I have to take a few seconds here to focus and calm myself. Deep breaths. Imagining I have access to a punching bag. That sort of thing. You see, it's bedtime. These days, it's usually not so bad, the kids do their thing, get to bed, stay quiet enough till they fall asleep. I usually have to lay with Alex for a good chunk of time, but I get some reading done on my iPod while I wait him out. Not so much tonight. Alex was tiiiiired. Too tired, one might say. He started falling asleep as we drove home from Grandma Newson's house today, at about 4:30pm. I kept him awake till we pulled in, and then he woke up enough to goof off until it was almost dinner time. He jumped off the couch just before dinner, and I didn't quite catch how he landed, but it sounded bad. He cried a lot. And then wouldn't settle for anything but sitting in my lap, where he very nearly fell asleep again. But the stove timer went off, and we headed to the dinner table. And while he was taking bites of food, he had his head propped up in his hands, and yup, you guessed it: He started falling asleep again. Jesse decided enough was enough, and ran to get him pajamas and a fresh diaper. But the process of getting him half-changed was enough to snap him out of it, and he spent another 15 minutes eating.
I guess we missed his window. Because from the moment I started getting him to bed after that, it was one big gigantic fit to top all other fits. He screamed (and I mean, screamed!!) about every single thing that crossed his mind. Brushing teeth. Pillows. Reading books. Blankets. Songs (not wanting them). Daddy. Not Daddy. Mommy. Not Mommy. Door open. Pee in potty. Daddy come back. Of course, only about 10 minutes into this, Jesse had to leave. Volunteered to help a friend unload a moving truck. And so there I am, with a screaming-at-the-top-of-his-lungs Alex, who only gets a million times worse if I try to actually respond to his screaming, or dare leave the room before I do something harmful because of the stress, and he's just not calming down for anything. Nothing at all!!!! So finally, I just gave up. I grabbed my iPod, turned on an audio book, stuffed the earphones into my ears, cranked up the volume, and just laid quietly next to Alex until sleep took him over. Which wasn't for another half hour, by the way. Every now and then, I checked to make sure he was still screaming about the same stuff (yup, he was), and went back to the audio book. Finally, finally, he went suddenly still. One minute he was screaming and thrashing, the next he was just quiet. Until about 30 seconds later he jerked (sort of like a baby's startle reflex), and went right back into screaming demands that won't actually mollify him. But only a couple minutes later, he was still again, breathing deep, giving into the sleep his body so desperately needed. I couldn't help but silently laugh when he moan-screamed in his sleep. Yup, he was out.
Of course, the second I left my room, I found Jacob standing in the hall calling my name, whining that Melinda was copying him (oh, the horrors of youth! How many times to I have to tell them, "If you don't say or do anything, there's nothing to copy"?!?!?). I may have lost it there a little bit. Okay, there was no may about it. I yelled, a lot. I threw stuffed animals and snuggly blankets out of their room with as much angry vigor as my shoulders could muster, relishing in the big thuds things made as they flew through the air and hit the opposite wall out in the hallway.
Hence the need to calm down. Writing it out is certainly therapeutic, too. ;)
So anyway, I wanted to give an update on Jacob's adjustment to Kindergarten, because I've had plenty of people ask about it. The day I wrote the last blog entry, with his giant problem in the bathroom, was the last bad day he's had so far. (At least, that's the last Ms. May has told me about. I haven't walked up to her to specifically ask every day, but I assume for now that if there were a problem, she'd wave me over to inform me like she has before.)
For a few days after that, I started watching him through the window as they transitioned from hanging up backpacks to sitting on the group rug. He's done marvelously, prancing in and sitting on his designated Polar Bear spot, right up front, and just waiting till his teacher got there.
He's gotten some Weekly Readers to bring home, which he's read to me enthusiastically. It's really hard to pry out of him what he did during the day, but Melinda's been pretty helpful at prompting him. Like when she sees his class go to the Music Room, she tells him, which makes him tell me a little bit about Music time. He doesn't answer questions about his day ("I can't remember"), but if something jogs his memory, he makes a point to tell me. For instance, just a couple days ago, I was in the shower. Jacob, out of nowhere, comes in just to tell me how he got to ride a trike during recess. Or, when Melinda checked out a book about butterflies, he came over and noticed the pictures of the life cycle of a butterfly, and excitedly told me about how they have "one of those" for tadpoles in their classroom. How they start out as an egg, get to be a tadpole, and as they get bigger, the tail shrinks!!!, until finally they become a toad. (They get to watch this for the next few weeks in their classroom tank!) He fills me in on just little things, here and there. But things seem to be going generally well at this point. Hooray!
He's gotten amazing at riding his bike to and from school. This same boy, mere months ago, could not go on a simple, flat walk without complaining every, single step of the way. We gave up on our idea of regular walks and hikes all around the area because of his attitude. We just couldn't stand it. There were so many things we could have explored as a family, but we just couldn't stomach the constant whining and complaining that he didn't have enough energy, couldn't do it, etc. And yet, here we are, just barely into the first couple weeks of school, and he's already riding his bike almost a mile two times a day- with hills!!- with no issues whatsoever.
Today he started out his day pretty whiny, and cried about a whole lot of stuff. We're not sure when he woke up, only that he was already up and the lights were on when we got out of bed at 7am. We think he must have simply gotten up way too early, because he was just having issues all day. It was the first day the idea of not wanting to go to school escaped his mouth, but he wasn't really serious about it. He still had a good day at school, and got to ride the trike again, which apparently is the best thing ever.
Basically, I'm thrilled that he seems to have gotten over the rough bits of the transition. Me, I'm still working on it! I'm already feeling the build-up of lack of sleep, and it gets harder and harder to pull myself out of bed every morning. On the plus side, we qualify for free school lunches, so I don't have to worry about packing lunches anymore, though I still have to come up with a snack for both kids every day (but that's way easier). And I've done my best with walking whenever possible to get to school. Taking Melinda there and back, taking Jacob there and back, and then going to pick them both up and back... it ends up being close to 5.5 miles of walking every day. A little exhausting... but I could seriously use the exercise, and I'm hoping to see some weight loss if I stick to it long enough. Jesse had the car yesterday, and between all our different destinations, I did 6.1 miles of walking, most of it with either a stroller to push or Alex in a carrier on my back. That much wore me out a bit, and I was sore and couldn't handle the thought of getting right back into it, so Jesse took care of Melinda this morning for me, and we drove the other two trips since it was laundry time at Grandma's house. But for the 2 weeks of school we've had, we've done almost every single trip on foot. Yay!
Alex is starting to take naps again, since Melinda and Jacob are both gone and giving us a nice quiet house in the afternoons. He stopped napping consistently right around his 2nd birthday (and it was really hit-or-miss before that, too!). So you can imagine how novel and thrilling it is to suddenly have honest-to-goodness quiet in the middle of my day, now! Of course, that just further restricts my window for getting things done. I've had a hard time trying to figure out when to do grocery shopping and other things that are out-and-about sort of errands. I only have a 2-3 hour window before I have to be taking kids to school or picking them up, and it just breaks my day up into such small pieces that I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around the timing of it all. For instance, I don't have time to sit down and make a menu plan and a grocery list and go shopping all in one window. That would take too long. Instead, I have to be prepared with the plan and a list, and then run to do the shopping as soon as humanly possible, to make sure I still have time to get Jacob fed lunch before it's time to head out again. When Alex naps, it's just that much less time I have to work with. But it sure is nice, all the same. And when he doesn't nap, he's doing awesome at entertaining himself. I think it must be the novelty of not having an older sibling suddenly yank your toys right out of your hand. ;)
In fact, the other day - funny story - he was wearing a cape and pretending he had a lightsaber. (Thanks to the Lego Star Wars video game Jacob got for his birthday, he knows all about this fun new weapon!) He'd gasp in shock, tell me, "Bad guy!!", run down the hall, make some lightsaber sounds, run back with the bad guys apparently dead, and hand me a handful of pretend... meat. Uhh, should I be concerned about that? Why does a bad guy yield meat? Do I want to know?? And then he'd spend time cooking it, adding other ingredients, telling me it's not ready, all the while going back and forth to get more bad guys down the hall.
Tomorrow night is the informational "Back to School Night" for parents. From what I've already learned, Melinda will start getting homework sometime soon after that, but I don't know what the frequency will be like just yet. And I also don't know why all the information is saved for 2 weeks after school starts (I sure feel quite a bit in-the-dark about how lunch is scheduled and run, for instance). But I'm looking forward to learning more about their classroom schedules, plans for the year, and so on!
Showing posts with label Alexander. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Alexander. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
Saturday, April 3, 2010
Alex's 2nd Birthday
Can you believe my little baby is already 2 years old? Time goes too quickly. This age has some of the most fun and most frustrating aspects to it... Alex is just constantly exploding with new words and new skills. Simultaneously, he's asserting himself more and more. And while I certainly want an assertive adult, sometimes it's just really difficult to absolutely NEED to get out the door and have a child refuse to get dressed with every scrap of his energy, you know? When it takes two adults and still a good 5-10 minutes of forcing clothes onto a wriggling, screaming toddler, who, for whatever reason, simply does not want to get dressed... ugh. It's not fun.
That said, there are so many fun things. I wish I could capture it all on camera. But he's a smart cookie. As soon as he catches glimpse of the camera, he stops everything to give a toothy grin. And then wants to see the results of his posing on the LCD screen.
Anyway. We celebrated his birthday on April 1st. The first ever of any of our children that we got to celebrate with family. Actually, that's not entirely true. My youngest sister Kaija was present for Alex's first birthday! Lucky little guy!
After Melinda got home from school that day, and after we ate some lunch, we headed over to Grandma Newson's house, with bags and bags full of supplies. We took over birthday presents, cake, and all the makings for his birthday dinner.
Alex got a very short nap after we got there, and I quickly wrapped his presents. By 3pm we started dinner preparations, and we ate at about 6pm. I tried really hard to think of things that Alex would really enjoy for dinner: Meatballs with sauce, mashed potatoes and gravy, roasted carrots and sweet potatoes, homemade rolls, and assorted fresh fruits. As it turned out, he mostly just ate the fruits. I can't blame him- they were really yummy! But I was surprised he didn't gobble the rest of it down, too.
