changes

Judd and I were sitting on the couch the other night, and it hit me. There are 4 other people in my house right now. Weird. There are 6 of us and 3 bedrooms. Hmmmm....
Life has been different, but good. I feel really out numbered.
At first I was kinda stressed, but I made a conscious choice that instead of getting stressed, I'm going to think everything is funny. Example. Nolan is a dramatic child. He has these dad gum silly band things (stretchy bracelets) and every time one of them breaks its the end of the world. Well one broke the other day and he came out of his room doing is pterodactyl scream. He makes this horrible face and he was even drooling. Normally, me not being sympathetic and all, I would yell at him to go to his room and come back out when he is ready to talk like a normal person, but instead I laughed hysterically. I couldn't stop. The drool was just so funny. Judd came into the room and asked what was so funny and I told him. He told Nolan that he was making his mother psychotic. That could be true. After a while of being a parent, I think we are all crazy.
Come over to my house some time and you will see why. I came up with my own top 10 list....
You know you have a newborn when:
10: School aged children wear the same thing to school for the whole week and you don't even notice
9: Your two year old eats and watches what ever he wants
8: You walk through the house in the middle of the night and step on a squishy diaper.
7: You have spit up on your shirt and you don't even care
6: Every time you sit down you fall asleep
5: If your husband tries to make a pass at you, you smack him
4: Nothing is clean. ever.
3. You get excited and dressed up to go to the grocery store
2. The sunlight burns your eyes when you go outside
1. You get excited that you slept for 3 hours straight.

The other night Judd was at school. I was making dinner, helping a whining Madison with her homework (which is exhausting in itself, like pulling teeth) Nolan is crying because of something or other, Coulson was squirting toothpaste all over the counter, and I was nursing the baby this whole time. The only thought that came to me was "Is this really my life?" I guess so. Motherhood is the craziest hardest job there is, and no one, can ever convince me otherwise. I don't care what you do!!!

She's here!!

Myla Kerrington Rich born Sept. 7th at 12:16 a.m. 8lbs 4 oz.

Here's the dirty details, since everyone's dying to know...actually, its more for my own references, because I promised myself after this birthing experience that I didn't want anymore kids. And we all know how mommy brains tend to forget these things.

I was supposed to be induced at 5 a.m. on Labor Day morning. Well, that didn't happen. It must have been the whole "Labor" day thing, but like everyone and their sister were having babies that day. I didn't actually get to the hospital until about 1 p.m. We got there, got all set up, everything was moving at a snails pace. Then in came the epidural lady at about 6:30. She gave me the epidural and I my blood pressure dropped so low that I started to lose consciousness. I thought I was going to die. The nurse then gave me ephedrine, which I guess is like one of the ingredients in Meth. Freaky. But I did feel better and was able to have a nap. Woke up from nap feeling contractions. I assumed that the epidural was only taking on one side, so I turned to my other side hoping the medicine would work its way over and even out. Turned to other side and didn't feel a difference. So I hit the more medicine button and nothing happened. I turned on my back and noticed that I was only numb from about my mid thigh to my calf on my left leg. So now I'm really feeling contractions. I'm ticked off. I've never researched having a baby naturally so I was trying to think of breathing techniques or something. Then everything happened really fast. At least now it seems fast, but I'm sure it didn't. I knew the baby was coming but the Dr. wasn't there. I had to try and hold her in for about 30 minutes before the dr got there. stupid nurse. I told her that I would go fast and she didn't believe me. So for that horrible 30 minutes I'm fighting my body. The baby wanted out and my body was pushing and I was trying my hardest to breath through the pain and over come the urge to get her out. All the while husband asking me "what's wrong?"....really husband!! What the heck do you think. He denies asking that now, but I know he was saying it. I can see how women start name calling now. Then the Dr. got there. And was all ready to go, but I wasn't. I was freaked out. I didn't know first hand what it would be like to have a baby naturally, but I'd heard stories. I didn't want to push because I knew the worst was yet to come, but I had to stick it out. There was nothing to be done for me at that point but go through with it. So luckily the pushing part only took about a minute or two, but let me tell you, that was the worst two minutes of my life. a few obscenities shouted that I'm not going to post but...Holy painful misery. I'd had so much medicine and needles poking in me that I ended up getting super sick afterward. It was crappy. But... would I call it a bad experience? Definitely no. There was something pretty powerful about the whole thing. I could almost feel everything the baby was going through. I'd never realized how strenuous it must be on a baby to come into the world, but I realized it then. Its almost like we suffered together. I think the bond was a little stronger because of it. I could tell what she was going through and I felt so bad for her the whole time. I'm glad it happened like it did, and if I were to have any more, I would probably do it that way again. But....I think I'm done. ;)

