Lucky

When I was starting to get frustrated Wednesday evening, I realized I am lucky. I don't end up having to do it all most days or weeks. My husband is normally home by 4:30 or 5;00. He normally gets every other Friday off (as well as Saturdays and Sundays). When he travels, it is normally for one or two nights only.

I started to think of those whose husbands have to work 60 hours a week. Those families whose husband is only around on the weekends. I think of those families who work at places that don't value families. Then I realized having to do it all for a week and a half isn't that bad.

Wednesday night wasn't fun. AJU6 had 3 shots that afternoon and was not a happy camper. He just couldn't get comfortable for long because any movement in his little legs hurt him (luckily Tylenol eventually kicked in and he started to feel better. AJU5 was back at her not wanting to go to bed until every late (8;30ish), so I had two kids to wrangle when I was getting tired too. But, that was the last night of my husband's crazy work schedule at least for a little bit.

Normally if my husband has to work extra, he will do at most an hour Monday through Thursday and then work on Friday even if it is supposed to be a Friday off. But, when I hard deadline is coming up, they end up working even more than that. And, normally I don't mind the extra hours because he still gets paid overtime because he isn't staff. But, boy, with two kids it is harder!

Oh, and a little size update for AJU6:
10lbs 3.75 oz (25th percentile)
22.5 in long (over 25th percentile)
41cm+ head (nurse measured it at 41cm, but the doctor thinks it is larger than 50th percentile by look)

Two Months Old!

That's right. My little guy is 2 months old. I can't believe it. He is getting too big. Although, I do love the smiles and coos these days. Oh, and I love the sleep most nights. But, he is growing up too quickly!

Keeping Up

So, I am able to keep up with the kids day in and day out. The basics are easy - feeding, changing, sleeping, etc. Even with AJU1 working 20 hours more than he usually does last week and not0so-nice weather that kept us inside most of the time, AJU5 seemed happy. I keep up with my work-work, grading and responding to questions as they come in. But, the house is falling apart! I make dinner every night, and i have even gotten fairly good at mixing up the menu a little bit so we aren't eating grilled chicken every night. But the cleaning - yeah, that is another story.

So, today, while the kids napped, I tackled a little bit of the kitchen. All of the dishes were loaded into the dishwasher and one countertop was cleaned. I also put stuff in the toilets so I could clean them here in a little bit. I still have to tackle the dining area, as one certain toddler drops a lot of food! We did get the downstairs vacuumed on Saturday, and of course I got the laundry done. Hopefully I can get the upstairs vacuumed this week too. Our house (other than dining area and sometimes the kitchen) aren't dirty, but it just isn't totally clean. I am not a huge fan of cleaning, but it needs to be done. It has been months since we dusted. We only mop once a month if it is a good month. The showers and tubs rarely get scrubbed.

What do you have the hardest time keeping up with?

Product Review Friday - Infant Clothing/Sizing

Above is a picture of Carter sleepers in sizes NB and 3M. Can you tell which ones are NB?


Here is a hint - there are not three NB sleepers!


Any ideas?


Answer - the third and forth from the left. The fifth one is 3M! Some of them had never been washed (brand new), but the two monkey ones on the right have been washed the same number of times. The red sleeved one has been washed the most since it is a hand-me-down.

Really Carter - can't you make clothes the same size? It is bad enough trying to remember sizing differences between brands.

Wordless Wednesday - Asleep at Church

Taken two Sundays ago...

Baby Shower

So, my friends from church through AJU6 and I a baby shower. They offered to throw one before he was born, but I decided it would be more fun for all to wait until January. Since we didn't know the gender, there really wasn't much we wanted/needed before he was born! We had fun eating, fellowshipping, and opening presents. And of course, many of hte ladies got a chance to hold the guest of honor, which they loved! So, here are some pictures from Saturday!

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Me opening presents - not the flabby belly that I so hope goes away!

AJU5 with a present from little E (in the pink dress) which big friend E helped open.

The guest of honor not sure what is going on.

FAIL!

