Tornado Bunker

Last Friday we had some pretty severe weather in the area (as most people, probably all reading this, know). Going into last Friday, the weather forecast was that there would be tornadoes. I don't ever remember being told that there would almost definitely be tornadoes. Mathew was supposed to have a friend over in the afternoon, but I told him we were going to cancel it due to the forecast. I suppose Matthew has just hit a developmental age of being more aware of consequence of things, but he was really shaken by the thought that a tornado could be coming. He fought tears all morning (not very successfully, either!) He was most worried about Jonathan - so sweet. And he was very concerned about other family members, asking if they had basements (specifically, Daddy at work). He was also very worried about his toys and our house. I almost kept him home from school because he was so emotional about it. So before we left for school in the morning we started to build a tornado bunker. We flipped the couch upside down to protect us. While the boys were at school I gathered things that could be helpful if the weather really did get bad. I had snacks, drinks, flashlight, and activities to do in the dark if we lost power. My mom came over, too, because she does not have a basement. We built a toy bunker for Matthew to put his favorite toys in (don't tell him that it was just a couch cushion and it would have fallen over if I blew hard enough....he bought it). So we hunkered down for the afternoon. Fortunately, the weather near us didn't get bad at all. I think we had one huge gust of wind (which happened to displace part of our back fence. It's in place now, at least until the wind blows hard again!) Our hearts go out to those that did lose everything. Earlier in the day, Matthew had said something about how he didn't want our stuff to be all white. I couldn't figure out what he meant until we watched some of the news coverage after the storm. We saw a picture of an area where everything had been destroyed. All the wreckage was white. He pointed and said, "That's what I meant. It's white. I didn't want our stuff to look like that." I was so amazed at how his mind thought about that. I didn't realize he had even seen pictures like that before.

So we're thankful we came out unscathed. Thank you, Lord, for once again protecting us!

Life With Three

Lots of people ask me, "How is life with three?" Well, compared to everything else our family has been through in the last couple month, the baby is nothing.

Three has seemed easier – most of the time. We have our moments (like tonight where we just had to laugh at ourselves. At dinner, we had Jacob and Jonathan both screaming. I had Jacob, David had the baby. I am trying to hold Jacob and calm him, and selfishly try to eat before it all gets cold. David was walking around, and had given up on eating. Matthew is sitting at the table, going back and forth between complaining that he doesn’t like what’s on his plate and talking about random nonsense like someone is listening to him. We ate in shifts, with the final person finally deciding to finish  his plate as he went to bed around 8. I’m sure that was yummy…and cold. But he chose to do it…anyway….) We love being a family of five.

Here’s a little of sight into each of our kids.

Matthew: The first thing I think of with him is how much he adores Jonathan. It’s truly amazing how he is always so eager to be with him and help him in anyway. Anytime I ask for help that is ultimately for Jonathan, he jumps at the chance. He loves to “babysit” while I go do something around the house. I just genuinely loves him.

Matthew is really starting to build his overall confidence about so many things. He is beginning to read. For so long he was almost scared to try. He tends to be one that if he feels like he won’t do something well, he won’t even try it. I also think that he was scared it would change his world too much – like he thought we wouldn’t read to him anymore. But slowly he is starting to catch on to sight words and sounding things out. He surprises us all the time with figuring out what things say. We are so proud of him. I have also seen his growing confidence at dance. I am his dance teacher. And all last year, if I threw a new step at him without first showing him how to do it at home, he would get so upset. He was so afraid to try and fail. But now he has no problem attempting something, and usually doing quite well at it. In fact, he has been known to come home and tell me he was the best one….might have to work on the opposite side of the spectrum with pride ;) But for now, we’ll just let him be confident and feel good about himself.  

Jacob: The first thing that comes to mind with Jacob is his servant’s heart. Jacob is always trying to help out. He amazes me how he can see a need before I do. I won’t realize something needs to be done, and he’s already doing it. Today when some friends were leaving our house, he asked the mom if he could help her get out to the car. I made a comment tonight about some crumbs he had gotten on the carpet (that I had just vacuumed….) He offered to get his vacuum out and clean up. I told him to do it in the morning because Jonathan was already asleep. He said he’d close the door…ever the problem solver, whether we want him to or not. We can often ask him to do something and he joyfully will start at it. (Although let me remind you that he is 3…he’s not perfect!) I am so thankful for his model. I need to learn from it because I am not always joyful in my serving of others.

