A day at the park

As of late we have been spending just about every day at the park. Its nice because 3 of the 4 can do so much by themselves and can have the freedom to run around and play. Pax loves to sit in the stroller and take it all in or go for a ride in the swing.

I soooo need to run!!!

Jeff went to Chicago for work this past week - he left the day after my race so it was a whirlwind of a weekend with a lot of time spent in the car back and forth to Philly and then he left the next day. So we were already starting the week off on a bad note with the kids just bouncing off the walls and exhausted all at the same time!

I decided not to ask anyone for help the first night, figuring I could handle it. I wasn't completely stressed and figured, how bad can it really be?? Well, grabbing them dinner, going to Target to pick up formula for Pax, going to the park, and then coming home for bed, turned into one of the most stressful nights I have had in such a long time. Between a diaper leakage, Parker having an "accident" at the the park which resulted in my throwing the underwear away and not having a spare outfit (yes, I was THAT mom at the park with her kid who had wet pants and was still playing!!), Piper climbing out of her crib for the first time (and not the last time!), and another "accident" on top of the normal routine of taking care of them, I ended my very first night of 4 by myself in tears!!

If only it ended there.... it was just nonstop craziness for the next 4 days. As mentioned before, Paxton has a tongue tie which often results in him throwing up his babyfood because he can't control the food going down as well. The reflux also doesn't help this issue either. It just makes him more prone to throwing up at the slightest gag. So as you can see, this was a good one. I kept Jeff up to date with many photos throughout the week. :) This being one of them.... This was also just as I was about to walk out the door for an appt for Parker (will go into detail about that later). Thankfully Denise (Jeff's mom) was able to come over that night and help me!

Our poor little 3 year old with the worst allergies!!!! He is on Allegra twice a day, Nasonex once a day, perscription eye drops, and then Visine throughout the day as needed to wash away allergens he has been exposed to in high doses. Its never ending and exhausting for him and for me!! This resulted from playing at the park, getting allergens on his hands, and then rubbing them into his eyes. They said this will keep happening and there is nothing that can be done about it - we just have to do our best to keep him from rubbing his eyes. Sure, you tell a 3 yr old not to blow dandelion seeds all over the place, rub flowers on his face, roll in the grass and dirt, keep his brother from blowing them all over him, and then as soon as his eyes start to itch - keep him from itching them!!! Yeah right!!!! It means a lot of hand washing the second we walk in the door, shoes off immediately, clothes changed before napping and then again when he goes out again, faced washed constantly... Its heartbreaking to see him like this and to hear him ask for eye drops so that his eyes aren't itchy!!

All of this happened by Tuesday. If only I could say the week got better.  Piper climbed out of her crib three times in one night until she finally hit her head on the floor - I say finally because now she's too scared to do it again! At least that's what I'm counting on.

Thanks to Denise and my parent's for all their help!

Thankfully Jeff is home and despite him having to work on Mother's Day, it turned out to be a pretty good day which ended with a glass of MUCH needed wine and some time to relax with him.

Very anxious to get back to running to relieve some stress. Be careful Jeff, I might not come back!! :)

Finished!

10 mile race - check. Haven't run in a week - check. Eating everything in sight and not running a single thing off - check!!

Well, I did it! I may not have been the fastest, my butt may have been dragging across that finish line, but I can proudly say that I ran the whole thing and am anxiously considering a half marathon in Philadelphia in September!

As many of you mom's know, life usually revolves around the kids and nothing else, especially if you don't work outside of the home and doing this race was "my thing". My connection to the real world. Often, people would ask what are your hobbies? What do you do? Sadly, I didn't really have an answer... I worked myself through college, got married, and then worked 60 hr weeks right out of college and didn't really pour myself into anything. Then I found running after having Peyton. It has become my outlet, my stress reliever, my hobby.  I was so grateful to be able to do this, something for me. I am so thankful to Jeff for all the support and encouragement throughout the whole process. I'm so glad I got to share this victory with you!

Unfortunately, I don't really have any photos of the race, except one pre-race and one post-race taken on a cell phone.
My race buddies - Sandie and Faith                                          Awful picture - but post race in the car

Go Phillies

He surprisingly leaves this one and doesn't even reach up to touch it! We'll see how long that lasts!

Piper's beard! :)

Gotta love Emeril's Spaghetti and Meatballs (its like Spaghettios sauce almost - is orange and stains EVERYTHING - hence the reason she is naked!)

Its been a while...

Its been a while since I have updated you on anything that is going on around here! Peyton just started Pony B Little league and is doing well.

Paxton is into everything BUT baby toys now!

You see how he is reaching OVER all the baby toys to get the big kid toys?!

 My 10 mile run is less than 2 weeks away! Ahhhhhh!!!!! And we are anxiously waiting for the weather to warm up and stay that way!

Laundry, laundry, and more laundry

It feels like all I EVER do is laundry!! By the time I get done one weeks worth of laundry (I do laundry almost everday, but I also have a "laundry day") its time to do another weeks worth of laundry again!! Believe it or not, this is also with FOUR loads of laundry already washed!!!!

Easter preview

The boys...

Sissy - she would only sit still for a second but we got this one!

All four of them - the only one that turned out! Pretty good considering three of them are 3 and under!

Look who turned 3!

He's turning into such a little man. No more baby. :( I haven't updated professional photos with him since last year and he has changed sooo much! He has lost all of his baby looks.

This is the beloved "Fra Fra" (aka Zebra) that he sleeps with every night. We had a Fra Fra party for him too! (Fra Fra came about because that's how he learned to say zebra and it just stuck as his name)

This just makes me giggle!

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??

The big blues

This little guy's smile (not to mention the blue eyes and chubby cheeks) makes the bad week I have had seemingly disappear. Its just been one of those weeks that you wish you could start over... I hate to say that I wish it would just be over because I know how precious the time I get with my family is, but man I could really use a new start. Nonstop crying, fighting (6yr old vs the 3 yr old), throwing up (Pax's reflux turns into vomiting when he gets a cold!), sleepless nights, cleaning up potty training messes, ALL the loads of laundry that come with all the throw up and potty training.... Plus, Jeff has been so busy at work that I have been flying solo through much of the day and night. Thank goodness its FRIDAY! (Not that the weekend means much in "mommy-world"). Here's to a new week next week!!

 Pax wearing the Woody hat - looks more like a sombrero on him than a Cowboy hat!

Our girly girl

Despite poor lighting, this picture describes our little princess to a "T". She is a girl through and through!!! This morning she insisted on wearing her ballerina tu tu, her princess crown slippers, and her sunglasses all while carrying her purse over top of her PJs.