Busy Summer Fifteen weeks today and things are going great! If only the exhaustion would pass, that still really bothers me. Also some vague nauseous feelings, but a lot less than the extreme exhaustion. Apart from that, things are right on track, uterus is growing, belly gets bigger and bigger and kids are looking forward to having a new baby in the house again. Since there is not much going on pregnancy wise which will make a good story, I'll tell about some of the activities we are doing this summer and maybe that kind of explains part of my exhaustion too :-) Let's take a typical day, last Monday. We started out by going to the swimming pool for Cees's and Tim's swimming lessons. Doesn't sound too bad, does it, apart from the fact that Timmy's class starts at 8am! Usually we are still getting up and slowly waking up at that time, now I needed to get everybody dressed and ready to go by 7:45! Not easy, I am not a morning person and neither are my kids. We were only a little too late, and Tim did his class, while I watched from an upstairs room, and the kids ran around in there. It is great that they have a 'watching room' where the little ones do not disturb the swimming lesson and are contained. Then we found out that she had some scheduling issues that day and she asked whether we could come back at 2:30pm for Cees's class. Usually he has his class immediately after Timmy's. OK, we could do that. So back to home, play time and then a snack before heading off to our next commitment. That was the chiropractor, where both Timmy and I are getting treated. We are very lucky and have found a child friendly chiropractor. Not only in how he treats kids, but he also has a waiting rooms with quite some toys and a television with video! That makes going there and waiting for mom a lot more fun for our kids! They always want to see the same video there, Bugs Bunny cartoons and really enjoy it. The only one still wandering is Kate, but usually she stays with her siblings without any problems. If not, the staff at the front desk helps to entertain her while I am getting treated. Pretty good! Back home, quick lunch and trying to put Kate down for a nap. She didn't go for that! I tried for quite a while, but she had no plans of going to sleep at all and I finally gave up and logged on to the computer to participate for a very short while in the Monday afternoon Large Families chat. I enjoy chatting there, the chats are always a lot of fun, it is nice to socialize with other people with more than the standard family size, even if it is just on line and not in real life. Although I have met two of them in real life too, that was even better! Time for Cees's swimming lesson, back to the swimming pool, this time I had the opportunity to take the other kids in the water too. Tara had a new bathing suit and was very excited about being able to use it. She showed it proudly to the swim instructor. I helped the girls putting on their bathing suits, put on my own bathing suit and we went into the pool, while Cees got his lesson. The kids had a lot of fun, 'swimming' and splashing. Getting everybody dressed after the lesson took quite a while, the boys can do it themselves, but especially the younger girls need quite some help and of course I also needed to dress myself. Then I have to watch constantly that Jane doesn't start running around, because the floor can get slippery. Of course, it isn't easy to keep Jane from running around, so it was quite a challenge, but we did it, without anybody getting hurt! Home again, time for a snack and after a while we needed to head off again, to our final activity for the day, karate! The vacations are nice, because all three can go during the same class. Outside vacations, Cees usually goes to a higher belt class than Tara and Tim. So I got all of them dressed up in their gi's, had to dress Jane and Kate who both had decided to run around naked and off again! Dropped the karate kids off and took the other two to a local playground, so that they could run off some energy too. That's nice about summer, it enables me to go to places like that. During the winter I usually do grocery shopping or so at karate time, but that just isn't as much fun. Time to pick them up again, heading home just in time to see daddy arrive home too. Kids were all excited to see him and all over him. I made dinner for the kids and Sander later cooked dinner for us two. I was so tired by then, that I was very happy that he took over cooking duties for us! So this was a typical summer day for us, although usually the swimming would have been once instead of twice and we don't always do so many things at one day. But things are pretty busy anyway, with karate for three of them, about 4 or 5 times a week, swimming for the boys thrice a week, and of course all kinds of extra things like play ground, beach, hiking and more. Next week Tara is going to try gymnastics, they have a preschool camp 2 mornings a week and you can sign up for just one week, so we can try out whether she likes it. She was very in awe when she saw the gymnastics place and wanted to join in immediately. She is happy to go there next week and try gymnastics and swimming. Jane is still too young for it, but she will be able to start classes in the fall. I think both of them will enjoy it. The week after that, the boys will go to cub scouts day camp and I think after that we might do some family camping, we got a new tent already. Summer is fun, but I am kind of looking forward to winter too, when there is more time to just snuggle inside and do nothing :-) Page design by mabear | Send email to Karen | Page last updated: Dec 29, 2001