Jonathan: Oh his dimples. When he smiles, it’s so contagious. And it’s easy to get him to smile. He’s a sweet guy and we love him. He’s starting to really respond to things around him. He has recently started trying to reach things he sees and pick them up. Today he was playing under his baby gym, which has toys dangling over his head. He really reached and pulled at things (and did a complete 360 turn like a clock! He lifts his little bottom up and scoots around) He really wants to play, but isn’t quite at the point where he can do a whole lot, so he gets frustrated. He is a great sleeper at night. He has been sleeping 11 hours since about 2 ½ months. Amazing. However, he is a horrible napper. I NEVER would have done this with my first (okay, or my second), but he almost always naps in his swing or carseat. It’s that, or he doesn’t nap. I was and advocate of crying it out with the first two, but when we’ve attempted it with Jonathan, it ruins his day. He will cry for the rest of the day.

I told David earlier that I have noticed two little quirks about Jonathan. 1. He hates it when I talk loudly (or yell) when he’s eating. He’ll either stop eating and cry, or shoot me a disgruntled look and then resume. 2. He can’t handle overstimulation at bedtime. I ruins his evening. We’ve had people over around bedtime and he has such a hard time going to bed. Normally he will eat and go right down. But usually he’ll cry and cry and not eat well if too much goes on. If we are out too late (like after 8 pm) he’ll do the same. He’s so laid back most of the time, so I feel like I owe it to him to stick to his one consistent part of his routine!

So pictures. I had high hopes of posting a bunch. But we have super slow, horrible internet. So after typing all this, only one picture has uploaded. If I had known only one was going to make it, I would have picked a different one. Oh well. Maybe another time I’ll do more. I love my snuggles with my baby. I learned the hard way with 1 and 2 that the snuggles go away so quickly. So I snuggle all I can. And  I look horrible in this picture…so we might get a wee bit tired occasionally ;)

Rollin', Rollin', Rollin'

David and I have both noticed a huge developmental jump in Jonathan over the last week. He is noticibly stronger, more alert, and less content with being stuck on the floor. Today we put him on his tummy and this is what happened. My baby is getting big too quickly!

100 Days

Today, while I was sitting feeding Jonathan, enjoying a few quiet moments to think, I calculated that Jonathan is 100 days old today! (At least that is my calculation without looking at a calendar.) I was thinking about what an awesome blessing this little guy is, how wonderful he has been and how much we all love him. He has been a really, really good baby. I think my brain started calculting how old he was when i was thinking about how I could probably count his unconsolable fits on one hand. With the other two I remember having to put them in the car and go for a ride to get them to sleep sometimes. We have never had to do that with Jonathan (although just this past week we did have to take him for a walk twice....and by we, I mean David :) He definitely has his moments,, but really, he's very laid back. I have really enjoyed more snuggling and rocking than I probably did with the other two. It was with the first two that I learned how quickly it all goes. So if I have a baby that needs to be snuggled to fall asleep, I'm okay with that. And I'm really okay with it since he's sleeping 11-12 hours each night! He's a horrible napper, but how can I care when he sleeps that well at night!

Jonathan's favorite person is Matthew. He loves mommy, daddy and Jacob, but I think he pretty much adores Matthew. If anyone can get a smile out of him, it's Matthew. And Matthew adores him right back. It's amazing. I can't believe how much Matthew has totally embraced being the big brother. He LOVES to help and will always "babysit" when asked to watch him for a minute. He never complains about anything that has to do with Jonathan.

So we have some big milestone news...Jonathan rolled over today. I have to look at baby books, but I'm pretty sure that both of the other two were around 4 months. Jonathan is 3 months and one week. A couple days ago I saw him propel himself onto his side by swinging his feet, but I didn't think he'd figure out how to get over his arm anytime soon. Tonight he looked like he might try so I sat videotaping him for about 5 minutes. I eventually turned off the camera and walked away for a minute. When I came back, this is what I found:

Both boys claim they didn't help him. When I flipped him back over he got mad. Later on I saw him do it again. He doesn't do a quick roll, like he's intending to go somehere. He slowly wiggles his body and eventually ends up on his stomach, like he's just doing it to get comfortable. It'll be fun to watch what he does with it. Although I have to admit, I'm a little sad that he did it...it means my newborn is gone. He's getting older, which makes me a little sad. I love my little snuggle bug baby.