Okay, so I have so many blog ideas these days that involve pictures. But, I am never able to get the pictures taken, downloaded onto my computer, and then write a post. I used to be able to blame my husband since he did the picture downloading, but when we changed to Windows 7 and upgraded computers, that isn't an excuse. So, it is all on me.

I want to post about AJU6's baby shower on Saturday. I want to write a post about baby clothes and how even one brand can't be consistent with size. I want to show off pictures of AJU5 at the park and AJU6 playing on his mat. But, they will have to wait. I thought about downloading the pictures today, but then I realized my battery was almost dead. So, I had to charge the battery before doing anything else (currently charging). Then I have to remember to take the pictures off of the camera later today when I have a chance. I don't like to do it when AJU5 is around because she steals the camera. Yes - it is one of her favorite toys. She loves to carry it everywhere. It really makes taking pictures of her hard unless she is distracted. And, when she is distracted, I don't get good facial shots normally.

Okay, so I think that is about it. AJU5 did do well at the meeting on Friday and fairly well at church yesterday. AJU6 is letting me sleep quite a bit at night, so I am not dragging too much. And, life in general is going fairly well.

Maybe by Friday I will have good posts with pictures...

Delurking Day!

Well, it is delurking day! So, if you are reading this, please leave a comment introducing yourself (unless you are a regular commenter - then you can just say hi :) ).

In other news, things are going well here. I took the kiddos to the library today for storytime. AJU6 slept the whole time in the sling carrier whilc AJU5 behaved fairly well. It was only girls today, and all are fairly close in age (other than AJU6 of course), so they had fun running around the kids section of the library after the storytime while us moms got to talk. Then we came home for naps and lunch. After that we headed to a friend's house for the afternoon. I had my 6 wk post partum appointment (at 7 weeks because my doctor takes the beginning of January off each year), so AJU5 got to play with her friends while AJU6 and I took care of that. So, we had a busy day!

As for the post partum appointment, I have lost 24 pounds so far. I was hoping for closer to 30, but I am not going to complain too much. Hopefully the remaining 20 pounds will come up in the next few months! I have plans for more trips to the park and hopefully walks in the near future, so that should help. Oh, and maybe I will eat a little better - 3 bowls of cereal in one day is a little much I think :) Oh, and my body is still healing. I ended up with a third degree tear/episiotomy because there was such a rush to get AJU6 out (his heart rate was half of what it should have been). I knew it wasn't completely healed yet, but I was nice to hear my doctor said it is almost healed and should be 100% in the next few weeks.

Tomorrow I may be adventurous and take the kids to a meeting at work. If we go, we will leave as soon as AJU5 starts acting up. I don't have to attend because I am a part-timer, but I like to hear what is going on... So stay tuned to hear how it goes!

Genius!

Not me - AJU6! This boy is hitting milestones early, and I am loving it! Sunday night (at 6 wks 3 days), he rolled from his belly to his back on a hard surface. He had rolled off of me many times in the past, but this time he was on his blanket on the middle of a table with adult witnesses other than me! Then, just a few minutes ago I saw him holding one of his toys1 It is attached to a playmat, and he had a good grip on it. Now, to top this off, he didn't need to eat for 6 hours last night! I did have to give him his pacifier after about 2.75 hours, but that was all I had to do! And he was doing this in his bed (in the boppy pillow of course) - not ours!

He is definitely different from AJU5. I think some of it is because my life is more flexible than it was when she was this age. I don't have to go to work every morning. We aren't spending all of our nights remodeling a house. So, instead I can cuddle him a lot more. I think this is making it so he is ready to sleep at night instead of wanting more snuggle time. I can feed him every hour for 3 hours before bed without a worry.

Now, the downside of this is that he may become mobile earlier... I love it when they can play with you, but mobile means a whole new level of mommy-stress! It is so much easier when you can lay them down somewhere and not worry about them moving!

AJU5 crawled at 6.5 months... let's see when AJU6 does...

Ahhh!!!

