatty like this little girl is.... she just coos and ahhs when she is happy or excited.  Maybe she will actually speak before she's 2 years old!  I won't know what to do with myself!!

I loved this small piece of my day cause it is a teeny peek at what Annie can be like when she actually feels good.  She is doing much better now that she is on the second medication, but still we are trying to tweak things and get it just right.  And of course getting her to eat is a constant battle.  Although we did get her to eat a whopping 19 ounces yesterday!!  That's a big deal around here.  But things are looking up!

Dewberry Farm

Last week we took the kiddos to Dewberry Farm, and they had a great time.  I am so glad we were able to go as part of the CHA fieldtrip.  We were really excited cause all our best friends were able to go too.  I just LOVED the pumpkin stroll thing..... they didn't have that last time we were there.  They had a barn type building all blacked out, and there was a path lit with Christmas lights that led you through hundreds of lit, carved pumpkins.  It was really beautiful! 

 Annie girl did pretty well, although it was SO incredibly windy, I'm sure she was just inhaling dust the whole time.

Josh took the boys on the hayride to the pumpkin patch to pick out teeny tiny pumpkins.  You can see they loved it!

 They had tons of fun on the other play things, like the rope jump into the hay.  Wyatt was so excited to try it, but then chickened out when he got to the top of the hay.  Noah LOVED it!  Noah's favorite part of the day, though, was jumping on the pillow.   Not only does he love jumping, but he got to do it with his older crush, Catie.  It is so funny looking through all the pictures cause you can just see how much he loves her.  He has a smile on his face in all of them, but then when we get to the pictures of him and her holding hands and jumping you can see that it is just pure bliss!!

 When we were looking at these pictures with my parents he pointed out Catie in each and every picture.  He even went so far as to say, "Catie  sure looks pretty in that shirt!  I didn't even know she was going to wear that today."  lol :)

 And to make the day even better, Catie rode in Noah's barrel on the train ride.  Could it get any better than that? Not to Noah J.  And Wyatt was super thrilled to get to ride with Natalie.

 And as Noah so properly narrated to my parents when we looked at the pictures, "the three momma's"!! (and Olivia!)

Fun times!!

Airport field trip!!

 Well, I'm so lost and confused about time these days I really have no clue when we did this.  Last week?  The week before?  It was definitely October, that much I know!  We took the kids to Hooks airport for a field trip with our homeschool group. 

 The boys got to play around in a flight simulator, and then they let the kids get in a couple of airplanes and fool around.  They were quite excited about the planes!  I have to say, though, that I would be a bit nervous to actually fly in these planes after these kids were in them.  They were rough!!!  And the airport folks just let them do whatever they wanted.  I guess planes are sturdier than I picture them to be? 

While the boys loved the planes, they were mostly excited cause their best friends were able to come.  We did our best to get a group shot of the kids, but that is pretty hard to do with so many little ones!  Noah was especially tickled cause we let him hold Annie all by himself for the picture - you can see how happy he is about it!

After the plane ordeal we had a picnic lunch at the pond that is at the airport.  And this was truly the boys favorite part of the day.  Seriously - they both said that when we had our nightly 'what was your favorite part of the day" conversation over dinner.  They ate only a tiny bit of their picnic lunches, and then fed the ducks the rest of it.  Quite exciting, evidently!  Noah kept telling everyone later on how he didn't get to eat his lunch cause the ducks needed it.  Ummmmm, not quite.  I think it was more one little boy who doesn't like PB&J and was thrilled that he had an excuse to not eat it!!

Little Annie muffin even enjoyed the nice weather in her adorable little dress that Corrie got her!  So excited that we caught this cute picture of her smiling while she was all dolled up!!  I really can't even believe that she is old enough to be smiling at us.  It just breaks my heart she is growing up so quickly!  At 4 weeks she weighed 8 lb 14 oz, so I guess she is still pretty tiny.  We just finally got her into size one diapers - the boys wore those weeks ago.  Maybe she's going to be a wee thing?

Our little angel

 From here Josh got to take Annie out to the waiting room to meet her brothers while I was whisked off to a labor and delivery room to nurse and recover in.  You can see how pleased the boys were to finally see their sister!

Like I said in an earlier post, they actually let me nurse right away, but they were still in the middle of all the recovery stuff.  You can see in this picture they are still taking my temp, but I got to hold my baby.  It was so great!!  She actually got to nurse about 30 minutes after she was delivered, and she did a great job!  She was wide awake - it was so much easier than waiting a few hours till they are conked out!!

Now here is where the ridiculousness began!  As I am laying there focusing on nursing I notice that Josh has kind of stopped taking pictures and is just standing over by the window.  And then he starts calling the nurse by name, which was just bizarre to me.  The man almost passed out!!!!!  Yes, a half hour after the surgery he thinks he is going to pass out.  So immediately all the nurses rush over to tend to him while I am laying there in disbelief!  They start going over this list of symptoms, and it even went so far that a nurse had to cut off his scrubs!!!  Yes, he sat there while someone cut his pants off of him.  So they're getting him juice and sandwiches, and a bucket to puke into.  I felt concerned for the poor guy, but at the same time I just had to laugh!  The nurse grabbed the camera and got a shot of him sitting over on the couch recovering!  I'm so glad we at least have a picture to commemorate the moment!

After all three of us recovered we went to our assigned room and the boys finally got to meet their sister! You can see how much they were instantly in love with her!

4 weeks later, they are still this much in love with her.  The girl doesn't get a spare moment to breathe without having one of the boys in her face talking to her and kissing her.

These next few pictures are my favorites - they perfectly capture the lighting in the room later that night with just the three of us after everyone left.  It is such a special time where you get to finally breathe and get to examine all the little details you haven't had the chance to see yet.  And everything is just so warm and cozy - you're holding your baby and dozing in and out for hours.  It is so great!

Ohhhhhh, she is just so beautiful.  You just have to wonder what she is dreaming about......