Splash from the Past!

Not only did Wesley and Anna Kate get to spend the afternoon at Legoland Water Park yesterday... they got to spend it with their preschool teacher, Miss Amanda!  Teachers are among the greatest celebrities to my kids, ranking right up there with cousins and golf-cart owners.  So it was a pretty big hairy deal!  And as if having your preschool teacher to yourself for a day at Legoland isn't enough, they also scored a little reunion with Miss Amanda's girls, Emily and Abby.  Wesley and Emily go all the way back to the 3-year-old program at College Heights Preschool!  Amanda taught both Wesley and Anna Kate for an entire year at JHP when they were four.  We are super-sad that she is now teaching 1st grade, so she can't teach Carigan or Tate when they're four.  :o(

Legoland mailed us four free one-day tickets (including the water park!) in an attempt to woo us back for annual pass renewals.  No such luck, Legoland, but we were happy to redeem the one-day tickets!  I saw on Facebook that Amanda had just purchased annual passes to Legoland, and we've been talking for months about trying to get together, so this was the perfect opportunity!  Amanda and her girls met us in the parking lot at church right at noon and we left straight from worship.  We were able to slip out without Carigan noticing, so Daddy didn't even have to deal with tears.  Can you imagine getting to spend the day at a theme park with your preschool teacher??  I mean, this is BIG stuff!!
  

We'd barely taken a few steps into the park when we ran into a guy wearing a vest with more than a hundred mini-figures to choose from to trade!  Jackpot!  This is new... we always had to hunt mini-figures one at a time (each employee wears one on their badge).  The kids had a big time trading.  -BELOW- Wesley and Emily racing cars at the Daytona 500. 

Getting ready to head into the water park.  Everyone was way too hyper all day long to pause and smile nicely for photos, so the only way I ever got everyone to look at the camera was to tell them to make a silly face!  -BELOW- Anna Kate & Abby

We took the kids to the water park at Legoland two times last fall, and both times Wesley fell a good inch short of the required 48" to ride the giant water slides.  He was super disappointed that second visit when he still fell short.  He had been SO determined to hit 48" and ride those slides!  Yesterday I dutifully walked him back there to measure him (after he nagged me 28 times since arriving), but I was just going through the motions because I was SURE he'd still be too short, because the water slides are so tall and frightening even I would never ride!  The thought of Wesley being able to ride one seemed ridiculous!  But I got back there and lo and behold, he's exactly 48 inches tall.  I gazed up what seemed to be a good 5 stories or more to the top of the slides and thought, there's. NO. way.  But Wes was beside himself and Emily and Abby wanted to go too, so I started to climb the stairs behind them, certain I'd be returning down the stairs with all three very shortly...

I cannot even TELL you how high up we were!!  I was 99.9% certain we were waiting in line in vain, but was happy to climb the stairs with them for the view.  Wesley was as excited as I've ever seen him about anything.
Still only about halfway up from this point!  We got to the top and they asked which slide everyone wanted to ride.  Wes wanted to ride the one that goes STRAIGHT down.  Emily wanted to ride the tube that winds around, and the line was shortest for it, so she got bumped to the front.  When she actually went down, I felt like I needed to go down the stairs in case she came out scared and was upset.  So I told the worker up there I was heading down to meet her, but that if (and by that I meant when) Wesley and Abby changed their minds, to send them down the stairs and I'd be waiting. 

I rushed to the bottom and checked on Emily (who was fine) and then watched the stairs for little feet to descend.  I watched & watched and waited & waited and then I saw Wesley, but NOT on the stairs!  I was so shocked to see Wesley free-falling down that slide that I didn't even have my camera ready, so I didn't get to snap a picture until he was near the bottom.  UNreal.  Anna Kate is my thrill-seeker, but it took us a whole year to get Wesley to ride the dinkiest roller coaster at Legoland!  How in the world did he go through with this?!!  I rushed to comfort him, assuming he'd be half-drowned and crying, but he emerged and said, "That. was. AWESOME!!"  Then he immediately started begging to go again.
  

I discovered poor Anna Kate watching from the back fence of the play area where Amanda was watching her.  It's hard being the "ittle one"... I remember it well!  Wesley, Emily and Abby were all three begging to go again, so I yelled to Anna Kate to tell Miss Amanda to come swap out with me and I would take her to the lazy river.  So Anna Kate and I floated two laps on the lazy river while Wesley went down three more times... he did each slide once and the straight-down plummet slide twice.  I'm still in shock!  The water park closed an hour earlier than the rest of the park, so we rode some rides at the end of our day.  All the kids fought over who got to ride with Miss Amanda, and once she was claimed, they'd fight over who got to ride with each other.  I was always the leftover pick.  Until I told Abby I had cookies and then she liked to ride with me.  :o)  We had passes for an entire year and Wesley was always too scared to ride this ride... but coming off his water slide high, he finally rode Project X for the first time and declared he loved it.  He rode with me and they wouldn't allow cameras on the ride, so I didn't get a pic.
    

