I don't need company while pooping.

Please excuse my vent but I just want to poop alone. I don't want to speed poop because the baby is suddenly unhappy on the play mat the second my toosh hit the toilet. I don't want to receive or hold all the tiny rubber duckies the toddler is handing me. I really don't want to play guessing games with the preschooler who was out side helping grandpa until he heard the click of the door lock from 3 miles away. And I swear if one more kid wrinkles their nose at the smell I will climb on the roof and build an adults only blanket fort. Feel free to join me up there but don't forget the wine and snacks.

I lost an amazing woman.

I lost an amazing woman recently. My grandmother ... my everything passed away a week ago. This has been one of the hardest weeks of my life. I am still reeling from the loss of my mother in-law just 3 months ago. I am the mother to three kids under the age of 4 AND I have a teenager. I am still postpartum so hormones are flopping around and my hair is starting to fall out. Those are just a handful of the things going on and stressing me out. Then the whole world falls apart and my grandmother dies. What a cruel joke. What a rotten time. As one friend put it "it is hard when you barely have a chance to catch your breath between losses."

The good news is I saw her slipping away and I took action. My husband pushed for me to not let this opportunity get away. I took my kids and my husband to the nursing home to say goodbye. I took pictures of everything including her sleeping. I talked to her and saw her smile. I sat quietly by her beside and was just there in the moment with her. Sure I wish I had prayed with her while I held her hand. I wish I could have told her I loved her one more time. But for the most part I am at peace with my time spent with her before she went back home.

Still it is sad and still I feel lost with out her here. I cherish everything I have from her. The physical trinkets. The heart warming memories. The life altering morales. The pictures that seemed silly in the moment but mean everything to me now. All I can do is trudge forth and hope that I am making her proud. I miss you grandma. I can still feel your hand in mine. I hope that memory never fades.

I wanna be a kid again

When I was sick as a kid my mom would make me stay in bed all day. She'd tell me to read a book and sleep. I hated it. If I was lucky I could convince her to let me lay on the couch so I could watch TV. Now I am sick as an adult and I would kill for someone to send me to my room. How awesome would it be to spend the day laying in bed reading a book only getting up to eat and pee?!?! As an adult I have a TV in my room so I don't even have to move to the couch. Chromecast makes it almost completely unnecessary to interact with the outside world. Except for the three out of four kids in the living room who require food and milk and diaper changes. Party poopers!

This is why ... Just ... Nooooo

This is why I don't want to return to work on Tuesday. I am sick and I feel like crap. Oh well suck it up Sally and of course I do. I'm a mom. Do I really have any other option? However Adelia is sick. She has been up all night with no signs of slowing down. I have hugged her, kissed her, loved her, and given her the recommended dose of pain reliever in an attempt to keep her as comfortable as possible. And yet sleep evades her and so it does me. Thankfully Annalise is sleeping well and has only been up once. Thankfully Bryan is home on spring break so I have a chance at a nap. To bad the bug guy is coming early tomorrow morning to kill off the wasps that have appeared two seconds after spring tried to come. So tired ...

Just wait until you are a teen

They say the best pay back is to do to your kids, when they are teens, the same things they did to you as small children. I decided it would be a good idea to keep a list to remind myself in 10-12 years of what each kid gets. Because payback sucks. Bah ha ha ha

Wyatt has a knack for waking us in the middle of the night ... screaming ... from his bedroom ... upstairs. It's such a lovely way to wake up. It's never anything horribly important. He's not scared and didn't have a bad dream. He is just to lazy to pull the blanket up on his own. Or he wants a drink. Or he had a dream about the wind blower (manure spreader) that he needs to share with someone NOW! So this is my plan.

1. I am going to sneak upstairs at 3 am. I am going to stand next to his bed and scream at the top of my lungs "I WANT CHOCOLATE MILK!"

2. I will save the baby monitors we have and hide one under his bed. Again sometime around 3 am I will turn that bad boy on and yell into the baby monitor "WYATT WHERE IS MY BLANKET?! CAN YOU COME COVER ME UP?!"

