Birthday party Part 1

We always celebrate with the kids on their real birthdays as well as have a party for them. It was beautiful weather out, so after dinner and chocolate cake we went outside for a walk and to play in the yard. We came back in to open presents.

 "Yes, I blew out the candle!"

Best buds...

Piper wearing her dinner on her shirt....

 Its not too clear in this photo, but Peyton has lost two teeth on the bottom...

 Jungle Book 1...

 Dragon car that goes with the castle they got for Christmas...

What's new?

What's new here at the Borchelt household? Well I'll tell you...

I'm training to run in the 10 mile Broad Street Run in Philadelphia on Sunday May 1st! I'm nervous beyond belief, but its something that I have been thinking of doing for quite some time now. The only goal I have set right now is to cross the finish line (and not in last place!) There's not a whole lot of training time outside except on the weekends, but I have been getting in some intense workouts on the treadmill too!

Parker is potty trained!!!! For about a month now he has been potty trained and is doing great! I tried to train him a few months ago with no luck, but just recently I got annoyed with 3 in diapers enough to just try again. It only took about a week or two until he was telling us all by himself and we RARELY have an accident. Now its only two in diapers!!! YAY!

 Parker and Peyton now share a room. It hasn't been going as well as I would like, but hopefully we will get there soon. Parker has a hard time falling asleep and is usually still talking at 10:30 and is up really early (for him anyway). Unfortunately he's waking up a lot in the middle of the night too. Its exhausting to say the least. It makes for a long night of not much sleep for me or him and a long day with a grouchy kid!

Paxton moved over to Parker's old room and Jeff and I got our room back, well sort of; there's now a treadmill in our room instead of a crib!

Happy Birthday Parker

Our miracle baby. Its hard to believe that its been 3 yrs since God has blessed us with this spunky, STUBBORN, energetic, sometimes shy, smart, giggly little guy.

After huge heartache and almost losing him, God gave us this little joy in our lives and for that we are so very thankful! We love you little man! Happy 3rd Birthday to our St Patrick's Day baby!! 

(I wasn't allowed to take his pic but I tickled him to try and get a quick shot! - This was as good as it was going to get) More pics from his birthday night and party to come....

2 errands or 10?

Typically the 3 oldest kids sleep until between 8 and 8:30 every morning, not today! They all decided (except for Peyton) to get up at 7:20 clearly not ready to get up yet! Parker has been a mess all day! Nothing like starting out your morning with crying, whining kids that had they just slept until normal time would most likely be happy and at least able to function on their own. Everything has been a chore today... getting Parker to go to the bathroom takes 15 minutes instead of 2, getting everyone dressed and out the door to run 2 errands that I am dreading taking them on takes an hour and my house gets destroyed in the process, the boys are fighting NONSTOP.... While running the errands I'm playing referee, trying to keep them from destroying the store, from losing my mind, and still concentrate on the few things I ran out to get! Not only are they touching EVERYTHING in sight, they are just running out in front of people and nearly avoiding being run over by shopping carts. As I'm apologizing to the one woman, she says "No worries, I just didn't want to run anyone over", to which I say "that's ok, maybe if you did they would learn to stay with me!" She turns to me and says, "I understand, I have 5" which nearly brings me to tears, because she actually understands and ISN'T judging, much like all the rest of the comments I get from everyone!!

In the first store as we're picking out Parker's cake for his birthday party, the ladies who are "helping" me are chit chatting and telling me how neat it is that Parker likes zebras and is having a zebra party as my boys are putting their hands on every cake in the open cooler and I'm just waiting for one of them to come crashing to the floor. In my head I'm screaming at these ladies who are oblivious to the FOUR children I have and that I don't have time to stand around and chat, all while I'm spinning in circles making sure that they are all still with me and not getting into too much trouble! Can we just get on with it ladies?! Then as we get to the checkout lane, the pacifier that is keeping Piper sitting and quiet in her seat falls to the floor and the manager talking to the cashier steps on it!!! I could have cried. She offered to wash it off, but I kept my cool and stuffed it my pocket, grabbed my stuff and children and tried to calmly get them all to the car without losing it!

We get to the last store of 2 and we only have to run back and get formula and pick up Paxton's reflux medicine... wouldn't you know it, we get all the way to the back of the store and Parker tells me he has to go potty!! I could scream! It means corraling them all to the front of the store again (which is no small task and takes much more time than it should), and then going to get the medicine. After the bathroom, Piper starts spilling her snack ALL over the floor. She's eating these mini cheezits and they just start falling all over the floor; as I'm cleaning up that mess Parker decides to go through my bag and finds Swedish fish and pulls them out UPSIDE down!!! Now not only do I have to clean up the 50 tiny cheese crackers, I now have fish to clean up off a nasty dirty floor! An errand that is supposed to be taking 15 minutes is now working on 30... I go back to get the meds and they can't find them!! As they are searching, Piper is wiggling out of the seatbelt and trying to climb out of her stroller to face Paxton, the boys are running around and picking up stuff off the shelves. I finally pick up Parker, use my legs to hold Piper in the stroller, and yell at Peyton to stop messing with the pinpad for credit cards!! Finally they find the medicine and as I'm paying a man says to me, "Excuse me ma'am." and in my head I'm thinking, "great, what now?" and hands me Piper's binky (a clean one I had in the bag, not the stepped on one)! I was MORE than ready to get in the car and go home 45 minutes later! It felt like I had just run 10 errands instead of 2!

On a more positive note... I was able to snap this photo this morning. I love the smile behind the binky. :)

Really??

Why is it that time seems to go faster and faster with every passing day?! I cannot believe that Paxton is 7 months old already. It feels like just recently we were processing the news that our family was growing even bigger yet and here we are only 5 months away from our baby no longer being a "baby". Even though I thought we were done after having Piper, really KNOWING that Paxton is our last changes my outlook on watching him go through all the baby stages. Parker was still so much of a baby himself when Piper was born, being only 14.5 months old and I guess I got so wrapped up in trying to keep my head above water that I didn't sit and think "wow, this is really our last baby, no more of this stage or that stage", but its all too real this time and I'm not sure I'm liking it. :) Don't worry Mom and Dad, no more babies for us, just a little sad that the baby coos and smiles will all be over before I know it.

As I write this post listening to the boys play their nerf guns downstairs I came across this article in the Oprah magazine about a little boy who shot and killed himself with his father's gun accidently and the tears flooded my eyes to think of the despair this family must be going through and the lack of thought that was put into gun saftey in the house. I am always at a battle in my head on when its ok for boys to be boys and to play with these kinds of toys. They just don't get the seriousness of shooting a gun and that shooting a toy gun at someone in fun is vastly different from the potentially fatal outcome of shooting a real gun. Right now Jeff's guns are all locked in a gun safe and are kept a secret for the most part due to their lack of ability to understand the danger. We are believers in not allowing them to point the guns at each other or other people in a violent manner but this life altering choice for this family reminds me of how much more we still have to teach them.

Double fisted screams

Her latest "trick".... Gets lots of laughs around our house. Be glad that the photo doesn't do the volume level justice!!!

One of the many daily battles

I could tell them to sit down and back away from the tv in my sleep!! They are constantly fighting over a spot in front of the tv....wonder what will happen when there is a 4th and no room??