That is what I felt like doing yesterday at church. AJU1 has been our church's AV guy, which means he sits in the little room upstairs running everything instead of downstairs with us. There have been Sundays where AJU5 has been somewhat of a handful, but it has been fairly easy to deal with really. Yesterday was not he case. First, she was going back and forth from the nursery to our pew. She was come and suck on her pacifier and drink a little and then head to the nursery. This wouldn't be too bad if she was tall enough to open the nursery door. Instead, she had to stand in front of the door and yell (because, well, she has no volume control it seems) open and then Mommy if they didn't open the door fast enough. Then, she came and sat down for a while. She wanted a hymnal, which I was happy to give her. But then she started to yell the letter she saw. Again, she has no volume control, so she was quite loud. I tried to tell her to whisper, to be quiet, to close her mouth. I tried the pacifier; I tried gently holding her mouth shut; I tried putting my hand over her mouth. Nothing worked. "Luckily" she gave up after a while and went back towards the nursery. Unfortunately, she did not go to the nursery. She went to the water fountain and yelled for me again. So, I went and got her and took her outside (we have a very small church, and there was no good place to take her inside - luckily it wasn't that cold out and she still had her jacket on). She creid to get back in. A friend offered to hold JAU6 for me, but since AJU5 was just crying and AJU6 was asleep in my arms, I kept him. At the point she was heading back in, AJU1 came out. He tried to get AJU5 to calm down, but there was no success there. So, he went back in. Eventually she did calm down, so we walked in. But, as soon as we were inside she started balling again. So, I rushed her into the small room opposite the nursery and tried to talk to her. Before too long the husband of the friend that had offered to hold AJU6 came to take over for AJU1 (he has been the back-up guy). So, AJU1 came and AJU5 calmed down again. We were able to go sit in the pew for the last song and announcements. Now, AJU5 didn't cry for two reasons at that point - eating and the sleeping! I knew half of the issue was she was tired. But, it is impossible to get her to nap unless she is totally exhausted or in her bed...

At the end of service (during announcements), my husband asked for volunteers to help with the AV things so he can be with us more weeks. The back-up man already had told him he was up for helping again (since his kids were older now so he wasn't as needed in the pew to contain them). After service, another man and two women in the church offered to learn how to help as well. So, hopefully, within the next month, we will get to the point where AJU1 will be with us most weeks (they are going to rotate working upstairs). This should make it so we can train AJU5 since there will be two of us! I won't have to juggle both kids most weeks, and both of us will be there to enforce the rules.

The hard thing for me has been the running back and forth. The nursery isn't too insulated, so letting her cry to come out isn't an option. But, trying to keep her in the pew normally resulted in crying as well. But, with two of us we should be able to contain her easier... We will see!

Ugh!

AJU5 is not sleeping well. Yesterday, she barely napped. She wanted the big girl bed, so we got everything set up there (pillow, juice, pacifiers, and blanket) only to have her exit the bed within minutes. She went back into her bed quite a few times, but she wouldn't stay. Eventually, I convinced her to try and nap in her crib. But, she didn't nap longer than 30 minutes (if she napped at all). So, MAYBE she had an hour worth of nap when she normally gets 2-3 hours yesterday. Then last night she cried just after we crawled into bed. She had been whimpering for about 30 minutes, so we gave in and went to see what she was upset about. All she wanted was to sleep with me. Now, AJU6 was having a hard time falling asleep, so he was laying on my right arm. So, "naturally" AJU5 took her spot on my right arm. Luckily I was able to free my arms and just haved them wrapped around the kids within 10 minutes. Then, I was able to turn onto my side and face AJU6 within half an hour (I can't sleep well on my back). Around midnight AJU6 woke to feed. I feed him laying down, and as "luck" would have it we ended up having to roll over. So, it was me, AJU6, AJU5, and then AJU1 who was fast asleep on about half of the bed. Eventually AJU5 woke up and asked for her bucket of all things (a little toy bucket she likes to carry around). AJU1 woke during this because she cried loudly and convinced her to go back to her bed. At 4, we heard her crying again. And, once again all she wanted was me. Since AJU6 was already occuppying the middle of the bed, I put her between me and the pack-n-play bassinet. AJU1 stuffed my body pillow along the side to make sure she didn't fall off. 4:30 rolls around, and it is time for AJU1 to get up. By this point, AJU6 had rolled/squirmed his way up against him (about a foot movement) so I have to move him first. Then we went back to sleep. At 6, AJU6 woke to eat. So, I changed him and was getting back into bed when AJU5 woke. Luckily, I was able to convince her to go back to sleep.