Obviously, Rachel decided that by sneaking in as photographer, she'd make sure she wasn't included in the picture. Poor Rachel caught the cold that my kids have had for the last week. Except, worse, since she got a bit of a fever along with it. Sorry, Rachel. Well, at least we know and will always remember that you were there, whether or not you allow us to show off the proof. ;)
We actually had waaay too much fruit. Blueberries, strawberries, pineapple, mango, kiwi fruit, and green grapes. So delicious, though.
After dinner we played a few simple games. Penny, Penny, Who Has the Penny was a lot of fun. Alex had a great time trying to figure out who was holding the penny after someone tried to pass it on in secret, and he even started to understand how to pass it on himself after a few rounds. Here's a little video from that game:
After that we moved onto another goody from my childhood: Pop the balloon. Okay, well, I don't know if it really has a name or not, but it's always fun. You write a bunch of silly instructions on paper, fold each individual slip of paper up into a small tube, stuff it into a balloon, then blow up and tie the balloon. Each person has to take a turn popping the balloon and doing what their instructions tell them to. This is a great one for younger kids, who just *love* popping balloons. Alex was a little to small for following the directions, but had a great time with popping, anyway. Also, a funny little note: Out of 20 slips of paper, I only wrote 4 name-specific instructions: Give Grandma a hug, Tickle Jacob, Tickle Alex, and Sit on Jesse's Lap. Alex got "Tickle Alex", and Jesse got "Sit on Jesse's Lap." How's that for funny coincidence? Jesse, true to his character, made a hilarious attempt to sit on his own lap. Which I unfortunately did not record. Alas. Also, Rachel got "Sing Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star", which she sang in her lovely operatic voice. Despite her cold! I also didn't get that recorded. Not that she would have allowed me to publish it anyway, since she's sick. ;) Sigh. Still, enjoy this video clip of the balloon game:
I was going to play drop the clothespin into a jar, too... but nobody seemed especially interested. The kids each took a short turn dropping in clothespins, but we left it at that and jumped into opening presents, instead.
First thing he opened was my unfinished city map. I bought some white vinyl and had been planning on coloring a city playmat for him with my nice set of permanent markers. The first night I worked on it, I got all the roads and traffic lines and signs colored in. The next night, I got a nice little section of houses done. I was laying on top of the vinyl while I worked on it, and when I got up to stretch, I saw that all of the yellow lines were almost completely smudged off. Further investigating showed that just a simple finger-rub would take off almost all the ink from any of the sections I colored with my Bic brand markers. The black road lines themselves were done with a regular Sharpie brand marker, and they didn't have any problem. But that was the easiest part! I was aghast!! Yes, that's the best word to describe it, I think. It was only a couple nights away from his birthday, and it would have been a stretch to finish it in time, anyway. With this little problem thrown in, there was no way I could have it ready in time. We decided, though, to go out and buy a set of colored Sharpie markers, and see if that would work. Well, it did, but I simply didn't have enough time to do much with it. I gave it to him on his birthday, anyway. And I think it'll look really nice once it's done... but in the meantime, I was pretty bummed. I hate it when good ideas fail.
Of course, to go with the city playmat, I got him a bunch of Matchbook-type cars to play with, since we had very few.
And Rachel made him this gorgeous little wall banner with his name. Which, for the time being, has made its home in my bedroom, since that's where Alex's bed is. Hopefully in the not-too-far-distant future, we'll live in a house and he'll have his own space to display his name banner.
In this video, you can see my favorite part! First, he opens a gift from Grandma Newson: a spaceship made from polar fleece, with little finger puppet aliens. It's so cute! I don't think he really knows what aliens are yet, but we've taught him how to make alien-speech babble, which he thinks is pretty funny. He likes it a lot. And of course, the part I was really looking forward to- opening up the backpack I sewed for him. I was slightly annoyed with Melinda chanting "backpack, backpack!" while he opened it... I really wanted to see him figure out for himself what it was... but his reaction was absolutely, 110% perfect! He was so excited, and so proud to have his own backpack! Which I didn't think he wouldn't be - he'd spent the last several days trying to steal Melinda's backpack and pretending to go off to school, claiming it was his - but sometimes even when you know it's something they'll love, the reaction is not what you expect. But he definitely didn't disappoint!
Ben and Brea gave him a perfect simple little gift - a sparkly pinwheel!! He still needs to figure out just how to blow on it to make it work, but he'll get there soon. Melinda was playing with it in my bedroom last night with the evening sun streaming in through the window, and it made a gorgeous little rainbow on the wall, and a brilliant blue streak along with it. Alex was thrilled: "Ooooooh, PRETTY!! Rainbow!!!" he exclaimed!
And then, after all the presents were done, we finally got around to the birthday cake. I made a white chocolate lemon cake for his birthday, complete with homemade lemon curd between the layers. I decorated it with an owl (because I just seem to be on a cute owl kick!) that says, "Look whoooo's 2!" When I was decorating it, he was watching, and when it finally became apparent that it was an owl on his cake, he said, "Mommy, owl?" And I replied, "Yes, I'm putting an owl on your birthday cake." And Alex said, "Oh! NICE!!" And I wish I had a recording for you to hear the voice inflections when he says that phrase, because every time he says it, I about die of cuteness overload.
And here's a video of the birthday singing and him blowing out the candles. I think it's hilarious how hesitant he is about blowing - he doesn't even lean forward! He's always so eager to blow out any candles we have around the house, but it's been since Melinda's birthday that we've done any candles on cake, and maybe he just didn't remember how it worked! But he blew them out without any effort at all, and then was so excited about it that he kept talking about it! Of course, he didn't eat any cake at all, not even after weeks of talking about birthday cake. All he touched was the ice cream!! Oh, well. It was a yummy cake anyway!
And of course, I had to throw in a few little party-favor blowers. They were a little upset that they weren't the noisemaker kind. And Jacob was very upset that his didn't seem to flatten completely out, even after Uncle Ben insisted and insisted that it was working exactly like everyone else's. Still, I thought it was fun. And I think this picture, despite its poor quality, is cute!
We survived his second birthday! And I'm experiencing a 2-year-old for the first time ever without being simultaneously pregnant! Isn't it fun?? Well, most of the time, anyway. ;)
Happy Birthday, Alex. We're so glad and thankful to have you in our lives! I look forward to the amazing boy you're going to grow up to be.
That said, there are so many fun things. I wish I could capture it all on camera. But he's a smart cookie. As soon as he catches glimpse of the camera, he stops everything to give a toothy grin. And then wants to see the results of his posing on the LCD screen.
Anyway. We celebrated his birthday on April 1st. The first ever of any of our children that we got to celebrate with family. Actually, that's not entirely true. My youngest sister Kaija was present for Alex's first birthday! Lucky little guy!
After Melinda got home from school that day, and after we ate some lunch, we headed over to Grandma Newson's house, with bags and bags full of supplies. We took over birthday presents, cake, and all the makings for his birthday dinner.
Alex got a very short nap after we got there, and I quickly wrapped his presents. By 3pm we started dinner preparations, and we ate at about 6pm. I tried really hard to think of things that Alex would really enjoy for dinner: Meatballs with sauce, mashed potatoes and gravy, roasted carrots and sweet potatoes, homemade rolls, and assorted fresh fruits. As it turned out, he mostly just ate the fruits. I can't blame him- they were really yummy! But I was surprised he didn't gobble the rest of it down, too.
Obviously, Rachel decided that by sneaking in as photographer, she'd make sure she wasn't included in the picture. Poor Rachel caught the cold that my kids have had for the last week. Except, worse, since she got a bit of a fever along with it. Sorry, Rachel. Well, at least we know and will always remember that you were there, whether or not you allow us to show off the proof. ;)
After dinner we played a few simple games. Penny, Penny, Who Has the Penny was a lot of fun. Alex had a great time trying to figure out who was holding the penny after someone tried to pass it on in secret, and he even started to understand how to pass it on himself after a few rounds. Here's a little video from that game:
After that we moved onto another goody from my childhood: Pop the balloon. Okay, well, I don't know if it really has a name or not, but it's always fun. You write a bunch of silly instructions on paper, fold each individual slip of paper up into a small tube, stuff it into a balloon, then blow up and tie the balloon. Each person has to take a turn popping the balloon and doing what their instructions tell them to. This is a great one for younger kids, who just *love* popping balloons. Alex was a little to small for following the directions, but had a great time with popping, anyway. Also, a funny little note: Out of 20 slips of paper, I only wrote 4 name-specific instructions: Give Grandma a hug, Tickle Jacob, Tickle Alex, and Sit on Jesse's Lap. Alex got "Tickle Alex", and Jesse got "Sit on Jesse's Lap." How's that for funny coincidence? Jesse, true to his character, made a hilarious attempt to sit on his own lap. Which I unfortunately did not record. Alas. Also, Rachel got "Sing Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star", which she sang in her lovely operatic voice. Despite her cold! I also didn't get that recorded. Not that she would have allowed me to publish it anyway, since she's sick. ;) Sigh. Still, enjoy this video clip of the balloon game:
I was going to play drop the clothespin into a jar, too... but nobody seemed especially interested. The kids each took a short turn dropping in clothespins, but we left it at that and jumped into opening presents, instead.
First thing he opened was my unfinished city map. I bought some white vinyl and had been planning on coloring a city playmat for him with my nice set of permanent markers. The first night I worked on it, I got all the roads and traffic lines and signs colored in. The next night, I got a nice little section of houses done. I was laying on top of the vinyl while I worked on it, and when I got up to stretch, I saw that all of the yellow lines were almost completely smudged off. Further investigating showed that just a simple finger-rub would take off almost all the ink from any of the sections I colored with my Bic brand markers. The black road lines themselves were done with a regular Sharpie brand marker, and they didn't have any problem. But that was the easiest part! I was aghast!! Yes, that's the best word to describe it, I think. It was only a couple nights away from his birthday, and it would have been a stretch to finish it in time, anyway. With this little problem thrown in, there was no way I could have it ready in time. We decided, though, to go out and buy a set of colored Sharpie markers, and see if that would work. Well, it did, but I simply didn't have enough time to do much with it. I gave it to him on his birthday, anyway. And I think it'll look really nice once it's done... but in the meantime, I was pretty bummed. I hate it when good ideas fail.
