Rockin' and (almost) Rollin'

Big Brother.

Every day after school the kids do "quiet time". They each pick a room to spend some quiet, alone time in. It's a great way for them (and me) to relax after school. Today I asked Abe what he wanted to play with during quiet time and he said "Ashlyn!". She was awake and happy, so I put her in his room in her car seat thinking he'd get bored with her after a few minutes, but he talked and played her for a full hour! It was the cutest thing. These two little girls are lucky to have some amazing older brothers.

Thumbs up.

I'm a sucker for a thumb sucker. I just think it's adorable. Abe and Ella have both been thumb (or finger) suckers and just this week Ashlyn joined the club. It has been lovely. She starts to cry, but it only takes a second for her to find that thumb and calm down. Happy birthday to me!

ABE

ELLA

ASHLYN

Calls it like he sees it.

Last night Gavin and I were sitting together and he held his hand up to mine to compare their sizes.

Gavin: "Mom, I bet when I am 18 my hands will be as big as yours"

Me: "I bet they'll be even bigger because I'm kinda small."

Gavin: "Yep, Mom, you're small and fat"

At church yesterday a friend of ours brought Gavin a chocolate cake. As we were packing up to leave (in a crowd people) I showed the cake to Gavin and told him who it was from.

Me: "Gavin, _______ made this cake for you."

Gavin: "Wow, she sure is elderly, but she's nice."

Luckily, she was not around, but the rest of the crowd had a good laugh.

Ella's mess of the day...

can of cashews.

apple juice.

combine.

dump on floor.

smear.

go.

Just in case.

I know you didn't believe me when I said Ella was

The. messiest. child. ever.

This is how I found her after her "nap".

That's diaper rash cream, which is basically the texture of

Elmer's glue and toothpaste mashed together.

When I asked her why she did this she said:

"I just love this beautiful cream Mama!"

I guess we know what I'll be doing for the next few hours.....

The new kid...

Last night Abe came up with the perfect nickname for Ashlyn.

Introducing............... Mrs. Chubby Chops!

Perfect!

Tip of the day...

Every morning, as soon as I get up, the boys ask me if they can play Wii after school. I almost always say "I'll think about it and get back to you later" and hope they forget to ask again. I don't love video games. This morning I came downstairs and had this conversation with Gavin:

Gavin: "Mom, can I please play Wii after school"

Me: "I'll think about it"

Gavin: "Well, you think about what you need to think about. That's important."

Me: "Thanks for the tip, Gavin"

Gavin: "Well, you give me, like, 1,000 tips a day. You could use a tip"

I know I should probably get mad when he says sassy little things like this, but it just makes me laugh! And, I probably do give him 1,000 tips a day.... maybe I should cut it back to 998.

Cooking School by Gavin

This post written by Gavin:

One fine day in January I was learning to cook. I was making some fish sticks for dinner. I put them in the microwave. The first time they were good, but the second time smoke came out of the microwave and the fish sticks were burned. The fire alarm went off and Mom came running in. We turned on the fan and the breeze took the smoke away. It was because I accidentally put them in for 3 minutes instead of 30 seconds so they burned in the middle of cooking. I won't do that next time.

Birthdays!

It's birthday season! We have 6 birthdays in 9 weeks in our family. It keeps the dreary Chicago winters full of fun. Gavin, Abe and Ella have all had their birthdays in the last month, so I thought it was time for an update.

Ella at 3:

Ella is our free-spirited, party girl. She loves people. We are always amazed by her ability to engage people in conversation and keep their attention. She can sit and chat up just about anyone. If she is not getting the attention she needs she is making a mess. She loves to rip up papers, smear food around, color on the walls, unravel the toilet paper or pull all the clothes out of her dresser. Anything she can do that will cause me to react. Her bedroom always looks like the most shocking episode of "Hoarders", despite the fact that I clean it every-single-morning. But, she is always cute while she does it. I will catch her doing something so naughty and she'll look up with her adorably big eyes and say "Don't you just love me Mommy? Are you so happy to see me Mommy?" It makes it really hard to punish her! She is just so darn charming! She has also mastered the art of acting just ditzy enough to get away with things. I can tell her over and over not to do something, but she'll just continue doing it and saying "Oh, I'm so sorry Mommy. I didn't know that Mommy." She is a very convincing airhead, but I know she's outsmarting me at every turn. She keeps our house light-hearted even on the hardest of days.

