sorry to Tyler's babysitters, and sorry to Tyler, and goodbye to late night hanging out w/ friends

I need help on how to train my baby to take a bottle and go to sleep with a babysitter. (at night)
Or I can take the hints and just stay home and nurse him.
Here's how I found him this evening after being called to come home.

He was in just his diaper because he was red hot crying.  Martin was sweating bouncing with him when my mom saved him on New Year's Eve.  I got called back early then too, and he was sleeping on my mom sorta like this. 
Herre's a photo of after we took him on a group date with us to Ceviche.  He went in asleep, then woke up before he was ready.  I took him to the car to feed him and brought him back.  Then I came back and he started crying.  He didn't stop for over an hour with me holding him out in the car, then on the way home.  It wasn't 'til I laid him down on his Uncle Andre's bed here and nursed him that way that he calmed down and finally slept.  That was the first of the big tantrums I think.  That was 12/30/11.  (And I know the socks don't match.) 

Poor baby boy.

not 1, not 2, not 3, not 4, not 5, but SIX kids for me!

These two, Ivy and Tyler, bring back memories of when I just had Dylan then started watching Malia who was/is 3 months older.  Corrie and I thought we had our hands full with those two. 

 I only watched these 5 kiddos after Malia was done with her school.  She gets out early on Wednesdays. 

 Here we are after picking up Dylan from his school.  I never thought my mini van would be too small!  We had to take out a car seat to squish everybody in the back.  Isaac and Dylan cried about it for a minute. 

In that chaos, we still made candy corn sugar cookies.  If I do them again, I'll make them where they don't spread as much. 

 Here is Ivy and Tyler.  I tried to recreate the Malia and Dylan picture from 5 years before. 

I had forgotten that we did a close up instead of a full body shot of them. 

This is Dylan and Malia.  Dylan was only 5 days old. 

So here's a better comparison of Ivy and Tyler, outside - where I like it.

 Back to the full body shot of the now 5 yr olds:

And here's one of Ivy's 3 month portraits. 

Sometimes she looks just like Noah, but now she looks more like Malia. 

AND, she's getting Malia's personality.  Here we go again!

(I'll usually only have 5 kids which is good because by the time Steven and Darren came home, I had sweat in my hair, and my shirt had spit up in two places and yellow poo.  Yuck!)

I still like Mondays:)

(In case you were worried, Marcie Ü)
Steven kept Dylan out of preschool and took him to Busch Gardens. I still had Isaac and Noah as usual. I also got two bonus girls! Olivia is Malia's cousin. She didn't have school that day so she got to come over. And it was Kirsten's last day of summer. We wanted her to come play at our house instead of sipping chicken noodle soup with her sick little brothers. That wouldn't have been a good last day of summer at all. I think it's funny that I had 4 kids and none were siblings.
We playes inside a lot, and Kirsten was a big helper with the little boys. She's used to 2 little boys their size. They loved chasing each other. Olivia liked playing with learning games. After a while, we went outside. Noah was nappnig, as usual he misses on a lot of fun.
The swings are in the shade this time of year. Olivia and Kirsten had such fun on them.
Isaac played with chalk and the girls joined him.
Kirsten made her own hop scotch squares
and taught Olivia the correct way to play.
And how to jump in the pool when they got hot.
Olivia was so excited for her pickle in her lunch box that day. I was glad I had a jar b/c
they were a hit:)
Oh, did I mention the carraige ride?
Isaac asked my dad to take him for a ride and Kirsten wanted to go too. I was happy that my dad was there b/c somebody had to stay back w/ Olivia and Noah. Olivia didn't want to go anyway.

When Dylan got home from Busch Gardens, we were doing yard work. It was Kirsten's idea! The neighbor's driveway was yucky, so we swept it up!Then we took my dad to the airport:( It was fun while he was here but we missed him right away. This is a good picture of my back seat.And this is just a funny one:)

Then everybody came to pick up their kids by first having a pizza pool party. Can you believe all these kids are ours? (Noah was napping again.)

Pretty much a perfect Monday, wouldn't you say?!

A typical Wednesday morning

Isn't this fun? I should just go ahead and open a daycare, huh. 5 of 5 are looking at me, 0 of 5 are smiling a real smile. Maybe no daycare for me.Dylan stripped his PJs off and had his Rays outfit on this morning. It was so funny to Steven and me when we looked over and he had quick-changed. Yea, Malia's in her PJs still too. I love it. Welcome to my life:)

The Great Outdoors

You may not think that a morning in my back yard is much to post about, but it's so hot that I hadn't braved going outside with all 4 before. I made sure the lock was on the gate to the pool. It's a lot of work, going from being a mom of 1 to a mom of 4. I love it, but my days off are anything but days off. Don't expect me to answer your phone calls on my days off (or when I'm at work either). We ventured outside a couple of weeks ago, but haven't had time to waste blogging.

We started out in the shade all in one place. You can see Noah has other plans.
He would rather taste the grass Dylan and Malia metastasize to the swings

I really like the colors in this one. Imagine if they were looking up at me. Look at the perfect chalk lines. He was practicing so he could do even better ones in marker on my living room carpet. No need for a picture of that though.
Isn't that a Karate Kid skill?
What a life:)
Noah didn't stay eating his grass, so I got out my babylegs for him. His knees didn't like the concrete. They went with his outfit!
"Hi!"Isaac stayed put of course. Malia came back for some bubbles.

And Dylan came back to play in the bubble spill. So did Noah, so they all got a little dirty.
So it was BATH TIME! I should win an award for getting them to all look at me at once.
First and only time quite possibly.
Dylan and Malia are good helpers

Look at the LOOK Noah's giving me. He and Isaac were about done. Nobody had napped yet.
So they were tired.
Look at how sweet and still Noah was. He was so sleepy.
I fed him a bottle while Isaac ate at the same time.
Thankfully Dylan and Malia are now potty trained. I don't remember, but they were probably running around in towels after the bath while I put these two to bed. I dressed them at the same time as feeding them so they could be well rested for their photo shoot. (Previous post below)

Mother of Four

Corrie and I have it made. We both went back to work. She has had her mom stay with her for the past month, so I haven't been taking care of her kids. This was Noah's first time being babysat here. He was so perfect. He slept then woke up when Corrie said, and ate the milk she had for him. She can get her kids on schedules. My kids, on the other hand, were hungry at the same time as Noah was. It was fine and fun. Luckily I only worked one half-day this week. Next week it'll be two half days. I'm easing into this part-time work schedule I'll have to do. Nobody's going to think they're twins. Look how different! They each took turns sleeping while the other was awake in there. They're going to have to be heavy sleepers if they ever want any Zzzzs.

My kids didn't want to stay happy for very long. But they have cute shirts on, thanks Lacey!