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| Life is pretty good when you can get one of your brothers to read to you. |
Friday, May 17, 2013
Wednesday, May 15, 2013
Spring fevers
I think it's been at least a couple of weeks since everyone in our house has been healthy at the same time. We started with stomach viruses, then had terrible allergies, and then somehow a respiratory virus (complete with pinkeye for Jack) piggybacked onto the allergy attacks and basically our house now sounds like a symphony of hacks, coughs, sniffles, sneezes, and nose-blowing. I think Davy and I are in the best shape right now -- but everyone else is just not quite themsevles. Poor Peter kept falling asleep on the couch today in the middle of the day, and if you know Peter, you know how unlike him this is!! He hasn't napped for years! He had a fever and was really out of sorts, so we'll see what tomorrow brings.
We are fortunate that none of these illness is serious -- just lots of run-of-the-mill stuff happening back to back. Still, it's tiring and sad to watch everyone feel so miserable all the time and to not be able to do much about it. And we're in the midst of getting ready to move in 2 weeks, so there's that floating in the air behind everything else. I've been working hard between normal everyday tasks to give the house a deep clean, get rid of unnecessary clutter, and organize our belongings so they can be packed and unpacked more easily. It actually is kind of fun to get rid of things, though! If some toy or book or household item bothers me, isn't really as useful as I once thought it would be, or if I just plain don't feel like it's worth unpacking it in the next house, then I find a new home for it. It's liberating!
Davy is asking me nicely to read him a book, so I will close with a couple of pictures of Jack at his Orioles field trip today. David got to take the day off work and be a chaperone, and Jack was feeling well enough to finally go back to school today, and they had a great time. :)
We are fortunate that none of these illness is serious -- just lots of run-of-the-mill stuff happening back to back. Still, it's tiring and sad to watch everyone feel so miserable all the time and to not be able to do much about it. And we're in the midst of getting ready to move in 2 weeks, so there's that floating in the air behind everything else. I've been working hard between normal everyday tasks to give the house a deep clean, get rid of unnecessary clutter, and organize our belongings so they can be packed and unpacked more easily. It actually is kind of fun to get rid of things, though! If some toy or book or household item bothers me, isn't really as useful as I once thought it would be, or if I just plain don't feel like it's worth unpacking it in the next house, then I find a new home for it. It's liberating!
Davy is asking me nicely to read him a book, so I will close with a couple of pictures of Jack at his Orioles field trip today. David got to take the day off work and be a chaperone, and Jack was feeling well enough to finally go back to school today, and they had a great time. :)
Monday, May 6, 2013
Sunday, May 5, 2013
Saturday, May 4, 2013
Boys = 4, Girls = 1
Sure enough, baby Campbell #5 is a girl! She looks healthy so far and we're pretty excited (and, admittedly, a little nervous!) about welcoming a baby girl in 4.5 months. The boys were kind of hoping for another brother, but they seem to be warming up to the idea of a sister. Although they insist that she will be called Phoebe (which happens to be the name of 90% of the stuffed animals in our house). Dare I say she looks kind of cute already at 19 weeks? (that floating blob by her mouth is her fist)
As for names, nothing has really bubbled up as The Name yet. It's funny -- I can think of a 4 or 5 great boy's names off the top of my head, but so far nothing fits quite right for this girl. We like Isabel / Isabella, but I think it might be too rhymey with our last name. I'm sure we'll figure out a name that fits just right before too long -- and suggestions are always welcome ;).
In other, less pleasant, news, 2 of the kids are down with a stomach virus today. It hit poor Thomas and Davy last night in the wee hours, but fortunately so far today is better. They're tired and cranky, but thankfully their tummies have settled down. I was sick earlier this week with the same thing, but I had hoped that my vigorous handwashing and staying away from food prep duties for a couple of days would help prevent the spread, but that was probably wishful thinking. I hate stomach bugs with the fire of 1000 suns! So far Jack, Peter, and David seem fine but we'll see how the next few days go.
Other than that, we're crazy busy with swimming lessons and baseball stuff Monday-Thursday and Saturdays, and I'm trying to squeeze in moving preparation tasks every spare second I can. It's going pretty well -- I'm using our move as an opportunity to really deep clean and get rid of random stuff we have accumulated over the years. But it is slow-going, and the to-do list never seems to get shorter!