Abe at 6:

Our little Abe is now in Kindergarten. He loves school. I am shocked by how quickly he has made friends. It has always been such a struggle for Gavin. It is just fascinating for us to watch Abe. He gets phone calls from the girls and notes from the boys. It makes us laugh. He played on a soccer team for the first time this year. He loved that too, but I think he liked the socializing the best. At the end of the season the coach handed out awards to each player and he got the "Captain Chatty" award. He spent most of his game time trying to make his teammates laugh at him. He still loves art and has real style. At parent teacher conferences his teacher was actually asking if she could have some of his drawings to keep because she loved them so much. It's not that he creates the most accurate depictions of things, but he has a real creative voice. I am always surprised by how well he can compose a picture and give life to his drawings. I am not at all artistic, so I really enjoy watching him develop that talent. He's so great!

Gavin at 8:

Gavin is in 2nd grade and this school year has by far been the hardest. We are just entering the age where teasing begins. He has struggled with teasing and bullying this year for the first time. It is really hard to watch. There are days when I get so frustrated that I just want to pull him out and home school him, but I know that he needs to learn some coping strategies at some point and it is probably better to learn them young. He has wonderful social workers and therapists at school that do their best to look out for him. I am also so grateful that he has Abe, who is a constant tease, but does it with love. I think it is good practice for Gavin, believe it or not. Abe is also helping Gavin to develop some age-appropriate interests like legos, Star Wars, Batman and Wii. Just yesterday Gavin came home to tell me that one of the kids who teases him the most had started talking with him about a video game they both like to play and saying they should get together and play it some time. It's a small thing, but it made Gavin feel so good. Gavin still loves to read his non-fiction books. Presidential biographies are a favorite, but he has slowed down a bit with those. We have even convinced him to start reading some fiction, which is a major victory for us. It feels like with each hurdle we jump over two more pop up, but we are learning together, slowly but surely. I am so grateful to have him. He teaches me so much about myself and how I can become better. He has such an innocent spirit about him and tries so hard to always do the right thing. A family friend who has an autistic child once commented to me that one of the greatest blessings of this disability is that it helps them to see the good in humanity. That has been so true for us. There are truly angels among us. People reach out to him in ways that surprise us everyday and he can melt even the coldest heart. God has given us such a gift in allowing us to raise this little boy.

Meet Ashlyn Rose

Well, things still are chaotic around the West household. Ella is in bed with pneumonia as I write this, but I'm starting to think that this chaos is just my new reality. When I was pregnant with Ashlyn I kept telling myself "We are already outnumbered by our children, four can't be that much harder than three". Well, folks I'm here to tell you it is that. much. harder.....like, A LOT harder. But, I really want to update the blog before I forget all the details of Ashlyn's first weeks (which will happen really soon with my mushy mommy brain).

Ashlyn Rose was born November 18, 2009 at 2:01pm at Good Samaritan Hospital in Downers Grove, IL. The last few weeks of my pregnancy were horrendous (like any good pregnancy should be). I felt like my skin was going to rip open at any moment, like her little feet were going to break my ribs and like I had to go to the bathroom all day, every day. At my Nov. 17th Dr. appointment, my doctor told me she'd take pity on me and induce me early the next morning... an offer I could not refuse! We got to the hospital at 7am the next morning and they broke my water and started me on pitocin. Everything went pretty smoothly. I got my epidural before the pain got too intense and it only took about 6 hours for me to dilate to 10cm. At around 1:45pm, just as I was getting ready to push, my cell phone rang. We weren't going to answer it at first, but Matt read the number to me and it was the kids' school nurse. Uh oh! They were calling to tell us Gavin was at school with a fever and I needed to come in to get him. Sorry, not gonna happen! Luckily, my parents were only 20 minutes away and they were able to run over and pick him up. We all had a good laugh about that. Ashlyn came out healthy and FEISTY! All the nurses were shocked at what a good scream she had from the get go. I think Matt and I had a little panic attack thinking "what did we get ourselves into?", but she eventually calmed down and was an angel the rest of our hospital stay and that whole first week. When she was about 7 days old I started to feel pains in my lower abdomen at night. The first couple times it happened I thought they were just really bad afterpains and threw on a heating pad. On the 10th day after she was born I woke up around 1am with a terrible pain in my lower right side. I still thought it was afterpains, so I got out the heating pad and tried to go back to sleep. By 2am the pain was so bad I started vomiting and thinking maybe this was something more than just cramps. Matt woke up and called our next door neighbor (she is a saint!) to come sleep on our couch while we headed off to the ER. We had to wake up poor Ashlyn and drag her out into the cold because she was still nursing and had no other options for food. I sat in the ER vomiting and trying to nurse Ashlyn with a morphine drip in my arm for about an hour before they figured out I had a kidney stone in my right side. They loaded me up with prescriptions, sent me home and told me to come back if I hadn't passed it in a week. That was a long week! It took me a full week to pass the stone. The medication they had me on was strong. It made me totally loopy and Ashlyn totally miserable. She cried for a week straight. I am grateful that we have so many loving family members and friends who helped us by bringing us dinner, watching our kids and driving them where they needed to go.

