Paul decided to start up a new blog for tech stuff, so now he has the family one and the tech one.

So here’s another shameless plug for his new blog if you’re a computer geek or techy person!

I love the holidays! Not that Halloween is technically a holiday, but I love it anyway. I love the smells, the excitement, the decorations, the anticipation. I love taking pics of the kids in their costumes.

Hopefully Pierce will have a little more fun this year. Last year costumes were very last-minute and neither of the kids were happy with them. Gab was a sorceress and Pierce was a black cat.

This year, with 3 kids, it’ll be a little more tricky and a take a little more planning, which is why I’m planning now! We’re thinking of “Cinderella” for a theme…Gab be the fairy godmother, Pierce a prince, and Dean can be the pumpkin (since we have the costume from when Pierce was a baby) that changed into the coach.

I was looking online for ideas and found a cute place with tons of ideas. I either need to find something local or get it there. I’m so excited! Here’s what I’m thinking for Gab.  Here’s something for Pierce. And this is like what I have for Dean (without the legs part).

A recent report on FOXNews states that “In the last 30 years, the number of women age 40 to 44 with no children has doubled, from 10 percent to 20 percent. And those who are mothers have an average of 1.9 children each, more than one child fewer than women of the same age in 1976.”  It also says that unemployed women had twice as many babies as employed women.

If “unemployed” means “stay at home”, it makes sense. Of course women who stay home with their kids would have more. Working full time with a child, or children, is very difficult; I did this for nearly 4 years with my oldest. It’s very tiring to work all day then take care of child, house, dinner, then have time for self. If I weren’t able to stay home with my kids, I know I wouldn’t have 3 by now. I would have just Gab, maybe Pierce, if I really wanted to stretch it.

Back in the 1800′s and early 1900′s it was common to have large families, with 5 to 12 children. The infant mortality rate was much higher than it is now. Survival rate among those children is much higher than it was then. Many people also lived on farms, where the more hands they had the better. Girls would work with their mothers in the house, doing all cooking, laundry and cleaning by hand. Boys would help their fathers work all day in the sun farming or ranching.

Families were also much more self-sufficient than they are now. If I want milk, I go to the store and use money (or plastic) to pay for it. I certainly don’t slaughter my own chickens, cows, or pigs (yuck). We have a garden, but it’s very small and we could never survive on what’s in it now. If a family back then had land and animals, they fed themselves and set away some for winter.

So, yeah, it makes sense we have smaller families now. One or 2 children is a smaller average than I thought, though. In my family (siblings), 3 is average. And if more women are focused on their career, they’re not stopping to have kids. To each their own, but I’m happy to have the number I have.

I saw this post today and was thinking about the term SuperMom. I talked to my husband about it and he of course said that I was a supermom, but that’s beside the point. To me the definition of a supermom is a mom that can do it all and not just do it all but be happy doing it all. You have to enjoy it and live in the moment. That includes changing poopy diapers while the older child is on the potty yelling “MOMMY!!!” and the oldest one is asking you to do laundry all at the same time your husband is walking through the door asking for dinner and the kitty litter needs to be changed. To me it’s not about working inside or outside of the home, it’s simply about doing it all.

My view on working and putting children in daycare is that most of the time it is not worth the effort. Quite often the expenses of a daycare are so close to what a parent might earn, and then adding in gas prices, work clothes, extra cost of quick meals, stress, and missing out on your kids, that it isn’t worth it. After all of that calculate how much you earn an hour and see if that’s really worth it. Sometimes we just need to scale back on how new the car is, how big the car is, or how big our vacations are. Live simply and enjoy the day-to-day life with kids, animals, cooking, and all that goes into a stay-at-home mom’s life.

So am I a supermom? Most definitely Ask my husband.

Anyone that knows a Rakisits (my maiden name, therefore my family on my dad’s side), knows that they have tempers and tantrums. (But not me of course!!) These are notoriously called Rak-Attacks. And they’re usually rather sizeable.

Anyone that knows Pierce knows he can throw a wild fit. Totally out of the blue. Well, I just put the 2 together a couple days ago…Pierce throws Rak-Attacks!! Holy cow! I finally, after 3 years, figured that kid out.

Of course, I realized this after seeing him mirror other members of my family in many years past (coughlastyearcough). Paul said he’s known this for a long time. I guess he must have remembered them from when we lived near my family. Like I said, I am absolutely immune to them, so the attacks went from my dad, straight to my son, and skipped me entirely.

We decided not to take Cooper (aka Squeaky Chicken) to the beach with us, for numerous reasons. The main reason being that we simply did not have room in the car. We had so much baby stuff. So we found a place kinda nearby that looked and sounded good and took him there for the week.

Then one day, Wednesday, I think, Paul got a call from the owner saying our Chicken had escaped twice, and on the second venture, had cut his leg so she took him to the vet. When we filled out the requested paper work, there was a page that said if something happened to the dog, we were still responsible to pay for the vet bill.  We didn’t really think he’d get hurt at the place; Paul said it was set up well.

