School Carnival

I need to catch up, including our trip to Idaho for Spring Break, but thought I'd record a "typical" night, like tonight.

I worked today, the last of my week plus I've been staying up WAAAAAY too late the last few nights.  Like 2am late.  So I was already super tired today and my back was hurting.  (The back pains, that used to plague me in the past but that have subsided the last few years since attempting to take it a little easier at home, are returning now. :-(  Between keeping much too busy at home (which always resulted in my back hurting) lately, combined with sitting all day at work, it's just a bad combination.)  Anyway, I was tired.  I was hurting.  But there's only one school carnival each year so I thought I'd better suck it up and take the kids.  Plus I didn't have the energy to make dinner, lol.

Once in I didn't see Brennan again until it was time to go, saw Asher occasionally, kept just half an eye on Hollyn, who thankfully just wanted to do the bouncehouse repeatedly, and chased Kieran.  He kept me busy enough.  When he was jealous of Asher's balloon sword I got in line to get a balloon for him - I envisioned two or three of the long balloons being shaped into a sphere, since he just wanted to throw it like a ball anyway.  So we stood in line.  And stood there, and stood some more.  We waited for like 45 minutes.  During which time I couldn't put Kieran down or he'd of run off and I didn't want to lose my place since I'd committed so much time to this endeavor already.  He was NOT happy to be held.  In fact he fussed so much he threw up on me.  Fine.  It wasn't much.  I took of my sweater, turned it inside out and tied it around my waste.  And we waited some more.  The kind lady in front of us, after asking what shape I was requesting, said we could go ahead of her since it would be fast.  Boy was it.  When I said I wanted a ball shape, the man got out a tiny little regular-type balloon, filled it with a half second worth of air, and handed the 5-inch-diameter ball to Kieran.  Kieran was delighted enough with it, but I could have spent 10 minutes going home and blowing up my own balloon and saved myself 40 minutes, a thrown up on shirt, a back now absolutely KILLING me, and Kieran's tears.  Sigh.  I'm too nice to have clarified, plus felt bad for everyone still standing in line.  Oh, and by this time I was becoming increasingly worried that my special visiting Aunt was making an appearance.  Through my clothes.  Which is why I was going to wrap my sweater around my waist anyway as soon as I had that dang balloon toy for Kieran so I could put him down for a minute.  Still, having that worry hanging over my head didn't help at all.

So that was fun.  Later I was called to come to Asher who had REALLY thrown up after bouncing in the bouncehouse.  Which bouncing he'd done after eating too much cotton candy and other junk.  It was already being taken care of by another Mom who kept shooing me away as she could see I had Kieran in my arms while I tried to help.

Somehow I managed to corral them ALL out at the end, and in only 2 trips!  Kieran was sticky from head to foot from suckers, Hollyn lost like 2lbs in sweat from that bouncehouse, and apparently Brennan just informed me that he'd been on the monkey bars and wacked his head bad enough that the parents outside who witnessed it advised him to watch out for memory loss. (He said he felt fine, even right after it happened, but shared the story with me since the Moms told him to.)  I wish I could say this was a particularly difficult evening out for us.  But let's be honest.  This is pretty much how it always goes.  Just another day in the life of the Stevensons.  Nothing to see here folks, move along.

And now, an Ibuprophen later, I'm hitting the sack at 9pm.  I'm beat!

Circus!

Monday night only the circus came to town!  I would not have even known a thing about it if I hadn't happened to hit the UPS store on Saturday and Judi hadn't happened to be with me and noticed a flyer/coupon.  It sounded like a fun FHE and boy was it.  The kids were still talking about it today.  Almost all my shots are of the back of the kids' heads, but I guess that's to be expected.

Asher and Brennan watching some clown action

You can't tell, but she's smiling for the camera while the motorcycle rode the wire above.

Backs of heads and selfies were basically my only option.  Neither kind worked well with Kieran on my nap because as soon as my phone was out he'd lunge for it.  Poor guy's mad he can't reach it sufficiently.

Make a silly face, Kier!

Intermission

Watching the other kids who's parents paid for elephant rides, face painting, photos with the Tiger, etc.  Their Mom is cheap and lame.  Thankfully they're good sports about it and seemed sufficiently thankful just to be there.

Elfish Asher

Watching the Tiger show

In our seats, waiting for the show to begin

Everybody cram in, my arms are only so long!

