Can I say failure?!

So, obviously I need to go to bed-- it's past 9:30-- Isaac will probably be awake in about 2 hours, Matt will be home from work by then too...... needless to say-- I'll be woken up AT LEAST twice tonight, and that's a positive outlook. :)

I was just looking through random people's blogs and I found that I have failed as a mother! :) TONS of blogs (I just clicked the button that said "next blog" at the top) are about people's children, and I will admit-- all of these bloggers only had one child and all of these only children were under age 1...... but still, these parents go through month by month posting pictures and little ditties about what their kids is doing each month. And Megan, I know you're good at this too.....

I, for one, cannot tell you anything BIG about Isaac's 6 months of life. I can tell you he's 6 months, weighs over 18 pounds, laughs very heartily and loves to eat-- and that he bite me (while he was nursing) tonight....... Other than that, all these beautiful little lists that these wonderful parents can make about their children-- I can't do it.

Hope my kids will forgive me for it. Luckily I never did it for the first born-- so the 3rd born can't tell me that he was left out! ;) I can admit though that Addison had 3 photo albums complete of her by 3 months...... Isaac doesn't even have an album at 6 months-- I mean, there are pictures to put in, but I don't have a book to put them in yet!

Good night!

Death

My Grandma Pickard has been failing in health for the past year.... last summer she wasn't doing well and they thought she would pass away before the summer was over. She's held on this long-- and really was doing pretty well over the last few months, however the end of February she went to the hospital and spent at least a week there-- and was then released to the nursing home. She's retaining fluids, has heart failure, kidney failure, etc.... her body is shutting down. She's on a lot of pain meds and they have stopped with her other medications, so it's seems to be a waiting game right now.

I've been trying to find the right words to talk to Addison about Grandma dying. I didn't want to tell her that she's "sick" or "old" because little kids can sometimes get the wrong idea and associate these words with anyone who we say is "sick" or "old".... My mom and sister suggested I just tell Addison that Grandma is getting ready to go to Heaven and live with Jesus there. Tonight while driving home from church (in the dark), I decided it was time to talk to her about it-- so I just said "Addison did you know that Grandma Pickard is getting ready to go to Heaven and live with Jesus".... she said "Yeah, so she's dying?" I was shocked she put that together so fast. After that her concerns were "who's going to live at her house", "who else is going to die right now" (we just had Matt's uncle die a couple weeks ago).....

It's very interesting to speak with a 4 year old about death-- and to see all the pieces getting put together for them. To have 2 funerals in a matter of weeks (I assume) seems a little confusing too-- but she has asked some of the most amazing questions about death: where do we go when we die, won't we miss the person who dies, how do we get to Heaven, etc....

Chores

I thought it might be fun to start a "chore chart" for Addison this week.... was a very simple design-- 7 days and 4 chores per day. The chores weren't very interesting ones (change your underwear, brush your teeth, brush your hair and make your bed)..... so day 1 she completed all the chores very excitedly. That night before bed she changed her underwear about 20 times hoping she could get more stickers on the chart. I told her that once all the squares had stickers (7 days) that we'd bring her out to the local ice cream store. So day 2 she excitedly got up and got things done. At nap time she got the chart down, and put stickers in ALL the remaining squares and then VERY seriously wants to know if it's time to go get ice cream. I told her no, and that I must not have explained it very well and she said "dad will have to explain it, he has a better voice anyway."

Milk

On the way to church tonight Addison made comment about Isaac eating sweet potatoes..... which reminded me that I forgot to bring food (oatmeal & applesauce, sweet potatoes or pears) along to feed him. I said "shoot I forgot to bring food with for him".... Addison VERY seriously said, "don't worry mom you can feed him milk"; I said yes, she was right about that-- so that was good. She continued on "mom, you didn't forget food, you can feed him milk from your tummy, so that's good". :) Then she said "how did the milk get in your tummy?" It was like after all this time it was the first time she had ever thought about how the milk got there!

