Blessed

** Blogger is being a butt and won't let me post pictures right. Just so you know. Maybe I'll try to add them again later.

I am. I know it. Sometimes it doesn't make daily life any easier. I Thank God everytime I read about someone else's difficulties having a baby that what I have has come so easily for me. Did I ask for 6 children? Er, no! But would I trade a single one of them for having all of the bills paid? Er, hell no! I'll drive this mini-van straight to the poor house if I have to, but I'll be loving these children all the way.

Ok, enough of that.

Gosh I really have not been keeping y'all updated, have I? Work is great. I'm so glad to be in a job at a place that I want to go to everyday. I love my co-workers. Sometimes we get a few patients come through that are hard to take, or hard to get a long with, or hard to please, but they eventually drift off. Scott is doing great at home. He gets a little stressed, but he's not ready to give it up just yet (thank goodness!!).

Jamie - oh the joys of raising a teenager! It never ends. Her grades are in the toilet. As a result, she hasn't had her cell phone for several weeks now and it.is.the.end.of.the.world. She had 9000 texts last month. No, that is not too many zeroes. That is the actual number. She can't manage to finish any homework because she "doesn't have time" to do that and "all of my chores" but she can send 300 texts per day. And really, cleaning the kitchen after dinner, keeping your room at least hygienically clean and cleaning the bathroom just often enough to keep the alien fungus at bay is not really a whole lot to ask. I'm worried that I won't be able to motivate her enough to pass, yes PASS, the 9th grade. Much less have any sense of the future, college, etc. She wants to be a dermatologist but doesn't think passing 9th grade English is important?? God, give me strength.

Oh, and I almost forgot - I'm endebted to 6 Day Dental and Orthodontics for the next 2 years... Jamie has started the process of getting braces. Right now she has spacers, next week is a blah-blah inserted and then a mold taken, yada yada, followed 3 weeks later by initial.initial.initial which sounds something like something the enemy is shooting at you (RPG or some such??) but is actually an expander. I just drive her there and sign the checks. Anyway, I'll post pictures when she has something that looks like it should cost the $150 per month I'm paying.

Hunter - He alternately holds my heart and makes me want to scream. He'll be the first to run up and hug me when I get home and the next minute throw himself in the floor in a fit of fury because I tell him to put his toys away. Sheesh. So we struggle with doing as we are told at home and at school. We made a new rule that he has to get "green" for behavior ALL WEEK at school in order to play any video games on the weekends. I think that has happened once since. Except Dad gives me the big middle finger about my rules and pretty much lets him do whatever he wants. Thank you Dad. He just gets tired of the whining and says "Fine then!" and gives in.

Hannah - always my sweet pea! Though she is learning some bad habits from Hunter. She gets mad and walks off anytime you start to correct her. She got a fish tank for her b-day (thank you Didi; Daddy was NOT happy, LOL, but who's giving the finger now? I approved the gift hahahahaha!) so she bugs me daily and about getting it set up so she and DiDi can go pick out her fish.

The twins had their first ever birthday party this year. I will never do that again! It was awful! None of the girls showed up (except the cousins and 1 or 2 stragglers at the end) and several of the boys parents just dropped them off. So, guess which boys were the worst behaved? Of course the ones whose parents weren't there. GRRRR But the twins seemed to enjoy it and they got some fun gifts so I just count off those 2 hours in the tally of my life.

Babies!!

Cooper - we call him the True Adventurer (if you play any Lego Indiana Jones you know what that means). He can commando crawl (belly crawl using his elbows) and he is All.Over.the.Place. Seriously, he can not be contained. We build "castle walls" with pillows and laundry baskets to keep him in the family room but he just plows through or climbs over. It's pretty funny, except when you want to go to the bathroom and can't leave him alone for half a minute. We are working on getting baby gates to block off the entire room for him (long story, they are more expensive because we have long, oddly shaped openings so we're having to kinda save up for them or wait to get them as xmas gift) but right now he's got the run of the place.

Molly - we call her Chubs. Cooper started to lose some of that "fat baby" look when he started being so active, but Molly just keeps getting chubbier. She doesn't move much. She "dances" on her belly, and of course she rolls around, but thats about it. She can almost sit up though. She'll sit propped with one hand for a bit if you stay close by. Gosh, she's the prettiest little thing you ever saw. I entered all of the younger kids (Jamie is past the age-range) into Gap's model search, but we all agree Molly will be the one if any of them gets it.

Emily - still the princess. And the Peanut. Weighing in a grand total of 12 lbs (yes, STILL) she's like Mighty Mouse. At her last well-baby, she was still 12 lbs. So the pediatrician looked back over it and said that at her last visit, when she had supposedly made such a big jump in weight, she thinks that was an error. She thinks it must have been more like 10-11 lbs then and they wrote it down wrong. Still, she thinks she is on the same "curve" she has always been on and we are not to worry. She's still on the high calorie formula but she's just bitty bitty. She's almost as long as the other 2, just lighter. She can wear most of the same clothes as Molly, they are just big around the waist.

She just almost wants to crawl. She gets on her elbows and knees and rocks, rocks, rocks...crashes. Not there yet. And she thinks she is an only child (she always has, really). She wants to be held all the time. She wants to eat first, wants to be changed first, etc. Definitely the princess.

Is that everybody? Whew!