Where we are headed!

I promised I would give you an update on the future of where the Cook family is headed.  Well, there has been a change of plans.  We originally had planned on building at the farm on part of the land that Sara owned.  Well, after finding out that we couldn't really build a house that would fit our growing family and get a survey done on the land without being about 15k over budget, we were back to the drawing board.  The most obvious answer to us was to move close-by.  We chose Brownsburg which is about 20 minutes from the farm and about 20 minutes from Wes' work.  We also liked the idea because the kids could get the "farm experience" by visiting and still live in the city close to friends and church with no problem.  We have been looking for homes and we think we found one.  It is a short sale so who knows how long it will take to close on, but the good news is that our offer is the only one they accepted and they have taken it off the market.  We're hoping that all those things point to us getting the house!  We are also hoping that we can move straight from our house here in Noblesville to our house in Brownsburg.  That might be too tall of an order, but a girl can hope can't she?  Here are a few pictures of it! 

Here's a better view of the house and garage.

We are hoping to get this house.  When we walked through it, the possibilites were endless.  There was even a secret door in one of the bedrooms!  How fun is that if you are a 5 year old boy...or a 30 year old boy for that matter!  And there is so much room for our family.  You would not believe how much I have been itching to get into a new place.  My secret hobby is decorating and I can't wait to start working!  The house that we offered on is pretty much a blank slate.  It has newer carpet and neutral paint so I am excited to bring some new colors to the space.  I think I will bring some of the colors from our house in Noblesville just because I'm not sick of them yet but I think I will introduce some new ones as well!

Things at the farm are going along well.  There is so much work to be done that I joked to Sara that I don't think we will ever be done.  The inside of the house is looking good but the outside and the "barn side" as we call it are in need of some major TLC.  Sara has been running herself ragged trying to get things done.  It's not easy to keep up on work when just mowing the lawn can take hours.  She is still keeping up with the chickens!  We have lost about 8 of the chickens so far to different things like animals, sickness, etc.  I guess they say that that's to be expected.  Our laying chickens are getting nice and big but they still have a few months to go before they start popping out eggs.  Our meat chickens are getting huge!!  They will be ready to give their lives so that I can make fried chicken in about a month.  It's a tough sacrafice to make, but someone has to do it!

There definitely have been bumps in the road such as broken down tractors, not having the right equipment to get jobs done, getting on each other's nerves, people not seeing eye to eye, etc.  We knew that things wouldn't always be perfect and we were right!  But if you're going to undertake such a huge project, why not do it with people you have to spend the rest of your life with anyway? :)

The future is starting to get clearer now and we are getting more and more excited!

Bloglettes

I have so many things that I would love to share on here, but they are just little snippetts of life around here and not enough to make up a full blog...so now I have coined a new term.  Bloglettes!  Little baby blogs all put into one blog, so here goes.

~Yesterday I was at Target buying a necklace and earrings and I was in the checkout with a checker woman who looked to be a little younger than my grandparents.  She was so cute in how she checked us out; she had to say everything aloud so that she knew that she was doing everything right.  Well, she got to my neckalace and earrings and said "oh I have something perfect for this in my bag!"  Lo and behold, she pulls out an old cereal bag that she has brought from home and proceeds to put my jewelry into the bag.  "See, now it wont get lost in your bag.  I just love to recycle!"  I had to stifle laughter when she was doing it, but my mom and I got a good laugh out of it when we got to the parking lot.  I'm pretty sure that her boss didn't see her pulling out things from home to give to people.  It was so cute!  I did check to see if there was any cereal left in the bottom of the bag, but alas, it was empty.

~The other day, I pulled up in front of the preschool that Preston goes to a little bit early.  I was right in front of their playground and I was excited to see that the kids were still outside playing.  I tried to find Preston but I couldn't find him until I saw him sandwiched between two little girls.  Then it was time for all the kids to line up and all of the sudden those two girls start pushing each other in order to be the one standing closer in the line to Preston.  It was intense!  I thought they might start pulling hair!  The poor girls ended up losing their sticker for the day, all because of their little fight.  I asked Preston about it later and in typical boy style, he just says "they just both love to be by me, I don't know why."  I think it's cute, but I really don't want Preston to be one of those kids who has a "girlfriend" all the time.  There will be plenty of time for that when he turns 40.

~Potty training is still going great.  Owen has been staying dry at night and has been taking himself to the bathroom whenever he needs to go.  The one I expected to be the hardest ended up being the easiest.  He does pee in his pants about once a day when he is too busy to stop playing, but I would much rather throw wet clothes in the wash than have to change his diaper all day!   Okay I promise this will be the last time I mention it, I'm just so excited!

