Random life update

Baby #4 is half baked (20 weeks gestation roughly) and I have an ultrasound next week. Fingers crossed that the rest of our bloodwork comes back okay and that everything goes as smoothly or better than it has been.

 

Casey is 19 months now. She’s way more of a toddler tornado than I was ever ready for… she’s on every chair, in every cabinet, standing on the couch. She’s also ‘ug’ and squeezing our necks, ‘yuck’ at food she doesn’t like, ‘mm’ at something tasty, ‘be-wy be-wy’ at fruit, and just started saying ‘dank oo’ yesterday. Crazy stuff. She alternates between wanting to hug and high five everyone and shaking her head at strangers clearly saying ‘back off’. She’s obsessed with hats and shoes, probably because they mean going outside. It’s going to be a fun summer.

 

Brennan will be 4 in a couple of months. She has just started whining, misbehaving, and in general acting like a 3 year old, so we got a bonus year of awesome behavior out of her. I hope it’s just a bit of sibling rivalry. It’s been worse since we moved K in the room with her. We’ll get it figure out, she’s much more easygoing than her older sister, so it seems kind of like cake comparatively. She’s still obsessed with her stuffed pig, the color blue, Lightning McQueen and tagging along with daddy when she can.

 

Keeley will be 7 this fall. Sometimes she acts more juvenile, but for the most part, realizing we’re having another baby has made her grow up pretty quickly. I think a lot changed with homeschooling, too. She had to come to terms with NOT being in a classroom and although it still upsets her from time to time, she finally saw one of her classmates she rode the bus with, and we exchanged numbers with parents, which is awesome! This literally just happened a few hours ago, so we’ll see if we can make some playdates happen this summer. She’s had a lot of fun in softball, and had a hit and gotten on base nearly every game. She’s getting exercise and socializing with same aged kids, so that’s good.

 

Matt is looking into another job, same company. His division took on a failing project from elsewhere that was going to slash their budget before the end of the month. The very same day a guy from one of his old jobs (who tried to recruit him before) sent him a message and asked basically what it would take to get him back on their team. Awesome. Especially since he was personally requested by a bunch of people he used to work with as well. He (fingers crossed it all happens) will be helping to manage/oversee or whatever a bunch of brand new out of the box software people and help guide them along. He’s been trying for 2 years to get *anywhere* with his current position and they continually… I don’t know ‘forgot’ him on meetings, he had 6 or 8 different managers in 2 years and by the time he got noticed by one, they were gone and on to somewhere else, so he’s been treading water and annoyed for a while. The new/old job is back with the flight training stuff, which he adored. Plus if we’re lucky, he’ll be promoted. They’re pretty good usually about keeping people at or above ‘middle ground’ for job $$ across the region if they have decent reviews at all. He was consistently rated above average/excellent yet budget constraints meant this year’s raise was basically not a raise at all. He is being paid a lot LESS than average, so if he does get promoted, he should get a bump in pay, which can only help with our current situation.

 

I’m just hanging in and trying to figure the world out. We traded our truck in for a SUV the other day. It’s sad, but Matt got the old truck repaired, added parts to it, etc. and just got an alignment so he’ll be driving that to work. It’s paid for (2004- the one I paid for before having K) so even though our one car payment will basically be the same as our other 2 payments, fingers crossed both stay on the road and work well. They’ve both 4WD but the truck only carries 3. His car didn’t carry everyone either, and since he sold that this winter, he’d been driving our newly traded in truck. At any rate, we have 2 vehicles now and I have wheels again, so hopefully that will help with getting the kids to see, well, other kids, library time, errands, and so on… I’m still a bit in denial about the pregnancy, I think. I’m going through the motions but I guess we haven’t made huge announcements or anything, so people find out as they see me, literally. I’m buying newborn cloth diapers (I donated most of mine last year), planning out freezer meals for post-partum, and we’re slowly getting the kids adjusted to life knowing another kid is coming in the fall. One of my last people I actually do anything with/friend moved away last week. It’s sad, but will be a good move for her and her family. It means we’re also losing our teenage babysitter. We rarely went out anyway, but it was nice to have help or the random drop in, which she was good for from time to time.

I’m currently awake because the fetus decided to wake me up at 2:30 and then I couldn’t go back to sleep. So I played on the internet, emailed my mom and then made 2 kinds of bread, banana and blueberry, which we can either eat or freeze depending on what everyone wants. The fruit needed used up. Makes the most sense! Plus if we do keep it for after the baby is born, then it will only need warmed and that’s it. Easy for everyone. Maybe I’ll try going back to bed once it’s out of the oven. Might get a catnap before the kids start running around like crazy.