mudpuddles

I let the babies play outside yesterday. I thought all the water had dried up from our recent rains and wouldn't you know the little buggers found water. I decided that they deserved to have a little fun and I let them play in it. Then we went in and took a bath.

Jaileigh does not like dirty hands! She kept coming over and wiping them on my pants.

Rigid Scheduler? HA

This week's Question of The Week at Multiples and More is: (this question is from a couple of weeks ago)


How closely do you follow a schedule for your kids?
We follow a flexible schedule. The kids have good days where they follow the schedule and sometimes they have bad days.

Here is our schedule:
6:00-7:00 am babies wake up on their own
7:00-8:00 am babies get fed breakfast
8:00-10:00 am Playtime
10:00 am snacks
11:00am-1:30pm babies nap
1:00-1:30 pm lunchtime
3:30 pm snacktime
more playtime
5:30 pm dinner
6:00 pm baths
6:30 pm clean up, stories, jammies
7:00 pm bedtime


Now at our house this schedule can vary from baby to baby. Some days certain babies will need more sleep, more food, more attention, etc and I allow them to go off of the schedule. I figure I have 4 babies who are all different. I know there are days when I don't want to get out of my jammies and I just want to have a "bad" day. I like schedules but I do not allow them to be my taskmaster.



How old are your kids now? Have you always followed a rigid schedule?
My babies are 18 months old. At the beginning we followed a pretty rigid schedule. We had to feed the babies every 3 hours around the clock. I had to pump every 2 hours around the clock. We did this for the first 7-9 months before we started letting them skip feedings at night.

Do you think that your schedule is conducive to healthy sleep patterns in your kids?
YES! My kids are very healthy and have always been healthy.

Do people give you a lot of flack for being a strict scheduler? If anything I would probably be given flack for not being a strict scheduler.


Has your routine become more relaxed as your kids have gotten older?
Yes, my routine has become more relaxed. No more 3 hour feedings!

How do you kids react when they are completely off their schedules- and how do you get them back on track? I allow them to get off schedule and we try again the next day. Usually they get themselves back on schedule.

Park Days

With all the wonderful California weather we have been having we decided to take the kiddos on some outings. We went to the Church Pavilion/Softball Field one day and then the park. The babies loved both. Jakob gets the runner award. He ran for over an hour straight. No stopping, just ran, and ran, and ran. They all slept really well those nights! Too bad its raining this week.

Anthony and Jakob playing in the sand.

Michael and Jakob in the swing. None of the kids really liked swinging. They would much rather be running and climbing. The swings lasted about 30 seconds for each baby.

Anthony

Michael

Jaileigh- wearing her brothers jacket

and Jakob

Jakob running

Anthony and Michael

Anthony cheesing it

Anthony and Jaileigh

The "Boys"

Michael

Anthony

Jaileigh checking the ball out

and the Faboulous Foursome playing a little tackle football. Jaileigh did jump on top of the pile.

Sorry for the lack of updates. My computer is currently in the shop for 2 weeks, last time that really meant a month. I am lucky enough to have a junker PC still hanging around. It does take me quadruple the time to post but at least I have it. Also, Mike is in New York for 16 days so keep us in your prayers that we will survive- or that I will survive these wild children!

Beautiful Blogger Award

I would like to thank Kim King for nominating me for the Beautiful Blogger Award. She is one of my fellow quad mammas. Check out her beautiful family at her blog - The King Squad

THE RULES

1. Thank the person who nominated you for this award and insert a link to their blog.

2. Pass on the award to 5 other bloggers who you recently discovered and think are great!

3. Contact the other bloggers and let them know they have been chosen for this award.

4. Say 7 things about yourself.

I would like to nominate the following bloggers for this award:
1. SweetnSourMoments
2. The Krazy K's
3.The Stokes Clan
4. Sunny Happenings
5. Luke and Bobbi

Now for 7 things about me.

1. I hate tomatoes, always have, always will.
2. I graduated with a BS in Biology, yes I am a science nerd.
3. I love to read.
4. I love candy.
5. I don't have a dishwasher and I hate it!
6. I don't miss work at all!
7. I have 4 beautiful, happy, healthy babies that I love with all of my being!