We think one issue she had was AJU1 forgot to put her cups in her bed for her (they made it to her room but not her bed). She has been stuffed up some at night (as have the rest of us), so she gets thirsty. And, since she didn't have any drink, she got mad. But I don't know what was up with the naps. Today she is napping in the crib (after resting in the big girl bed earlier). So, hopefully tonight will be a better night of sleep!

*Normally I try to put AJU6 down in the bassinet after he falls asleep. But, last night he wanted to nurse too close to bedtime. I hadn't had a chance to get him fully asleep first.

Wordless Wednesday - Big Girl Bunk Beds!

So Promising...

We went to the park this afternoon. It is about 1/4 mile from our house, so we just walk there. I had AJU6 in the front carrier, so I had both hands free! Going to the park (as usual) was easy. With the exception of crossing the street, I don't worry about holding AJU5's hand because the roads are not busy (and I stay on the street side in case she starts to bolt for the street). At the park there was only one or two cries, and those were very short. She even got the courage to slide down two slides completely by herself (I normally have to hold a finger). Then we started to head home after 30-45 minutes. She (amazingly) was willing to go home and wait for Daddy. That is until we got to where we had to cross the street...

I asked for a finger - she refused.
I asked if she wanted to be carried... crying started.
I carried her across the street and went to put her down.
She turned to go back to the park.
I turned her back around.
She cried some more.
She tried to bolt towards the park.
I ended up having to carry her.
I let her down after a while only to have to carry her again (bolting back to the park). Repeat a few times...

She cried after we got in the house. She asked to go to bed, so I put her in her crib with milk and juice so she could calm down. Eventually she did...

Adjusting

AJU1 went back to work today. There are no plans for holidays or vacations until at least March, so it is time to adjust to the new normal. So far - so good!

AJU5 was a handful last week at times. She has gotten very demanding and will throw a tantrum when she doesn't get her way. There is a hint that this might be partly due to teething, but we aren't sure. Last night, she was also running a temperature (or so I guessed based totally on feel), so I drugged her with Motrin. This morning she has been great. She isn't hot anymore, but she is a little stuffy. So, I drugged her with a little Benadryl before nap time :) I think the stuffiness may just be allergies ebcause AJU6 and I woke up stuffy too (but we have cleared up by now).

So, not to figure out our new "routine" during the week... School starts for me on Monday, but I have a lot of prep work to do. Library storytime starts next week. So, this week will be a good trial run of just normal days. I can figure out when it is best for me to work. I can figure out the best times to figure out what is for dinner (because I haven't had to cook much since November). Hopefully we will get "organized" so AJU5 will be happier and not take things out out AJU6...

And as for that - she kicked him Saturday morning! I had them both in my lap, and she kicked him in the head trying to get him off my lap. Luckily AJU1 and my sister were there, and she got removed from the room. She is definitely jealous of him! She has also requested to be held like a baby (laying in our arms) and requests that he be moved from places where she wants to lay/play. We also learned the hard way to not use her blanket for him EVER! I used it once to cover myself up while feeding him, and she pulled it off. Another time AJU1 had wrapped AJU6 up in it and had him laying on the couch. AJU5 tried to pull her blanket away and almost pulled him with it (luckily multiple adults were there to stop her). Ahh, the joys of two kids!

Are you getting back into the swing of things this week?

My To Do List for 2010

Hi - it is AJU5 here. Mommy is letting me publish my goals for 2010 here for everyone to read. So, here they are!

• Learn my letters and numbers. I can already point out some, so hopefully the others will be just as easy!
• Learn to use the potty.
• Sleep in my big girl bed all the time.
• Take swimming lessons.
• Visit Grandpa's farm and Grampy's lake.

I might add more later, but I am getting sleepy now. Too many things going on!