2018 Year in Review

2018 was a great year for the Costellos! Of course we had our ups and downs, but I like to focus on the positives. We had our fair share of difficulties of many kinds, illnesses and difficult life changes but we powered through! Here’s a look back (mostly for my memories!) of our 2018. Consider this your 2018 Christmas card 😉

January

• We announced we were expecting baby #5!
• I survived morning sickness and fatigue combined with 4 kids, life and working. That was about all we accomplished in January. Lol

February

• Gabriel celebrated his First Reconciliation
• Jeremiah had a birthday! (We won’t say how old…)
• We enjoyed winter in Iowa learning to ice fish and snowshoe
• We attended our first opera and the kids really liked it!
• I survived another month of pregnancy.

March

• We got to see baby #5 for the first time via 19 week ultrasound! Always exciting!
• We helped make the Costello’s St Patrick’s Day parade float a success once again!
• Black Betty joined our family and I’ll forever be a maxi-van lover 😉
• We celebrated Easter!

April

• Gabriel had his First Communion! And I only cried once or twice…
• Lucy turned 7 and we ate sushi and went ice skating, her requests
• Gabriel and Lucy started baseball/softball seasons
• Jeremiah completed his final presentation for grad school.We pulled the big kids out of school so they could be a part of it. So proud of him!

May

• Amelia had her first ever weekend with Aunt Mel, solo
• Celebrated Mother’s Day with Great Grandma Laura
• Amelia fulfilled her lifelong dream of taking horseback riding lessons
• Celebrated the end of the school year and the beginning of summer!

June 

• Gabriel turned 9!
• Jeremiah and I spent some time in San Diego without kids, enjoying all the sites and foods before he attended a conference there
• Hosted 2 of our favorite cousins for 10 days!
• Had the annual Costello campout with our extended family. It was one of the hottest weekends of the year, and our A/C also malfunctioned this weekend. I was 7 months pregnant. Good times
• We had another batch of adorable baby bunnies

July

• I celebrated another year of life and 8 months of pregnancy, and it showed! (Read: I was M.I.S.E.R.A.B.L.E.)

• We took a wonderful family vacation to Kentucky and visited The Arc and The Creation Museum. We also ate a lot of great food!
• The oldest 3 kids rocked swimming lessons
• Lucy chopped 9 inches off her hair and donated it to Pantene Beautiful Lengths
• J and the kids enjoyed summer in Iowa with lots of fishing.

• We hiked a lot to try to walk the baby out

August

• Started the month off with a bang with the arrival of Kateri Elizabeth Ann Costello on August 1 after a fast labor of 2.5 hours!
• Filled up the 5 rows of van seats a bit more
• Got more used to life as a family of 7

• Traveled to Des Moines with a 2 week old infant and Gabriel got to fulfill his Christmas gift of a day of rock climbing! (not our best timing)
• Kids resumed school  life. Gabriel started 3rd grade, Lucy 2nd grade, Amelia 4 yr old preschool

September

• Gabriel and Lucy starred in their first year of flag football

• I chopped 8 inches of my hair and also donated to Pantene Beautiful Lengths!
• Kateri was baptized!

• Jeremiah ran the QC Marathon Relay on a team from his school
• Ruth turned 2!

• We took our first longer road trip as a family of 7 to visit Uncle Cameron at his last year at Conception Seminary College in Missouri and hung out with the monks

October

• We had fun at Halloween!

• I used the beautiful fall colors as a reason to update the kid’s pictures 

  

  

  

  

  

  
• Had a good time with friends at the pumpkin patch!

• I returned to work part time and am enjoying a fabulous work/life balance. I go to work part time and come home to my full time job 🙂
• Enjoyed fall in Iowa by hiking some local parks

November

• Amelia turned 5!

• Gabriel and Lucy got to live out a child’s dream when they were gifted a 5 day trip to Disney World in Florida with their grandparents!
• I met up with 3 of my childhood friends; we had not all been together for over 15 years. It was long overdue!
• Gabriel started swim team and he loves it. I LOVE seeing him so committed and motivated with an activity!