Of course, to go with the city playmat, I got him a bunch of Matchbook-type cars to play with, since we had very few.
And Rachel made him this gorgeous little wall banner with his name. Which, for the time being, has made its home in my bedroom, since that's where Alex's bed is. Hopefully in the not-too-far-distant future, we'll live in a house and he'll have his own space to display his name banner.
In this video, you can see my favorite part! First, he opens a gift from Grandma Newson: a spaceship made from polar fleece, with little finger puppet aliens. It's so cute! I don't think he really knows what aliens are yet, but we've taught him how to make alien-speech babble, which he thinks is pretty funny. He likes it a lot. And of course, the part I was really looking forward to- opening up the backpack I sewed for him. I was slightly annoyed with Melinda chanting "backpack, backpack!" while he opened it... I really wanted to see him figure out for himself what it was... but his reaction was absolutely, 110% perfect! He was so excited, and so proud to have his own backpack! Which I didn't think he wouldn't be - he'd spent the last several days trying to steal Melinda's backpack and pretending to go off to school, claiming it was his - but sometimes even when you know it's something they'll love, the reaction is not what you expect. But he definitely didn't disappoint!
Ben and Brea gave him a perfect simple little gift - a sparkly pinwheel!! He still needs to figure out just how to blow on it to make it work, but he'll get there soon. Melinda was playing with it in my bedroom last night with the evening sun streaming in through the window, and it made a gorgeous little rainbow on the wall, and a brilliant blue streak along with it. Alex was thrilled: "Ooooooh, PRETTY!! Rainbow!!!" he exclaimed!
And then, after all the presents were done, we finally got around to the birthday cake. I made a white chocolate lemon cake for his birthday, complete with homemade lemon curd between the layers. I decorated it with an owl (because I just seem to be on a cute owl kick!) that says, "Look whoooo's 2!" When I was decorating it, he was watching, and when it finally became apparent that it was an owl on his cake, he said, "Mommy, owl?" And I replied, "Yes, I'm putting an owl on your birthday cake." And Alex said, "Oh! NICE!!" And I wish I had a recording for you to hear the voice inflections when he says that phrase, because every time he says it, I about die of cuteness overload.
And here's a video of the birthday singing and him blowing out the candles. I think it's hilarious how hesitant he is about blowing - he doesn't even lean forward! He's always so eager to blow out any candles we have around the house, but it's been since Melinda's birthday that we've done any candles on cake, and maybe he just didn't remember how it worked! But he blew them out without any effort at all, and then was so excited about it that he kept talking about it! Of course, he didn't eat any cake at all, not even after weeks of talking about birthday cake. All he touched was the ice cream!! Oh, well. It was a yummy cake anyway!
And of course, I had to throw in a few little party-favor blowers. They were a little upset that they weren't the noisemaker kind. And Jacob was very upset that his didn't seem to flatten completely out, even after Uncle Ben insisted and insisted that it was working exactly like everyone else's. Still, I thought it was fun. And I think this picture, despite its poor quality, is cute!
We survived his second birthday! And I'm experiencing a 2-year-old for the first time ever without being simultaneously pregnant! Isn't it fun?? Well, most of the time, anyway. ;)
Happy Birthday, Alex. We're so glad and thankful to have you in our lives! I look forward to the amazing boy you're going to grow up to be.
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Bedtime
Tonight, I'm sitting on my lovely cushy IKEA couch while I type. Jesse's sister, Rachel, got a new laptop this holiday season, after her old laptop broke. Jesse, being both bored and always inclined to take things apart to see if he can fix them, did just that. There was one little tiny piece that needed to be re-soldered, and voila, it worked again! Rachel was generous and let us keep her old laptop, which is just almost like a second Christmas. I can sit on my couch and do my computer stuff! Instead of in a hard chair under a drafty window!! Granted, it's a very slow machine, and definitely acting it's age... but so is the desktop computer I've been using: Jesse's hand-me-down after my computer died several months ago. (It's so tempting to think of buying a shiny new computer with tax returns this year, instead of putting it in savings in case this unemployment thing drags on forever...)
Anyway. That's not the reason for my post. I just had to gush about it for a minute. Because it feels so luxurious to not be chained to a desk. Even though I still have to be chained to an extension cord, because the laptop battery needs replacing. ;)
The real reason for this post is bedtime. "Duh," you're thinking. "That's the title of the blog post, after all!" Well, you're right. I'm being obvious. But bedtime this week has been such a great discovery! Let me tell you what bedtime has been like for about the past year:
It would take no less than an hour. Every. Single. Time. Sometimes it would take at least twice as long. It always involved sooooo much singing, reading, soft music, fans blowing for white noise, laying down and cuddling, shushing, heating up rice bags, and on and on and on and on. Melinda and Jacob would giggle and play and turn their lights on and climb furniture if we dared leave before they were completely settled down. Alex would take a maddening amount of time rocking, patting, nursing, etc. before he would finally, finally fall asleep and leave us to our treasured, quiet, adult time. And often, he would wake back up and need even more rocking, patting, singing, nursing, whatever before he would fall back asleep.
When we moved to Colorado, we continued - as closely as possible - to follow those same routines. But somehow, in a rather sudden way, Melinda and Jacob stopped needing all the jumping through hoops for bedtime. It might have been the very old-school GloWorms that we started giving them when we left. Or the change of location. But at any rate, as soon as we started living in our condo, once we left them in bed, they have generally stayed in bed. Every now and then someone gets up to use the potty, or to complain of an aching leg, but it's the exception. And they even stay all night. They aren't waking up in the middle of the night to come lay in our bedroom anymore. They stay in their own bed until they wake up in the morning!! It's heaven!!
But Alex continued to give us problems. I ended up finding a good compromise by taking my iPod Touch with me when I would lay down with him, so that when he took an hour or so to fall asleep, at least I had something to do. Mostly I would read my scriptures on my iPod, but sometimes I listened to a podcast or an audio book, or would sneak in a game or two. But a few nights ago, Jesse's sister Rachel, brother Ben, and his wife Brea made arrangements to come over and play Settlers with us after the kids were asleep. I was anxious to play, and Alex was taking for.ev.er. to fall asleep, just being wiggly and goofy and not laying still. After they had been over for 20 minutes, and I was getting more and more anxious to get out there and play, I finally gave up. I set up the baby gate in our door, made sure Alex had everything he needed, and left. He protested loudly for about half a minute, and got quiet. About a minute later, he cried halfheartedly for a few more seconds, and then I could tell he walked away from the door and climbed in bed. He was completely calm in only about 2 minutes from the time I had left my room.
I did it again the next night. He reacted about the same way.
I did it again last night. I hadn't even finished filling up a glass of water in the kitchen before he was calm and quiet.
I did it again tonight. And again, he protested very loudly when he knew I was leaving. After all, he's had me tethered to him since he was a newborn infant, me not leaving until he was good and asleep. It breaks my heart a little to walk out the door when he's basically screaming for me to stay... BUT, it wasn't even a full 20 seconds before he stopped crying and went back to bed. And that was the last peep I heard from him.
Can I just tell you how freeing it feels to not have to waste an hour or more of my evening time to get him to sleep? My quiet time starts at 7:30 now, instead of 8:30 or 9:00pm. It is marvelous. So wonderful.
I have no idea if this will last forever... but I hope it does. Also, I used to pick him up and lay him in Jacob's bed after he fell asleep, but I'm too nervous to do that after he's fallen asleep on his own, lest I wake him and have to calm him down again. So I can't go rummaging through all my sewing stuff that is being stored in my bedroom while he's in there asleep. Maybe I'll get up the courage to try moving him soon, but for now I'm just enjoying the fact that he's big enough to go to sleep on his own, with so very, very little complaint. It's like I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. Think about going away for a night or two. Contemplate life with a hassle-free bedtime routine. Mmmm. Good times.
Anyway. That's not the reason for my post. I just had to gush about it for a minute. Because it feels so luxurious to not be chained to a desk. Even though I still have to be chained to an extension cord, because the laptop battery needs replacing. ;)
The real reason for this post is bedtime. "Duh," you're thinking. "That's the title of the blog post, after all!" Well, you're right. I'm being obvious. But bedtime this week has been such a great discovery! Let me tell you what bedtime has been like for about the past year:
It would take no less than an hour. Every. Single. Time. Sometimes it would take at least twice as long. It always involved sooooo much singing, reading, soft music, fans blowing for white noise, laying down and cuddling, shushing, heating up rice bags, and on and on and on and on. Melinda and Jacob would giggle and play and turn their lights on and climb furniture if we dared leave before they were completely settled down. Alex would take a maddening amount of time rocking, patting, nursing, etc. before he would finally, finally fall asleep and leave us to our treasured, quiet, adult time. And often, he would wake back up and need even more rocking, patting, singing, nursing, whatever before he would fall back asleep.
When we moved to Colorado, we continued - as closely as possible - to follow those same routines. But somehow, in a rather sudden way, Melinda and Jacob stopped needing all the jumping through hoops for bedtime. It might have been the very old-school GloWorms that we started giving them when we left. Or the change of location. But at any rate, as soon as we started living in our condo, once we left them in bed, they have generally stayed in bed. Every now and then someone gets up to use the potty, or to complain of an aching leg, but it's the exception. And they even stay all night. They aren't waking up in the middle of the night to come lay in our bedroom anymore. They stay in their own bed until they wake up in the morning!! It's heaven!!