sometimes I just need a good vent

So, as I'm sitting here drinking my almost frozen, ginormous glass of chocolate milk and eating the worlds biggest slice of blueberry bread, it hits me. I'm getting fat. Yes, I know that's what happens to all pregnant people. But right now I am hating all of you that pop your babies out and fit right back into your normal jeans. I'm actually hating everyone in their normal jeans, pregnant or not. I'm hating my husband that never gains a pound no matter what I try and feed him. I'm hating that through over eight years of marriage his body looks exactly the same! No stretch marks, no saggy parts, no skin breakouts. I'm hating that its so blasted hot outside. I hate that person that parked so close to my car that I had to climb my fat butt through the passenger side to get myself in and buckle in a two year old. You can't imagine the horrible thoughts I was having about what I could have written on their windshield. "Thanks for parking so close to my car @$$%#%!! Sorry about the dent in your door and your mirror, but that's what happens when you park 6 inches away from a huge pregnant girl's door and its 116 degrees outside." I did have my kids with me so I only shouted idiot a few times. Still, not the best example. I can't seem to help myself. I'm just angry right now. And if my husband asks me if I'm hormonal one more time, I swear I'm going to club him in the head.
There, I feel better now :)

Prayers

Nolan's Lunchtime Prayer:
"Please bless that the baby in mommy's tummy will be healthy and be born fast. And bless that when she gets here she won't attack us. And bless that Coulson will be nice and not attack us either. Amen."

Cought Red Handed

I've really got to figure out how to put video on here! Every time I try, I let it load for hours and nothing happens. Any tips???

So....This morning we are in regular routine. Maddy and Nolan wake up at about 6:30 and watch cartoons until I roll out of bed at about 7:30. And when I say roll, picture a walrus wrapped in sheets trying to get out of a mound of pillows. That's probably more like it. First thing I do in the morning is make myself some chocolate milk and put it in the freezer because I like it super cold. Then I hide and drink it so the kids can't see me. (mostly so I don't have to make them some too, because I'm kinda mean and lazy like that) Then I make breakfast for everyone. I had all of the eggs and toast ready, but I realized that all of the plates were in the dishwasher. So I grabbed a few and noticed that one of the plates still had a bunch of water on it from the wash. I looked in the drawers for a dish towel, but they are all in the washing machine and I was out of paper towels, so I was in a dilemma of how I was going to dry this plate off. I was still decked out in sleeping attire and my top was silky and my bottoms were cotton, so I figured I would use my bottoms. So I was rubbing this plate on my rear end to get it dry and I turn around and Coulson is staring at me wondering what the heck I was doing. Then I realized how ridiculous I must look and we both started laughing. So this whole morning, everything that he has picked up he has been rubbing it on his bum. Stuffed animals, sippy cups, you name it. Hopefully we get over this new trend before we go out in public.

Yay for Summer! (not so much)

So, let me put this as nice as I can. Summer sucks. Its hot, everyone's home, there's only so much I can do to keep kids entertained without breaking the bank, and I don't want to cook anything because it makes my house so stinking hot. I've been such a blog slacker!!
But.......exciting things have been happening. Baby girl is coming in 10 weeks! YAY!! I've been obsessing over decorating the girl's room! I can't wait to get it done and put up some pictures.
Can you believe that I am going to have four kids!?! I don't think reality has set in yet. But I figure I'm already insane, how much worse can it possibly be?
With that being said, I may as well take some time to update about the kids that are actually here.
Starting with my oldest little midget.

Miss Madison: Thank goodness for this child. If it wasn't for her I would have probably run off to leave the boys to fend for themselves. She is such a great little mommy. She gets Coulson dressed, she can make lunch for the kids and basically help with any little chore. I LOVE this girl!!! She is a fabulous artist. So fabulous that I signed her up for an art class and she is able to draw to her little heart's content. Here's a few samples...
sorry some of them are sideways.




Her first piano recital at our ward talent show.

Midget #2 Nolan the gentleman:
This is one good boy. I read a lot of 19th century novels and I've decided that I was going to teach Nolan to have the best manners ever. So all of my friends with little girls....Give this boy 10 years and he will be golden. He holds the doors for everyone, pulls out chairs, lets Madison go first in everything. Such a mini-man. Don't get me wrong, he is a pester-y little thing. When he is wound up all he wants to do is bug. I call him fat feet because his feet are so wide they are like flippers and when he runs across the wood floor you hear, slap slap slapping. I hope having the nickname fat feet won't be bad for his self esteem. He's a pretty good helper too, and actually loves to do chores. I think he takes after his dad.

And last but not least, the third midget, the child that can make me pull my hair out one minute and melt my heart the next. Coulson the terrible.
This child is crazy! He does the naughtiest things, way naughtier than any other child, but I can't help but be entertained by him.
He always manages to hurt himself

check out this egg from the side. poor guy.