 I took a chance by bringing Kieran along and expecting him to sit on my lap for several hours.  He did SO good though.  We got there early, which meant we actually got seating in the bleachers (barely), and front row to boot, instead of sitting on the ground in front of the bleachers.  Kieran stayed on my lap during that crazy, crowded, chaotic wait while I somehow managed the overly excited other kids.  He sat on my lap the whole first "half" of the show, even though he couldn't really see anything from his spot.  Intermission went down hill real quick though as he decided he was quite DONE sitting and wanted to run away.  Thankfully the second half was only about half an hour, much much shorter than the first portion.  I was so relieved that he spent those first two hours just chilling and not fussing.  He's not generally a lap sitter - hence the trouble with Sacrament Meeting each Sunday.  He does great hanging out in a stroller, but he does not usually tolerate laps or being held, oddly, even if each thing is used at the same event/activity.  So, he was surprisingly great last night!

*******************************************************************

We enjoyed a short-but-lovely visit with Barry and Judi last weekend.  The sun shone (wait, it does that in Oregon?  Never for visitors, what a treat!) so there were walks and playground visits, there was chatting, and Judi even made us all dinner on Saturday.

Brennan showed off some music he's working on, which eventually led to a quartet free-for-all.  It was, ummm, loud.  But fun to see them all enjoying the piano together.

OMSI 2/28/15

Maze Room - only not building a maze

In the 0-6 room, Kieran and Hollyn had a great time.  There's a large sand "box", some water play, and the most exciting for Kieran - balls that float!

Are you noticing a theme of who's in the photos?  Guess which kids I ended up watching over, lol.  It's nothing personal Brennan.

That photobomb is actually a photo.  Sooooo... photophotobomb.

How cute is that face?!?!  I'm so lucky I get to smooch it any time I want!

I don't know why or how it came up, but for some reason the book "The Giver" came up in a conversation with Brennan.  Since neither of us have read it and he'd never even heard of it I can't fathom how its existence came to be spoken about by us, but Brennan was intrigued by what I thought the book was about and checked it out at his school library the very next day, yesterday.

He wanted me to add it to my reading out loud routine, but I have a hard enough time being consistent with even one book at a time.  But I picked it up and began reading it myself while the kids were getting ready for bed and despite taking a break to get some things done, finished it about 1am.  On a work night, meaning I had to get up extra early this morning.  Meh.  Who ever said growing older is the same thing as growing wiser. ;-)  Anyway, the thought provoking concepts were in my dreams and on my mind all day today.  I related several of the characters to my children, and interestingly the character Asher and my own Asher seem to have a lot of similarities, particularly about standing out for being well liked.  I am excited to start quoting now, "Asher, thank you for your childhood", in my case because he's delighted me with his. :-)  I nearly cried for the neighbor boy known for being scattered and disheveled - who couldn't get the hang of all the rules regarding order and "perfection".  I worried for his future, about his label in that community because he sounded just like my dear Brenny.  Anyway, enough book review.  It's just what's on my mind today.

I was started on some new stuff at work today.  Spent a good part of the day watching tutorials and learning stuff about Customer Relationship Management and Marketing.  Cool beans.

So I'm at a sort of crossroads right now about what to pursue, if anything.  Ugh.  Crossroads.  I was more and more liking the idea of pursuing a Master's in Speech Pathology with the hope of working as a pediatric speech therapist in a private practice.  There are many pros to that path, but the cons are the amount of time until completion and the accumulation of more student loans.  On the other hand, I'm already being trained in some skills at my job at Underwater Audio, which means I'm being PAID to learn - the opposite of college.  And I already enjoy what I'm learning and doing right now.  So that sounds good, however I KNOW I can't go terribly far where I am and the earning potential is not as much - we all want to earn more per work hour, right? Not to mention what's the point of working just to pay for the childcare? And I can't be sure what I'm learning at UA will transfer anywhere else.  I may want or need to pursue a marketing degree anyway, putting me back where I started.  What to do, what to do...

I think this is the first time in my life I'm being faced with BIG decisions and struggling over them.  For many it's what college/major (the first time) and who to marry.  I chose the only church school to accept me.  I didn't agonize over marrying Brian, I knew I wanted to and knew he'd be a stable, loving, eternal companion.  Easy peasy.  I didn't struggle about whether or not to serve a mission... I've just gone along in life with the routes that pleased me most.  I mean, I pray about my decisions and tried to be ready should I be warned about wrong courses, but I've never STRUGGLED over any decisions.

