Long time no blog?

It's been a while since I posted. I could use the excuse that I've been really busy, which I have, or that there hasn't been anything to post about, which is absolutely a lie, but the truth is, it's much easier to write about happy things that occur in one's life than the difficult things that occur along the way. When I started this blog, I wanted to write about what it's like to be a wife and mother of multiple children while still working and attempting to maintain some sort of a social life. I wanted it to be funny, light-hearted, but more than anything honest. But honestly, life isn't always funny and light-hearted. The past months have been filled with joys but also sorrows. Life-changing things have occured which I wasn't exactly sure I wanted the world (or at least the few of you that read this) to be aware of. Honesty, it turns out, comes with a price and that price is exposing one's deepest emotions to what life throws at us. So from here on I will try to do just that- talk honestly about the good, the bad, and the in between. Because that's my life.

Dino Fun!

This year Sebastian celebrated his 4th birthday! This would be the first birthday in which he was able to invite other kids. Normally birthdays cause a certain level of anxiety for me that I already mentioned in a previous post, but this party was actually fun to plan! He chose a dinosaur theme, much to my relief, which very easy to plan for (I should mention that Seb originally chose a "motorcycle theme" for some reason I will never know but luckily for me, he became strangely fascinated with dinosaurs weeks before his birthday! Good thing- I have know idea where I would find motorcycle decorations!) I ordered dinosaur eggs for a dino egg hunt and dinosaur figurines for the kiddies to paint from Oriental Trading Co. I also picked up some dino themed decorations and a T-Rex pinata from Party City. The cake came from a local bakery in Mebane that was able to do a dino scene with dino candles to top it off. We had quite a houseful as our family, many of our neighbors, and 13 children showed up! Below are the pics. As you can see, the kids had a blast and Sebastian now has more dinosaurs then he knows what to do with!

Sebastian is dino form!

The table was set!
Pinata!
Dino birthday cake.
Dino Grub
The kids painted dino figurinesThe cake was served!
It was obviously a hit!

Fall beginnings...

There's something about a cool, crisp morning at the end of summer that makes me very nastalgic for Fall. Fall, after all, is my absolute favorite season. With fall comes not only cooler weather, which let me tell you I am SO ready for, but the rise of school buses, the start of football season, the countdown until my birthday (don't really know how excited I am about that), and of course, preparations for Halloween. Fall is also the season I got married in, and the season my youngest was born. Although busy, I do, indeed, love fall.

Today was one such morning when the coolness of the air mixed with excitement of the first day of school combined to make me realize that fall will soon be aproaching. I'm sure many mom's were in the same position this morning as they sent their "little" boys and girls off for the first day and realized, 'God, I can't believe he/she is a second grader (or whatever grade they're in)'. Solomon's first day of the second grade began like any ordinary day of school, with me restling him out of bed as he complained that he was just 'too tired'. As I reminded him that this was the first day of school and he should be excited to see all his friends again, he half grunted and then let me know in a very grown up voice that he was not wearing what I picked out for him. Ah the joys of having your kids grow up. After breakfast at Biscuitville, I did manage to get him to cheer up and express that he was excited to start the second grade. Here's the evidence and the one picture I managed to take of him on his first day of the second grade (single tear...)


In other events, I had my first OB visit with my nurse midwife today. I am very excited about delivering with a midwife vs a MD because since going through nursing school, I now realize and appreciate the level of care a midwife can deliver. I was absolutely thrilled to meet her and actually like the woman! She spent over 45 minutes talking with me about my past pregnancies and what I expect from this one. She then examined me and assured me that everything looked great!

I have one week until I am out of the dreaded first trimester and heading full throttle into the greater portion of this pregnancy. So far this pregnancy has been pretty different than the other two, and not in a good way. I don't remember being quite so tired, nauseated, constipated (sorry for the TMI but it's ture), and well, BIG. I've attached a picture of my first trimester ultrasound. As you can see, my baby is a peanut :) It's hard to believe a peanut could wreak so much havoc on my body but it has! Maybe this is a sign it's a girl??? I guess we will just have to wait and see... For now, though, I am VERY excited about fall and everything it has to bring!

It's that time of year...

Summer tends to be a very busy season for the Cole family. Not only are the kids out of school and vacationing plans are in full swing, but it is also the season in which two of our children have birthdays a week apart: Solomon July 22nd and Kaidyn August 3rd. Because of this, I refer to this time of year quite commonly as the season of "birthday madness". For those of you who do not have children, or even for those of you who do but haven't reached this stage in their childhood, let me enlighten you on why this period often becomes my own personal version of hell.