The dog dug a hole under the faucet and Coulson filled it with water. Every day is a great one when you can get all muddy.


This is his Lilla. He sleeps with it, in his crib. That thing would freak me out at night, but he loves it.

Probably the only kid on earth afraid of his Birthday cake.

CANCUN!!!

I loved Cancun!! What a beautiful place! I'll try to start from the beginning.
Hubby and I dropped the kids off on Thursday night because we had to leave for the airport at 4:30 a.m.!! We got there, all went well. Flight was awesome! We flew Frontier Airlines. I'd never heard of them before, so I was kinda scared, but I thought they were awesome! Each person had their own TV with satellite, so we were able to watch what ever we wanted the whole time. That made it much nicer! Judd's not a very good flier, so it distracted me and helped me to not be AS annoyed by him. We got to our hotel at about 4:30 and scoped our cute room out. We had an ocean view which was awesome. The hotel is in the middle of the stinking jungle and they try to keep it as natural as possible, so there are all of these winding dark sidewalks going through jungle areas and every time we walked somewhere we saw something cool. There were little Coati animal things, which are kind of a cross between a lemur and a monkey. They were running around everywhere.


There were also tons of Iguanas. And they were HUGE!
Here is our room. They had room service come in twice a day and they always made different towel art. This one is a little rabbit with fresh flowers all around it. I thought it was cute.
The food at the hotel was Fabulous and really fancy. The waiters all pulled out your chair and pushed you in and placed napkins on your lap. We're not very high class, so this was all new to us. There was a lot of culture at the hotel. People from all around the world come to stay there. As Americans, we were probably in the minority. Mostly everyone was from Europe. Now, I'm not very familiar with Europeans, so I wasn't sure what to expect. But... little did I know, they are very proud of their bodies. No matter how old they were, no matter how big or small, they wore bikinis and speedos. I'm not kidding. Even grandmas and grandpas. I had fun one day and tried to take pictures of all of the speedos around me.

The manly speedo

the Speedo sunburn

the jogging speedo

the grandma and grandpa speedo/bikini combo

Father and son Speedo

The kids even wear speedos and the young girls never wear bathing suit tops. Well, a lot of the older girls didn't wear tops either. I had to constantly say to Judd "No looking at 10 o'clock." No one seemed to care, even if their were kids around. All of the American guys seemed to enjoy this. I caught a few staring pervs. There was this one family with a mom, dad and two little boys about 3 and 1 1/2. The baby had a pacifier in his mouth and would run around in a little speedo. I called him binky speedo baby, and I looked for him everyday because I missed my own kids and it made me happy to see other people's for some reason. I am kinda a little jealous of how comfortable they are in their own skin. There were some big girls in skimpy suits, not that I would ever wear a skimpy suit, but I wish I was that confident. I wish we lived in a place where you don't feel like you have to be a stick figure to look good. I was impressed.
Well anyway, my idea of vacation is relaxation. I woke up early, walked to the beach with a book and could sit there all day. I would even leave Judd sleeping and go out to be beach side. I realized its not that much fun trying to take a relaxing trip with a husband. He didn't quite know how to relax. I would sit there reading and watching the beach and the people and I was perfectly happy like that. But he was all jittery and waiting for me to entertain him the whole time. Geez can't a girl get a break, even on vacation!! We went for walks, and found shells and he even let me bury him once. We got really bad sunburns because I ran out of sunblock while I was out there and had to buy some Mexican sunblock. It should be called Mexican sun"burn" because as soon as I put that stuff on I could feel my arms cooking! I also bought Mexican mosquito repellant because I was being eaten alive, and I swore it was just a mixture of pine sol and lotion. I had 32 mosquito bites on my legs. 5 on one knee cap.
Anyway, here's some pics from a walk along our beach



I actually wrote that and a wave washed it away as I was trying to take the picture. Judd bent down to fix it and I snapped him. He was all embarrassed that he would look like a wimp if I posted this, so I just thought I would throw that out there.... so officially, for the record, Judd is not this smooth.

On Monday we did an all day excursion to a natural water park called Xel-ha (Shell-ha) and the Mayan ruin town of Tulum (too-loom). Xel-ha was stinking awesome. you get there and they give out snorkels, goggles and fins and then you put on a life jacket and snorkel in this natural lagoon that is the size of like 10 football fields. There were fish everywhere. All different kinds. Judd had a minor encounter with a "5 foot long" barracuda. or so he says, but each time he told me about it the fish got a little bit bigger. hmmm. He did touch his tail fin though, even though he admitted to me that the fish scared the bejeezies out of him and it had huge teeth. After about 15 minutes he got motion sickness from the waves and he just kinda had to sit around and watch while I explored. I went in to caves and over reefs. I can't wait to develop my underwater camera film. That will be so cool. hopefully i figure out how to use my scanner. Judd got over his motion sickness
for the most part and we came upon a rope swing that I made him do. He was a little nervous that he was going to hit the wall, but a little pressure from a lady can get a man to do anything, especially when it comes to his pride. So he did the rope swing and then he did some cliff diving. The water is amazing down there. You can see all the way to the bottom everywhere you go. Even at the beach at our hotel, we were swimming with angel fish and other dark unknown shadows. Kinda Freaky.
They had like 12 dolphins at Xel-ha.


