a new approach

monday is my day off.
therefore, it's my most important day.
it is also my most exhausting.

i find that - to keep up with my girls - I have to be proactive, otherwise I will get pummelled and left for dead. so this morning I woke up with a new gameplan: I was going to approach the day as many football coaches approach a game....by quarters.

It dawned on me that a whole day from start to finish of taking girls to the potty, washing bibs, preparing meals, roughhousing, getting them in carseats, out of carseats, wiping noses, reading books, cleaning up, then uncleaning up what i had just cleaned up, etc...was just to much to get my arms around (i know, i know...i'm talking about just a day, when my blessed wife has to think in terms of years).

So I broke the day up into quarters.

1st Quarter: wake up through breakfast.
2nd Quarter: post-breakfast through 2:00PM nap time
3rd Quarter: post-nap through dinner
4th Quarter: bath, books, bedtime

My goal, you see, was to win more quarters than I lost and...to own the 4th quarter. I've kept a small scorecard. Here's how we did:

TeamDeeble: 4
Meltdown: 0

Oh yeah. We killed today. We decorated a Christmas tree, I raked/mowed leaves, Mia and I ran errands and had a lunch date, girls were hugging, they were sharing, there were new songs written, no one bit anyone,...I mean, it was a really good day and I'm sticking with my new strategy.

Elise is a bit worried, though, that I'm taking the football analogy a bit far. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that, after dinner, I shouted "It's the 4th Quarter baby!" and then made everyone raise 4 fingers in the air as we hit the showers - err, bathtub.

oh. so this is joy.

Before leaving for our 4-day trip to Colorado for Thanksgiving, I asked my friends to pray for two specific things: (1) Safety and (2) Sanity.

And God answered one of those prayers.

The picture below really says it all as Elise and our two oldest were ready to throw in the towel by day 4. This is not to say that there weren't great moments (such as Papa and Hadley sharing the Karaoke machine - post pending) nor that Butde and Papa didn't bend over backwards to make our time as relaxing as possible. It's just that the girls got sick. All of them. Fevers and snot galore.

One moment rises above the rest in my head, however, and it happened to be within the first hour of our 12-hour drive home. Our mini-van's dvd went on the fritz and we couldn't get it to work at all for the first 6 hours of our trip. So I just remember driving down the mountain with Hadley screaming, Mia sneezing, Brianna crying, Elise wacking on the DVD player - all the while a Veggie Tale's CD blared through all 8 speakers: "I've got JOY JOY JOY JOY down in my heart. Where? Down in my heart. Where? Down in my heart. I've got JOY JOY JOY JOY down in my heart - where?...."


If only we had brought the dogs.

P.S. We later got the dvd player to work after the girls fixed it. No kidding. It still required Elise to whack it every 5-10 minutes in order to make it work which prompted me to say "score one for the team" each time.

thanksgiving 2009

welcome to the jungle

The below videos should capture a vivid snapshot of what our nightly routine looks AND sounds like.

Video #1: Competing Melodies

Double Seeing Girls from Elise Deeble on Vimeo.

Video #2: Mommy Won't Sing and Daddy Can't
Also notice the excellent save by Daddy during the last 7 seconds. Hadley sneaks up on him, trips over his leg, and Daddy somehow (SOMEHOW I SAY!) manages to catch her head in the palm of his hand WHILE simultaneously capturing his own heroism on tape.

Not Singing Alone from Elise Deeble on Vimeo.

Video #3: Mommy Knows Best, Always, At All Hours, From All Angles.

Untitled from Elise Deeble on Vimeo.

This video can be best enjoyed with a transcript:
Mom: "Someone's gonna get seriously hurt."
Dad: "I know."
{Loud cries}
Mom: "Theeere it is."
{Pause}
Dad: "Whattya think?"
Mom: "She's holding her breath."
Dad: "Oh, ya think so."
Mom: "Yes!"
Dad: "It's pretty quiet..."
{Loud Screams}
Dad: "Oh yeah. You're right. You're right."

Hadley - No More Morning Nap :(

Much to my dismay, Hadley is giving up her morning nap but still not completely use to it. This is pretty much her new play position in the mornings.

Girls Sporting Their New Winter Boots

The older girls were all excited to wear their new winter boots to church on Sunday. I had to come up with outfits to wear them with. They looked like little teenagers with skirts, tights and boots!

Much to my chagrin I discovered the day before that both of the big girls had been wearing shoes a whole size too small for them. So Mia's complaints about her shoes were valid. Oops!!! Do you have any idea how hard it is to keep up with three girls with extremely fast growing feet. I literally had their feet measured about a month before.

Mommy and Baby

Here is a little video of the girls playing Mommy and Baby.

Untitled from Elise Deeble on Vimeo.

Matilda the Gorilla

So "Matilda the Gorilla" stands as the all time favorite baby/toddler song. This song was each of our girls first favorite song. Hadley was not even remotely peforming for the camera here. The minute we get in the car she starts saying "OO OO AH AH" and then goes crazy when it starts.

Untitled from Elise Deeble on Vimeo.

Mia and Papa Building Together

Mia our little engineer loves to build towers or in this case they call them sand castles. This one took a creative flair with Sonja inside the tower.

Butde and Papa Visit

So Butde and Papa came to visit to check out the new church building. As always we loved having them here.

On Saturday, Dan decided to take both girls to McDonalds in place of the one on one breakfast and to ask Papa to join them. They had a great time. The McDonalds staff now recognizes them as regulars and has started giving the girls toys. So this is how the happy meal stuff starts.

Hat and Slippers

Two of Mia's favorite things to wear: her bucket hat and her slippers. She always has to come model them for me when she puts them on. Sorry about the lack of pants in the picture.

Imaginations at Work

So one of the girls new things is to play mommy and baby. Brianna is usually the mommy and Mia is the baby. They love to play it upstairs in their room. Mia will get in her bed and Brianna will tell her "good night, I love you" and leave the room and close the door. Mia will then start crying and Brianna will say "I'll get you" come back into the room and go hold Mia. Then they start all over again. It is so cute.

Well this particular day baby Mia was crying and so Brianna told that she would hold her. She went and sat on the floor and them Mia got in her lap. Hadley of course tried to play as well.

Hadley

So Hadley is totally changing from our sweet, easy going, compliant baby to a strong willed, feisty thing with quite a temper. She had her first time out yesterday. Needless to say it didn't really work. It just made her madder.

But at the same time it is so fun to watch the light bulb going on in her head. She loves to read books and do anything that her sisters do. Our doctor at her 1 year appointment said that our current goal is to just keep her alive. That she is going to start trying to climb things like her sister. I thought current goal....that has been the goal since the day she was born.

Dud Blogger Award

So my baby sister just emailed me all mad saying that we win the dud blogger award. So stay tuned for some posts. :)

bri's new favorite phrase

"What About ME?"

top 5 quotes of the week....

1. Mia , while potty training: "Daddy, the poopy's stuck in my bottom."

2. Daddy: "Hadley, no headbanging."

3. Brianna & Daddy:

d: Brianna? What are you doing to Hadley?
b: I'm putting lotion on her feet.
d: Where did you find lotion?
b: From my mouth.
d: Bri, that's not lotion. That's saliva.
b: No, it's lotion.

4. Mia, while playing in the creek at the Arboretum: "Dude!"

5. Elise, commenting on my sermon from Sunday in which I talked about a big argument we had gotten into: "I think you really undersold just what a jerk you really were."