Anna Kate riding Lost Kingdom Adventure with me.  She claims she's scared of the ride, but I'm pretty sure it's just a ploy to avoid wasting time on it because she thinks it's boring and it's right next to her favorite ride...  The Beetle Bounce!
  

We were able to walk right up to the big coasters just before the park closed.  We got to ride Project X and Coastersaurus twice in a row!  So everyone got a turn with Miss Amanda the celebrity.  -BELOW- My coaster girl!  I had so much fun riding with her after 9 months of having to let Daddy do all the rides.  She's a hoot!
  

Sunday, April 28, 2013.  The park was supposed to close at 6:00 and all the rides promptly shut down, but the stores stayed open much longer.  Surprise, surprise!  None of the kids were ready to end our day, so they dragged it out as long as possible, watching Lego movies inside one of the stores.
  

As Carigan would say... "BEST. DAY. EVER... the end!" 

Tate's Church Debut

Anna Kate has been dying to show Tate off to her friends, so I signed up to be guest reader for her class on April 18.  Isa and Anna Kate happened to be wearing matching skirts and matching bows (although the bows were from a birthday party they had both attended the day before, so that wasn't so much a coincidence).  Isabella, Anna Kate, Riley and Carigan:

Tate's big church debut was Sunday, April 21.  Again, I scored an epic fail in photo-documentation.  I grabbed the camera to snap a picture of all the kids before heading out, but by the time I had emerged with it, Michael had half of the kids already buckled in the car.  Luckily it was also Baby Liam's church debut, and Amanda was on the ball taking pictures with her phone.  She e-mailed me these shots.  Thanks, Amanda!

So Tate won't let me get dressed and he won't let me clean the house and he won't let me cook and he won't let me eat, but he'll let me do this... which is why a blog post is often the only thing I accomplish on any given day.  Luckily he sleeps pretty well at night... you know he's ready for bed when you can set him down and he stays asleep!   4/26/13

Wesley subscribes to a Lego magazine where they publish a few photos in each installment of kids with their Lego creations.  Wes really really REALLY wants to be in the magazine, so he's always creating things and asking me to take his picture with them.  And if I was a good mom, I'd actually have mailed off a photo or two by now, but sadly it's a bit low on the priory list right now as I'm adjusting to life with four kids!

One Month Old!

Tate is one month old today!!  Time for his first month-birthday post!  Click here to compare what the other kids looked like at 1-month-old... they all look huge compared to Tate!  I chronicled each of Anna Kate and Carigan's month-birthdays, and now it's Tate's turn!  Wesley had the disadvantage/benefit of being born before my blogging days... sometimes I feel badly that his babyhood didn't get the same coverage, but that also meant he got a lot more Mommy time than the others, because Mommy had a lot more time back then!
 

The kids were out of school today for a teacher work day, and since the rest of the county still had school, it was the perfect opportunity to visit the children's museum.  We had the whole place to ourselves most of the time we were there.  We met up with Will and Kerrigan (the "other" Kerrigan, as Carigan calls her) and had a great play-date.  Tate snoozed in his stroller while we were upstairs and then I nursed him in a rocking chair on the lower level while the kids played on the "oranges" playground.  I was nervous about getting out with all four, but Tate was great and meeting a friend always helps diffuse the chaos.  Wesley sat down to play his recital piece as soon as he spotted the piano.  It's a little Russian ditty.  We only have an electronic keyboard at home, but we hear this ditty a lot... and I mean A LOT.  ;o)  Only a couple of weeks left until the actual recital.
 

Carigan ready for a check-up.  She actually just had her real 3-year check-up last week (I'm a wee bit behind due to the pregnancy and Tate's arrival), so she knew what to do!  Anna Kate and Carigan pretty much cleared the shelves shopping at Mini-Publix:

April 15, 2013

The whole Rogers/Cooper clan... loving having the place to ourselves! 

Since Tate's first month-birthday is cause for celebration, we arranged not one, but TWO play-dates.  We said goodbye to the Coopers and went straight to the Galbraith's house to swim.  Their place is right up there with Disney World to my kids.  Tate enjoyed chillaxin' by the pool with Khaysy.  He wet through his little outfit and all I had in my bag was a sleeper that I was afraid would be too warm, so we let him chill in his diaper.  Such a sweet boy.  Tate is finally starting to put on weight!  He dipped below his birth weight of 5 pounds, 1 ounce and remained between 4-10 and 4-13 for the first two weeks.  His last weigh-in was one week ago, and he weighed 5 pounds, 10 1/2 ounces!  He had put on almost a pound in a week!  We don't take him back for another weigh-in until the 23rd, but he's eating well and I'd be shocked if he's not above 6 pounds now.  Yay!