But Alex continued to give us problems. I ended up finding a good compromise by taking my iPod Touch with me when I would lay down with him, so that when he took an hour or so to fall asleep, at least I had something to do. Mostly I would read my scriptures on my iPod, but sometimes I listened to a podcast or an audio book, or would sneak in a game or two. But a few nights ago, Jesse's sister Rachel, brother Ben, and his wife Brea made arrangements to come over and play Settlers with us after the kids were asleep. I was anxious to play, and Alex was taking for.ev.er. to fall asleep, just being wiggly and goofy and not laying still. After they had been over for 20 minutes, and I was getting more and more anxious to get out there and play, I finally gave up. I set up the baby gate in our door, made sure Alex had everything he needed, and left. He protested loudly for about half a minute, and got quiet. About a minute later, he cried halfheartedly for a few more seconds, and then I could tell he walked away from the door and climbed in bed. He was completely calm in only about 2 minutes from the time I had left my room.
I did it again the next night. He reacted about the same way.
I did it again last night. I hadn't even finished filling up a glass of water in the kitchen before he was calm and quiet.
I did it again tonight. And again, he protested very loudly when he knew I was leaving. After all, he's had me tethered to him since he was a newborn infant, me not leaving until he was good and asleep. It breaks my heart a little to walk out the door when he's basically screaming for me to stay... BUT, it wasn't even a full 20 seconds before he stopped crying and went back to bed. And that was the last peep I heard from him.
Can I just tell you how freeing it feels to not have to waste an hour or more of my evening time to get him to sleep? My quiet time starts at 7:30 now, instead of 8:30 or 9:00pm. It is marvelous. So wonderful.
I have no idea if this will last forever... but I hope it does. Also, I used to pick him up and lay him in Jacob's bed after he fell asleep, but I'm too nervous to do that after he's fallen asleep on his own, lest I wake him and have to calm him down again. So I can't go rummaging through all my sewing stuff that is being stored in my bedroom while he's in there asleep. Maybe I'll get up the courage to try moving him soon, but for now I'm just enjoying the fact that he's big enough to go to sleep on his own, with so very, very little complaint. It's like I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. Think about going away for a night or two. Contemplate life with a hassle-free bedtime routine. Mmmm. Good times.
Sunday, September 6, 2009
Our First Trip to Urgent Care
Today was such a long day.
We got up extra-early and got ready for church up in Pennsylvania today. Our friends Adam and Jenn had a baby boy a few months ago, and today they blessed him, along with his new little cousin. It was lovely to listen to it, and nice to be there for friends we met way back before we even had kids. But between everyone taking turns waking up with various issues that needed to be resolved last night, the early morning, and a slightly unfamiliar routine, we were tired before Sacrament Meeting had even finished, and decided to go home early.
Jacob fell asleep on the way home. Obviously he wasn't really ready to wake up at 7:30am today. Melinda whined about our choice of listening material (we turned on the General Conference podcast from April of this year). Alex woke up when we got home, declaring his nap officially finished. It was only 11am and the kids were pestering me for lunch as if I had starved them.... when in reality they had breakfast AND snacks.
So, our day was not off to the best start. But we got the kids fed- and finally satisfied- and tried to have some quiet, calm, resting time.
Not long after 2pm, Alex went into the front room to play with Melinda and Jacob. Not 2 seconds after he got in there, he was screaming bloody murder. When I found him, he had deep red blood dripping from his eyebrow, down his temple, and nearly into his eye. I instantly knew this wasn't good. Alex gets hurt a lot between his own feats of mobility and the antics and roughhousing of his older siblings. But it's rare that he actually bleeds.
We gently cleaned his eyebrow with a cloth, and there was definitely a gash. We found out that Jacob had pushed Alex (in play) and he had fallen against the square corner of the rocking chair seat. Once we cleaned the wound up, though, the bleeding wasn't alarming. It oozed very slowly. But it was a big gash. On his eyebrow. Jesse and I were both thinking of what a bad scar this could leave, and not feeling sure about what we should do.
When Melinda cut her head on a dresser in Colorado a couple years ago, we were able to get some skin glue ("liquid stitches") from the grocery store just down the road, and fix her up nicely. We decided to try that route for Alex, too. So Jesse ran out to the pharmacy, but had no luck finding any. Then he asked a pharmacist, who didn't seem to even know what he was looking for. He tried a few different stores, also with no luck. The closest he could get was liquid bandaids, which don't exactly hold skin together. Jesse keeps grumbling about it probably being against the law to sell it in Maryland or something like that.
While Jesse was out looking for the glue, I kept pressure on Alex's cut, and ended up shaving off his eyebrow, too, since we wouldn't want hair to heal itself into it. Glad to have an electric razor on hand!
Still thinking of a really ugly scar, we decided to take him to urgent care. There's an urgent care very close to us, not associated with the hospital. They advertise little wait time, and other such niceties, so we went there. After filling out a bit of paperwork and waiting maybe 5 minutes, they called us back.
When we got to see the doctor, he took a look and thought it might need stitches. But after cleaning it with an alcohol wipe (it was already clotting, less than an hour later), he thought it looked too superficial to worry about, and was concerned about using the liquid stitches so close to his eye. But he understood our concerns about a big ugly scar, and agreed that the liquid stitches could minimize the scar a bit. He brought in a nurse to help hold some gauze over his eye while he applied the glue. It was a messy business, but Alex was amazingly calm. Didn't squirm or fuss or anything, just looked curiously at the people hovering over him. The doctor couldn't stop remarking over his behavior like he was some miracle child, and it was beginning to become obvious that he had NEVER treated a child as calm as Alex. Truth be told, I was even a little mystified, because he usually hates to be made to lay down. You should hear him when I have to pin him down to brush his teeth!!
Anyway, I watched as the doctor applied the glue, and it seemed like he was doing a fine job, squeezing the wound together as he applied it, and after he finished, to keep it together while it dried. But Jesse feels like it looks pretty jagged and open in some places, and is feeling pretty unhappy about it, just wishing we could have gotten a hold of some glue and done it ourselves. Of course, I agree that we probably could have done at least as well ourselves, and saved us a trip to urgent care (and who knows how much money for a copay, I have no clue!)... but I guess that's life, when you're not sure if a wound needs stitches and you can't find any skin glue in the stores. (Note to self: Find some online and keep it on hand!!)
We probably could have gotten away without doing anything, with how superficial it is. But ugh, those thoughts of big ugly scars... they just wouldn't go away! And it made us unsure about what would be best. No big panic or big rush to urgent care... just more of a "I guess we need to do this to be on the safe side" sort of attitude.
Anyway, here's the little guy after we got home. As you can see, he was all fine and happy already (and saying "cheese", in the likely case you can't decipher that face). Won't be surprised if he ends up with a black eye fairly soon. And I'm really regretting not setting up some family portraits for yesterday like I had been considering. Because who knows what he'll look like for the next several months, right?
Ah, urgent care. I'm not sure how we avoided it for so long, with the three kids that we have. I suppose it was inevitable that it happen soon. Still... it's been a very long day.
We got up extra-early and got ready for church up in Pennsylvania today. Our friends Adam and Jenn had a baby boy a few months ago, and today they blessed him, along with his new little cousin. It was lovely to listen to it, and nice to be there for friends we met way back before we even had kids. But between everyone taking turns waking up with various issues that needed to be resolved last night, the early morning, and a slightly unfamiliar routine, we were tired before Sacrament Meeting had even finished, and decided to go home early.
Jacob fell asleep on the way home. Obviously he wasn't really ready to wake up at 7:30am today. Melinda whined about our choice of listening material (we turned on the General Conference podcast from April of this year). Alex woke up when we got home, declaring his nap officially finished. It was only 11am and the kids were pestering me for lunch as if I had starved them.... when in reality they had breakfast AND snacks.
So, our day was not off to the best start. But we got the kids fed- and finally satisfied- and tried to have some quiet, calm, resting time.
Not long after 2pm, Alex went into the front room to play with Melinda and Jacob. Not 2 seconds after he got in there, he was screaming bloody murder. When I found him, he had deep red blood dripping from his eyebrow, down his temple, and nearly into his eye. I instantly knew this wasn't good. Alex gets hurt a lot between his own feats of mobility and the antics and roughhousing of his older siblings. But it's rare that he actually bleeds.
We gently cleaned his eyebrow with a cloth, and there was definitely a gash. We found out that Jacob had pushed Alex (in play) and he had fallen against the square corner of the rocking chair seat. Once we cleaned the wound up, though, the bleeding wasn't alarming. It oozed very slowly. But it was a big gash. On his eyebrow. Jesse and I were both thinking of what a bad scar this could leave, and not feeling sure about what we should do.
When Melinda cut her head on a dresser in Colorado a couple years ago, we were able to get some skin glue ("liquid stitches") from the grocery store just down the road, and fix her up nicely. We decided to try that route for Alex, too. So Jesse ran out to the pharmacy, but had no luck finding any. Then he asked a pharmacist, who didn't seem to even know what he was looking for. He tried a few different stores, also with no luck. The closest he could get was liquid bandaids, which don't exactly hold skin together. Jesse keeps grumbling about it probably being against the law to sell it in Maryland or something like that.
While Jesse was out looking for the glue, I kept pressure on Alex's cut, and ended up shaving off his eyebrow, too, since we wouldn't want hair to heal itself into it. Glad to have an electric razor on hand!
Still thinking of a really ugly scar, we decided to take him to urgent care. There's an urgent care very close to us, not associated with the hospital. They advertise little wait time, and other such niceties, so we went there. After filling out a bit of paperwork and waiting maybe 5 minutes, they called us back.
When we got to see the doctor, he took a look and thought it might need stitches. But after cleaning it with an alcohol wipe (it was already clotting, less than an hour later), he thought it looked too superficial to worry about, and was concerned about using the liquid stitches so close to his eye. But he understood our concerns about a big ugly scar, and agreed that the liquid stitches could minimize the scar a bit. He brought in a nurse to help hold some gauze over his eye while he applied the glue. It was a messy business, but Alex was amazingly calm. Didn't squirm or fuss or anything, just looked curiously at the people hovering over him. The doctor couldn't stop remarking over his behavior like he was some miracle child, and it was beginning to become obvious that he had NEVER treated a child as calm as Alex. Truth be told, I was even a little mystified, because he usually hates to be made to lay down. You should hear him when I have to pin him down to brush his teeth!!