Don't get me wrong, I love my kiddos and am more than excited to help them celebrate the day that they came into this world. As a new parent, the first few birthdays your child celebrates are filled with feelings of joy and celebration. Pictures of your little bundle of joy taking his first bite of cake, and subsequently wearing most of it, are proudly displayed on fb posts and alike for all your friends and family to see. Birthdays really don't start to become complicated until small gatherings of friends and family turn into larger gatherings of your child's school friends.

This is also usually the point in time when your child becomes very opinionated about the type of birthday party he or she wants to have, aka the party's theme. This can be the initial source of anxiety for many party-planning parents, as sometimes little Jonny's request is all but impossible to find. We've had some very unique parties in the past, including Winnie the Poo, Dora/Diego, Spiderman, Wolverine, and Under the Sea. More than one of these parties involved some creative online google-ing by yours truly in order to find select party supplies that just did not exist at the typical party supply store.

The second source of anxiety of party planning parents is the RSVPs, or the lack there of. I'm not real sure when it became acceptable to not RSVP to any party, let alone a child's birthday party in which numbers are typically needed for things like food, goodbags, etc but sadly, this has been the case in the past years. Summer is the worst time for parents to not RSVP, and because of this, I have spent countless amounts of time in the past calling each individual parent (at one point 20 parents!) to ask them if their child was, indeed, going to attend. In the end, many "yes" parents don't show up, only adding more fuel to my ever-growing frustration and irritation with said parent.

For all of these reasons, birthday madness becomes a point of my summer that I could go with out. So this year when the idea surfaced for our family to go to six flags over Georgia instead of having a large, anxiety-producing celebration, I was the biggest advocate. Luckily, the kids were more than happy to for-go a large party for the opportunity to go to six flags. Instead of a large party with themes and friends involved, they got a small, family celebration this past weekend. Presents were received (ipod touches- they were lovin it!). Cupcakes were eaten. There was no theme and RSVPs were unnecessary. The kids were happy. I was ecstatic. A simple party with zero stress= perfection. My only question is why don't we do this every year?

And so it begins...

For those of you who were not clued into to my recent cryptic fb post, yes, Shad and I are expecting a baby next March 2012. Are we excited? Yes! Nervous? You bet. A little shocked? Well yeah.

It's not that this particular baby was not planned. We always knew we wanted another child. The question of when was never far from our minds as each year past us by and we decided, a las, it was not the right timing. This year was no different as we contemplated growing our family to a party of six, which would include four children under the age of 9. As we weighed the decision, certain fears inevitably crept in: Do we have enough money for another child? Is our house equipped to hold 4 children? Certainly, we would need a bigger car, right? Can we both really work full time and give the children the love and attention we would want to give them?? Along with this anxiety, however, also came anticipation and excitement for the possibility of another child. We thought through the positive aspects of having a child right now: Our children would be closer in age than they would if we waited. We are both at a good point in our careers to have a larger family. Do we really want to be in a position where we have a teenager and a baby? And most importantly- is money really the most important factor when it comes to having a child?

We weighed the decision carefully, but in the end, we decided to let "fate" decide. We had decided a while ago that the next child we had was to be born in the spring. If it was indeed "fate" or God's plan for us to have another child this year, we would try for two months to ensure the baby would be born in either March or April. If I did not get pregnant, however, we would take this as a sign that it wasn't the right timing and wait until the following year. Thus we embarked of the adventure of trying to conceive. If you have ever been TTC you will relate that it has to be the most anxiety-filled period of time you will ever go through. From the time you ovulate and possible conceive to 10-13 days later when you actually find out if your pregnant or not, all you can wonder about is whether you are pregnant. This will drive you crazy! For me, this led to some overly obsessive web browsing on every possible pregnancy symptom that could occur and some over speculation that these symptoms were actually happening to me. Fast forward to that fateful day when I could actually test to see if I was pregnant. Both Shad and I had our doubts that we had indeed conceived, so when that + sign did happen to appear, all I could do was laugh. Fate, it seems, was with us all along.

So we begin the journey of pregnancy, and although we have been here before (twice), everything seems just as new as the first time. We are excited. We are nervous. We are trying to get over our shock that this is actually happening. But overall, we are just happy this is the direction our lives have taken us.