Words we say: hi hi hi, bye, stuck, box, spoon, bowl, daddy, mommy, vroom vroom (car), baaa, moooo, oink, fish lips, neigh, cluck, quack, BALL, shoe, sock, book, num-num, bunny nose (motion), bite, jacket, toes, bonk bonk, mike, cracker, meow, roar, me, apple, uh oh, ssshhhhh, yucky, tickle tickle, hot, thank you, lemon, rock, bubbles

sign language for: more, all done, puppy, eat


Body parts we point to: head, noggin, hair, eyes, nose, ears, mouth, teeth, tongue, hand, feet, toes, knees, belly, bottom

Happy Valentines Day!

Happy Valentines Day to all!


Michael and Jaileigh smooching.

Jakob

Also a Happy Anniversary to my parents. They met on Valentines day a LONG LONG time ago and were married 6 months later. WOW! Happy Day of LOVE!

I just updated my blogger and I really don't know how to use it yet so you get this crazy post with no picture labels. Sorry. Hopefully next time will be better!

The Rocking Chair

I have a rocking chair that I absolutely LOVE. It was given to us by Mikes brother and sister in law when the babies were born. It is the best purchase ever! Now it is dirty. I clean it but it keeps getting dirty. The babies love to sit in it too. They also love to wipe their dirty hands and faces on it. It is a well loved chair! I have spent so many hours, countless hours, in this rocking chair and it still rocks the same as it did when we first got it. I love holding and rocking my babies. I love it and I am going to miss it when they don't want to be rocked anymore. One day though, like in the book Love You Forever by Robert Munsch, my babies will come home and rock me in it. I consider myself so blessed to have four babies to rock and that I have the time to rock them. I have been blessed to be able to stay home with my babies and to love on them all day long. What a blessed life I have!

New Toy At Our House

For the quads first birthday we bought them the Eezy Peezy Ball Pit. This was suggested to us by several other quad mommas. When we got it we were living in a tiny house and didn't have room for it. Now that we moved I was ready to put it up. So, 6 months after their birthday they finally get to enjoy their present. They LOVE it! I thought it was going to be HUGE but it really isn't. I put it together originally thinking that I was going to leave it outside but it was so much smaller than I thought that it now has a permanent spot in our living/playroom. I would recommend this toy to everyone. It is awesome. My babies play on it everyday, several times a day.
Now for the picture overload. They were having so much fun on it I just kept taking pictures and couldn't stop.


Jakob and Jaileigh.

The babies rarely go down the slide. They usually walk up it. They think its the ladder : )
Michael showing us how much he loves it.

Jaileigh in the ball toss basket reading her books. See it's multifunctional. It has its own reading room.

Jakob, Jaileigh, Anthony, and Michael. What you can't really see is that Jaileigh is hitting Anthony on the head with a ball. I think that's the reason for the "look" he is giving the camera.

Michael

Anthony

Jaileigh, Anthony, and Michael. The blue thing is a "hoop" of some sort. The babies throw the balls in and they come out the bottom.

Jakob, Anthony, Jaileigh, and Michael. Yes, Jaileigh and Michael are wrestling. This happens quite often. For some reason they like to tackle each other and Jaileigh loves it just as much as the boys.

Michael the Monkey. He is climbing here. I haven't had one fall yet. They do some crazy stuff on this toy. I think I'm going to have to keep them away from the circus. They all think they are trapeze artists.

Jakob, Michael, Jaileigh, and Anthony. Love Michaels funny face.

Jake getting ready to climb

Anthony, Jakob, and Jaileigh

Naming Multiples

This week at Multiples and More, the 'Question of the Week' was about naming multiples. (Jan 24, 2010) I am just getting around to answering this question though. I don't think that I have blogged about it yet. I like this question. I print my blog out in a book once or twice a year. This blog is acting as my babies "baby books" because it is so much easier than trying to do 4 different baby books. For those interesting in printing out your blogs I use Blog2print. It is a little expensive but worth it! So on to the topic.