So we were thinking, great, now what?? Are we going to have to leave early to pick him up? How much is the vet bill going to be, on top of the kennel charge? And WHY did they let him escape the second time??? My opinion was (is) that he was just trying to find his way home…he’s a very loyal dog and it’s in his breed to stay close to his owner.

The owner said the dog was going to stay over night at the vet and had to have stitches. At this point we knew it wasn’t a little scrape like she was making it out to be. But she told us she’d call the next day and let us know how he was doing.

The next day when she called back, she told us Cooper was doing well and apologized profusely. She also paid the vet bill and told us not to worry about it! Yay!!!     So while we may not need to use a kennel again, if we do need to, we’ll be taking him back there again.

So we’re back! The drive home was uneventful, except for one stop we made. We saw a “U Pick” sign with a big peach on it, and we thought it would be fun to get out of the car and see how much it cost to pick some peaches.  The orchard was off the road a couple miles and was very pretty, lots of trees and green hills. The kid at the stand said it was $10 a peck, which turned out to be quite a lot. Pierce liked picking up the smaller unripe peaches off the ground, and somehow he managed to sneak a few into our bag. Once we were done, we paid and sat in the car and Paul and I each had a peach. Let me tell you, there is nothing better than a freshly picked, juicy, sweet, Virginia peach!! It was like eating candy; so good. We looked at each other and said, “We should have gotten another bag!”

Another stop was at a local-grown market, and their peaches were $17 a peck, so we really kicked ourselves for not getting another bag at the orchard. I ended up making a peach crisp for dessert that night.

Back to the vacation itself…one of “the” things to see at the Outer Banks is the Wright Brothers National Memorial. If you look at the pic on the link, there’s a long path up to the big memorial. That is not fun pushing a stroller up!! Do that twice a day and you’ll have calves and butt of steel. Then we walked down the other side, around, and back to the main building and parking lot. It was only 66 years from first flight to first flight to the moon…absolutely amazing.

The beach was beautiful and the waves were calm. Pierce had fun, but Gab really enjoyed it most. We took Dean for a couple walks in the evening and he seemed to like it as well.

We all had fun, but everyone agrees it’s good to be home. “There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home, there’s no place like home!”

Well, we arrived at the beach! We left our house at 8:40am and got to the beach house at 6:35; a 10-hour drive. Fun, fun! Gab rode with her grandparents so Paul and I just had the little boys in the car. They did absolutely great until about 5:30 when they reached their “I’m done being in the car” limit. Dean just fussed and Pierce could not stay happily quiet. This, of course, made the last hour of my drive rather uncomfortable, my left arm reaching back to Dean who would fuss without my hand on his face. Poor little guy. So it was great getting out of the car! The drive normally takes 7-8 hours, except when you have a 3 year old and a 7 week old.

The house is nice, of course, a very short walking distance from the beach. It has a nice little pool in back, too, when we get tired of the saltwater. Gabby is very brave in the ocean, much more than last year. And Pierce is really enjoying the pool. He is much more adventurous in it than the ocean; he’s intimidated by the size of it, as he should be.

The Outer Banks is a great vacation spot for families. It’s clean and “clean”. The beaches aren’t crowded and everything is geared towards families, including plays, aquariums, fishing, foods and clothing at the shops. Today we went mini-golfing, which Pierce loved, once he had free reign of the holes. He’s not much for structure and rules in games yet. There’s plenty of stuff we want to do and it’s going to be a great week.

As the Wonder Pets would say, “We’re going to the beach, the beach, the beach.” For his birthday, Pierce got a dvd player from Paul and me, and dvd’s from everyone, so he’ll have movies to watch if he gets too bored on the way there. I think he’ll enjoy the drive, though. Dean’s very good in the car and I’m guessing he’ll sleep most of the way. And Gab, of course, won’t be a problem. She’s got her dvd player, too, though, if the trip gets too long.

We usually try to take it easy and not rush down there. We have a couple usual stops and that really helps break up the 7-hr-drive. All in all it’s fun. Hopefully we have everything we’ll need and I didn’t forget anything major, like one of the kids.

Happy Birthday Little Guy!!!

It’s amazing how fast 3 years has gone by! He’s getting so big and has grown out of most of his baby trials. (yay!) He loves playing with his sister and daddy and he’s even sharing his prized “yellow blankie” with his brother. That’s quite a feat! He’s already got a good throwing arm and we’ll probably see him play soccer next year! Wow. He was “the baby” and now he’s the big brother; I think he and Dean will be pretty tight. I can totally see the 2 boys whispering in a corner, conspiring against their big sister. Can’t wait.

He’s a little talker and likes to tell people, “I’m Piercey Comfort!” He comes up with the funniest things to say. Earlier this week he began saying to me, “Yes, sir!” I just laugh…at least it’s not “no”. His conversations with his animals and toys are hilarious. Sunday night he was supposed to be in bed, but we heard him saying, “Come on, kitten, take my hand! Come on kitten!” He wanted the kitten over the gate and into his room so he could play with her.

Hopefully he’ll eat his cake this year. I don’t have any messy cake pictures. He had a cold on his first birthday, and he only ate the cookies off the cake for his 2nd birthday. He’s much more willing to get messy and try new things now, so I think we’ll have some luck. If he does get into it, I’ll post a pic.