Anyway, I watched as the doctor applied the glue, and it seemed like he was doing a fine job, squeezing the wound together as he applied it, and after he finished, to keep it together while it dried. But Jesse feels like it looks pretty jagged and open in some places, and is feeling pretty unhappy about it, just wishing we could have gotten a hold of some glue and done it ourselves. Of course, I agree that we probably could have done at least as well ourselves, and saved us a trip to urgent care (and who knows how much money for a copay, I have no clue!)... but I guess that's life, when you're not sure if a wound needs stitches and you can't find any skin glue in the stores. (Note to self: Find some online and keep it on hand!!)
We probably could have gotten away without doing anything, with how superficial it is. But ugh, those thoughts of big ugly scars... they just wouldn't go away! And it made us unsure about what would be best. No big panic or big rush to urgent care... just more of a "I guess we need to do this to be on the safe side" sort of attitude.
Anyway, here's the little guy after we got home. As you can see, he was all fine and happy already (and saying "cheese", in the likely case you can't decipher that face). Won't be surprised if he ends up with a black eye fairly soon. And I'm really regretting not setting up some family portraits for yesterday like I had been considering. Because who knows what he'll look like for the next several months, right?
Ah, urgent care. I'm not sure how we avoided it for so long, with the three kids that we have. I suppose it was inevitable that it happen soon. Still... it's been a very long day.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Metroid
(Did I say something earlier about being able to find time to catch up on my blogging? Obviously, getting a yucky cold wasn't part of the plan, so I beg mercy.....)
Alex has picked up a totally cute ability for an almost-14-month old: He's making sound effects. You know, he watches the kids like a hawk, and tries to do everything they do. Which, a lot of times, is not fun: Like when he tries to climb the bunk bed ladder, or jump on the couch, or all sorts of too-big-for-him things. But when it comes to imaginitive play, the whole copy-the-big-sibs thing is so adorable!!!
Lately, their new thing is playing Metroid. I mentioned this briefly in one of the Facebook Friday updates (and yes, I realize I haven't posted the latest installment....). The kids dug up a copy of Jesse's Game Boy Advance "Metroid Zero" game about a month ago. Since then, they've asked him to play it, they've asked me to play it, and they've figured out how to play it themselves. And of course, it wasn't long before they started pretending Metroid games in the home. Complete with curling up into a ball to get into narrow spaces, doing the beam-me-up animation style "save", and of course, shooting enemies.
Jacob is such an action poser. He mimics it with such precision. He would grab his forearm, get into a forward-facing attack crouch, and make "Pshew, Pshew" sorts of laser gun sounds as he shot at imaginary monsters. So then Jesse had the bright idea to give them props, which he made from used Vitamin Water bottles - just cut off the end, and painted them green, like Samus' weapon. Observe:
You get the concept, right? Green cylindrical shape that covers your forearm. Easy enough, with a water bottle or two!! Well, Jacob's was a hit, and Melinda soon got her own, and now even Alex has one. Because he just couldn't be left out of the fun. As soon as anyone starts playing any sort of shooting/chasing/fighting game, Alex is so in on it. And the sound effects make watching it just absolutely a hoot!!
So I tried to grab a video of it tonight - it's not great... there's a lot of other noise going on in the video, and I had a hard time being in front of him so you could see his face while he was making sounds. But of the "Pshew, Pshew" sounds, Alex is making about half of them, and Jesse's doing the rest, for the most part. Also, if you see a large pink tutu flying around, Jesse was pretending it was a fireball shooting out of his fist. I'm so glad he can still play with the kids like that. It's awesome, and I love it.
So here's the video. Enjoy the cuteness!! I know I do. :)
Alex has picked up a totally cute ability for an almost-14-month old: He's making sound effects. You know, he watches the kids like a hawk, and tries to do everything they do. Which, a lot of times, is not fun: Like when he tries to climb the bunk bed ladder, or jump on the couch, or all sorts of too-big-for-him things. But when it comes to imaginitive play, the whole copy-the-big-sibs thing is so adorable!!!
Lately, their new thing is playing Metroid. I mentioned this briefly in one of the Facebook Friday updates (and yes, I realize I haven't posted the latest installment....). The kids dug up a copy of Jesse's Game Boy Advance "Metroid Zero" game about a month ago. Since then, they've asked him to play it, they've asked me to play it, and they've figured out how to play it themselves. And of course, it wasn't long before they started pretending Metroid games in the home. Complete with curling up into a ball to get into narrow spaces, doing the beam-me-up animation style "save", and of course, shooting enemies.
Jacob is such an action poser. He mimics it with such precision. He would grab his forearm, get into a forward-facing attack crouch, and make "Pshew, Pshew" sorts of laser gun sounds as he shot at imaginary monsters. So then Jesse had the bright idea to give them props, which he made from used Vitamin Water bottles - just cut off the end, and painted them green, like Samus' weapon. Observe:
So I tried to grab a video of it tonight - it's not great... there's a lot of other noise going on in the video, and I had a hard time being in front of him so you could see his face while he was making sounds. But of the "Pshew, Pshew" sounds, Alex is making about half of them, and Jesse's doing the rest, for the most part. Also, if you see a large pink tutu flying around, Jesse was pretending it was a fireball shooting out of his fist. I'm so glad he can still play with the kids like that. It's awesome, and I love it.
So here's the video. Enjoy the cuteness!! I know I do. :)
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
April 1st Rundown
April 1st was so interesting last year, what with me going into labor and all. This year's April 1st was also an "interesting" day. A full day, for sure.
This was the day that I woke up with my voice completely hoarse and bullfrog-like. Fun times, for such an unexpected twist! (Nature's April Fools joke on me??)
We started off our morning bright and early with Melinda and Jacob's swim classes. Melinda is definitely being moved to a Level 2 class. She kept insisting her teacher said she would be Level 2, but nobody talked to me about it until this week. The teacher tested her very quickly on things like "diving" into the water and floating on her back, because she wasn't sure if she'd be better off in Level 2 or Level 3, I guess. But Level 2 it is. Melinda absolutely *amazed* me by retrieving 3 toy rings from under the water at the end of class. She wouldn't open up her eyes underwater, of course, but she'd take a good long look at where the rings were, close her eyes tight, take a deep breath, and plunge underwater. She'd stay there for 3-4 seconds, feeling around with her hand, and pop back up for a breath. She later told me that she even took her feet off of the ground while she was under. With some persistence, she got all three of the rings, and dunked herself under the water at least 10 different times! She had the most proud smile on her face as she handed her three rings to the teacher! Jacob was okay for most of the swim class - he avoided getting his head near the water during the "Simon Says" portion at the beginning, but didn't hesistate with hopping back and forth between walls when it was time for that, and didn't really seem perturbed by jumping into the water off of the wall when his teacher was ready to catch him. He DID freak out about being asked to float on his back, though, even with support. I could hear his yells of "It's too scary for me! I'm tooooo scaaaaary!!!" from inside my closed-off room. He curled his body up and wouldn't relax to even try. Not unexpected, though - he does that even in the bathtub. And the other little girl in the class reacted the exact same way, only without the words. We'll see if he gets brave enough to try over the next few weeks, huh?
After swim class, we popped over to the party store and bought a boquet of balloons for Alex. Because what new 1-year-old boy doesn't like a fun floating balloon? And then we stopped by Edible Arrangments to order a special treat for Jesse. Jesse's just been amazingly supportive and loving lately, and then I got to thinking about how I wouldn't even have these adorable kids to celebrate their birthdays if it weren't for him, and I just decided it was high time he got something special, too, for always being there for us and making our lives so much better.
By the time we got home, it was 10:30. Kaija was still in bed, asleep. I certainly couldn't blame her... I'd probably still be sleeping at 10:30am if I had a quiet house, too! But we woke her up at that point, and then I baked a cake. After lunch, we headed out to Coldstone Creamery to get a free ice cream for the birthday boy (which we had *just* signed up for that morning... yay for printable birthday coupons!), and one for everyone else, of course. And really, Alex only had a few bites of the ice cream, I ate the rest. ;) After Coldstone, we were just heading back to the car, where we were going to go pick up Jesse's boquet and deliver it to his work, when he called. Hands juggling 2 ice creams, keys, a diaper bag, and trying to open a door, I opened up my cell phone and wondered why he was calling so soon after lunch. He'd been hit by a car on his way back to work. The guy was making a left-hand turn onto his road, didn't see Jesse (it *was* a dreary day, and the road is busy), and hit his bumper to Jesse's bumper. Jesse had seen him coming, and slammed on his breaks, but with the wet roads, he couldn't stop soon enough to avoid being hit. His passenger side headlight is now gone, the front grill was smashed up by another driver on the road, and the bumper and hood took some damage. But luckily, nobody was hurt, not even a little bit of whiplash. Unfortunately, with Kaija being here, and us being busy, we haven't gotten his car to a body shop yet. We were about to do it on Saturday morning, but discovered the shop that the guy's insurance recommended was MUCH too far for us to go to. When we called to check on alternatives, we discovered that the insurance rep would be gone for an entire week. So his auto care is still up in the air at this point, since we don't want to simply assume we can go wherever we'd like, but have some confirmation so we don't get stuck with a bill. Also, Jesse is really hoping they don't decide the car it totaled. It's still running well enough for him to drive it now, as long as he doesn't take it out at night when he would need a headlight. But if there's some internal damage that would get costly to fix, Jesse seems to think there's a good chance that it could cost more than the car is worth, at it's old age ('94). And then we wouldn't have enough money to get a car to replace it, more than likely. Well, we do, but with
job stability being what it is, we wouldn't spend it on a car.
Anyway, so after talking to Jesse and first freaking out and then calming down, we moved on and picked up his boquet. When I dropped it off at his work, he was already talking with insurance people. So I just gave him a quick hug and kiss and let him get back to all of that... but I think it was a nice surprise.
