Spangler Family Communication Center

Well the Spangler family has finally made it back to TX. It took us two long days. The girls had fun driving across the country not getting lost or taking one wrong turn. We are women hear us roar. Our beloved father or Galen as some call him, was so concerned we were somehow going to take a wrong turn and end up in Australia. But we are hear to tell him we are not having a terrible horrible no good very bad day. I'm not even sure hom we could drive to Australia anyhow.

Oh well

We had a fabulous trip. If I can figure out how to post pics I can post some great pics for all of us to see. I think I took like 350 pictures and two hours of video. The vidoes and picture CD's will be available for 68 low payments of 1000 dollars... Or I can just mail everyone a copy for free. It may take me a while to figure out the videos but the pics should be available soon. They are surely great. The important thing is now that we have survived.... we are going on a real vacation to Sea World where the dolphins swim quickly and the adults out number the children. We love Sea World YEAH!!!!! I love it when there are more adults than kids. It's my favorite. Mark and I also got family pics taken and I am going to go pick them up any moment. I shall get those in the mail as well. I guess I don't leave anything for a surprise. I do need to address Greg though. When I was in PA I met your newest cousin, Stacey and he happens to love coffee. As I talked with him I learned what he ment by coffee. He drank foldgers!!!!!!!!!! I was shocked and I think it calls for an emergency coffee run. I'm just not sure what kind of coffee to send him. I mean I don't want to shock his system. I really love Pete's coffee but I'm not sure if it will be too much for him to handle. This is a very important opperation. He didn't even realize all the good stuff out there. My coffee taste buds cried for him as I listened to his sad coffee story. Please send advice quickly so I can send the man the coffee that will change his life forever. Whew......

Well that's enough crazy talk....
for now....
I'm off to Australia
See you at Christmas everyone. I'll send some post cards.
jess

Sorry you have to be apart! Hope you can make up for it later!

I stumbled across some old pictures the other day and thought I'd share. They are from when Greg and I came to Indiana not long after Dalton was born. Mark & Jess came up from Alabama and joined us for the fourth of July- they had gotten married not long before.








The four geeks are wearing the nerd glasses because we had gone to see a 3-D Imax movie (it took Greg and I awhile to remember that).

-Niki, Greg & Addie

Mom and Dad have jsut gotten to Ft. Hood TX. They will hang out here today and tomorrow and then leave tuesday morning for the next part of there adventure. Yeah. Getting closer to Indy and PA.

I have been trying to blog in response to Sara's blog for a couple days now but it has been kind of messed up. So, I just wanted to Say that Jess is so excited aabout going out on Saturday, she wouldn't care if Dalton was watching the kids. She is ready for a little break. My only request is that doesn;t have to drive home Sat. night because she is going to want to have a couple Officers, Mr Margarita. :-)
Also, if Sarah has some pics handy and could email them to us we want to give Ali a crash course on who she is going to see this weekend. She is getting good at the names but I don't think she knows the faces.

Only a few more days til the party starts. Yeah! Mom and Dad leave to come to TX on Saturday. Whew whoo!

It is so nice to hear about the rocking memories with your dad Jess. I must admit- until a week ago, rocking Addie to sleep was my favorite part of the day with her. She is so calm and cuddly and peaceful. Unfortunatly, for the last week, she has been out of sorts and is crying while I rock her to sleep, so I'm not enjoying it as much. I think her reflux is bothering her again. She has been really irritable and restless for a week now, so the doctor said we should come in and have her looked at. I am glad because I don't want her to be in pain unneccesarily, but not thrilled about taking her into the doctor AGAIN. Sarah- are there parents that come into your office so often you feel like they are family? I feel like THAT parent. :( Anyway, I digress....

Jess- I seriously want your address. Or an address I can send cards to this month- June is big for you people!

-Niki

Niki if it makes you feel any better my dad said some of the best times he had was rocking me and my brother to sleep. He really didn't think there was any other way to put a baby to sleep. Even when we were older we would go sit on my dad's lap and he would rock us. Those are some of the best memories I had with my dad. We called them "daddy rocks." He looked forward to it as much as we did.

What is up with Spangler kids not wanting to go to sleep? :) I'm just going to guess that this thing is common to all children, and not just our kids.

As for what Jessie said about being in charge and choosing to go with what the kiddo needs- AMEN sister. We have come to the conclusion that we can be in charge and still be following Addie's cues a bit. Sounds so contradictory, but we make the choice and our choice is not to go insane! We choose to rock Addie to sleep for now because she will fall asleep much faster, sleep better, and sleep longer. When we tried to force her to fall asleep on her own by letting her cry, not only would it take 30-45 minutes of torturous screaming, but then she would sleep restlessly and wake up crying (now she wakes up happy). So though some say that now Addie is in charge, she isn't, it's our choice to do it this way.

When we got into this new adventure we were SET that we would call the shots and that Addie would fit in around our existing family, not us fitting in around her. Though I still think that is a right concept, I think that when a child is very young you have to adjust around their needs, whether you like it or not. It doesn't mean that you aren't the boss, it just means that as the boss, you know it is necessary, but only for a time.

