It's a jungle out there....

I had google set to Google Images and I was typing random animals and telling Jubilee about them when she climbed up on my lap.  The other kids wanted to see and pretty soon all the kids were making animal noises for Jubilee.  Jubi tried to join in and I thought it was cute so I set the webcam to record this video... (which put it behind Google so I couldn't see who was in the frame and who wasn't...and since it was spur of the moment, it was dark in here...)  but you get the idea and there are some pretty cute things here.  :)  I'm pretty sure Emma's giving Jubi a giraffe kiss at one point since we've fed the giraffes at the zoo and they are all tongue.  Jubi likes the duck the pig and the baby (humans) I think the most.  She really lights up when those come around.

Mostly the Kid Computer

This new "toy" has become quite popular... Noah trying to do it.  He's not good with the mouse yet.

Snowwhite watching Emma play a game on the computer...

Or rather, Snowwhite watching Abby take over the computer...Abby's really good at it...so good in fact that she takes it away from others if they mess up too much.  We have to remind her that it's not her turn.

Abby working with Noah on the computer.  Yes, that little Noah stole a binky!  :P  I'm constantly after him about that!

Isaiah on the computer.  

This one is a climber...She have very little fear of certain kinds of "dangers."  Falling down the stairs?  Sure, she's scared of that and she takes it easy and slow... Getting burned on the hot fire...she doesn't know what "burned" or "hot" means, but she knows it will get her a growl or something and she won't do it...but climbing on the stools..."surfing" on the rocking chair...nope.  Not scary.  She's a thrill seeker.  Roller Coaster kid.   

"What?  Me climbing?  No way!"  

Lego boy playing with his very favorite toy right now.

At it again...

One morning after working an all night shift at work, I had a doctor's appointment.  Brandon stayed home with the kids and stayed awake... he wanted to try to stay up the whole day so that he could get back on schedule...instead he fell asleep.  How can that even be comfortable?  I'm soooo thankful he can sleep anywhere, anytime though, because when we first started this schedule, I was afraid of the kids making too much noise and waking him up all the time... Nope.  He can sleep through ANYTHING!

Teething?  Sick?  I don't remember...but she was really, really fussy... She was walking around the house crying...  Then she stopped and I found her here with the blanket I used to nurse her under a lot.  It's been put away, but she pulled it out and was cuddling under it.  I don't think she remembers nursing, but I think, maybe, she still associated it with comfort.  

Chair surfing.  Disregard the mac n cheese on her face.  It was a busy morning.  A lot was going on.  She was napping when we started lunch and then by the time she was eating,  I think I was helping a 3 year old wipe his bottom when she got done eating and came into the office to start chair surfing.  I "yell" at her all the time for this...just so you know...  But anyway, on this day, she pushed the chair back against that black thing.  She was rocking it as far as it would go and falling back into a sitting position onto the black thing then doing it over and over again.  She was giggling like crazy which is why I took the pictures before scolding her or washing her... 

I didn't capture any of her landing on the box.  This is the face she made when I said, "You are going to fall down!  Owie!" 

"Brothers and sisters like this thing.  Maybe I need to check it out..."

"There's something to do with this..."

"Yeah.  Like that, I think.  Hmmm... Pretty boring."

Rocking her baby dolls.  She climbed up, sat down and pointed at the dolls she couldn't manage to get both into the chair at the same time with her, so I handed them to her...and she sat there and rocked them for a while.

Playing Legos together.  Isaiah likes to build tall towers and encourage Jubilee to knock them down when he plays with her. 

Me:  "Jubilee...That's yucky!  No!"

Two strikes and you're out, kid!  Yes, I know its a different color...different shape...different lego...but it is still a lego.
 

"Okay.  Fine.  I'll go back to chair surfing.  I like this game better than eating legos anyway."

Her face when I tell her to sit down... It's kind of "I'll just wait until you aren't looking..."

See...I'm cute.

These two were having a particularly hard time getting along one night.  So I stuck them both in a big t-shirt together with one arm out and one arm around each other and had them put away a few books and toys that were in the kitchen.  After working together for a while, they were laughing and friends again and taking turns/co-operating much better.

Nerd math... We took Nerd candy and did math with it.  I showed them a flash card and they had to show me the answer in Nerds.  The one who did it right first got to eat theirs while the other one had to wait to get one right.  There are like a million nerds in one of those tiny boxes you get at halloween...so this game lasted for a long, long time.  I need to buy some more of those.  :)  They really enjoyed it.  