Tate has just officially "woken up" in the past 3 or 4 days... after 4 weeks of pretty much sleeping 22 hours a day, he's suddenly having long awake periods and wants to be held.  A LOT.  This is when having four kids is going to start to get interesting!  Up until this past weekend, I set an alarm to wake us to feed Tate every three hours at night, because he would have slept through the night and we had to make sure his blood sugar didn't dip too low from not eating often enough.  But by this weekend, Tate was waking up on his own before our alarms went off.  On one hand it's a relief that he's grown out of his itty-bitty-too-tiny phase and is acting like a normal newborn.  But on the other hand - helllloooo, sleep deprivation!  He actually still sleeps well at night, but he doesn't transition well from snuggling and nursing in bed to being put in the bassinet.  He doesn't cry, but he squeaks like a mouse and then starts grunting, and I'd rather pick him up and get him back to sleep than try to ignore him.  Unfortunately, I've never been able to tune out baby noise of any kind.  So I'm not "up" up at night, but I'm also usually not sleeping... I'm in bed nursing or snuggling a baby.  But my body & brain are starting to inform me that's not the same as actually sleeping.  :o)

And speaking of grunting - Tate is the gruntiest kid I've ever met!  It seems to be his main form of communication.  I keep thinking it's a good thing we didn't name him Grant (loved the name but couldn't go double-presidential with Lincoln... I'm telling ya, our naming woes ran deep!), because we'd definitely be calling him Grunt by now.  He still spends most of his awake time grunting and trying to go poopy.  I think his tummy may be a little immature because he also spits up, which is something none of my others did.  My others were all blasters... but they weren't spitters.  I've never used bibs or had burp clothes on hand, but I may have to start - right now I just always yell at one of the kids to run and get me a wet wipe.  I'm just going to have to get in a better habit of burping more often.  None of my others really seemed to need to burp, and usually wouldn't.  Tate almost always gives us a good burp and I need to start remembering to stop and try more often. 

He was easy-breezy for the first 3 weeks, but it's taken me literally hours to type these few paragraphs with Tate's constant insistence on being held!  I hen-pecked some sentences with him draped over my shoulder and he's fussing in the bouncy seat at this moment.  I feel myself entering the phase where a shower may be the greatest accomplishment of each day.  I have about five blog posts to write to catch up, but don't hold your breath!  Tate seems to like being out and about, and has been much easier to manage out of the house than at home.  Which is not good news for my blog!

Nothing wears the kids out like swimming and being in the sun!  As soon as we got home last night I fed the kids dinner and then gave them baths.  Even though it was barely 7 p.m. and still light outside, I knew Carigan would crash hard, so we bribed her into her bed early with the iPad.  This was what I found when I checked back 10 minutes later.  The sign of a successful day!  Glad Tate's first month-birthday was such a fun day for everyone. 

Granddaddy's Turn

Granddaddy waited until Tate was home (for good!) before booking his flight to come see him, since he could only take a couple of days off work.  Carigan, Tate, and I picked him up Friday afternoon (April 12) and Dad got his first real-life glimpse of grandbaby #7.  We ate lunch at Cracker Barrel before picking up Wesley and Anna Kate from school and heading to Yogurt Mountain, where Tate has his first public blast.  I had to strip his poopy-stained outfit off right there in Books-A-Million!  That evening we went to Greg & Marty's neighborhood to watch the Sun 'n Fun night time air show.  One of Wesley's old preschool friends (Cozette) was attending a party at the neighborhood pool, so my kids got pulled into festivities including jumpy houses and slides.  Everyone came to ooh & aahh over Tate, and Greg took the big kids on a thrill ride through the field on his golf cart, where they saw a possum.  Or so I've been told numerous times by all three of my big kids.  Apparently that possum left an impression!
 

After 4 weeks of pretty much sleeping 22 hours a day, Tate has finally decided to spend long periods of time being AWAKE and won't allow anyone to set him down for more than a minute. I've tried the swing, the Boppy, the bouncy seat... he must be held. He did last about 30 seconds longer in the bouncy seat with his sister talking to him though. ☺ Carigan still loves to hold Tate and even insists on sharing her blankey with him... which is saying a lot because it's her most prized possession!
 

We had a super fun and busy day with Grandaddy on Saturday, but there was an epic fail on my part in photo-documentation.  I guess that's what happens when you first venture out  about with four kids!  We went to Common Grounds, we went to Palace Pizza, and we walked Lake Mirror (where Anna Kate insisted that Michael hold her upside down by her ankles over the lake again so she could retrieve more snail shells).  Sunday we were all worn out and we spent a lot of time napping and snuggling after church before venturing out for a Baskin Robbins/Walmart run.  -BELOW- Granddaddy's Quad Squad ♥  Michael took Dad to the airport in the wee hours of the morning on Monday, so our time with Granddaddy was brief, but seeing as the kids' favorite thing to do with him is to play horsey and ride him all over the place as they heap abuse on him, it's probably best Dad enjoy my kids in small doses.  :o) 

Had to throw this in... Dad e-mailed me this photo he took with his iPhone.  My Grandmother and Grandaddy bought this fridge within a couple of months of getting married in March of 1946.  They replaced the compressor and a coil a week later.  It's been running ever since.  It's been the "Coke" fridge in their basement for my entire life.  Granddaddy lost the knob off the thermostat and Cokes kept exploding; he got tired of defrosting it and Grandmother got tired of cleaning it, so after 67 years, they finally decided to replace it with a mini-fridge.  One of my dad's co-workers came and got it to use in his garage.  Sad day.  I'm not a fan of goodbyes... even with refrigerators!

Tate's Nursery