I will survive

Somedays I wonder if we will survive Wyatt as a baby. We still live in a 2 bedroom duplex and have decided that 2 parents and 1 baby being woken up in the night is better than 2 parents and 3 children awake, so Wyatt still sleeps in our room or the living room when we think to move his crib out there. I know some of you are thinking, "Why is he still getting up in the night when he is almost 8 months old?" And the really annoying part is, he isn't really getting up. He just reaches this partially asleep state while he moves around, or searches out his pacifier and he talks to himself during this time. Loudly. Like the kind of loud baby babbling that we all find cute and funny during the daytime hours, or when you can hear him settling in for a nap. But not so cute at 4am. Seldom do we even have to get up and do anything for him, but yet, one or both of us is always awake for it. For all of our poor blog readers who attend church with us on Sunday, you know exactly what I am referring to. He's not sad, just really loud and talkative.
He also seems to be going through a serious growth spurt. It does wonders for his naps, but is not as wonderful when he wakes up at 5:30 or 6 starving and super angry that we have not immediately provided him with some kind of nourishment at that hour. He then proceeds to suck down a bottle and pass out cold for about 2 more hours, with a 2 fisted grip on the shirt of whichever parent got the pleasure of feeding him... just daring us to leave him to sleep alone.
The other fun thing is that he has been teething since he was 3 months old, and while he has 6 teeth and many more partially on the way, he can sometimes become incredibly annoyed with us when his poor mouth hurts. All I can think in those times- "Curse you Highlands teething tablets for being taken off the market!"
This morning as I left all of the boys in the living room and went to move laundry to the dryer, I walked in and found that Wyatt was missing (I was gone like 2 minutes tops). Gavin and Henry were both looking at books and hadn't notice. I turned around to look in their room and found him on the floor with a mouthful of legos. Luckily for me, they were big ones, one in each cheek.

You may wonder why I am blogging about the craziness of this baby, but sometimes, I think it needs to be said. Raising kids, especially babies, is not all sunshine and flowers (especially not the flowers part in my house full of boys). Sometimes things get really exhausting and hard. There... I said it.

All of these fun experiences really just make me realize, it is only the beginning. We are on the wild ride that is our crazy lives right now, and I had better just get used to it and stop thinking it will change in the next phase of Wyatt's developement. All that is coming next is that he will be able to reach even higher and move faster than he does now. And really, when you look at that super cute chubby face, with his little blonde hair starting to come in, how can you not smile. And when he sees me come into the room and he smiles really big and reaches up for me to pick him up, of course I do it. How can I not? even if my arms ache from holding him all morning. I guess I just have to think past all of the really stressful moments of the third child, and remember... Caleb and I are both the third child too. Perhaps he just wants to be heard and included and an individual and, oh yeah, kind of a pain-in-the-rear like we both are.