The last few weeks with Ashlyn have been a roller coaster. We have had Thanksgiving, Christmas, a kidney stone, 3 kids' birthdays, a birthday party, a baby blessing, a baptism and the flu (3 times). I feel like we haven't even had time to sit back and reflect on all the changes in our lives. Ashlyn is a bit high maintenance at the moment. I spend most of my time nursing her, trying to put her to sleep or trying to keep her asleep, which is no easy task with 3 other kids around. The other kids ADORE her. Ella is especially drawn to her. I have to be very careful where I leave her to sleep because Ella cannot resist the temptation to pinch her cheeks and kiss her and sing to her. It is really cute. Ashlyn is starting to coo and smile at us pretty regularly. She has the cutest little smile that makes her beautiful blue eyes twinkle. Abe loves to sit and talk to her whenever he gets a chance. He swears he was the first one to get her to smile. Gavin loves to hold her as often as I'll let him. He has always been so sweet to Ella and I am excited to watch him bond with Ashlyn as well. We feel so blessed to have her in our lives.

Coming soon.....

I am really excited to update the blog..... someday. Ashlyn is finally here and I can't wait to post some pics and tell you her story, but life has been chaotic around here to say the least. I've spent the last 3 weeks recovering from childbirth, drugged up trying to pass a kidney stone and now laid up with the flu. The good news is Ashlyn is an absolute angel baby. You are going to love her...... as soon as I have the energy to tell you about her.

A perfect start to summer

Well, school is out and summer has begun..... in theory anyway. I don't really consider it summer until it is warm enough for me to spend my days at the waterpark. Poor Gavin only had 4 days between the end of the regular school year and the start of his summer school program. He takes a social skills course during the summer (it's the 0nly way for him to continue with his speech and occupational therapy during the summer months), so he doesn't really get a break. It's only 3 hours a day Mon-Thur, but I still feel a little bad. During the school year he had a laundry list of complaints regarding the things he missed out on because he was in school. Mainly, spending time with Gramma and Grampa Worlton, eating lunch with us, and watching tv. Thursday we watched a little tv, played outside with the neighbors, ate a picnic lunch together in the backyard and played in our kiddie pool. Friday was our day to spend time with the Grandparents and we decided to go to the Morton Arboretum. Visiting an aboretum might not sound fun, but this one is. They have created a beautiful children's garden where the kids can dig in the dirt, play with tadpoles in a pond, walk through a stream, climb on rocks and learn all about plants and ecosystems. We love it. 

Saturday we decided to head out to a local flea market. I am a big fan of flea markets and there is a huge one once a month about half an hour from us. It is held at a county fairground and is full of miles and miles of randomness. Toys, art, clothing, junk, dollar bins, homemade soda, plants, vintage candies, junk food, organic fruits and veggies..... just about anything you could dream of (for a steal, too). The kids were so excited, especially when they spotted the vintage star wars toys. We walked around, ate junk food and visited stalls for 4 solid hours. At the end we were all tired, but happy. Ella got a beanie baby that she fell in love with the first 5 minutes, Abe and Gavin got some cool star wars memorabilia and Matt and I found a great antique tool box to use as storage. Saturday night we crashed on the couch, ate some great bbq and watched a video. Today is Sunday and I think we'll make it a much needed day of rest. Tomorrow Gavin starts summer school, but we'll still have time for some great afternoon adventures. Hopefully most of them will involve our local waterpark. I love summer!

Bigger news!

We're having a baby! Baby #4 is due November 24, 2009. We could not be more excited and the kids are counting the days.

News!

Matt is now a published author! He wrote an article about Storytelling and it has been published in an obscure PR journal. The book costs about $400 a pop, so we won't be getting one, but I do have a copy of the article I can send to anyone who is interested. Any further communication with us should be done through our agent or publicist. Surely, fame and fortune are coming our way!