Pictures

This week I was putting up new pictures of the kids in the living room. I told Addison that we needed to take down the picture of her & Levi (Levi is only 6 months in the picture)... She started looking at another picture of Levi and said (kinda sad voice) "We're going to take down the picture of Levi cause we don't like him anymore?"

Duluth

After looking at all of Matt's days off between now and when the baby is due to arrive-- yesterday was the only day we had with no plans/ appointments, etc.... We haven't been to Duluth since before Levi was born and I thought we should go up there. We finally decided we'd just run up for the day-- see some boats coming and going and spend the day carefree and have some fun.

We left our house about 9 am-- I was very crabby and didn't feel very good-- I'm on Terbutline (sp?) to keep me from going into labor right now, but it makes me really shaky and feeling kinda gross. So, I was just trying to get out the door, etc... We began driving, things were going fine. Matt commented that when we got to Grantsburg we'd put gas in the van. I thought that was fine-- I didn't have a map to look at so I was just waiting till we got to a gas station to get a map. After we went through Danbury we realized that Grantsburg is on a different road and so we wouldn't be getting to Grantsburg. By this time we were down to less than 50 miles left on our tank of gas, and knew we had more than 50 miles till the next town. So we were holding our breath-- finally with 20 miles left on our tank we see a little station. Whew!

We continue down the road about 10 miles to arrive at Pattison State Park. We paid our entrance fee and went to park to look at the waterfall. Matt flipped on the blinker and I noticed something sounded wierd. By the time we were in the lot I noticed that the clock was off, the computer module was off, the spedometer was off, the fan blowers were off, etc.... So I told Matt that it looked like our alternator had gone out on the van-- UGH!!!! He shut it off, and yep, it wouldn't start again. We got someone to jump us, and started driving up 35 toward Superior-- the van was chugging away and right then there was a service place-- WHEW!

We pulled in, the owner came out and he had us pull up to the garage and had a guy come pull the alternator out. It's about noon by now, so Levi is CRABBY (naptime) and we hadn't eaten lunch yet. They got us squared away in under an hour so we were happy about that. Unfortunately, when we left for the day I had looked at our checkbook and told Matt we had $305 for the next two weeks.................. he went in to pay for the service and it came t $340. Eek. So he had paid for it out of our checking account and so we left feeling a little sick.

We finally arrive in Superior and then into Duluth-- and Duluth was a disaster. There were people everywhere-- it was unbelievable how it could be that busy on a Tuesday afternoon!! Levi fell asleep in Superior-- so I told Matt to get to a beach and he and Addison could go swim and Levi could stay asleep for awhile. Of course by the time we got to a beach and got ready-- Levi was awake. We let the kids play in Lake Superior for awhile, but they were too crazy, we thought we'd try to park in Canal Park once more. It was too crazy there, so we gave up and left Duluth. Went bckto Pattison, let the kids swim and play there and then looked at the waterfall.

By the time we got home last night I think we were a little less crabby-- but it was a maddening day to go for a FUN day-- to come home BROKE for the next 2 weeks and really didn't get to do anything we had wanted to do. Grr.

Pretend

Levi has started a new important thing in his life--PRETEND. To be honest, I don't remember when Addison started pretending things, but am so suprised that Levi has already started it. Addison pretends things all day long-- everyday so I'm used to it-- and I know that it's a positive thing they need to do.
On Sunday we were playing outside at the playground at church and I saw Levi walk over to the picnic table and pretend to grab something to eat-- and then stick his hands in his mouth and chew up the pretend object. He walked away, turned around and went back to the table over and over again to continue eating it! Since then I've noticed him doing lots of pretend things. Yesterday Matt was flossing his teeth and Levi was watching and pretty soon had his hands up just like Matt has his and was doing it too. :) Age 1 is a lot of fun, they learn more and more every day.