I had other things I wanted to say in this post, but my thoughts have disappeared amongst the tiredness. Two nights ago was a rare night where Jonathan was up for two hours in the middle of the night (which again I can count how many times I have spent hours up with him on one hand). It's amazing how quickly you get out of the routine of broken sleep- I'm still recovering.

Here are some other recent pictures I enjoy.

Doesn't he look like a bobble head? :)

On his way over!

I had others I wanted to do, but we have cheap internet and it's taking to long to upload. Maybe another day :)

Fire Alarms

Saturday morning we set out to have a great family morning. We went to the Cincinnati Museum Center, which is a place that our older boys absolutely love. When we got there, I got the two boys to agree to take me to see the Christmas train display (David had already taken them to see it, so I was the only one who hadn't seen it.) We were on our way down into the museum (which if you haven't been to our museum, most of the museum is underground), playing with steamboats along the way, when the fire alarm went off. It took a moment to figure out what it was. Everyone around us looked at each other, wondering if it was for real. We figured it was maybe a test, or someone pulled it. There were no workers around. So we found an emergency exit door near us. The people in front of us started out of it, realizing it was a set of stairs. We had a stroller. After a short moment of considering taking the car seat and leaving the stroller, we decided we weren't that far away from the top of the museum, so we just went out the way we came in (up the ramp to the entrance). I grabbed Jacob, David was pushing the stroller, and we told Matthew to go quickly. All the workers were smiling, but they were directing us out of the museum. I think as our escape went on, my anxiety heightened, that maybe it was really a real fire. But why was everyone smiling? When we got to the rotunda, we could smell something burning - so maybe it was real? Matthew seemed very worried. He almost took off, so concerned with getting out. He often turned around to make sure I was close behind, but he wasn't concerned with staying together. It was a good time to have a discussion about trying to stay together in a situation like that, where there's a lot of people. My phone was in the stroller, so I would not have been able to call David to reconnect. But we did wait for David and the stroller right outside the door. The workers at the museum ushered us outside, out by the fountain (if you are familiar with the set up). At that point we still didn't know what was going on - we just knew it was cold! We waited for a bit, trying to decide if we were going to stay or not. We were determined to have fun as a family, but couldn't come up with an alternative that didn't cost money. We were not prepared to do anything outside. David and I were just in jackets, so we were pretty cold. Within a few minutes, emergency vehicles started arriving. Because the museum is up on a hill, we could see many emergency vehicles coming from far away, from many different directions. Some went behind the museum. But some turned around before they came up the driveway. Only three trucks came up to the front of the museum, one was a huge ladder truck. We finally asked a worker what was going on. There was a kitchen fire in the food service area. The fire was out before the firefighters got there, but they had to clear the smoke. We ended up waiting over an hour, but we stayed until we were allowed it. You could definitely smell something when you went in to the rotunda. We decided to go ahead and eat lunch because at that point it was around 11:30. Then we could just play in the Children's Museum and not have to stop to eat later. We ended up still having a nice time, it was just slightly shorter than we had planned (but we had a chance to learn some lessons, too :) And we didn't go see the trains....oh well, next year!

Here's a picture from the Museum.

Well, our fire alarms didn't end there. Later that evening, for New Year's Eve, we lit a fire in our fire place. I guess some smoke had come in the house. It wasn't a lot. I don't think we even noticed it. David and Matthew were in the living room, Jacob was in his room playing, and I was in my room, feeding the baby. All of a sudden our fire alarm went off in our house. Jacob came running out of his room, so quickly. He ran out to the living room to find David or I. While he was admittedly absolutely scared, we were so proud of him that he acted quickly to get out. Bless his heart, all I could do was hug him. He was so scared. We've had our fix of fires lately. We've had lots of discussions about what to do if there is a fire. Matthew's mind is always thinking, so he often comes up with various situations and what we should do if we are in that situation. I think it's great that he does that, even if the scenarios are a little wacky. I've been meaning to have fire safety night, where we practice different escape routes. Maybe we should do that soon - maybe at the end of the week when the weather is a little warmer :)

So if you see Jacob in the next little bit, ask him about the fire alarm. He'll tell you what it sounded like. It's pretty cute.