Good thing for the 1st amendment...

...or this sign would likely have been torched already! This is why we sometimes cringe to live in NH...ugh...the Live Free or Die! state. I cringe when I see that on license plates too. Give me a break! Anyways, we're not sure why a business would post utter ignorance on a very large sign in a very public place but stranger things have happened I'm sure. Among the other asinine things that have been posted recently: "Hamas endorses Obama" and "Barack Obama is from Kenya". These people aren't the sharpest tools in the shed - enough said.

Landscaping update

Here's the house, done for the fall! The rock walls are finished, the front yard got leveled, sprinklers installed, and mulch was put in. It looks gorgeous!! Of course, now our walkway, front steps, and front door look atrocious next to the new stuff :( That'll be a project for another day. Can't wait until spring when we plant and hydroseed. We could use some color!

Leaps & Bounds

If it weren't for the scary red eye the above picture would be good! Oh well. We're closing another crazy week at the Gotlieb household. Ben is sick, still and/or again, I don't know which since he never seems to get better before another cold piles on. After telling a neighbor my motto this winter is "Wait it out", I promptly took Ben to the doctor this morning :) haha...well, to give myself credit, I WAS going to wait on this illness before handing over my $20 for them to sing the song doctors love, "Viiiiiraaaalllll...tra-la-la" but Eric got Ben up this morning and even he said I should take him to the doctor. Now that NEVER happens, and I know you other mommies are with me on this one with dear old dad always thinking we're psycho for rushing to the doctor at every whimper! His ears and lungs were clear but they gave me an antibiotic to treat for a "sinus infection". Hooray! The mother's stamp of approval: ANTIBIOTICS - also known as "See honey, I'm NOT crazy...they gave me medicine!"

So this is likely the last pictures you'll see of Seth for a couple weeks. He's starting to get baby acne as all my kids do at this age and they look horrible! Ben was ecstatic for me to put together Seth's bouncy chair - easy access to pummeling Seth now :) He does swat at him now and then but mostly is still overjoyed when I tell him he can hold Seth. He sits right down, reaches his arms up, and tries to grab him like a sack of potatoes. It's rather comical.

Ben is improving his speech SO much week to week that I don't think they refer to him as delayed anymore. We'll hold on to Denise as long as we can though. It's secretly mom's idea of an "activity" and Ben basks in the one-on-one attention which he doesn't get much of these days. He's using 2 and 3 words now and sometimes sentences, "I want apple too!" He can generally get his point across CLEARLY which is great for all involved. Hooray!

FLOOR UPDATE: It took me over an hour to scrub the food off my dining room floor, but at last, it's clean! One down, 2 more and a hallway to go!

More pumpkins...

We packed up lunches and off we went to Emery Farms late this morning. Hayrides didn't start until noon, which by the way people, who does things from 12-4pm??? We have children that nap!! Events need to start at 9 or 10am and give us parents a break! We got there and decided to start with a yummy treat first. Cal picked pumpkin sugar cookies and we got the apple cide despite the "VERY HOT" caution sign. Yup, it was hot. Had to let it cool forever and as soon as we stepped outside with it yellow jackets started swarming us. Not good. We managed to not get stung but I'm not really sure how. Happy bees I guess. Next we passed some time in the the sandbox, looking at the cows, goats, chickens, and finally sipping some cider while trying not to swallow a yellow jacket. Finally it was noon and we went on the hayride through the "spooky" forest and to the pumpkin patch. We ate lunch on the way home and were back for naps! Later in the afternoon we dug out the seeds and carved the pumpkins. I salted and cooked up the seeds for a yummy treat!

I now remember from last year how much of a problem the sun was!

Watch out for those fingers, daddy!

Digging for seeds!

Ben- our constant observer - He tends to like to sit on the sidelines and watch. Even here he's singing "Hello, everybody" and being as funny as ever! The song is from his music class at which he NEVER says anything...always just sits and watches and then vocalizes at home. I wonder at the things this child must know and I'm none the wiser. Ben is often only crazy under the comfy wing of his brother. Hmmm...

Pumpkin Patch

Seriously, we need to come up with a name for these two jack-o-laterns...they're always hamming it up! I could make some good money off of these kids!!!