Kaija, the kids, and I all headed out to the Towson mall to do some quick browsing and to play at the playplace. Kaija picked up some new shoes at Nordstrom Rack (holy wowza, the high heels she picked! I don't think I could walk in them! But they looked fantastic on her!). I couldn't resist buying a sweet pink lacy-overlay type of dress for Melinda that was hanging near the shoes. She can't wait to wear it to church this coming week, either.
We headed home just in time to get back and decorate Alex's cake and make dinner. Alex had fallen asleep on the way home from the mall, and he woke up with perfect timing at the end of dinner, giving us just enough time to do presents, cake and ice cream before heading out to the circus.
Now, I didn't spend tons of time on this cake... just made something simple and quick. Sorry Alex. I hope you don't mind in 15 years or so, when you're looking through all your baby pictures. We were so busy, and you were just going to smash things anyway. ;)
And now for the barrage of picture. Don't worry, I'm only showing you about 1/3 of what I actually took...
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Okay, now the fun starts! He loves the curly ribbons. .jpg)
Peering past the torn paper to figure out what's inside: .jpg)
Kaija puts the bow on Alex's head. Awww, how cute! (And, yeah, his clothes are dirty. Remember how short on time we were? Not gonna change the clothes just before cupcake time, not smart!) .jpg)
Yes! The piggy bank was an instant hit! (This one was from myself and Jesse.) Jacob likes it a lot, too. :).jpg)
Alex opens a fun little bathtime toy from Grandma Wilcox. Really getting the hang of present-opening now! .jpg)
Not the best picture ever, but it's the only one I took of Alex playing with the new ball toy (from myself and Jesse). .jpg)
Aunt Rachel (I hope I got that right!) sent Alex a fun little book called Swing!. I've actually been thinking about buying this one for a couple months, so it was a perfect gift! Jacob "yoinked" it so he could look at it himself, and Alex was just walking up to him to take it back, because he was so interested in seeing it. The pictures move when you turn the pages. .jpg)
Grandma and Grandpa Newson sent this adorable pajama set. It fits perfect, I love the big truck theme, and he needed new PJ's. Thank you so much!! .jpg)
Uncle Ben & Aunt Brea also sent a lovely card in the mail. And a few days later, we also got a card in the mail from Aunt Megan and her family, complete with Alex's first dollar bill. Thanks everyone!
On to cake time. Here's the cake I decorated for Alex. Cream cheese frosting is difficult to decorate with because it's so soft... especially when you're in a hurry, and you had forgotten that you ran out of frosting bags and had to improvise with Ziploc bags. That's all I'm sayin'. .jpg)
Alex carefullly inspects his individual cupcake. .jpg)
Flips it over a couple times. .jpg)
Eventually, he smashed it apart, never attempting to really eat any of it. But he definitely enjoyed licking his fingers when everything was flung off of his tray. .jpg)
.jpg)
Such a silly birthday boy!! .jpg)
Here are the videos, which, for me, is the best part:
And of course, after all of that, we spent a few minutes finishing up our cake and ice cream, cleaned up Alex, and made sure everyone had clean clothes on. There was just a couple minutes to play with toys, and then we went to the Circus down at the 1st Mariner Arena near the Inner Harbor. But that's a post all of it's own, so I'll save it for later.
This was the day that I woke up with my voice completely hoarse and bullfrog-like. Fun times, for such an unexpected twist! (Nature's April Fools joke on me??)
We started off our morning bright and early with Melinda and Jacob's swim classes. Melinda is definitely being moved to a Level 2 class. She kept insisting her teacher said she would be Level 2, but nobody talked to me about it until this week. The teacher tested her very quickly on things like "diving" into the water and floating on her back, because she wasn't sure if she'd be better off in Level 2 or Level 3, I guess. But Level 2 it is. Melinda absolutely *amazed* me by retrieving 3 toy rings from under the water at the end of class. She wouldn't open up her eyes underwater, of course, but she'd take a good long look at where the rings were, close her eyes tight, take a deep breath, and plunge underwater. She'd stay there for 3-4 seconds, feeling around with her hand, and pop back up for a breath. She later told me that she even took her feet off of the ground while she was under. With some persistence, she got all three of the rings, and dunked herself under the water at least 10 different times! She had the most proud smile on her face as she handed her three rings to the teacher! Jacob was okay for most of the swim class - he avoided getting his head near the water during the "Simon Says" portion at the beginning, but didn't hesistate with hopping back and forth between walls when it was time for that, and didn't really seem perturbed by jumping into the water off of the wall when his teacher was ready to catch him. He DID freak out about being asked to float on his back, though, even with support. I could hear his yells of "It's too scary for me! I'm tooooo scaaaaary!!!" from inside my closed-off room. He curled his body up and wouldn't relax to even try. Not unexpected, though - he does that even in the bathtub. And the other little girl in the class reacted the exact same way, only without the words. We'll see if he gets brave enough to try over the next few weeks, huh?
After swim class, we popped over to the party store and bought a boquet of balloons for Alex. Because what new 1-year-old boy doesn't like a fun floating balloon? And then we stopped by Edible Arrangments to order a special treat for Jesse. Jesse's just been amazingly supportive and loving lately, and then I got to thinking about how I wouldn't even have these adorable kids to celebrate their birthdays if it weren't for him, and I just decided it was high time he got something special, too, for always being there for us and making our lives so much better.
By the time we got home, it was 10:30. Kaija was still in bed, asleep. I certainly couldn't blame her... I'd probably still be sleeping at 10:30am if I had a quiet house, too! But we woke her up at that point, and then I baked a cake. After lunch, we headed out to Coldstone Creamery to get a free ice cream for the birthday boy (which we had *just* signed up for that morning... yay for printable birthday coupons!), and one for everyone else, of course. And really, Alex only had a few bites of the ice cream, I ate the rest. ;) After Coldstone, we were just heading back to the car, where we were going to go pick up Jesse's boquet and deliver it to his work, when he called. Hands juggling 2 ice creams, keys, a diaper bag, and trying to open a door, I opened up my cell phone and wondered why he was calling so soon after lunch. He'd been hit by a car on his way back to work. The guy was making a left-hand turn onto his road, didn't see Jesse (it *was* a dreary day, and the road is busy), and hit his bumper to Jesse's bumper. Jesse had seen him coming, and slammed on his breaks, but with the wet roads, he couldn't stop soon enough to avoid being hit. His passenger side headlight is now gone, the front grill was smashed up by another driver on the road, and the bumper and hood took some damage. But luckily, nobody was hurt, not even a little bit of whiplash. Unfortunately, with Kaija being here, and us being busy, we haven't gotten his car to a body shop yet. We were about to do it on Saturday morning, but discovered the shop that the guy's insurance recommended was MUCH too far for us to go to. When we called to check on alternatives, we discovered that the insurance rep would be gone for an entire week. So his auto care is still up in the air at this point, since we don't want to simply assume we can go wherever we'd like, but have some confirmation so we don't get stuck with a bill. Also, Jesse is really hoping they don't decide the car it totaled. It's still running well enough for him to drive it now, as long as he doesn't take it out at night when he would need a headlight. But if there's some internal damage that would get costly to fix, Jesse seems to think there's a good chance that it could cost more than the car is worth, at it's old age ('94). And then we wouldn't have enough money to get a car to replace it, more than likely. Well, we do, but with
job stability being what it is, we wouldn't spend it on a car.Anyway, so after talking to Jesse and first freaking out and then calming down, we moved on and picked up his boquet. When I dropped it off at his work, he was already talking with insurance people. So I just gave him a quick hug and kiss and let him get back to all of that... but I think it was a nice surprise.
Kaija, the kids, and I all headed out to the Towson mall to do some quick browsing and to play at the playplace. Kaija picked up some new shoes at Nordstrom Rack (holy wowza, the high heels she picked! I don't think I could walk in them! But they looked fantastic on her!). I couldn't resist buying a sweet pink lacy-overlay type of dress for Melinda that was hanging near the shoes. She can't wait to wear it to church this coming week, either.
We headed home just in time to get back and decorate Alex's cake and make dinner. Alex had fallen asleep on the way home from the mall, and he woke up with perfect timing at the end of dinner, giving us just enough time to do presents, cake and ice cream before heading out to the circus.
Now, I didn't spend tons of time on this cake... just made something simple and quick. Sorry Alex. I hope you don't mind in 15 years or so, when you're looking through all your baby pictures. We were so busy, and you were just going to smash things anyway. ;)
And now for the barrage of picture. Don't worry, I'm only showing you about 1/3 of what I actually took...
Alex plays with his balloons for a minute before he gets started with the presents:
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Okay, now the fun starts! He loves the curly ribbons.
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Peering past the torn paper to figure out what's inside:
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Kaija puts the bow on Alex's head. Awww, how cute! (And, yeah, his clothes are dirty. Remember how short on time we were? Not gonna change the clothes just before cupcake time, not smart!)
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Yes! The piggy bank was an instant hit! (This one was from myself and Jesse.) Jacob likes it a lot, too. :)
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Alex opens a fun little bathtime toy from Grandma Wilcox. Really getting the hang of present-opening now!
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Not the best picture ever, but it's the only one I took of Alex playing with the new ball toy (from myself and Jesse).
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Aunt Rachel (I hope I got that right!) sent Alex a fun little book called Swing!. I've actually been thinking about buying this one for a couple months, so it was a perfect gift! Jacob "yoinked" it so he could look at it himself, and Alex was just walking up to him to take it back, because he was so interested in seeing it. The pictures move when you turn the pages.
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Grandma and Grandpa Newson sent this adorable pajama set. It fits perfect, I love the big truck theme, and he needed new PJ's. Thank you so much!!
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Uncle Ben & Aunt Brea also sent a lovely card in the mail. And a few days later, we also got a card in the mail from Aunt Megan and her family, complete with Alex's first dollar bill. Thanks everyone!
On to cake time. Here's the cake I decorated for Alex. Cream cheese frosting is difficult to decorate with because it's so soft... especially when you're in a hurry, and you had forgotten that you ran out of frosting bags and had to improvise with Ziploc bags. That's all I'm sayin'.
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Alex carefullly inspects his individual cupcake.
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Flips it over a couple times.