Here's some pics of Tulum. This place was really neat. The temples were built right on the beach.



This is a temple for the Goddess of Fertility. I thought I was in a fitting state :)



look in the branch of the tree

We also went into a little town called Playa Del Carmen, where we were able to shop and haggle with the business owners. Judd pays way to much for stuff in Mexico!! What's up with that. I can hardly get him to buy anything here and he goes there and paid $22 for a pair of sunglasses (because he thought he it would be fun to body surf while wearing his old ones from home, they are now property of the Gulf of Mexico) and $15 for a weird straw hat that he ended up leaving on the airplane (thank goodness) We got the kids some cool little presents though that were like a $1 each, which was more my style for that stuff. One thing that was crazy about that town, besides the drivers, was that they had soccer leagues on the beach. They set up goals and play like crazy men for hours.
All in all, our trip was great. We didn't even fight once until our flight home. By then I was just ready to be alone for a little while. And, I was ready to see my kids.

DiSnEyLaNd!!!

We had our whirlwind trip to Disneyland this week. And when I say whirlwind, I mean it! We got to Anaheim at 11:45 p.m. Tuesday night. Did Disneyland all day Wednesday and drove home Thursday morning. It was fast, but I'm so glad we did it. It was the perfect time of year to go. We didn't have to wait in line for hardly any rides! The kids were able to ride on everything at the whole park and even do some rides twice. Madison's favorite ride was Peter Pan, Nolan's was Space Mountain, Mine was Pirates of course, a classic. Judd's was Indiana Jones. We went on the Nemo submarine ride and it made Judd feel really woozy, so the rest of his day was kind of crappy.

The kids at Mickey's house. I could not find a way to get Mickey's ginormous body guard out of the picture. I need to figure out how to crop.

The kids were so brave. When I couldn't go on a ride Madi always rode in front by herself. I don't know if I would do that when I was 7.

My cute little stinkers! They were the perfect ages to go.

Space Mountain freaked Madison out. And you can see by the look on Judd's face that he doesn't feel really good either. Nolan however, is always wide eyed and quiet after the ride. After it was over he yelled YESSSSS!!


Its a small world was so much better as an Adult. I really liked it!!! And the kids LOVED it.

Judd had to get his picture taken with his role model. ;)

the broom from one of our favorite Disney Books


Minnie!!!

I think I've taken other jail pictures of these guys before, but I'll say it again. I wish I had one of these at home!! All in all, it was a great trip and I'm so glad we had the chance to spend time with the big kids before the little babies take over.

For Sale

Very cute male child. Almost 2 years old. Can say a few words such as... love you, good boy, hi, bye, mom, dad, Madi, Nolan, etc...
Will throw things in the garbage can (especially spoons and toys), can unload the dishwasher and put clothes in the washing machine.
Reason for selling, mom just can't keep up with him anymore. Needs very energetic family that enjoy cleaning up lots of mud and bottles of nail polish that have been opened and used as a paint brush on floors, walls and body. Loves to wear hats or other things (underwear) on his head. Underwear and pacifier included.



Also, still for sale and now at a reduced price. This child that enjoys playing in garbage cans.


OTHER THINGS:
we took a trip to the Phoenix Children's Museum. If you've never been, you have to go!! The first Friday of every month if free from 6 to 10 p.m. I can't even begin to tell you the amount of fun the kids had here!





Me and Madison went to see Mary Poppins. It was one of the best shows I have ever seen! Here she is in her little theater get up. Her first Broadway Show. She had so much fun. Mary Poppins flew right by us on her broom!



Here's Madison with her homemade robot, Petunia. She's a gardening robot.

In other news. My due date has changed from the last time I posted. I went in to the Dr. and she said that I was about 3 weeks farther along than I thought! What great news! New due date...Sep. 6th. We find out next week what we are having! This pregnancy has been a pain in the butt, literally! My butt is killing me! And the migraines! But...I'm not big on complaining, so I'll leave it at that. I have been feeling this little bug moving around though. That's when it starts being real for me. I'm still kind of in denial because I can't believe that I'm having another child after Coulson. There is nothing like him and this pregnancy is going way too fast!

Oh, and just so I don't have to add another post after this one... WE ARE GOING TO CANCUN!! Yay! We've never done a honeymoon and we just celebrated 8 years. We will be gone for 6 days in May. I'm sure I'll have a million bajillion pictures to post. SOOOOO excited!