Crazy Months

Life has been extremely crazy lately, with planned and unplanned events. Today was the first day I could say that I hope to get back into a routine since February.

 In February Kyrie and I took a trip to Wisconsin for a week to visit my parents.

 In March the whole family drove up to Wisconsin to see my parents and help them move out of their house. It was quite a trip. Eli broke his leg falling out of a tree at a rest stop in Kentucky on the way up. Isaac had a jaw infection and Kyrie started with bronchitis. Hence our time there was filled with doctor appointments as well as many days of doctor appointments after our return home.

Three of our kids had birthdays all within a few weeks in March and April. Sandy, Kyle's mom, planned wonderful celebrations for all 3 kids. She went all out on her planning for Eli's birthday. See my sister in law Amber's post for some great photos and details. Amber and Sam's son Bennett also had a birthday celebration tucked in between Prema and Isaac's.

The night of Eli's birthday party, David (Kyle's dad) was returning a bike to our house and happened to walk in on our house flooding. The water line from the ice maker detached from its fitting and thus water was over majority of our bottom floor. This wouldn't be such a big deal except for the fact that Kyle had spent about 3 months laying all of the hardwood floor in the house less than a year ago. A few days after the water was dried off the surface the floor began to buckle in some areas. Now we are just waiting to see how much we have to fix once all the moisture is gone. Our home repair/ finish house list became longer instead of shortening so that was a bit overwhelming, but we do realize that home repairs are really never ending.

 Kyle has been very busy at work and I have been busy with planning a Classical Conversations practicum.

February through April Isaac was on his first participation on a real baseball team. Sadly The Rockers team (his imaginary team for years) is no longer playing month long seasons in the back yard. Isaac LOVED his experience with his RED SOX baseball team. We enjoyed watching him love playing. It was our first time learning to juggle the baseball commitment with other family life. Grandma and Grandpa Cullum were a HUGE help in getting him to games and practices at times when it was either impossible or a tight time crunch for us.

We are now looking forward to some down time this summer. 

Loving Kyrie

The oldest 3 are still so in love with having Kyrie here. They are so enamoured with her that it is often we have to tell them to leave her alone. We don't have a camera that works and I don't have time for daily/ weekly posts so uploading some video will have to do for the time.



I have a video of Prema with Kyrie but it is taking too long to upload.

How to choose a President

Isaac, after watching several GOP debates with me and hearing many adults discuss the candidates, has decided that he would vote for Romney. According to Isaac, Romney's name fits best into the Presidents Song we sing for Classical Conversations (our homeschool curriculum). Romney is not who Kyle and I plan to vote for on Tuesday, so Isaac has not been influenced by our thoughts. His criteria is quite comical to me.

I hope you all take the opportunity to vote in your primary election in the coming days and months. Your vote counts!

A nick on the stairs

We love our new home. One of the luxuries of building your home is the ability to choose the layout and finishes. Kyle and I both really like the craftsman/bungalow style home. Two reasons I love the style is because it reminds me of the homes in downtown Madison that I always used to love walking past, and secondly because the stain wood finishes. Hence we chose to have hardwood floors in our new home. Some people may think that is a crazy choice given that we have very high energy boys and a very clumsy daughter. Our floors will certainly have imperfections as it is impossible to keep them from spilling, dropping or hitting something on the floors and trim. Today Isaac dropped a his toy gun on the stairs after being told the gun was not allowed in the house earlier in the morning. He obeyed the first time but his pretend play overruled his desire to thoroughly obey later. Although I would love for my new wood stairs to look perfect, the reality is that my stairs and floors tell the truth about our family. We are not perfect. Instead my stairs and floors tell the story of our life within the walls of our home, a story I will be grateful to still have when the children are grown and out of the house. I love the look of the wood and I also love the stories it tells. I am grateful for a piece of advice I learned when working through Reactive Attachment Therapy with Prema: the child is much more important than the furniture and house.

A few pictures of Isaac and his gun. The WWII replica gun and helmet, coon hat, and adventure vest were Christmas gifts this year. Eli also received a coon hat and adventure vest along with a cowboy hat with pistol. We are much safer now in the Cullum home.