3. This again requires me to sneak into his bedroom in the middle of the night and stand next to him. I will get close to his face and whisper "Wyatt? Wyatt are you awake?" over and over again until he does in fact wake up. Once he wakes and darn near craps himself I will inform him that I need to pee.

4. Any time I am eating something crumbly like biscuits I will randomly walk up to Adelia and sneeze. Then I will innocently walk away as if I didn't just cover her in wet mommy snot.

5. I will randomly stand in front of the TV during video game play. Waiting of course until they are fully engrossed in a boss show down so intense I risk having to replace the couch cushion. Because they are totally gonna crap themselves when I wander past.

6. I am going to open doors, cabinets, the dishwasher or maybe the fridge. Then I am going to stand next to the open door screaming for someone else to come close it for me.

7. Any and all bathroom breaks run the risk of me standing outside the door yelling "What are you doing in there?" or "Are you pooping?" or "Did you pee in the potty? Big girls pee in the potty right?"

8. All naps will be interrupted by me standing over them crumpling a pack of fruit snacks and yelling "I CAN'T GET THEM OPEN!"

9. I have just three words. RANDOM WET SPOTS. Walking through their bedrooms will be like walking through a mine field of delights. Wet squishy delights.

10. I am going to hide every remote they hold dear to them. TV ... radio ... Xbox ... doesn't matter what it controls. I am going to hide it in the most random spots and watch them squirm. How much you wanna bet they just give up and watch/listen to what is on instead of actually finding the remote?

They are still young so I am sure I will have plenty to add to the list by the time Wyatt, Adelia and Annalise are Bryan's age. But until then I wait and plot and mwuah ha ha ha!

Come and sit and chat with me.

Grab a cup of coffee ... or Redbull as it seems to be these days ... let's sit and get caught up.

Ethan and I are still married. Yeah buddy! It will be 8 years this summer and 13 years total together last month. The road has been rocky some years and smooth as glass other years. Life with four kids means you have to work extra hard to make it work but it is as always totally worth it. Even if my partner in crime is a bit pinchy and leaves Pepsi cans on the side table.

Bryan will be 16 this summer. Holy crap! He has his permit and is allowed to drive with a licensed adult. Bryan gets straight A's in school and with the exception of this year rarely misses a day. (This year has been full of births, deaths and snow days) He is still addicted to World of Warcraft. Which is fine with us so long as his grades stay up and his chores get done. Bryan is a pretty awesome big brother and has been a huge help during all the chaos of the last year.

Wyatt is my almost 4 year old wild man. Just ... just ... just so wild. It doesn't help that it has been a horrible winter and he has been cooped up for months. Wyatt is smart as a whip and made of pure muscle. He is a farm kid to the core. Wyatt wants to be no place else but outside doing chores with daddy and grandpa. He has a fever disorder called PFAPA and as I write this he sits next to me feeling a hair to warm again. Wyatt will spike a fever for no apparent reason every 2-4 weeks. As soon as he hits 102 degrees we have a medication to give him that smacks his immune system back into reality and It calms down again. Wyatt is fatigued but 95% better in 2-3 hours with medication instead of the 4-5 days with out medication. He should grow out of it by the time he enters school. Fingers crossed or this could mean a lot of missed school days. He is a good kid with a ridiculous amount of energy. If I had half of it this house would be spotless at all times.

Adelia my beautiful little princess celebrated her first birthday in January ... by becoming a big sister. Ya more on that later. Adelia is a spit fire and I love it! She is really starting to show this amazingly strong and sassy spirit that would make her grandmother so proud of her. She is already barreling across the room at top speed. The very recent backwards walking is cool. However the side walking is rather creepy. It doesn't help that she stares silently into your soul as she does it. Adelia is starting to talk and actually ask for things. Mama, dada, grandpa, and even the dogs (Coco and Bobo) are being called by their proper name. She just started saying baba when she wants milk and she is sooooooo close to saying Anna when talking about her sister. Sadly Bryan and Wyatt just get pointed at. Although I think she called Bryan bubba the other day. But then again she may just have been asking for her milk.