As for reading to Alli and it requiring great patience, that's what I have found with Addie too. My patience is tested more now than ever and I'm sure it will continue to be more so in the future. I have several times said to the Lord "No, I want it to work another way," and when the situation didn't change I had to think "maybe God wants it this way right now, maybe my character development in this situation is more important than whether Addie goes to sleep in a certain way." The thing is, one day it will all be a distant memory that Addie would cry and scream for what seemed like eternity, but I will have always gained the relationship development with the Lord. I will remember those times when I had to depend on Him minute by minute or second by second for strength and though I thought I couldn't do it, He got me through the day. I'm sure you guys know all about this. :)

A funny anecdote from our house today- we put Addie down for her nap and she was normal, but when she woke up, her bottom lip was all purple. I was shocked and tried to figure out what happened- was it from sucking on her blue dress or her purple blanket? No, the child had given herself a lip hicky from sucking it during her nap. Proof of how hard she can suck and why nursing was so difficult in the beginning... I will post some pictures of it on our blog later if you want to see.

Love you guys!

Niki

I wonder if Music would help Ali. Along time ago it helped. Actually it may work for Micah too. It worked well when Ali was Micah's age. I don't remember why we stopped it with Ali. Experiment #563 :)

I can't wait to see you guys. We are still working out all the details of the trip. It will be so great for a change. The thought of sleep is good too. I'm not worried about it messing the kids up because they're already nuts. Oh yeah, we have a fan but I haven't made sure it was on each night. Ibet that would help. Plus if other people in other rooms make noise it might keep some of that out. Nice. I should keep a journal. I hadn't thought about keeping a journal of my struggles but it might be good for now too. Any how Thanks so much you have great ideas and I'm gonna start the experiments. I'll let you know how it goes. Jessica

I think that your thoughts were so good and need to be pondered even more. But for now I would say with confidence I do agree with, and yet needed a reminder, that it isn't about the kids but about the parents and thier marriage. Where would I be in twenty or so years when the kids are gone and I'm left with a man whom I no longer know very well. It is definitly better for us to have sleep at night but we also have to weigh the other end of it. Is sleep worth dept or is dept loosing sleep? Think about that a second :) I do know that you are so right about making OUR decision and letting the kids know that it is up to us. Even if it we know it wasn't our idea, so to speak. Well, I hope you know what I mean. Like Aletheia. She has always had a relatively easy bed time routine and she goes to bed without a fuss 95% of the time. It works at grandmas, mamaws, and at home. Since we've moved around and things have been so weird we've had to change it. Do we want it they NEW way. Not really. Does it work? You Betcha. Is it up to Ali how we do it. No way. Did we plan it around her? Oh yes. Does she know that? Not in this life time. We used to tuck her in and leave the room so she could send herself off to lala land. She will only screem our names now and NEVER go to sleep. So instead of her being in control and us running in there to try and shut her up we decided to stay in there with her and read to her til she passes out or until she seems so contented that it wouldn't matter if we left. The goal is, she isn't given the opportunity to cry to get us back in there. It has worked since we started it. Even though we are catering to her she has no clue we are. Now that this is her new routine and she has no reason to cry. Before she would be in control cause she knew we couldn't let her cry. So we eliminated the crying. I have no idea what this will mean for later but for now it has turned into millions of bed time stories and we don't give her the option or need to whine and fuss. We flat wear her out on stories. It's kinda like on the movies when the kids pass out during the story. I always thought, "Yeah right, like that ever happens." But that is actually where I got the idea. Hey maybe you can wear a kid out by reading a billion books. You gotta have some patients but there are no tears and she loves it. I guess in my mind that is how we are in control still. We didn't give into her and come back in twelve time to read to her. We just stayed so we are in control. I don't know if that is really how it works but it made sense in my mind.

Micah on the other hand is a hard cookie to crumble. (And hopefully Ali keeps going to bed all nice and sweatly) We just haven't figured him out yet. He is waking a lot in the middle of the night too. Like each hour even. I think it may be teathing. There is no good way to get him to bed. I dunno really. Help me apply #1 and #2 to him. It isn't as easy for some reason. There is no one good way to get him to bed. Tonight we are armed and ready with the oragel and tylonol to see if that helps. If it doesn't I'm kinda at a loss. It would be nice to do some of the options you were talking about. Believe me we are always looking for a new plan or idea. It is all about timing and the right plan I guess. So far either one or the other was missing. Hopefully this trip to PA will buy us some time and maybe even some sleep. Funny most people thing of loosing sleep when they travel with two kiddos but I can't imagine loosing any more sleep at this point I could only get more. I mean hey long car ride = sleep in my book. I have ear plugs :) Enough to go around even. He he hehehe. Okay maybe it isn't that easy. I'm gonna have to read the five points a few more times and get creative. It may even help me with my toddler discipline attitude. I have a lot to think about. Gees the thinking won't end ever. Not ever. I guess that is half the fun in life. Trying to figure life out. Hmmmm. I'm glad that I have a wonderful family to help me out there though. A girl that doesn't have sisters can at least marry a man with three brothers and be supplied with sister in laws :) Good times. Thanks for the encouragement. It takes a lot of brain cells, as you well know, to do all this thinking up stuff. I guess it will work if they know you are in charge. Now that is a tuffy. Is that next weeks topic? How to let your children know you are in charge when they think they are the only real human being on the planet and everyone else, including their mom, is a robot put on earth for your pleasure and enjoyment?