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Eventually, he smashed it apart, never attempting to really eat any of it. But he definitely enjoyed licking his fingers when everything was flung off of his tray.
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Such a silly birthday boy!!
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Here are the videos, which, for me, is the best part:
And of course, after all of that, we spent a few minutes finishing up our cake and ice cream, cleaned up Alex, and made sure everyone had clean clothes on. There was just a couple minutes to play with toys, and then we went to the Circus down at the 1st Mariner Arena near the Inner Harbor. But that's a post all of it's own, so I'll save it for later.
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
The Baby Turns One
At any rate, today is the day he turns one year old. Amazingly. Incredibly. Unbelievably. And we're fortunate to have my little sister Kaija visiting with us this week, so I'm busy bonding and hanging out and running us all ragged. Well, not too ragged, but I'm definitely on the go more than usual with someone to entertain in the house!
So, we will be celebrating today, but you won't get full details for a while. You'll all have to wait until later, probably after the weekend, after Kaija is gone, when I will actually have time to really sit down again. I sure have a lot to share, already! But I wouldn't want to be a negligent host/big sister. ;)
In the mean time, feel free to reminisce with me by re-reading Alex's birth story, looking at some baby pictures. I'll be enjoying the second April Fool's Day of many, many more to come that I will always cherish in a whole new way: No longer a day just for jokes and pranks, but a day to celebrate our family being blessed and forever changed for the better..
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Kids These Days
Prepare to be overwhelmed by newness. The kids have been busy!!
Melinda drew a fun picture the other day. It seems to me that she has a lot of good imagination, and a fairly decent drawing ability, but it's harder and harder to encourage her to sit down long enough to draw anything anymore. But here's what she came up with: Her and a friend sliding down a really fun slide (it's on the back of a math paper, so excuse the other odd things that scanned through - I toned them down as best as I could):
We also bought a jump rope a few days ago. Again, something she was completely unable to do when we brought it home. But with a little time and determination, she again figured it out all on her own. She's up to doing 4 jumps in a row!
I don't really have any fun pictures of Jacob, but he's gotten extremely comfortable with computers in the past couple weeks. A month or so ago, he was completely unable to get a handle on using the computer mouse. Now he clicks everything, much to our dislike/ Because, yeah - do you really want a 3 year old helping himself to anything and everything on your computer? He can your change task bar's size, location and type faster than you can even realize that he's standing in front of your computer, messing with things! The kids are allowed to play on Jesse's computer, which is mainly just for internet usage and games, so there's nothing sensitive there. But Jesse is frequently annoyed these days, trying to figure out how to undo what Jacob has rearranged. And the rule is that he's not allowed to even touch my computer, but that doesn't keep him from trying. He's particularly fond of clicking the pause button when I have music playing. Over and over and over.
Jacob's also learned how to use the potty "Daddy's way". Standing up. Oh, the messes... He hasn't quite mastered how to get that aim right at the very beginning yet, and we frequently end up with wet potties, wet socks, wet shirts.... but he's bound and determined to keep right on standing up for potty time. A shame, too - he was so comfortable just straddling the toilet, when even Melinda never was, and still isn't. She's still nervous without a toddler-sized potty seat. But Jacob just keeps on trying new things.
With summer coming up, and both Melinda and Jacob still being fairly uncomfortable with water, I finally bit the bullet/got on the ball/admitted reality - whatever you want to call it - and signed them both up for swim lessons. They'll start in Level 1, geared toward the kids who still don't put their face in water (yup, that's them!), and have half-hour lessons just down the street every Wednesday for 6 weeks. Melinda's super excited that I'm finally getting her lessons, after probably a good year of talking about it, but she's still doubtful about the part where she's going to have to put her face in water. Hopefully the instructors are as good as I've heard they are! Plus, they don't chlorinate the pools, so hopefully it will be easy on their eyes. From their website:
Alex. Now, Alex is constantly doing something new!! Can you believe the little guy turns one year old on April 1st?! Just a couple weeks away! (*sniff, sob, sniff*)
He's really mastered climbing on our chairs now. One of his favorite pastimes is climbing up the front room chair, climbing over to the couch, sliding down feet first off the couch, and starting the whole rotation over. He'll do it for a good half hour before he gets bored! He loves to climb up onto the computer chairs and see what treasures he can find up on the desks. And last, but not least, he figured out the dining room chairs. For a couple days, we got away with just making sure the chairs were pushed in after we were done using them. Now, though, if he's feeling really determined, he will pull the chair out, and then climb up on top. And of course, the table is easy pickin's after that. And what toddler in his right mind wouldn't go ahead and climb up on top of the table if he already got as far as the top of the chair? So, nothing is safe anymore. What an adventure...
A couple other fun, random things that Alex has done: He really likes to "play" the drums from Guitar Hero:
Alex also likes to take the stairs out of Melinda's dollhouse, and then crawl right on into the bottom floor. Like he's Clifford the Big Red Dog, or something. ;)
Alex has been mimicking for a long while now... but we just hit a pretty major first. We've had a letter Z and letter Z words hanging up on the wall for a couple weeks now, and Jacob and Melinda like to point at them and name them. The other night, I took Alex near the wall, and he started pointing at the pictuers, too. So I told him the names of each one. Pretty soon, he was saying the "zzzzzz" sound right along with me, and clearly proud of himself. The next night, which was last night, we did it again, and he said "zzzzz" even better than before. And when we went and sat back down with daddy, we pointed to me, saying "Mama". Pointed to Jesse, saying "Dada". Pointed to Alex, saying "Alex". He paid very close attention, clearly interested in this new thing. We repeated it a few times. Then, he pointed just like we had been doing, right on Jesse's chest, and very clearly said "dada"!!! Of course, then he tried to call me "dada", but didn't sound as sure about it. But I think we can call that his first word, can't we? (And, for the record, he doesn't really say "mmm" sounds yet, so I don't think "mama" will happen anytime soon.)
This next thing is not so much completely kid-specific, but I still wanted to include it. We had a few friends over for a playdate yesterday. I had wanted to do a playdate this Tuesday anyway, but when I saw it was also St. Patrick's Day, we (okay, fine: I) decided to make it a little bit fun, too. We ran to the store and got some green lei's and some shamrocks (which we hung on the walls), and some St. Patrick's Day plates. We set out every green food we could manage: Sliced green apples, cut up broccoli, celery, cucumbers, pickles, green grapes... I would have done sugar snap peas, too, but they looked awful and wilted at the store. I also made little "rainbows on a stick":
And the playgroup was really fun. A nice full house, with a total of 9 kids and 4 of us adults. All those yummy fruits and vegetables were plowed right through. And when the veggies were gone, Melinda wanted more and requested some carrots and dip. Of course, she was also given the option of extra bug-shaped graham crackers that our friend brought along. Can you believe she declined that in favor of the carrots? :) Jacob, in the meantime, was working hard to remind me how hard 3-year-olds are. I guess I had forgotten. But when he went from perfectly fine to throwing a big ol' giant fit over bike-sharing issues, I exclaimed in exasperation, "Are all three-year-olds like this?!? Because I seriously can't remember!" And, in unison, all my friends piped in with a hearty "YES!" Sigh. I guess that means I get to do this all over again in a couple years with Alex. Ugh.
We continued our green fun for dinner: We had a soup that included green onions and spinach, followed by a leek/spinach/broccoli quiche. Which was very yummy, by the way. Although now I'm starting to wonder if maybe the kids wouldn't have enjoyed some corned beef and cabbage.... oh well. The all-green-all-day thing was fun, too. :)
Melinda drew a fun picture the other day. It seems to me that she has a lot of good imagination, and a fairly decent drawing ability, but it's harder and harder to encourage her to sit down long enough to draw anything anymore. But here's what she came up with: Her and a friend sliding down a really fun slide (it's on the back of a math paper, so excuse the other odd things that scanned through - I toned them down as best as I could):
In just a couple weeks, Melinda has gone from being completely unable to hula hoop, to becoming a quick expert. I'm amazed at how quickly she's picked it up!!
We also bought a jump rope a few days ago. Again, something she was completely unable to do when we brought it home. But with a little time and determination, she again figured it out all on her own. She's up to doing 4 jumps in a row!
I don't really have any fun pictures of Jacob, but he's gotten extremely comfortable with computers in the past couple weeks. A month or so ago, he was completely unable to get a handle on using the computer mouse. Now he clicks everything, much to our dislike/ Because, yeah - do you really want a 3 year old helping himself to anything and everything on your computer? He can your change task bar's size, location and type faster than you can even realize that he's standing in front of your computer, messing with things! The kids are allowed to play on Jesse's computer, which is mainly just for internet usage and games, so there's nothing sensitive there. But Jesse is frequently annoyed these days, trying to figure out how to undo what Jacob has rearranged. And the rule is that he's not allowed to even touch my computer, but that doesn't keep him from trying. He's particularly fond of clicking the pause button when I have music playing. Over and over and over.
Jacob's also learned how to use the potty "Daddy's way". Standing up. Oh, the messes... He hasn't quite mastered how to get that aim right at the very beginning yet, and we frequently end up with wet potties, wet socks, wet shirts.... but he's bound and determined to keep right on standing up for potty time. A shame, too - he was so comfortable just straddling the toilet, when even Melinda never was, and still isn't. She's still nervous without a toddler-sized potty seat. But Jacob just keeps on trying new things.
With summer coming up, and both Melinda and Jacob still being fairly uncomfortable with water, I finally bit the bullet/got on the ball/admitted reality - whatever you want to call it - and signed them both up for swim lessons. They'll start in Level 1, geared toward the kids who still don't put their face in water (yup, that's them!), and have half-hour lessons just down the street every Wednesday for 6 weeks. Melinda's super excited that I'm finally getting her lessons, after probably a good year of talking about it, but she's still doubtful about the part where she's going to have to put her face in water. Hopefully the instructors are as good as I've heard they are! Plus, they don't chlorinate the pools, so hopefully it will be easy on their eyes. From their website:
If you notice a slight salt taste in our pools it is because they are state-of-the-art! We brought these systems in from Australia. We add salt to the pool, raising the salinity to 4500 ppm (the human tear is 8000 ppm). Then we run the salt water through a low voltage electrical charge in the backroom that converts the salt (NaCl) water into natural chlorine. We never have to add harsh chemicals to these pools.
