Biggest Boy

Jack insists on being called the "biggest boy" just so everyone is clear that he is bigger than his baby brother.

I never fully grasped the term "all boy" until Jack hit 2.5 years. Oh.My.Goodness. He is everywhere at once and into everything imaginable. He's pretty awesome. :)

Here are a few fun facts about my Jack...

~ He will be three next month.
~ He is still completely in love with horses. Lives and breathes them.
~ He is still completely in love with Daddy. He is by far Daddy's #1 fan.
~ He has received the nicknames Dennis the Menace and Curious Jack.
~ He loves to be outside and will spend hours out there playing.
~ He loves to swing and taught himself how to pump his legs.
~ He loves to climb, jump off really high surfaces, throw things, and hit things.
~ He can turn anything into a gun or sword.
~ If he's not supposed to mess with something, it is his goal to get to it.
~ His favorite movie right now is Beauty and the Beast.
~ His favorite book is anything that has a horse in it.
~ He loves to sleep and still takes a 2-3 hour nap everyday.
~ He has a really big heart and is very sensitive.
~ He is a cuddlebug when he wakes up. If you don't catch him then, you won't for the rest of the day.
~ He cries every Sunday when he's dropped off in Sunday school. Poor kid.
~ He's starting MDO this fall to make some new friends and conquer his separation anxiety. :)
~ He is still the sweetest, kindest soul you'll ever meet. He just pulls at my heart strings. I love him tons!

See. Awesome I tell ya. :)

p.s. If you're wondering how I'm knocking out these posts so fast, it's because I'm down to one kid over here, and he's asleep. Mark has taken Jack and Bella to La Grange for the evening. :) Also, I'm no longer working on a slower than slow PC. We are an iMac family now. :)

Littlest

I thought I would start from the littlest and work up. So... Max Palmer Van Wart.

We didn't know if Max would be a boy or girl before he was born. It took us a long time to decide on a boy name. Like about 8 months. :) I am big into wanting my children's names to "go together". I know some of you know exactly what I'm talking about. He's named Max because we loved the name and Palmer after his grandpa. Pretty good name I think. :)

He is 8 months old and here are a few fun facts about him...

~ He loves his family. All of us. He smiles and squeals when he sees someone he recognizes.
~ He gets carried around by big sis and loves it. Most of the time.
~ He is mobile. Watch out. He is crawling fast and has just started pulling up to a standing position.
~ He loves to feed himself. He will purse his lips if you try to feed him with a spoon. It's for this reason that he is mostly eating finger foods (cut up grapes, grilled cheese, crackers, cereal bars, peas).
~ He's babbling a lot and gives big open mouth kisses. So sweet.
~ He can be pretty feisty. He's very squirmy and loves to jump. Laid back is not how I would describe him.
~ He loves to nurse and has entered the super clingy stage. I have to admit, I don't mind. :)

We just love him to pieces, and we all gather around him when he wakes up in the morning to ooh and ahh over him. He eats it up! He hasn't been my easiest baby, but I forgive him because he's so cute and gives sweet kisses. Oh and did I mention he loves his mama?

Family of 5

Well, I'm still here. Barely. Just kidding. Not really. :)

My last post was about 9 months ago, right before I had baby #3. Baby #3 turned out to be this little guy.

Max Palmer Van Wart

Who now looks like this...

Isn't he a cutie?!

I'll do a separate post about this little guy. He is soooo sweet. :)

I've been away from blogging because long story short... I've just been trying to stay afloat. Having three kids really turned my world upside down. It was hard. Really hard. There's not really any one reason that made it that way. Bottom line is I had a 4 year old, 2 year old, and a newborn. All day was spent treading water- trying to maintain the house, unload the dishwasher, keeping clean clothes on the kids, nursing (a lot), feeding the bigger two, trying to squeeze a shower in, making my hubby dinner, running errands, having playdates, looking desirable to my husband (insert delirious laughter here)... did I mention Max would only take cat naps for the first 6 months of his life? How much can you get accomplished in 30 minute increments? Not a lot. I thought three would be no big deal. I think for a lot of people, any number after two is easy. Not for me. I was getting my hiney handed to me on a daily basis. :) I know I just painted a pretty dark picture, however, there were plenty of good times mixed in. :)

Things are better though! Whew. I was just talking to my SIL about how the 6 month mark after having a baby is the real turning point for feeling normal again. And the Van Wart house has a good groove going on! Max takes 2-3 long naps a day. Thank you Jesus. Jack is potty trained. Hallelujah. Bella...well... that deserves a separate post of it's own. I plan on writing an update post for each of the kids. We had a great summer FULL of swimming... some at the beach, some at the waterpark, but mostly at HoneyPop's house. Bella and Jack took swim lessons and both are swimming like fish. Swimming is the best thing ever. The kids will swim their hearts out, fill their bellies up, and sleep like newborns. Brilliant.

We are getting ready for the busyness of the fall. Jack is enrolled at MDO one day a week, we are all signed up for BSF, AND drum roll please.... I am homeschooling Bella this year. Yes, I know you're saying, "Bethany, you might want to read about two paragraphs up where you were talking about trying to stay afloat." Don't worry, a post is coming about homeschooling too.

*I sure am getting over-zealous in my commitments to new posts considering this one was 9 months in the making. Anyways ~ I'll end this way over-due post with pictures. You know, the good stuff. :)

Tick Tock

This baby is almost here and I have done NOTHING to prepare for his/her arrival. Seriously people, we are talking probably 6.5 weeks here, and I can't name one thing I've done in preparation. This is sooo not like me- I am a planner all the way. I have a few theories though as to why I have waited till the last minute to get ready for this baby.

