1 Month Update

When people ask me these days how we're doing, the first word that often pops into my mind is "chaos." I'm finding it very difficult to enjoy my kids instead of snapping at Kiera + Blake all day long for doing things they're not supposed to do because they're bored and I'm busy with Haley. "Love is patient" and "love is slow to anger" are 2 things I REALLY need help with. It's especially hard when I'm not getting enough sleep. Haley is up once a night and the last few nights it has only been for 20-40 minutes, but before that she was often up for an hour minimum and quite often up to 2 hours. My back gets really sore from rocking her to sleep. That being said, we've gone on quite a few outings with all 3 kids and Kiera + Blake have had a lot of fun and Haley has slept in the stroller! My other kids never slept in the stroller, so I find this miraculous! We've gone out to eat, we've gone to various parks, gone out for ice cream a couple of times, and have gone shopping a couple of times. We've done a lot more things in the first month of Haley's life than we did after Kiera + Blake were first born. Praise the Lord for a content baby!! I find putting the kids to bed VERY challenging to do by myself when Jared is working at his pizza job. We have managed to make it to church every Sunday since Haley was born, so I think that's pretty good!

Kiera starts Preschool tomorrow and we are excited about that! It's sort of like a home school Preschool in that it's a few Moms getting together at our church to do it, so I have to be there the whole time, which means I'm going with all 3 kids. I'll mostly be helping to take care of all the younger kids while the older ones are doing Preschool and then once a week I'll be doing a couple of songs with the Preschoolers. Kiera is most excited to wear her Strawberry Shortcake backpack and her new shoes. :) I think it will be good to get us all out of the house twice a week. Our goal is for our kids to get a Biblical world view and to enter Kindergarten solid in their faith, so the things they'll be doing this year will be Bible-based and Christ-centered, which I'm very excited about!

Life is interesting right now and there is hardly ever a dull moment. I feel like I'll never get time to myself ever again, but I know that's not true! Haley is one month old today, so we survived the first month! I hope each month gets better and better! I am very thankful for Netflix, as we don't have t.v., so Kiera has been watching "Little Bear," "Berenstain Bears," "Max + Ruby," and "The Backyardigans." I did no cooking for over 3 weeks and now I've started making simple suppers and that's going well. My stomach issues are almost all better, so I praise God for that! What a tremendous blessing to not have to make 2 lunches and 2 suppers every day with 3 kids 3 and under in the house! In spite of this being a challenging phase of our lives, we are totally blessed!