December

• Jeremiah officially graduated from UNI with his Master’s in Educational Leadership!!
• Gabriel attended his first swim meet. A learning experience for all!
• We celebrated Christmas 5 times and 1 more in January!

We’ve been incredibly blessed in 2018 and have high hopes for 2019! Hope you all are enjoying the last few days of 2018 and counting your blessings as well!

Exceptional

I’ve written before about Ruth. People are probably getting tired of reading about her. But this blog is my online diary of sorts, so I like to collect my thoughts here and keep things here that I want to remember, especially about the kids.

Ruth was a great baby. Slept well, was generally happy and good natured, from what I remember. Things started hitting the fan about 6 months ago. With Ruth, things lately have gotten….intense. The main reason? Ruth has learned to climb out of her crib. This. Is. Serious. When she climbs out of her bed she doesn’t sleep. She is far from dropping an afternoon nap. And when she doesn’t sleep she is A MANIAC.

Ruth climbs out of her bed at naptime. The first day she did this I put her back in bed 15 times. She got out every single time and opened the door back up just as I shut it, no matter what I said/didn’t say/did/ didn’t do to her. 2 of the older kids did this, and my tactics that worked on them do NOT work with Ruth. She continues to climb out and wander and do whatever she wants, it seems. Things we have found her doing during her ‘nap time’:

-climb shelf in closet to get wipes, change own diaper and leave 50 poopy wipes all over the floor

-steal a pen, hide behind our bed, draw all over herself

-fall asleep in our bed

-turn on light and play blocks, barbies or rearrange her sister’s bunks

-use all of my makeup wipes in bathroom on herself

-peruse the bathroom, play in water

She is SILENT when she climbs out and gets into this mischief.

Have you ever awoken in the middle of the night to a 2 year old roaming your house? It’s terrifying. You never know what they have gotten into or what the heck they were doing! Things we have encountered with Ruth in the middle of the night:

-sit on the stairs for no one knows how long and watch Star Wars over her uncle’s shoulder

-running back and forth across the bedroom vomiting (highly unfortunate for everyone involved)

-climbing repeatedly in and out of our and her siblings’ beds

-go downstairs and wander the house (yes, the exterior doors are deadbolted)

-turn on bedroom light where 3 of her siblings are sleeping and cause a lot of ruckus

No, she’s not sleepwalking.

The final straw came the other night when Ruth somehow ended up in our bed and was thrashing around enough that she gave J a bloody nose via headbutt. Yep. She’s done sleeping with us. That just doesn’t fly.

Other shenanigans she has pulled recently, for your entertainment:

-she put my roll-on bottle of lavendar essential oil on her lips, because she thought it was chapstick. It was up out of reach. She climbed.

-she dumped an entire salt shaker of salt all over our table, chair, and floor

-she has smeared tubes of hydrocortizone and antibacterial and lotion all over herself

-she has painted her face while using seemingly safe watercolor paints

-she has stolen hot dogs and ritz crackers and hidden behind furniture and eaten them, through the plastic (yuck) (we do feed her regularly)

-she has drawn on numerous surfaces, eaten markers and stolen pens

-stuck an entire package large of bandaids on her body, including her hair and forehead and belly

Many of you are saying, ‘Jeez, don’t they even supervise their kids?’ ‘I can’t believe they can’t watch her close enough’. Just let me tell you this. Ruth could be a secret agent. She is so quiet, so sneaky, so incredibly mischievous. I feel like she may have a future in private investigation. We turn around and she’s into something. I literally cannot let her out of my sight. If she leaves the room we are all looking for her because we KNOW she’s into something.

So Ruth is an exceptional child. We are having to do some exceptional things to keep her safe and us sane! I hope someday her spirit tames a bit and she can harness her energy for the good. Pray for us… and pray that the crib tent I ordered from Amazon gets here ASAP.