We are set to move during the last week of May to a very nice home about 10 minutes from our current home. The boys will be able to walk to their new school (there is literally a gate in our new backyard that leads to the elementary school blacktop) and it seems to be a large and very comfortable home. The next few weeks will be busy and tiring, but after we move we can unpack at our leisure and we have our Southern CA vacation to look forward to!! We are so excited! I know it will be hard to leave CA and come back to MD. We are doing well here, and we are happy, but I can't say that MD has grown on me in the past 1.5 years. We made some nice friends in our neighborhood, which is not usually an easy task for me, so I have been enjoying these new friendships, and now that we found out we have to move, I feel like we're back in David's rotation program and we are getting ready to rotate to a new location. I had a really hard time connecting to people and our neighborhoods because we were in each place for just 6 months, and it always made me think of that scene in "Back to the Future" when Marty McFly looks at that photo of his family and the people start to fade away, and then his own hand starts to fade away? During our rotations I felt like we were kind of a shadow family, with one foot in our current location and one foot in the next one, and the closer it got to our moving date, the more our family started to fade out of the neighborhood/associations we were in. And, I'm starting to feel that way again now that we have less than a month left here, and it stinks and it's hard. I suppose I am just plain tired of starting over ... yet again ... and honestly, just plain tired of being so darn far away from CA.
But, we have so much to look forward to, and so much to be grateful for in these next few months. So I'll focus on the good things we have going for us, and we'll see what adventures await us in our new neighborhood.
As for names, nothing has really bubbled up as The Name yet. It's funny -- I can think of a 4 or 5 great boy's names off the top of my head, but so far nothing fits quite right for this girl. We like Isabel / Isabella, but I think it might be too rhymey with our last name. I'm sure we'll figure out a name that fits just right before too long -- and suggestions are always welcome ;).
In other, less pleasant, news, 2 of the kids are down with a stomach virus today. It hit poor Thomas and Davy last night in the wee hours, but fortunately so far today is better. They're tired and cranky, but thankfully their tummies have settled down. I was sick earlier this week with the same thing, but I had hoped that my vigorous handwashing and staying away from food prep duties for a couple of days would help prevent the spread, but that was probably wishful thinking. I hate stomach bugs with the fire of 1000 suns! So far Jack, Peter, and David seem fine but we'll see how the next few days go.
Other than that, we're crazy busy with swimming lessons and baseball stuff Monday-Thursday and Saturdays, and I'm trying to squeeze in moving preparation tasks every spare second I can. It's going pretty well -- I'm using our move as an opportunity to really deep clean and get rid of random stuff we have accumulated over the years. But it is slow-going, and the to-do list never seems to get shorter!
We are set to move during the last week of May to a very nice home about 10 minutes from our current home. The boys will be able to walk to their new school (there is literally a gate in our new backyard that leads to the elementary school blacktop) and it seems to be a large and very comfortable home. The next few weeks will be busy and tiring, but after we move we can unpack at our leisure and we have our Southern CA vacation to look forward to!! We are so excited! I know it will be hard to leave CA and come back to MD. We are doing well here, and we are happy, but I can't say that MD has grown on me in the past 1.5 years. We made some nice friends in our neighborhood, which is not usually an easy task for me, so I have been enjoying these new friendships, and now that we found out we have to move, I feel like we're back in David's rotation program and we are getting ready to rotate to a new location. I had a really hard time connecting to people and our neighborhoods because we were in each place for just 6 months, and it always made me think of that scene in "Back to the Future" when Marty McFly looks at that photo of his family and the people start to fade away, and then his own hand starts to fade away? During our rotations I felt like we were kind of a shadow family, with one foot in our current location and one foot in the next one, and the closer it got to our moving date, the more our family started to fade out of the neighborhood/associations we were in. And, I'm starting to feel that way again now that we have less than a month left here, and it stinks and it's hard. I suppose I am just plain tired of starting over ... yet again ... and honestly, just plain tired of being so darn far away from CA.
But, we have so much to look forward to, and so much to be grateful for in these next few months. So I'll focus on the good things we have going for us, and we'll see what adventures await us in our new neighborhood.
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