~Cameron has turned into quite a handful and is very reminiscent of his older brother Owen at this age.  He LOVES to scream when he doesn't get what he wants, when he sees someone besides himself eating, or any other time for that matter.  I thought I was over the trauma from when Owen was like this, but I guess not.  I am driven CRAZY by it.  The only saving grace is knowing that just as with Owen, it will be with Cameron; just a phase.  Other than the screaming, Camerons still just has his two little bottom teeth, but the way he eats, you would say that he has all of them!  He outeats both of his brothers at every meal.  I am amazed at how much food Cam can put away.  We thought he was going to be skinny like Preston but maybe not!  When food is out of sight, he is a delight.  When food is in sight, you better watch your back!

In the next week or so, I want to tell you more about our future plans and also give you an update on how my sister Sara is doing.  Stay tuned!

Day 2 of potty training

Well, I am just so excited about the progress that Owen has made that I can't help but brag about him for a little bit!  He has FAR surpassed my expectations when it comes to this potty-training thing which kinda makes me sad because I don't like to think that I underestimate my own kids!  Last night I took a chance and put him in underwear all night and he stayed dry!  Then this morning he peed by himself on the potty before we took Preston to school.  I am still letting him run around with only a shirt on and no bottom and that seems to be working great.  The one time I did put him in underwear was this morning on the way to preschool.  He was dry when I got him out of the car but then when we got inside, he was all wet!  I guess the garage must be a comforting place to go! ;)  As of tonight, he didn't have any more accidents and stayed dry even when I put him in a diaper when he went over to Aunt Mandy's house for his nap while we closed on the house.  He also went #2 on the potty all by himself without even warning me that's what he was doing.  I can't believe how exciting this has been for me!  I guess it's the thought that I might be back to one kid in diapers in the very near future!  I guess it's true what they say: when the kids are ready, they will do it.  Okay, I'm done bragging on him now but I wanted to give an update! 

Also we are now renters in our own house!  How weird is that?  We have a lot to be thankful around here.

Goodnight all! 

Potty-Training in Real Time.

Since Owen is about old enough to drive a car, I decided I should probably get the boy potty-trained.  You know I don't take these things lightly, maybe because I have heard so many horror stories!  I have tried to wait until he seems ready and now I would say he's way past ready!  I decided on Easter the day after would be the day that we started.

I woke up before Owen and I listened very carefully for him to wake up.  Then I swooped in and stole his diaper like a ninja.  He didn't know what had just happened to him!  I told him he was a big boy now and it was time to say goodbye to the diapers.  I took him straight to the potty and he looked at me and said "can't do it."  After some crying and fit throwing, I had to take out my secret weapon.  I didn't have to use this weapon with Preston until a lot later in the process but we all know my little Owen likes to blaze his own trail.  So anyway, under much embarassement, I will share with you my secret weapon.  A baby gate.  I have told friends about this and they all look at me with horror and astonishment but you know what.  It has a history of working for me. 

Here's where I'm coming from with this:  For most kids, potty-training is less about the actual act and more about a battle of wills.  They don't want to be told what to do.  For long enough they have been used to going to the bathroom whenever they choose.  Now their crazy mother or father is telling them, no you do it when I tell you to do it.  You can imagine that doesn't go over real well.  At least not if you wait until they are 3 to do it, like me!  So anyways, I think you have to take yourself out of the situation and put the responsiblity of going in the toilet on their shoulders.  So, after Owen threw his fit, I told him he was going to stay in the bathroom until he went.  I put up the gate in the bathroom door to block his way out and then I left.  He continued crying and so after about a minute, I went back in there and said "I know you can do this.  Call me when you go and you can have a piece of candy."  Once he realized that I wasn't going to be an audience to his fit throwing, he stopped crying and within 2 minutes of me leaving he had had his first success on the potty.  I celebrated with him and then gave him a piece of candy.

Now here's where I have a hard time.  Once they have their first success, where do you go from there?  There are lots of theories out there like setting the timer and making them go after a certain amount of minutes.  I tried that today with Owen and he started getting agitated everytime I would tell him he needed to try and he would say "I dont' have to go."  So I said to myself, this is ridiculous.  I wouldn't hover over him to eat his dinner so I shouldn't hover over him for this.  Instead I put the potty in the middle of the room (sidenote:  from the beginning he has been naked from the waistdown, no underwear.) and told him to show me what to do if he had to go potty.  He sat on the toilet a few times and showed me so I decided it was time to leave him alone.  I left the room and said, "You go when you need to go and when you do, you get a piece of candy!" 

About 30 minutes later, he said "Mom, I pooped!" (he still calls peeing poop...baby steps!)  And he had!  I was actually so surprised because I really didn't think he would be able to do it on his own that I started jumping up and down!  I think seeing me excited got him excited so by the time he went one more time, I gave him some underwear and he said "Now I get to be just like Preston!"  I just love that! 