Typical Weeknight

Third post in a short span of time. WOW!!! Don't get too used to it yet. I probably will find myself on a long hiatus here soon.
Here's a snippet of life in our house these days after dinner. The three oldest playing together loudly and energetically. Kyrie is 6 weeks old now and already cooing away. Today she even wouldn't continue nursing after a burp break until she "chatted" a bit. I don't ever remember the boys doing this at such a young age. I think we have a talker on our hands.



Just before this video we got the results of Eli's allergy tests from the doctor. He was tested for the most common food, and indoor and outdoor allergies. Test was negative for everything except for indoor dust and mold. He scored a 3 on a scale of 1-6. So now I need to keep on top of the dust in our house in order to keep Eli's reaction to a minimum. His allergy is probably the reason that he had a reoccurring cold the past month or more when the rest of us were remaining healthy or only having the cold once.

Happy New Year

This is how our family rung in the New Year.


We have not gone camping since Eli was 1 year old. That experience, although fun, included a tent filled with water by morning. The boys have been asking to camp again so we thought we would play it safe first and have them camp out in the backyard first.

Last night's camping experience included
- an extensive incense treatment to deodorize the tent
- a plethora of bathroom trips by Eli within the first hour (at least 5 or more)
- several reminders to calm down and go to sleep between 8:30 and 9:30 p.m.
- Kyle sleeping on the concrete porch with mats and sleeping bags just outside the tent since the sleeping quarters were a wee bit tight with 3 kids and 1 adult.
- Eli sneaking in the house sometime in the wee hours to get a banana to eat.
- Isaac determining they heard "something" outside the tent and therefore he needed to "cock his pistol" (pretend gun) to prepare for what may come. The pistol was in the tent with them for protection.
- Kyle moving inside and sleeping on the floor in the family room since his sleeping bag made him too hot and any body part not in the sleeping bag was too cold.
- Kyrie and I sleeping in our own beds in the comfort of our home. BLISS
- Joyful "campers" waking up asking "When can we go camping again?"

Thank you Grandma and Grandpa Cullum for lending us your camping gear and setting up the tent with the boys.

Happy New Year!!!

Kyrie Grace Cullum

Welcome to the world Kyrie Grace Cullum! Kyrie (KEE-ree-yay) is Greek for "Lord". Our little girl entered the world on November 22, 2011 at 7:48p.m. at Breath of Life birth center in Largo, Florida. She weighed 9lbs 0.5 oz.

It was a wonderful birth experience; our first at a birth center. Kyrie was 9 days late, so I decided (with the approval of my midwife) to take castor oil the morning of the birth. By 3:30 pm the first contractions started. By 6:30 we left for the birth center and 1 hour and 15 minutes later she was born. While at the birth center I was able to hang out in the birthing tub for majority of the time. I am not sure if the water actually reduces the pain that much but it certainly helped me to stay relaxed and let things happen. Kyrie was born in the water. Kyle was able to catch her which brought him great joy. Once Kyrie was born we hung out in the birth suite for 4 hours and then went home. During those 4 hours our children visited and we learned a lot about the natural instincts of a baby and ways to welcome baby into the world. It was a very relaxing and pleasant experience. We also were grateful to be able to come home so early and sleep in our own bed.

The next few days I stayed upstairs in our bedroom resting and taking care of Kyrie while Kyle took care of the older children and household needs. It was so great to be able to have everyone at home and the older children could come up stairs as they wished for short periods to say "hi" to Kyrie, smother her with kisses and see me. A much more pleasant experience than a hospital room setting.

Isaac, Eli and Prema have adjusted very well to having a baby sister. It is joy to see them rise to the occasion in terms of helping me out, being more independent in tasks I used to help them with, and loving Kyrie. There are clearly moments when you see each of them struggling or desiring more attention, but we are so relieved that all 3 are doing as well as they are doing.

Kyrie has been a joy as well. She is plumping up nicely. She didn't lose any baby weight and weighed 10 lbs 2 oz by her 2 week visit.