Fall days

The weather has been a nice 70 degrees this week and weekend and we're happy to be able to be outside and play still! It's nice that it's not too cold to take the baby out too. Tomorrow is pumpkin picking which I'm sure will be mobbed. I picked Sunday hoping people will be at church and not out supporting a Pagan holiday :)

The boys are doing well. We all have lingering remnants of a cold. Mid-Sept and the germ fest had already begun...not even going to hope for an end until next June that way I won't be disappointed. Cal loves preschool; it's like he never left for the summer. I'm unsure about the "new crowd" of mommies. Some younger ones for sure this time around but no one seems overly sociable. My main goal this fall is to make some new friends for Ben. We had Mackenzie over last week. She's the sister of one of Cal's classmates and also has the same speech therapist as Ben! It was a very quiet playdate :) For now though Ben has his music class, speech therapy, library storytime, a neighborhood playgroup, and any newbies I can fit in! I'd say he's pretty busy. Seth is growing like a weed. His head is expanding every second to catch up with his HUGE eyes. He reminds me of Cal as a baby in many ways not just looks. I predict Seth will be just as attached to his blanket as Cal, and unfortunately, I also predict that he'll have the same breathing/cold problem as Ben :( Time will tell...

Coming right along...

New couch came and curtains are up!

I'm sure the neighbors are glad that we finally decided to hire the crew and not be the most ghetto looking house on the street. Although we've definitely been improving on the front yard little by little, we made some huge progress last week! The left side of the stairs is done with the wall and circle and the rest should be done this week on the other side (two more stone walls). We're going to hold off on the hydroseeding and planting and do that in the spring since the leaves are already raining down.

Airing dirty laundry

Ben made this whole tower by himself. He was so proud!

Seth likes this star outfit! It might have been the only one clean - leave me alone.

Hmm..so there's a variety of things that come to mind on this topic, the first being literal. Laundry has always been, well, sort of an issue around here. When you have a preschooler that doesn't understand what a smock is for, a toddler that loves to throw dirt (and food) on himself, and a newborn that spits up and pees everywhere, laundry is more than a chore, it's a full time job!

Last week proved to be particularly challenging when I noticed it was taking clothes double the time to get dry. In one way this was a good thing since my gas bill goes down the more I use as I was just informed after an $80 gas bill last month and a call to the company because I thought there must be some mistake. The lovely lady at Amerigas said, "oh yeah, you used less this month so you pay more!" On the other hand, clothes taking an eternity to dry meant less clean laundry and I couldn't keep up with blankets, burp clothes, and clothes for Seth! Poor thing.

Folding laundry? Forget it! I think I might just tack each person's name up on the wall with an arrow pointing at the floor. That can be their clean clothes PILE.

Love the neighbors (well most of them - we won't discuss the insecure, witchy mommy confrontation or the ones who seem to find everyway possible to make noise!) Walter from next door fixed the dryer. Seems the lint trap leading to outside needed to be cleaned - who knew that even existed?!

Speaking of cleaning...I'm just going to come out with it...I CONFESS: I haven't mopped/scrubbed/cleaned my floors since March. (Listening for the gasp!) Ah yes, there it is. I know, it's horrid. Sure, they've been swept or wiped up here or there from a spill but they're becoming positively unbearable. I'm reminded almost weekly of what a slacker I am when my dear friend Molly emails me to tell me she is about to go wash hers for the umpteenth time since mine have been cleaned. I'm posting this in hopes that it will shame and embarass me enough to motivate me to clean them!! I'll update you when they're done...don't hold your breath.

Triplets...

Below is each boy at 3 weeks old. We think Seth looks more like Cal although he might be a nice hybrid of the two!!

Cal

Seth

Ben

Your name is what?!

Ok, ok...so I could move my ENTIRE blog site so that I could add Seth's initial and have him be included but that's not going to happen. I'm established here at beck-g (Ben, Eric, Cal, Kady - Gotlieb) so he'll just have to know that the blog was started before his conception. What was I supposed to do?!

So Seth has been added to the title of the blog. These are the nicknames each boy has had thus far. Back in our gangsta days we called Cal, Cal-dawg or The Calster sometimes. We miss our peeps but we had to disassociate for obvious reasons once our first was born :) Ben was Ben-bo or Bennybo as Cal likes to call him and Seth has been dubbed Sethio for lack of a better nickname.