The process is only about half done as we still haven't tackled the "other issue" but I am very encouraged that he has done so well on his first day.  Way to go Owen!

Catch-up

Wow, it's been a while since I posted on here.  My apologies.  It's not for lack of wanting to, it's more that life just got busy and before I knew it, it had been a month since I posted!  Well, for the good news, we sold our house!  We accepted an offer the end of February and were supposed to close last week but things got held up so now we are closing 2 weeks late!  At this point, I don't really care as long as the buyers are solid (which they are).  We were able to get pretty close to what we were hoping for out of the house.  I think when we put it up for sale we said X is our bottom dollar and it ended up being $1000 above that once we paid all the realtor fees and closing costs, etc.  So we are counting ourselves very blessed considering the current housing market.  We also will be staying in the Noblesville house until June 30th because the new owners have a lease they can't get out of until then so they are renting it back to us for 3 months.  That will give us some more pooltime and friend time!

We just got done with spring break.  The first part of spring break was pretty rough because Preston was begging to go to school and was so bored.  Wednesday we left for the farm and were out there until Sunday.  The kids loved getting to see the chickens and "their dog," BJ.  They still claimed to be bored at times but we got the playroom in the farmhouse all nice and kid friendly and they seemed to have a good time.  Friday Wes took the day off so we went exploring.  We went to Brownsburg and Avon and then stopped and got some ice cream at the local dairy bar.  If I could figure out how to afford living with neither one of us having a job, I would do it!  I love hanging out with Wes and the kids together.  We also had a bonfire.  I wouldn't call it a good one because we didn't realize that when you put wet logs a fire all you get is a bunch of smoke!  I know...we are wilderness losers.

  My parents came this weekend and then we had the huge project of getting 42 trees planted for the orchard.  I wasn't there for about half the time but everyone there worked their tails off!  Mike and Jashawn came from Noblesville to help out too which was so nice!  It took about 9-10 hours to dig all of the holes and plant all of the trees.  I would be lying if I said that this is the kind of work I love doing.  I kept having to tell myself FREE APPLES!  FREE PEARS!!  FREE CHERRIES!!  You know how I love free.  Well, I guess the trees weren't free, but you get the idea!

Our neighbor at the farm is an old farmer who used to own the land that Sara now owns.  He came over and took the two boys out on his 4-wheeler.  They had SO much fun!  Preston kept saying "I need to do that again!!"  Maybe someday we can get our own 4-wheeler.

Easter Sunday we tried out a new church in Avon that we really liked and then we headed for Anderson.  It was about an hour and 15 minute drive from Avon.  It's always nice to see Wes' side of the family and makes me wish we got up there more often!

I know I keep promising pictures and I never deliver!  I take them on my sister's camera and then I always run out of time and don't get around to emailing them to myself!  Sorry about that!  Hope everyone else had a wonderful Easter celebrating the wonderful gift of Jesus!

Driven to the edge....by underaged drivers.

I am currently sitting in time-out in my bedroom.  I had to do a self-imposed timeout before I blew my top with the kids.  Sometimes I get to the point where I just want to hyperventilate and cry all at the same time and scream dramatically like in the movies, "What have I done?  I can't live 18-20 more years like this!"  There are just things that happen that make me feel like I'm either a). going to ruin their lives because I yelled at them too much. or b) I feel like I'm wasting my life taking care of them when the writing is on the wall: they will end up in prison.  Okay, so I exaggerate a tad. 

 But when I look into their eyes sometimes, I just see so much defiance that it rattles me to the core.  At this point in his life, Preston has decided it is his life goal to question every single decision I make.  I am just constantly talking in circles and I HATE that.  I want him to just take what I say, accept it and obey.  Is it really that hard?  I didn't used to think so but now I'm not so sure.  I feel like everywhere I go, I see this epidemic playing itself out.  We went to the Children's museum yesterday and surprisingly, it wasn't the 2 year olds that were throwing the most fits.  It was the kids Preston's age, 5-6 year olds.  What are we doing wrong as a society that kids who should know better don't?  What am I doing wrong?  I guess it's a question that I will just have to chew on for a while.


Lest I let the little guys off the hook for driving me to the edge........please tell me why when we are at a store, that is the time to show off how rotten you can be?  Today Owen threw a glass jar of baby food out of the cart at Meijer and it shattered all over the floor.  If you are a proud person, a 2 year old has a way of humbling you to your knees as you have to tell the less-than-pleased worker at Meijer that you're sorry your kid thought that the baby food was a basketball.  Now I'm going to go ahead and chalk this one up to experimentation but when you have a 5 year old begging you for every thing in the store that he sees, it gets a little bit hard to differentiate.