Alex. Now, Alex is constantly doing something new!! Can you believe the little guy turns one year old on April 1st?! Just a couple weeks away! (*sniff, sob, sniff*)
He's really mastered climbing on our chairs now. One of his favorite pastimes is climbing up the front room chair, climbing over to the couch, sliding down feet first off the couch, and starting the whole rotation over. He'll do it for a good half hour before he gets bored! He loves to climb up onto the computer chairs and see what treasures he can find up on the desks. And last, but not least, he figured out the dining room chairs. For a couple days, we got away with just making sure the chairs were pushed in after we were done using them. Now, though, if he's feeling really determined, he will pull the chair out, and then climb up on top. And of course, the table is easy pickin's after that. And what toddler in his right mind wouldn't go ahead and climb up on top of the table if he already got as far as the top of the chair? So, nothing is safe anymore. What an adventure...
A couple other fun, random things that Alex has done: He really likes to "play" the drums from Guitar Hero:
Alex also likes to take the stairs out of Melinda's dollhouse, and then crawl right on into the bottom floor. Like he's Clifford the Big Red Dog, or something. ;)
You think we're done yet? Not a chance! Alex also has started to figure out the fun little pop-up toy that seems to be a standard in every home, and has certainly been in ours since the early days of Melinda:
And, being such a busy boy, it's always nice to crash on a cuddly Daddy at the end of the day:
This next thing is not so much completely kid-specific, but I still wanted to include it. We had a few friends over for a playdate yesterday. I had wanted to do a playdate this Tuesday anyway, but when I saw it was also St. Patrick's Day, we (okay, fine: I) decided to make it a little bit fun, too. We ran to the store and got some green lei's and some shamrocks (which we hung on the walls), and some St. Patrick's Day plates. We set out every green food we could manage: Sliced green apples, cut up broccoli, celery, cucumbers, pickles, green grapes... I would have done sugar snap peas, too, but they looked awful and wilted at the store. I also made little "rainbows on a stick":
And the fun part: Green juice. I can't remember clearly whether this is something I found a couple years ago on the internet, or if maybe Jesse's mom, Nedra, gave the idea to me. But basically, it's spinach and apple juice. Put enough apple juice into the blender to provide liquid, add a whole bag of baby spinach, and blend it all together. Then, put it all through a strainer, leaving out the really thick bits of spinach, add in the rest of the apple juice, and you're left with a very green apple juice with a surprisingly enjoyable and refreshing spinach flavor. We gave this to Melinda to drink when she'd get constipated. But it seemed like it would be fun to enjoy on St. Patrick's Day, too, so I added it to the menu for our playgroup. :)
And the playgroup was really fun. A nice full house, with a total of 9 kids and 4 of us adults. All those yummy fruits and vegetables were plowed right through. And when the veggies were gone, Melinda wanted more and requested some carrots and dip. Of course, she was also given the option of extra bug-shaped graham crackers that our friend brought along. Can you believe she declined that in favor of the carrots? :) Jacob, in the meantime, was working hard to remind me how hard 3-year-olds are. I guess I had forgotten. But when he went from perfectly fine to throwing a big ol' giant fit over bike-sharing issues, I exclaimed in exasperation, "Are all three-year-olds like this?!? Because I seriously can't remember!" And, in unison, all my friends piped in with a hearty "YES!" Sigh. I guess that means I get to do this all over again in a couple years with Alex. Ugh.
We continued our green fun for dinner: We had a soup that included green onions and spinach, followed by a leek/spinach/broccoli quiche. Which was very yummy, by the way. Although now I'm starting to wonder if maybe the kids wouldn't have enjoyed some corned beef and cabbage.... oh well. The all-green-all-day thing was fun, too. :)
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Randomness
You know, I think Mr. Sandman is out to get me. But not in a helpful way. Between Alex's crack-of-dawn antics yesterday morning/the night before last, and last night.... Boy oh boy, am I getting sleep deprived! What happened last night? I honestly have no clue. Donated blood in the evening, felt perfectly fine all night. But despite feeling very tired, heavy-eyed, and ready for sleep last night, I could not fall asleep!!! Finally, at 4am, I was starting to drift off (no thanks to my MP3 player's batteries, which had died around 3am, taking my relaxation music with it) - I could tell, because my brain was following a not-real storyline, and it was just barely starting to get that surreal feel to it.
And then Alex woke up. Yay. Well, he went back to sleep fairly easily, but it just prolonged my falling asleep. And of course, you know, the entire time I'm laying there, whacking Jesse every few minutes for daring to start snoring again (can't you see I'm trying to fall asleep over here?!?) I'm thinking how entirely unfair it is that I'm getting closer and closer to morning with no relief in sight, and this is the second night in a row that I'm not getting the sleep I need!! And there's no chance for naps today - we've got a playdate after lunch. And I have to get ready for hosting preschool at our house tomorrow. So, yeah. I'm super-duper happy today!! Or not. I actually feel like digging my eyeballs out, they're so tired.
Go to the 6th folder of your picture files and post the 6th picture.
....drumroll!!
My 6th picture folder happens to be 2008. And then I sort them by month within that, so there weren't any individual pictures. So I picked the 6th folder, which was June. And the 6th picture there is this slightly-blurry but oh so spring-worthy picture. I can't wait for spring!! (Holy moly, Melinda's hair was short!!)
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Alternatively, if I ignore the 6th folder part, and just go to my "internet" folder, where I store all sorts of random photos, the 6th photos is this one of Melinda and Jacob just before Halloween in 2005!
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This is a fun way to waste 5-10 minutes (or more if you actually want to be creative).
Make your band's album cover meme:
1 - Go to Wikipedia. Hit “random”
or click http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The first random Wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.
2 - Go to Quotations Page and select "random quotations"
or click http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last four or five words of the very last quote on the page is the title of your first album.
3 - Go to Flickr and click on “explore the last seven days”
or click http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days
Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.
4 - Use Photoshop or similar to put it all together.
And here's my band's album!
***** ***** *****
***** ***** *****
And then Alex woke up. Yay. Well, he went back to sleep fairly easily, but it just prolonged my falling asleep. And of course, you know, the entire time I'm laying there, whacking Jesse every few minutes for daring to start snoring again (can't you see I'm trying to fall asleep over here?!?) I'm thinking how entirely unfair it is that I'm getting closer and closer to morning with no relief in sight, and this is the second night in a row that I'm not getting the sleep I need!! And there's no chance for naps today - we've got a playdate after lunch. And I have to get ready for hosting preschool at our house tomorrow. So, yeah. I'm super-duper happy today!! Or not. I actually feel like digging my eyeballs out, they're so tired.
***** ***** *****
Allyson over at Laughadaisy tagged me for a quick little picture meme:Go to the 6th folder of your picture files and post the 6th picture.
....drumroll!!
My 6th picture folder happens to be 2008. And then I sort them by month within that, so there weren't any individual pictures. So I picked the 6th folder, which was June. And the 6th picture there is this slightly-blurry but oh so spring-worthy picture. I can't wait for spring!! (Holy moly, Melinda's hair was short!!)
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Alternatively, if I ignore the 6th folder part, and just go to my "internet" folder, where I store all sorts of random photos, the 6th photos is this one of Melinda and Jacob just before Halloween in 2005!
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***** ***** *****
And here's another meme for you, that I found on Facebook:This is a fun way to waste 5-10 minutes (or more if you actually want to be creative).
Make your band's album cover meme:
1 - Go to Wikipedia. Hit “random”
or click http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The first random Wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.
2 - Go to Quotations Page and select "random quotations"
or click http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last four or five words of the very last quote on the page is the title of your first album.
3 - Go to Flickr and click on “explore the last seven days”
or click http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days
Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.
4 - Use Photoshop or similar to put it all together.
And here's my band's album!
***** ***** *****
I'm thinking of making baby blankets for my two sisters, Melissa and Megan, who are both expecting their first baby girls in May. I've been eyeballing quite a lot of lovely, adorable, girly fabrics on Etsy. What do you think, you two? Any of these strike your fancy?? I'm wondering if I should even mention it (too late now!!). Because I've been oh so unreliable at finishing projects lately. But I should be able to handle some simple blocked blankets by May, right?? Here's what I'm looking at:
I also absolutely adore this bundle of fabrics.... but it's not so girly. :( I might have to buy it for myself....
***** ***** *****
Uhhhh.... look what Alex just figured out how to do while I was typing this post....
***** ***** *****
I have the best kids!! While that video was uploading, Jesse got home and we had lunch. And then I put Alex down for a nap. Just before Jesse left back for work, and after I left the room to rock Alex, Jesse told Melinda and Jacob to clean up the room for me. When I came out, they had put all their train tracks away, and folded all the blankets! *sniff* Way a make a tired mama so happy!!
Monday, February 23, 2009
A Few More
Pictures and videos, that is.
Here's a couple more of Alex climbing our dining chairs... he's really getting too big for his own good!
And here's a video I grabbed during one of our recent sick days. All of us lined up in front of the computer to play some Webkinz games. Sigh, no, they're not really educational. But they're fun for the whole family! Just see how much they all enjoy it. ;)
Here's a couple more of Alex climbing our dining chairs... he's really getting too big for his own good!
This is what happens lately, if I dare sit at the computer with Alex awake. If he's not already on my lap, he'll climb up onto it (and if I'm sitting just right, he doesn't need any help from me, between using the stool, my crossed ankles, and the arms of my chair as strategic climbing grips). And once he's on my lap, he's not satisfied to stop there. He'll pound my keyboard or climb all over my desk. Today he finally made it all the way on top. Now I'll never be able to do computer stuff with him awake again, he's just too eager to get back on top of my desk!!!
And here's a video I grabbed during one of our recent sick days. All of us lined up in front of the computer to play some Webkinz games. Sigh, no, they're not really educational. But they're fun for the whole family! Just see how much they all enjoy it. ;)
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