One Sunday morning... I tried to match all 5 of them...hence the picture...but now looking at it...I don't think they are very matched anyway. 

Snow

more snow the next day... :)  I love snow!

Brandon: "Come see if you can find all the kids...See where they are sleeping..."

Noah...

Jubilee...she hadn't hardly moved a muscle from how I'd put her hours before...she was exhausted I guess!

Abby and Emma.  The light was on in this room.  (The boys room was dark and I just used the camera's flash for the pictures...)  (Also, notice the order on the bed.  Abby.  Emma.  And the blankets.  Abby has a dark colored one.  Emma has a pink one.  This is significant for later.)

Isaiah.  I almost didn't see him.  He was curled up in the corner by the crib in the girls' room and his hair was so similar to the blanket that he really was camouflaged.   

The next morning...
Jubilee was here.

Hmmm... I guess the basket got uncomfortable last night?
I've got both boys sleeping in plastic covered cloth training underwear at night.  Noah is dry probably 5 nights out of 6.  He gets up and goes to the bathroom a million times at night, but he does it!  I'm so proud of him!  :)  He probably got up and went potty and at some point didn't get back in the basket that I had found him in the night before.

(on a side note, I don't know what to do about Isaiah.  He sleeps like his daddy I guess.  Nothing wakes him up.  He never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever wakes up dry...and we've been doing this for months!  :(  )

Abby.  Isaiah and Emma were already awake when I went to check on the others.  Abby is on the other side of the bed now and has Isaiah's and Emma's blankets from the night before.  Emma said Abby got cold and took her blanket away in the night.  I'm assuming Abby also took Isaiah's blanket.  I'm not sure where the dark colored one went, but Isaiah and Emma said they both woke up with no blanket and were cold... (hence being awake earlier than the others, I guess.)  Maybe the dark one is in that pile on Abby too?

16 weeks

I don't usually take many of these, but I was looking at old pictures and found this one of Jubilee's pregnancy and thought it was funny that I had taken one at 14 weeks in the same shirt...So I took one at 16 weeks in the same shirt too.  ;)  So here you go.

The biggest differences I see between this pregnancy and Jubilee's is that this baby bump is WAY higher than Jubilee's was... or more spread out, I'm not sure, but it looks like it's much higher to me.  

Baby!

The blood is still there but it hasn't really grown and that's a good thing. It also hasn't moved and that's great because it's still not threatening the baby's blood supply and stuff.

The baby is doing well--nice and active--Emma's twin...never sits still!

LOL The doctor said, "Don't buy anything yet because at 15 weeks the baby is still so tiny and boys and girls look sooo much the same, but I think you are at 4 and 2."  So we'll see for sure (baby and Lord willing) on Dec 11.

And we got this really cool picture of the baby pointing. 

The baby was in a funny position for pictures, so I added a kind of interpretive picture for you to see it better.  All we could see was the top of the head and the bottom because the baby was curled up around its middle but the little hands were moving all over and the doctor tried to get a picture of the little hands when they were kind of folded together but at the last minute the baby decided to point instead.  So we got a kind of unique picture of the baby pointing...while looking down at his/her stomach.  And if you look really hard, you can see the other little fingers down kind of by the elbow/chin in this picture.

Sometimes I just get busy and forget to update this

 Trick or treat

 Me and Brandon.  :)  Notice I have the coffee and he has the sword.  :)

 Brandon was making fun of me one day because it was cold in the house and I wanted to watch a movie so I was watching it on my computer under all the blankets.

An old one but it's cute and I just re-discovered it.

 14 and 1/2 weeks pregnant looks like this...especially if you've lost 9 pounds with morning sickness and are just now starting to get it back.  That and the baby is riding up high, which means when most women are moving into pregnancy pants at this stage or trying to get by with looping a hair tie over their pants buttons to get an extra inch, I'm looking for a belt.  Seriously.  It's very weird.  I'm not used to this.

 Halloween 96.

 Nurse Minnie Mouse.
She had NO CLUE what we were doing.  It wasn't until we got back to the house that she saw the candy in the kids buckets and got excited.  The whole time we were out doing the trick-or-treat thing, this is exactly what she looked like.  She didn't move or peep or anything.  She probably thought, "My parents are crazy.  It's 45º out here and the wind is blowing 100mph from the North...it's FREEZING!"

 It was a good movie, okay?  I was thoroughly enjoying it.

 Book worm fell asleep with a book.