Lastly, I am driven to the edge by my kid's doctors.  Taking the kids to the doctors is right above getting teeth pulled for me.  I feel like every time I go in there, I have to parade my child in front of them to make sure that they fit in the "perfect" child mold.  And for a people-pleaser like me, when they don't fit the mold, I take it as a personal failure.  Like getting a bad job review.  I now have developed a syndrome around the kid's doctors called "cant control the lies coming from my mouth-itis."  I seriously can't stop myself from telling them exactly what they want to hear.  I just can't handle the grief they give when I...er the kids don't measure up.  I have cried too many times in doctor's appts. that I'm done.  I don't know how to cure myself of this disease but I have a feeling it could be cured by finding a doctor who I can relate to.  To be fair, my doctors are all very nice, they just aren't the right fit for me I guess.

One thing I do propose is a different line of questioning being asked by pediatricians depending on the number of kids you have.  A doctor's questions to a first time mom would go like this, "Did you snuggle with your baby for at least 6 hours today?  Great.  Try and go for 7 hours this coming month.  Do you read at least 7 books per hour to your little munchkin?  Excellent.  Do you feed your baby every time he whimpers?  Great.  Way to go first time mom!!  And now I envision my checkup going a little bit different.  Doctor: "Do you remember your babies name?  Great.  Did you remember to feed him yesterday?  No? Oh that's okay, you'll do better today.  Has the baby played patty-cake with you in the last 6 months?  Great.  Does he say ma-ma or da-da?  Oh you can't hear him speaking over the chaos in your home?....that is to be expected.  You are a doing just fine for a mother with 3 boys."  Ahhhhh.....if only!


So there you have it, the trifecta that has driven me to the edge.  Funny thing is, I feel better just getting my thoughts out there.  Doesn't really cure me, but does make me feel a little better.  Thanks for listening.

Out with a Bang

Our precious Owen is going to be celebrating his 3rd birthday this Sunday.  I can't believe it has only been 3 years since he's been alive!  It's seemed like a lifetime.  Part of the reason it has seemed like a lifetime is because he is my naughtiest child to date!  He just has such a mischievous spirit!  If there is trouble brewing, he is usually in the center of it.  You would think we would be having a hard time dealing with him, but he has actually stolen our hearts.  When he's not being naughty, he is usually hugging or loving on one of us.  He has found a way to be a naughty kid who is very hard to punish because he is so cute about it!  He has this toothy grin that he gives when he's just done something he knows he will get busted for.  It is sooooo hard for me to not laugh when he does this.

 That brings us to yesterday.  The weather was pretty nice out so we decided to go swing on the swingset.  After we were done, we all came in and Preston and I took our shoes off at the door.  Well, Owen took off without taking his shoes off and this is what he left in his trail:

Now, at any other time in my life, I would be okay with cleaning this up, but when you're trying to sell your house and people look at your house with a magnifying glass, this is enough to give you a heart attack!  I couldn't use my trusty water trick or I'd end up having a nice carpet full of mud.  I just sat there thinking how I was going to clean it up. I just couldn't think of a way that wouldn't make it worse.  The thing that I do when things seem overwhelming is I just leave the scene for awhile so I can think clearly.

So, I went into the kitchen and started doing the dishwasher.  All of the sudden, I felt a drop of water on my head.  Then another and another.  I looked up above me at our kitchen light which is shaped kind of like a bowl.  The light was on and I saw that the "bowl light" was full of water!  WHAT!?  Where is this water coming from?  So, I call Wes and said "Mayday, mayday, the ceiling is leaking!"  So, being the level-headed fellow he is, he told me I needed to find the source of the water leak.  "I hope I can" I said.  Well, let's just say it wasn't that difficult to locate.  I went upstairs to my master bath and found that SOMEONE had unrolled a whole roll of toilet paper into the toilet and then continuously flushed the toilet and had flooded the bathroom.

What you can't tell from the picture was that there was about a half an inch of standing water in the whole bathroom.  All the bathroom rugs were soaked.  I called Owen up and I said "DID YOU DO THIS??"  Yes, I probably was yelling at this point.  "Yes."  He said meekly.  Well, needless to say he got a spanking for this one.  Cuteness can only get you so far in life.

 So, after being faced with a flooded bathroom leaking through into the first floor, the muddy footprints didn't seem so bad.  I'm not sure if that was Owen's plan, but it worked.  I was able to vacuum up most of the dirt since by the time I got back there, it was dry.  After the day was over, I had to chalk up all this naughtiness to Owen making a big exit out of the "terrible twos" and into the threes.  I'm not sure what they have nicknamed the threes yet, and at this point I don't think I want to know.  Sometimes ignorance is bliss.

Happy Birthday to my beautiful, lovable Owen!

 (And no, those are not bruises on his face, they are marker.  Why would any smart parent leave their three year old alone with a marker?  Wes keeps asking me the same question... I guess the answer is I'm not that smart!)