New Stuff!

The purchases from our August spending spree are finally rolling in! We're excited to have our house slowly start to be furnished with all sorts of goodies. Eric's favorite of course is the 50 inch flat-screen TV that just got installed on Friday. It was supposed to be installed on September 12th but we had a baby that day instead...Eric was very upset about this - just kidding!!! haha...Cal calls this TV "the movie theater". And yes, we know we need a new entertainment center - one is on the way!

The other furniture is for Cal's room. They called me at noon on Thursday and asked if I wanted it delivered the same day! So in it came and I love it! We got the bed, night stand, dresser with mirror, and a bookcase which I didn't take a picture of. You can get a glimpse of the new carpet too. We put the same brown in all the bedrooms except Ben's since Ben's walls are brown and a brown runner on the stairs.

By the end of October we should have all things new delivered...check back for more to come!

Acorns!

Here's a big pile of acorns I raked up from just a tiny patch of grass. They rain down and pelt the car and us frequently. No wonder we have at least 20 chipmunks living in our stone wall, garage, UNDER our driveway. The little buggers have dug tunnels, evident by the large piles of dirt we find in unexpected places, underneath the driveway causing huge divots! So our driveway is like a huge booby trap....you have to watch out you don't slide on an acorn or trip in a divot and kill yourself!

Use what your momma gave ya!

Stretching after a long nap!

Where's Seth?

Finally able to get back on here to write a little ditty. It's been a whirlwind of a week...where to start? Let's see - a few Seth updates. Last Friday was his 2-week checkup. He'd gained some weight and surpassed his birth weight at a plump 6lbs 13oz. We found out that he has a "hemoglobin variant trait" which means nada for him but if Seth were to marry someone with the same trait their kids could have a "hemoglobin disease". I don't know what this means, so don't ask me. I'm pretty sure Cal has the same thing but they were too dumb in the military to know what it meant. They told me because he had a late newborn screening (they lost the first one) that Cal had some "weird stuff" in his blood. Mmmhmmm...anyways, I did my familial duty and passed on the news to my siblings and Eric's sister since technically their children could have a "disease" if their spouse was to have the same variant trait (genetic testing is advised) and lo and behold I find out my nephew has the same thing. Looks like I'm the one with the defective trait! On to other things...

This weekend was yucky and rainy so we started our indoor activities and much to my dismay Ben woke up sick on Monday. I guess that's what I get for 2 hours of fun at Chuck E Cheese and a visit to Barnes & Nobles. Damn that mouse and train table! Despite 8,000 handwashings and keeping Ben away from the baby, Eric and I got sick on Tuesday afternoon and Seth was sick by nightfall. LOVELY! Had a not-so-fun night of Seth sneezing, coughing, and choking on his own mucous which led to not much sleep. Cal escaped the dreaded cold and got to go to preschool all week, thank goodness!

Yesterday I became "that mom" who arrives 15 mins late to pick their kid up from preschool. Ben had speech therapy in the morning which I didn't want to cancel and so I had to schedule in what I thought would be a quick visit to the pediatrician for Seth. Ok, so I KNEW I couldn't have a 10:45 appt and get Cal by 11 but I decided to try. I apologized my head off and played the sick newborn card for sympathy. It worked! I showed up 15 mins EARLY today :) Oh and by the way, Seth was a enormous 8lbs 1oz yesterday with clothes on! Go Seth!

Last night everyone got some more sleep and I've started playing by Dr. W's first rule: "No baby shall be awake for more than 2 hours at a time". Since I flat-out REFUSE to use any gimmicks - swaddling, swing, pacifier - that's right, if you can't use what your momma gave ya, then too damn bad, kiddo - I spent some time showing Seth how to get his thumb in his mouth and keep it there last night. He was happy; I was happy; everyone got some sleep. I'll admit, he hasn't made it to the bassinet yet. He spends 75% of his daytime as pictured above - asleep in his car seat up on the kitchen island. He's up there so the boys can't harass him. He spends his nights snug in a beanbag still. I could move him to the bassinet but the beanbag is much more convenient for me since I can wake up and just look over at him when he starts smacking his lips to see how awake he really is and access how much longer I can sleep :) Otherwise, I'd actually have to get up and look in the bassinet. Note to self: Start billion dollar company of see-through bassinets!!