Hip Hip Hooray for Babies!

We had a tough week around the Klimstra house last week. The SHUTDOWN was into its second week and morale was low all around the DC area, but especially in our house.  Well the Grab family saved the day by surprising us on Thursday to let us know that they'd be coming up for a quick visit late Friday night for the weekend!  We were SO excited!

The Klimstra Crowd of three babies under three was joined by the Grab bunch of two babies under two and that makes a full-blown CIRCUS of FIVE babies under THREE.  Madness!  Absolutely wonderful chaos!

Natalie and Katherine played SO well together.  I don't think they had a single disagreement the entire weekend.  Delaney was an absolute DOLL, smiling and entertaining us with her sweet personality.  She *nearly* started crawling, it won't be long, in fact maybe she can pull it off when we visit NC next week.  Jon Jr. and Rylie were happy to have some extra attention and I was definitely happy to have the help and change to our routine.  Jon got to go hunting and we spent the entire weekend visiting, cooking and enjoying the babies.  It was SO GREAT to have all the wee ones in the same place.  Christmas is going to be SO FUN this year!

Here are a few pictures from the weekend:

Natalie telling Jon Jr. and Rylie that Katherine (Kafrine) and Delaney are coming!

Yes, her hair is getting ridiculously long. No I'm not going to cut it, ever.

 The girls were VERY busy.  Playing in the playroom and spilling its contents out all over the house.  We decided to move the party into the bathroom for...

Party Bath!

Natalie, Katherine and Delaney (in the little tub) all together!

Getting clean!

Sweet Katherine. I just LOVE her curls!

This is the SWEETEST child. 
Oh! Those cheeks!

 Everyone loves Delaney.  She honestly makes fans everywhere she goes because she is ALWAYS smiling and so sweet.  Well Natalie fell right in line.  If Delaney was awake Natalie wanted her in the floor and she was right there with her talking to her and playing.  She just couldn't get enough of that sweet girl!

Talking to Delaney after bath time

We also spent a lot of time in the twins room changing diapers, feeding babies, pumping, over and over... so here was a picture from my phone.  I managed to catch 4 of the 5 babies in the same picture!

The evenings are busy and especially when we are trying to cook dinner and wrangle five little ones.  Leslie and I devised a great way to accomplish both...

Advanced Parenting: Culinary Baby Wearing!

I wore Rylie and Leslie wore Jon Jr. while we prepared dinner

 The visit was short but oh, so sweet.  I just loved having my sister here and seeing Natalie playing with her cousins.  We can't wait to see them all again next week when we are down in NC!

This morning Natalie was missing her playtime with Katherine so after morning feeding, Natalie asked if I would put Jon Jr. in her bed.  So they could talk. 
Boy, I love that kid!

She told him all about her big girl bed and her toys.  And made sure he was all "snuggled up" with her blanket.

Jon Jr. and Rylie are 1 month old!

Actually they are 5 1/2 weeks old now but it has taken me a while to get this post up... We stay pretty busy. :)

I braved their 1 month doctor visit by myself, because of my own poor planning.  Their appointment was at 4:00 and Natalie had to be picked up from daycare by 5:00.  Too close for risking it.  

Dr. Hill - whom we LOVE - said the babies looked great and boy are they growing!

Jon Jr was born 6 pounds 1 oz.  At his 1 month appointment he weighed in at 8 pounds 13 oz!

Rylie was born 5 pounds 3 oz.  At her 1 month appointment she weighed 7 pounds 13.5 oz!

Mr. Junior is still a fussy little guy, but he's a loveable little dude and every now and again he will give us the biggest gummy grin.  Makes all the shouting a little more bearable. :)

Rylie is SUCH a chill little girl.  One good story to support this assertion is that when the nurse gave them their second Hep B shots at the doc visit.  Junior was first and I was busy soothing and feeding him to calm him down after his shot so I wasn't able to hold Rylie for hers.  The nurse was quick with it and before I could put Junior in his car seat Rylie had already had a little cry and calmed herself down, all own her own.  The nurse was AMAZED.  I even overheard her telling the doctor how tough our littlest girl was.

Here are a few pictures of the babies.  I really need to do a better job of taking pictures and especially videos.  Hopefully we'll get some videos up soon.

Junior on his blanket from Aunt Crystal

Rylie on her blanket from Aunt Crystal

We are getting a few longer stretches of sleep at night and some happier stretches during the day but mostly we are settling in as a family and figuring out how all this works when the inmates outnumber the guards :)

We are planning now to take this circus on the road later this month to NC to see all the family, hopefully the twins are as good in the car as Natalie was as a baby.  And we can't wait to see everyone soon!

The little girl who potty trained herself

Hello again!  We are still here - living our lives 3 hours at a time (that's how often 1 month olds need to eat...) and enjoying our sweet babies.

We've been easing up on potty training around here for MONTHS.  Friday at school they put her on the potty A LOT - about every hour and a half with NO results.  They said Natalie was happy as a lark but politely explained to them that "I go to the potty at home".  Oh well!  Ms. Dawn and Ms. Joann said not to worry, we would (eventually) prevail.  We had a low key weekend planned, the only thing on the agenda was trying to help Natalie learn to use the potty.  Saturday we tried using pull ups.  No dice - it must just feel like a diaper to Natalie so she only went when we asked her, but there were a few successes in the #1 department, but with a lot of encouragement from Mommy and Daddy.

Sunday it was a different ballgame.  I hadn't planned to go ANYWHERE so I decided to test the most radical theory of potty training - naked from the waist down.

Yes, that's a long sleeved PJ top and purple flip flops :)

Our carpet is nice throughout our house but this was a risk I was willing to take.  Turns out this is what we needed to do all along.  We explained that as soon as she felt that she needed to go, she just needed to run to the potty anytime.  Well she did.  EVERY TIME.  No accidents AT ALL.  Jon and I spent the entire day marveling that she was doing it all by herself.  We never even had to ask her if she needed to go.  She went naked for most of the day and enjoyed A LOT of treats thanks to all the marshmallow and lolly-pop incentives we had offered.

We transitioned to a pull up for nap time and into "big girl panties" for the afternoon again with no accidents.  Amazing!

This morning I wasn't sure how it was going to go after all the success yesterday but she picked right up where she left off.  She went potty twice BEFORE we left for daycare.  So she was able to go to school in big girl underwear.  At 9:00 I got the following text from the daycare "Natalie has just gone to the potty twice on her own! She understood if she felt the need just to go to the potty chair and go.  She is doing a great job!"

Our little girl is growing up so fast and we are so proud of her!