Annalise my amazingly full head of hair from the get go little lady. She ... well ...  Annalise was a surprise bonus baby. We celebrated Adelia turning 4 months old by going to Shopko to pick up several pregnancies tests. Because there is no way in hell I could be pregnant again. I mean I am still pumping. I am on the birth control pill. I JUST went back to work. This test must be broken. HA! My "I'm just gonna take a test to make me feel better" test turned positive before I even set it down on the bathroom counter. Not gonna lie. Back to back pregnancies is not easy. I spent the first four months terrified that my far to fresh c-section scar was going to bust open any second. Then the last four months ready for this baby to come out because who wants to be pregnant or nursing for two years straight! Yes I know that is only eight months but all four of my babies came out at 37 weeks. So month nine never lasted more then a week for me ever. The good news is despite blood pressure issues again (Adelia's birth was a semi emergency c- section due to high blood pressure) Annalise's birth went well and my recovery was cake. Annalise has had a few issues out of the gate. She has a mild hearing loss in her left ear. We are still testing to see if that hearing loss is temporary or permanent. Either way her right ear is perfect so she still hears well. Which is almost a  disadvantage considering how loud her father and siblings are. Annalise had a positive test on her newborn screening. If you know Wyatt's story with the new born screening you know that that phone call from the hospital almost made me vomit. When the nurse announced that the positive test was for hypothyroidism I laughed. I went from head in my hands trying not to puke to laughing out loud. Is that all? I have that. No big deal! It was a little bit of a big deal when it came time to draw blood from my newborn. It took MANY blood draws to get what they needed. They are starting to joke about how many of the tiny rubber ducks they hand out to the kids they poke she will have by her first birthday. Thankfully it seems like we have the right dosage of synthroid for her but it still might need a few tweaks as time goes on. Annalise will have her blood drawn every three months until she is three years old. Then they will take her off the synthroid and see what happens. If her thyroid takes over on it's own then she can stay off the medication and need fewer checks on her TSH. If not then back on the medication she goes for most likely the rest of her life. Either way we have a simple solution that is working well for us. Annalise is  beautiful and starting to smile and coo like a pro. Now if i could only get her to sleep at night.

Then there is me. I am still home on maternity leave. My second unpaid leave in one year. There is no way I can go back to work five days a week like I was. What the heck am I going to do with three kids under the age of 4 five days a week? So I have some negotiating to do with work and some researching on how to make money at home. Looks like I will be back to eBay. Which is fine considering the amount of baby stuff we will be getting rid of as Annalise out grows it. In the men time I am going to keep vlogging in YouTube and blogging here. Maybe I have a book in me. We will just have to see what happens.

Are you out of coffee? No problem. I got a Costco sized box of k-cups downstairs and my keurig is fired up and ready to pour.

Back in the saddle ... or at least that is my hope.

It's been a few years since I have blogged. I admit I have been doing more vlogging then anything else lately. I have established what I consider a pretty decent channel on Youtube. You can see it right ......................
here https://www.youtube.com/user/Amy3Lynn3

I have been vlogging on all things TTC, infertility, pregnancy and parenting. I have a couple of pretty good videos on exclusively pumping.
The original video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJXDGg8LonI&feature=share

and here is the updated 2014 version
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAlZd5A-hkg&feature=share&list=UUkb4CjUcvpEAqlPe7ILjLIw

As much as I love vlogging it requires me to comb my hair, put on some makeup and the most important part put on a bra. Who wants to wear a bra when they don't have to? Pants aren't my favorite either. So I thought what the heck. I might as well get back into it here. I can write and share like I used to. I loved doing that and I can do it sans bra with no one ever knowing. Though I am pretty sure from now on you guys are going to be assuming I don't have a bra on when reading this ... or possibly pants. You are welcome for that image. HA!