Thursday, October 15, 2015

Dear Knox, You're Nine Months











Knox Hardy Biesinger,

Tomorrow you'll be nine months. That means you've been here in our arms and in our home, rolling around and eating and giggling and spitting up almost as long as you grew in my belly those nine months before.  It seems like a significant age for that reason.  Which makes sense because you are more of your own person every day right now.  More teeth, new hair, new faces, more giggles... new tricks.  Nine months is good.

-You aren't fully crawling yet but it seems like you've had the skills to crawl for at least a month or two.  You might be my first official army crawler, pulling with your elbows and pushing with your feet and dragging your belly along for the ride.  You're not all over the house yet, but when you see something you really want (like dad when he got home tonight) those elbows can really pick up the pace.  I'm crossing my fingers you don't get too ambitious too fast, I'm appreciating that you'll still hang out on a blanket with toys while I lay by the pool, and you're not yet cruising the house looking for things like crickets and dishwasher detergent to put in your mouth.  This phase is good.

- You have four teeth on top and three on the bottom, kind of a lot of teeth for your age, and yet you might be my least interested in food.  Feeding you real food is my least favorite baby "chore", although I'd take my least favorite chore with you over pretty much anything else.  You could make a root canal kinda sweet. Well I don't know those are brutal. But back to you, you don't reach for and seem to love food quite yet.  But we go through the mandatory-ish baby food a few times a day.  You like oatmeal and applesauce and sometimes yogurt... we offer you everything and you eat some but mostly I clean up a highchair and floor covered in banana, cheese, salmon, hot dogs, grapes, crackers, berries... you name it and it's stuck in the cracks between our hardwood I'm sure.

- Sometimes I worry you'll hardly know I'm your mom since a few months ago, you discovered the bottle when I was at an appointment one day and it's been your favorite ever since.  I officially stopped nursing you when you were about 7 and a half months and you certainly didn't miss it.  I think I was forcing you to snuggle with me a bit longer but you just wanted to lay free and hold your own bottle and down it at your own pace.  I think you'd be happy if we skipped food and just gave you bottles all day.  You love that thing.  

- You love your sisters and your brother so much.  They come home from school and every one of them looks immediately for you.  Finn says "where's bubbas?!" I wonder if he'll still call you that when you're older. Your sisters are so helpful... you must feel like you have three moms.  They love to hold and play with you and let you hang on the floor in their room while they play.  Mila loves to make you a bottle all on her own.. they're going to be expert babysitters since they could pretty much take care of you all day just fine... you're a lucky boy to have these siblings, and they're so lucky to have you.

- Lately I feel like people are constantly telling me how good you are.  I wasn't sure if you'd be one of my easier or harder in the beginning... I think I wasn't making as much milk as you needed and you weren't sleeping nearly as much as your siblings had.  Your naps were short and it felt like you were hungry all day.  Besides that you were always sweet and even tempered. Your cycles throughout the day were just short.  The bottle turned that around and while you still don't always take a 3 hour nap like Finn did, you are so even tempered and easily entertained. So sweet and content-- I almost don't care how long you sleep.  Which is definitely a first.  You go down when you get fussy and when you wake, you come join the herd of action.  You sit and lay and roll and army crawl amongst the throngs of homework, piano, and a revolving door of neighborhood friends.  I wonder if you'll always like being around a lot of people because that's what you'll be used to.

I wish I could stop time and forever feel your face burrowing into me when you're tired and about to be laid down, and the weight of your little 23 pound body when I lift you out of your crib with wide but sleepy eyes. There's nothing better in the world.  But every day there's a little more of you to love and that makes the loss of the youngest days bearable.  I'm so excited to see what you'll be at a year, 18 months, 2.... 5...8 .... there are so many precious moments and phases ahead Knoxy and every person in this family will be hanging on to every one of them.  

Someday you'll have a chubby heaven- sent nine-month old and only then will you know how much I love you.

Love, Mom

Saturday, September 12, 2015

We Have Four Kids



The other night something made me look up this old blog.  I haven't been here in a while and once I stopped in, I couldn't pull away.  Instagram has taken over that spot in my life for documenting and sharing pictures.  If I'm "wasting" time online, I'm perusing pinterest or instagram.  But never reading blogs.  Gone are the days of getting on each morning and checking in to see what ventures my friends and their new babies were on... and gone are the days where I'd sit down and start typing all of the current thoughts of this mommy of one baby.... two babies.... a boy! I never even touched the surface of our fourth.  I hardly use to miss the opportunity to post a good meal I made, and now I've missed an entire pregnancy and the first 8 months of Knox's life.

This kid is so cute.  What if I finally print this blog someday and he's not in it?  I think I'm back.  Knox needs stories about his first words, his favorite foods, the crickets he eats...

Not to mention these other three just keep changing! I die when I look at old posts and see Sophia as a little girl. I don't know when it happened but she is practically a young woman.  She turned ten a couple of weeks ago and it blows my mind.

I think I said this in my last post a year ago.  But I don't have time to look back at it.  But I'm making a new resolution to write again.  Instagram has made it super easy to document and save some photos.  But I can't help but be dissuaded by that unwritten rule that everyone is annoyed if you post too many pictures and one a day or less is just not always enough. And sometimes there is so much more to say than is appropriate to put in someone's instagram feed.

So again, I think I'm back. I'm writing to myself now and later. I can't imagine anyone else will check this which might make it a little harder to be motivated because those blog days were fun when we were all back and forth with comments.  I'm not above that and for sure all of that validation gave me all the more fire to write.  But along with nobody checking in comes incredible freedom.  Like right now, I'm not even re-reading this. I don't think I will.  Who has time?  It might be pure gibberish and I'm quite confident it is, but I think it's worth it.  I don't have time to words and I don't have time to edit photos... I don't even have time to edit thoughts.  I probably don't have time to write at all since every night once my kids are in bed I think of a million things I wish I'd done better while they were awake.  My life has a chronic MOUNTAIN of things I could be improving on. But maybe that's exactly why I want to write.  So that all of those thoughts and goals and wishes and regrets can be documented somewhere.  To either help me remember and better myself.... or at least give my kids proof, later, of my good intentions. :/

For now, I'm tired and not sure I actually said anything in this unedited mash of words but I'm hoping this will crack the door to that part of my brain so all of the stories and conversations and moments that are happening in this amazing family and life of mine will start pouring out and be recorded.

This is it.  I used to be a new mom and it feels like yesterday.  But now I'm a 34-year-old woman with four kids ranging from 8 months to 10 years.  I still do diapers and baby food and lullabies but now I do homework and soccer and volleyball and piano and friend problems and FableHaven and chores and sometimes I just don't know when my brain is going to catch up with these crow's feet between my brows.  I'm not sure it ever will-- but I know this is it.  I'm IN my life.  It's not like leading up to it anymore.  I'm in it. Making the forever memories for my kids.  More than halfway done raising Sophia under my roof. I'm in it.

It's so overwhelming but so wonderful.  And I'm just so grateful for these four personalities I scored.. and for such a solid partner in Ross to cross our fingers together and hope we do it right.

And for prayer.

Life is still super good over here.