Updates

In an effort to stay up-to-date with how my family is growing and changing here is a quick update on each of us.

Nikolay--Finished tiling the kitchen today, now on to the grout!
Heather--has less than 2 weeks till her due date and is finding it harder and harder to keep up with housework due to large belly and lack of motivation.
Ariel--Learned how to embroider this week and now is torn between embroidering and crocheting.
Adriana--is trying to wiggle her first loose tooth as much as possible because the grownup one is already growing in, behind it.
Annika--spends at least half the day in a fantasy world with her stuffed animals and her best friend--Dallin.
Dallin--has come down with a cold, and will be missing nursery tomorrow, but is a cuddly as ever and loves to kiss me and tell me that I am a good mommy. (Just what I need to hear.)

Sunday Afternoons

I love Sunday afternoons, and evenings for that matter. I love the time to relax and enjoy each other, without the feeling that there is something else I should be doing like cleaning the house. Yesterday found us looking through family photo albums. I had just put the pictures of 2009 in so everyone was excited to look at them, but they started at the beginning. It was so cute to here Dallin ask, "Where me are?" and "That me baby?" The album they were looking at started with pictures from 2005 when Annika was a baby so it took a while to get to any pictures with Dallin in them, but when they did he was so excited, exclaiming, "There me are!" I corrected him a few times saying, "Dallin say, 'There I am.'" It got really funny when Nikolay started correcting Dallin as well, with his own unique version of identifying oneself in a picture in English and then Dallin re-correcting him incorrectly. I should have written it down at the time, because now I can't exactly remember how it went.
I started thinking about how glad I am that I put pictures in albums, especially with the new baby coming. I am afraid that I will be stretched too far and some things might fall through the cracks, so it is good to know that at least the first 4 kids all have their baby pictures in the family photo albums. Now I am just trying to get caught up on each of their scrapbooks, before the baby comes, so that I can concentrate on her new scrapbook and taking good pictures of her because babies grow so fast.
It feels like January is almost over, and I realized that I haven't gotten my camera out at all yet this year, so today when we went to Trexler Park to ride scooters and enjoy the nice weather and the day off of school, I brought my camera with me, but the sun wasn't cooperating much and I didn't take the time to really set the camera up right, but I got a few shots, so that I can prove that my kids were alive in the month of January 2010.

Becoming a mother of 5

I have been meaning to write about this for a while now, and now that my due date is less than 4 weeks away, I think I really should. Having 5 children in Allentown, PA, feels a lot different than having 5 children in Holladay, UT, simply because not many people here do that, where as there they did, so it kind of defines you as that crazy woman with all those kids. I don't know if it is just me, I have noticed that people out here use the word "nuts" for crazy a lot more than in Utah. Anyway, so here if you have more than 2 kids you must be nuts, at least that is what I gather is the general consensus. At first I was a little reluctant to let people know that I was expecting, but the more I thought about it and got used to the idea, I realized that I really didn't mind being defined by it, it is after all what we wanted and I can't imagine my life any other way. Most of the women in my neighborhood work, and I feel it a great luxury that I can stay home with my kids and still live in this neighborhood. When we go on walks, Nikolay often muses, "What do these people need these big houses for if they only have 2 or 3 kids?" Where he came from in Ukraine, most people grew up in multi-generational apartments, and there was no concept of a bedroom, each room had people sleeping in it at night, regardless of it's daytime use. I am happy to have a full house where each room is being used and is full of life. I think that growing up with siblings really enriches your life experiences. I love that my older kids play with my younger kids. On the flip side, being a parent is one of the hardest things I have ever done, and I know that I am always making mistakes, but trying to improve.

Annika prays

Tonight for our family prayer, it was Annika's turn and she said, "Dear Heavenly Father, Thank You for....EVERYTHING!!!!!! in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen."
Then I told her that we need to say specific things that we are thankful for each day and she told me that she is thankful for everything, and I asked her to try again thinking of some specific things. So she prayed, "Dear Heavenly Father, Thank You for ...milk, chocolate milk, pink milk and white milk. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen." It was all I could do to keep from totally cracking up in the middle. Funny thing is, no one else in the family could understand what she had said, so I had to repeat it to everyone else while keeping a straight face.

A resolution

The only New Year's resolution I am going to make this year is to keep up with my blog. I have so many pictures from Thanksgiving and Christmas, that I am just going to post them as slide shows on the sidebar. The overwhelming feeling of needing to get caught up has actually kept me from blogging lately, so, I am just going to try to stay on top of it, blogging at least once a week. I figure it is a good Sunday activity, family history and all.



Here are the snowmen the kids built today.
Ariel's, that she named Bob Fat Louis Laubert.
Dallin's that Ariel helped build.
Adriana's that she built herself and is so proud of that she wants to take a picture of it to school on Monday.
Annika's little "child" (her words).