Three under 3

I love my nephew. He's just about the sweetest thing ever. He's almost 3: three weeks younger than Ashenafi. My sister and I were fortunate to start our motherhood journies around the same time--Isaac born in December '06, Ashen home in July '07, Torin born February '08 and Dahlia born July '09. That's a lot of kids in 2.5 years! We're also hoping and expecting Little Sister to come home in '10...so five kids four years. Needless to say, my sister and I have both been busy with our new roles--both having worked for 8-10 years and then abruptly home full-time (I say abrupt because we didn't ease into our new SAHM status'). She and her husband lived minutes from us, but moved about 45 minutes away the day Isaac was born (that's a whole other story). Sadly, this distance keeps us from seeing each other as much as we'd like--not to mention that we keep rotating whose baby takes a morning nap, thus limiting our available time together. I wish we weren't so anal about our kids' naps, but we are--it works for us. No nap=bad day.

I've mentioned before that I'm extremely blessed with mid-week help from Mark's parents. They're retired, willing, tireless and over the top awesome. It's a respite for me and something that I now really depend on. My sister doesn't have a mid-week respite (though she does have my mom a couple minutes away for emergencies and weekend help). Her son doesn't nap anymore. She has a newborn. I truly feel for her. This week, we arranged for Isaac to come to our house for a whole day--hoping to give my sis a little break. He arrived cheery at 6:30am (!!) and stayed until 3:30. We had a blast--played with playdough, stamps, colored, went outside to shoot off the rocket a bazillion times, spent an hour at the park, and napped. I was a little leery (scared) about how it would be to have three boys under 3, but I figured that with Little Sister arriving next year, I might as well try out how three feels. Easy peasy ;) No really, Isaac was wonderful and he even napped (first time in a month!!) for over two hours. I know, kids often behave 'better' when they're out of their comfort zone of home, but I was thrilled with our time together. My boys love their cousin and none of them wanted to leave each others' company at the end of the day. Success.