 Wrestling Noah.

 Cute faces.

She's actually pretty good at it.  She can knock him down sometimes.

 

Emma's "Jubilee messed up all my work" face.

 

Jubi's "Emma won't let me play with her school stuff" face

 

Cute smile.  These two are good friends.

 

 A cute little curl showing in the daylight.

 Playing

 Sometimes, a brother just has to join with the girls and play dolls.

 Abby made "old time" outfits.

School by the fire


 

 Sleepy eyes

 very, very sleepy

"Can I go to bed early?"

Train

I think she likes this.  She was getting back in it by herself.

I made the shirts...both are a bit small for the size marked on the package...and Noah's ended up even shorter than Isaiah's.  I don't know how that happened.

 

She fell asleep in the playroom on a pile of blankets and stuffed animals and soft toys that the kids made for her.

 

 The day she discovered she could stand up by herself.

 Yes, this totally walked by me.  I grabbed a picture.  Most of the time, he uses a belt, but I guess he couldn't find one?

 Abby reading a book to Jubilee.

We played store in school one day.  The cards have "groceries" on the back and problems on the front.  You answer it right and we flip the card over to see what you bought.  Surprise!  I bet you didn't know you could buy stuff without seeing it first.  Haha!  :)  The price of the groceries was the answer to the problem.

 

 Noah took a picture of his own eye...it was surprisingly clear compared to most of the pictures he takes with my camera when I'm not looking.

 Observe.

 Abby made a lamb roast.

 She looks like she's tickling him.

 It's funny because they are both doing the same thing here.

 All the October Birthdays in the house.

 The first snow that stuck this season.

 October Birthday party.  We did one big party this year.

 Lined up to open gifts.  Yeah, Noah has lasagna all over him.  Oversight.  :(

 The chaos that ensues with this many birthday's in the same month...It's really almost like Christmas around here...

 Can I possibly hold ALL of my gifts at the same time?

 Playing with Abby's new legos.

 Sword fight with Noah's new sword.

Killing Noah's new blue dragon.

 

 Trying not to kill Jubilee because she wants the blue dragon.

 Most popular gift in the house.  Every single kid had to play with it about 10 times.

At some point after opening his gift, he discovered the supper mess on his shirt and went and took it off.  It was bedtime so he had probably been sent to put on PJ's or something... I don't quite remember, but he was doing these things on the stairs with his new sword instead of getting clothes on.

 

 Playing dolls together with all Abby's new outfits.

 The boys have to try out the legos.

 They were just cute.

 I made friends with the orbital sander.
It's surprisingly easy to use.
I got carried away and sanded all the writing on the bed from the previous owners.
And since this room is scary, I wanted to make it more "ours" for them.  I thought maybe they'd like it a bit more personalized since painting is somewhere down the road...
This is what it looks like from the hall.  Don't strain your eyes.  I have a close up in a minute.

Jubilee doesn't quite understand the concept of play food.  She kept grabbing up each new thing she saw and chewing on it, then tossing it aside like "That should be yummy and not taste like that."

 

 She tried a ton of them.

 Like all of them probably.

 On this day, she has a binky and seems to have realized that it won't taste good no matter how much she wants it to.

 Ice cream shop.

 We have a TON of ice cream.

 How high can we stack a single cone?

 That high, I guess.

 Fell asleep on her food.  No matter how many times a child of mine does this, I'll probably still think it's funny/cute.

 Halloween.
Isaiah is Link (Legend of Zelda game.)  Noah is a pirate.  Abby is a princess.  Emma is Tinkerbell.  Jubilee is Nurse Minnie Mouse.

 The day after Halloween.  I think now that she knows candy comes from it, she wants to try again and see if there is any candy left out there.

She makes funny faces when the flash gets in her eyes.

 

She thinks she is a big girl.

 

What are they so interested in that corner?

 

 Oh!  A computer with games just for the kids?
They thought this was really neat.  We played a few games probably 20 times on the first day it was set up.

Her face is funny.

 

Brandon wonders who adjusts his chair all the time.
Now he knows.  ;)

 

Noah and I were enjoying the special effects on the camera.  Is that twins back there in the background with the "Nonah Monster" as he called it.

 

 Sometimes a baby just needs her mommy.

 Mom, I made you when you are a Princess.

Sometimes a little mommy just needs her babies.

 

 See the proud expression on her face?

 She just realized she can take the baby's diaper off.
She was saying, "Stinky.  Stinky."