How did you choose your multiples' names? We, or I should say I had a hard time choosing names. Being a teacher is really hard when it comes down to naming your kids. There are so many names that are linked to your students. My husband had a huge list for me to pick from and I was so picky. We finally settled on the names a couple of weeks before the babies were born. All of the babies name have meaning to them.

Anthony Joseph- "Joseph Anthony" is the family name that is passed down through the oldest son in Mikes family. Mikes oldest brother didn't have children so we decided to use the name. I switched it to Anthony Joseph because Mike isn't the oldest so I didn't think we needed to keep the tradition exact.

Michael Huston- Michael is named after his father. Huston is a name that I found in the Sports Illustrated and I liked it. The baseball players name is Huston Street.

Jaileigh Addison- Jai is my middle name and Leigh is my sisters middle name. Addison is a name that Mike and I both really liked. I didn't like that it was in the top 10 most popular names for 2008 so we used it as a middle name. It is also one of the streets that Wrigley Field is on. Mike is a HUGE Cubs fan.

Jakob Thomas- I really like the name Jakob and I spelled it with a "K" because if we called him Jake it would switch and probably cause confusion. Besides I like the "K" better too. Thomas is the family name in my family. I think that everyone person in his family names at least one of their kids Thomas.


Did you stick with family names?
Each of the babies has a family name, so Yes we did.



How do you feel about "matchy" names?
I think they are cute but I can't imagine doing it. I have a hard enough time trying to remember who I am talking to with out having to sort out which matchy name I am trying to say.


Did you worry about their names "coordinating?"
No, I just wanted each of them to have an important and significant name.



Did you name your babies before you met them, or wait until you saw them to assign names?
They were named before we met.

What were your second choices?
Isabella and Grace were our girl names and Dean was a middle name that we were going to use for a boy.

Did you consider the popularity of a name as a deciding factor?
I did think about it for Jaileigh. Addison is such a popular name right now that I really didn't want that to be her first name. The boys I must have forgot or didn't care because they all make the top 10 most popular list year after year.

The Fashionista!

Jaileigh decided she wanted to pick her own clothes out today. She raided the laundry basket, thank goodness it was clean clothes and not dirty ones. She has on two of her brothers shirts, the teal outfit and the maroon longsleaved shirt, and one of her summer tanktops underneath and her pants. She insisted that I put all of these on and she wore them all day and slept in them too. She would not take them off.

Her she is sooooo proud of herself. Notice the cars that she won't let go of either? Tomboy or Princess? Today seems to be a tomboy day.

Gooooooooooo Blackhawks!

This picture is just to make our daddy happy.

Michael, Jaileigh, Jakob, and Anthony

Where's Your Belly?

When you ask the babies where their bellies are they look for their belly buttons. They are so silly. Here are pictures of them showing me their bellies. Please look beyond the different states of dress. Clothing is optional at our house and the fact that all of them have one piece on is a miracle, and all of their diapers are on.

Anthony
Michael

Jakob is thinking this is really funny.

And Jaileigh

Seeing Double

Our friends the Woodcock quads came over to visit today. The Woodcock Quads are 6 weeks old. We had 2 sets of quads in the house plus the older brother of the Woodcocks. That is 9 children under 4 and 8 of them were under 2. WOW! I was worried about how my babies would handle the other babies but they did great. Michael loved them and kept rubbing their heads and putting in their pacifiers. He and Jaileigh kept giving them kisses. Jaileigh really wanted to hold the babies. I really didn't think she would like them since she thinks she is the Princess. Anthony was a little put out that they were getting so much attention but quickly forgot about them when he was distracted. And Jakey really didn't care he just went on about his business.

Believe it or not it was a very fun day! It was great to be able to hang out with another quad mom and to see her beautiful babies. It was a sweet reminder of where we were not so long ago. Thank you Woodcocks for coming over. We all enjoyed it and look forward to seeing you again.

Michael is putting McKenzie's pacifier back in her mouth- whether she wants it or not.
The whole group with another wonderful friend Linda. Linda comes on Mondays to play with us. She has been coming to help us since our beginning so I am sure this brought back some memories for her too.

Jakob, Jaileigh, Anthony, Michael still working on the pacifier, Linda and Peyton. The babies are Carter, Presley, McKenzie and Kennedy.