Until now.  I'm late in the game I suppose but apparently I'm not getting away scott-free in this life as I was beginning to think.  I've come to realize I don't care much for the tough choices.  (Which is what made "The Giver" so meaningful to me right now, I suppose.)

The kids are all doing very well.  Brennan finished his OBOB (Oregon Battle of the Books) competition, which means as a parent coach, so have I.  Whew.  It was fun, but became sort of a bother.  I'm always torn between the guilt of not volunteering at the kids' school, and the guilt of getting friends to babysit so I CAN help at school.  Now that I'm calling in so many more babysitting favors I've started sucking it up and taking the littles with me when I do things at the school.  On the plus side, they're a hit among staff and students alike.  Brennan's piano lessons are coming along.  As the weather gets nicer its harder to get practice time in because he relishes his time with friends outside so much, and I hate to decline his requests to play OUTSIDE like we're supposed to let/make our kids do more of, as a rule.  But he'd doing very well with it.

Asher is doing well also.  Not really anything I can think of to report about him.  He loves his Sunday School teacher very VERY a lot (that's an Asherism).  Not like a crush, he just loves her.  You know, this reminds me of his blankie.  What I mean is, Asher had no special attachment to anything in particular until he was about 3 or so when, in preparation for a trip to Idaho, I planted the seed in his mind that this one blanket was special.  I named it blankie, I talked about it being HIS blankie and he bought it hook, line, and sinker.  From just that little seed I planted he immediately took it as if, "duh", it's always been his blankie.  He still cherishes it as his favorite.  In this case, I only had to suggest how lucky he was to have Sister Neuffer as his teacher, that I liked her very much and thought he would as well.  And bam, a special friendship was born.  Of course he has received special comfort from her during class when he was very upset once, and because he invited her to his birthday party, she stopped by to visit with him on his birthday and give him a little gift.  Those efforts didn't hurt, or course.  And they certainly solidified Asher's feelings!  I just adore seeing him love his church teacher, lol.

Hollyn, dear sweet Hollyn.  She's doing well too.  Knock on wood, but I think the terrible twos/threes are about over.  At least when it comes to messes and getting into things.  As she gets older and more capable she gets more helpful and obedient as well.  Still three, of course.  But I think the worst is over for now.  I am loving the progress she's made in various areas.  When she started preschool - at the youngest age of any of my kids so far - I was concerned because she'd be with 4-5 year olds who can write their names and everything.  She not only couldn't write, she still just scribbled when she colored, she didn't know color names, I don't think she recognized any numbers/letters yet (now I can't remember, she may have known a couple) and I'm not sure she could count perfectly to 10.  Not out of lack of brightness, just out of lack of time from Mama focusing on those things with her.  She started preschool and all of a sudden a couple weeks later I realized she could draw stick figures, she could write much of her name without help, could count to 20 almost perfectly, and knows her colors.  So she's really taking off and I'm enjoying watching it.

Kieran and his ears!  We took care of a pretty bad outer ear infection and he's a happy, chill little dude again.  But the poor guy is always alternating every few weeks between happy, perfect baby and grouchy, pained, clingy monster.  Don't you wish they could tell you when and where their aches and pains are?  Kieran still isn't saying a whole lot in English.  He says Mama and just recently Uh Oh, as well as Ball and Balloon.  And that's about all I can think of.  The rest is still Kieranese.  He has a lot of babble-sounds and sequences that are repeated so they may mean certain things for which I have no idea.  Or maybe they're just his favorite sounds to make.  Regardless, it's cute.  I sure love my little Kier-Bear Snuggle Bug.

I had heard Brennan sleep walk last night, but was still surprised to find him here when I came up to go to bed myself.

Receiving some beads at the Blue and Gold Banquet

 I was in charge of decorations for a YW activity of an Unusual Talent Show.  I bought balloons knowing they'd be donated to my children (particularly Kieran and ball/balloon King) afterwards, and sure enough he cried when I took them to do the decorating.  They returned of course and they're the first things Kieran goes for when he wakes up.  With four of them floating around there's always been one for Kieran to grab as he goes by, especially when I'm carrying him. :-)