Theory #1- I have no idea what I am having. When you don't know if a boy or girl is on the way, it's hard to envision the room, the crib, the clothes, etc. So, you do nothing. :) Actually, we did move Jack to a big boy bed, so the crib is free. Yahoo! I took his bedding out of the crib, and I'm going to wait on bedding for baby #3 until we know what it is. Bella did feel it necessary though to put an owl blanket in the crib that a sweet friend made for the baby. :)

*Funny sidenote- Our crib has yet to be converted to a toddler bed because everytime we move a baby out of it, we move another one into it. :)

Theory #2- The baby is sharing a room with Jack, so there's no room to get ready. It's done. Which is actually really nice. I do, however, want to spiffy up the room once the baby is here.

Theory #3- No baby showers. Now I don't say that in a poor poor pitiful me way. Trust me. I've told more than one person that we have everything we need for this baby. We have a crib, carseat, stroller, bumbo, highchair, pack-n-play, bottles, blankets, burp clothes, diaper bags, clothes... really everything. I'm so glad that I chose neutral colors for the big items when we had Bella. They're about to get use #3 out of them, which is awesome! So, when you aren't bringing truck loads of gifts home, you aren't forced to organize or put anything away.

It all of the sudden hit me though that this baby is coming soon, and I might want to get a few things in order. :) So here is my baby to-do list for the month of November...

- Buy diapers. I think I'm going to grab a package from now on when I'm at the store and that should last me awhile.

- Buy basics such as diaper rash cream, baby shampoo, lotion, pacifiers, baby detergent, etc.

- Wash blankets, burp clothes, sheets, and neutral baby sleepers.

- Sterilize bottles and nipples and make sure my breast pump still turns on. :) It should- it's a really nice one that we bought when Jack was born.

- Have Mark get the boy newborn and girl newborn bins out of the attic. I want to pick out and wash one boy and one girl "coming home" outfit for the hospital. I also want to leave both bins down so I'll have easy access to whichever one I end up needing.

- Also have Mark bring down from the attic the swing, bouncer, and carseat. They are all covered, but I still need to take off all the padding and wash it.

- Grab the little cradle from my in-laws that we are borrowing for our room for the first few weeks.

Am I forgetting anything?

As much as not knowing what we are having is out of my comfort zone, the anticipation of the surprise is SO exciting!!! I love my family, and I can't wait to welcome another little baby VW into it. What a blessing.

A sweet Bella story: Every night for the past couple of weeks Bella has been having me lay down on her bed, so she can feel and talk to the baby. She puts her little hands on my belly and puts her mouth really close and talks so sweet. Most of the time, the baby will give her a little nudge or kick which elates her. I think she is at a really good age for this baby to be super exciting to her. She's even finally come to terms with the fact that the baby might be a boy and not a girl. :) I'm so proud of her.

Halloween

Operation Halloween 2011 = Success!

I love Halloween. This is actually a new love of mine. I love the cute kids in their cute costumes, I love the yummy and creative food, I love the trick-or-treating... I love the tradition at our house. I did not grow up where Halloween was a big deal. We did not go trick-or-treating- usually there was a fall festival at our church and I remember dressing up a few times. It's all I knew, and I never grew up feeling like I missed out. It was actually pretty fun. Mark, however, did grow up with Halloween being a big deal, so when our kids came along, he was pumped about it. I was thinking "What's the big deal?". Well, now I know. It is so much fun. :)

I think in every family, holidays are what you make them. You being mom and dad. When Bella was born, her first Halloween started off pretty small. Small being, she wore a pumpkin hat and we took her picture. :) But each year, we've added a little something to the celebration, and this year was awesome!
We love having our family over on Halloween. Grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and this year, a few friends came as well. Lots of pictures are taken and lots of food is consumed. We always order pizza, and this year, thanks to my friend I call Pinterest, we also had salted caramel popcorn balls, rice krispie treats on a stick, caramel apple bites, witch hat cookies, toasted pumpkin seeds, and pretzel hug candy corn treats. I don't think I got one picture of all the food, but it sure was yummy. And thank you to Brenna for bringing the awesome pretzel sticks covered in almond bark. They were so good!

Here are a few pictures from this year's festivities...

We took Bella to the doctor on the day of her school party. She had a really bad cold and allergies but was heartbroken that she was going to miss her party. So, I ran her up there so she could participate. She was completely miserable... it was so sad. (I know it looks like I am the mom who brought her sick kid to school, and I kind of did, but it was for 20 minutes and she didn't touch anybody, so no judgement :) They had to dress up as what they wanted to be when they grew up, and she chose a nurse. So I made her up a costume that cost me about $1. :)

Carving our pumpkin

Washing the pumpkin seeds so we could toast them

Jack the Cowboy (minus a nap)

"Pippi Longstocking is coming into your world,

A freckled faced red head girl,

You wanna know,

She'll turn your life into a whirl."

Anybody remember Pippi? I grew up LOVING Pippi, and a couple of years ago I found the original movie in one of those $5 movie bins. I was so excited. I was even more excited when my daughter fell in love with Pippi too and wanted to be her for Halloween this year.

Cutest Pippi Ever!
She's holding Alfonzo the horse and Mr. Neilson the monkey, both of whom are Pippi's pets.

Costume made by yours truly for roughly $8. And most importantly, Bella loved it. :)

Trick-or-treating with friends and cousins

Starting in on the candy right away

She loved trick-or-treating this year!

Our neighborhood is CRAZY busy on Halloween. It's pretty cool how many families in the neighborhood participate in the festivities (as well as all the people who literally bus kids into our neighborhood just to trick-or-treat). So, we have to leave some adults behind to pass out candy. This year we had over 100 trick-or-treaters and went through 6 big bags of candy. Wow! It was greatness.

Sweet little mermaid

Assessing the loot

A happy and tired Pippi :)

So there you have it. Can't wait for next year!