Kyleigh's Newest Skill

Last week, Kyleigh learned how to pull up.  It's crazy how quickly she's learning new skills.  Below is the progression of me finding Kyleigh each day after waking up from her nap.  I hope you enjoy these pictures as much as I did discovering her this way.

Day 1 (1/23/13): sitting up with legs sticking out of the crib

Day 2 (1/24/13): Kneeling and ready to pull up

Day 3 (1/26/13): "I'm standing and really freaked out!"

Everyday I walked into her room, I couldn't help but laugh.  I left the room to get the camera because I just couldn't resist capturing her newest skills.  Now, whenever I walk into her room, she is standing at the rails and waiting for me to get her.  I guess it is time for us to drop the mattress so she doesn't climb out.  

She's growing too fast!  I'm trying to soak up and enjoy each new skill after she's mastered it; however, she moves onto the next skill so quickly that it's difficult to just enjoy the current one.

Just me and the kids

Well, the week is here.  We found out on January 2nd that Ryan would be traveling to California for a week for work.  Since that phone call, I have been nervously anticipating, er correction, dreading this week.  And now it's here.

A very wise friend gave me two pieces of advice for this upcoming week.  1) Get a babysitter about halfway through the week.  It'll be so refreshing to have just a few hours to yourself and it'll help you get through the rest of the week.  Done - I have a babysitter coming on Wednesday from 4-7p and I get to enjoy dinner with my girlfriends!!  2) Have a glass of wine after the kids go to bed.  Sounds like a plan to me!!!  I'll be picking up that bottle today ;-)

Ryan left about 5:15a.  I couldn't get back to sleep after we hugged and kissed goodbye.  Many things were going through my mind and I just felt restless.  Anyway, other than Ryan leaving, the morning began like every other Monday morning: Kyleigh up at 6a and Reagan shortly thereafter.  Breakfast on the table, a few books read, Kyleigh down for a nap, and the laundry started.  The only thing that doesn't make today like any other Monday is that we don't have small group tonight.  And our normal routine will start again the rest of the week.  It's just that Ryan won't be here in the evenings to spend it with me and the kids.

While nursing Kyleigh before her morning nap, I decided to pray about this week.  I have been asking for prayer from everyone else, but hadn't actually done any praying myself.  So, I boldly asked the Lord to bless this week and to give me a good attitude about Ryan being gone.  It's not like Ryan asked for a week away from his family and it's not like he's going to enjoy not seeing us for 5 days.  Instead of wallowing in self pity about this week, I asked the Lord to let me enjoy the kids.  I don't have to view this week as a terrible week.  All along, I have been preparing myself that this is going to be the worst week in the history of parenting.  No other week could possibly be as bad as this week is going to be.  I know, a little dramatic.  Well, maybe big time dramatic.  But it's how I've felt.  Not anymore...it can be a good week; I can have fun with the kids; I can enjoy going to bed at 8p if I choose ;-)  It's all about my attitude and how I approach the week.  If I continue to think it is going to be terrible, then every small mishap is going to feed into that belief.  But if I keep a good spirit, then the little things won't bother me (I hope!) and I can enjoy the rest of the day.  I truly feel like my change in attitude came from praying this morning and I'm so thankful!

I started this post about 9:30a and it's now 3:00p when I'm finishing it.  Both kids are happily asleep, so I'm going to give the first 75% of this day a thumbs up!

Weaning and Sleeping

I am beginning the process of weaning Kyleigh.  I can't believe I'm starting this already, but it's time.  I don't think I have been producing enough milk which is why she's had such a problem with her weight.  She doesn't look small, but she's ridden the roller coaster of gaining weight.  I've decided at 8 months, I will go full force into the weaning process.  A side thought: I didn't know how long I wanted to nurse this time around.  I guess in the back of my mind I thought I'd go anywhere between 9 months and a year.  This was a goal and although I will be a month shy of my goal, I am happy that I've been able to nurse Kyleigh a full 4 months longer than I was able to nurse Reagan.

Another thought on weaning: What if this is the last time I nurse/wean a child?  I have not been one of those moms who absolutely loves nursing.  I chose to nurse because I knew this was the best nourishment I could give, but let's be clear, I didn't LOVE it.  I don't think I will look back on nursing with fond memories.  Maybe I will someday, but at the moment, it's just kind of an "eh" feeling.  Anyway, back to my point.  Even though I haven't loved nursing, I am grateful I did have the ability to nurse.  And the thought of potentially not nursing in the future is very strange.  There, you have it.  The possibility of another child is on the table.  Timing of that possible third child is up for debate ;-)

Okay....onto my next topic for today.  This month has been a rough month of napping schedules.  I posted a status on Facebook that said, "Would you rather: be up at 5a with the CHANCE both kids will nap at the same time or be up at 6:30a with alternating nap schedules making it impossible to leave the house before 4p?"  Little did I know that posting this would dramatically change my life!  Amanda, bless her heart, suggested that I wake Kyleigh up from her morning nap so that I can then put her back down at the same time Reagan goes down for his nap.  Genius!  I never even thought of waking her up because I always assumed "Never wake a sleeping baby."  Well, this plan has been working fairly well so far...and it's only been 6 days!!

The real reason I'm choosing to write about this today is because now that I have two kids who sleep for 1.5-2 hours at the same time, I have some personal issues I'm trying to handle with this new free time.  While it is always my goal to keep the house tidy and the clothes clean and all the other stuff that comes along with being a SAHM and wife, there are days in which I would rather sit on the couch, read a book, and just relax for an hour.  Those days never happen, though.  The minute I sit on the couch to read or take a nap, the guilt sets in.  I say to myself, "How can you just lounge around here while Ryan is working his tail off?  You don't need to rest, there are other more important things you need to do."  Let's be honest....Ryan has never ever made me feel that if I take one afternoon do whatever I want, he'll be disappointed.  This is completely self inflicted guilt and I know it.  However, I am struggling to get over it.  I just know how hard Ryan is working and how tired he is and I can't justify taking a nap, watching TV, or reading a book.  Maybe I'll let myself do this some day...

Off to finish the laundry while the kids still sleep!

A Day Like Today

If you would have asked me this morning how I thought the day would be, I would have answered, "terrible."  Today was the third day this week in which Kyleigh awoke at 5a.  I didn't physically get up until 6a (she was just talking for that hour), but mentally, I was awake the whole time.  In addition, I woke with a horrible headache.  With the combination of these two things, I was certain it was going to be a terrible day.

Oh contraire!  After an uneventful morning of getting ready to leave for Moms, I actually got us out of the house a few minutes early.  Since Kyleigh had been up since 5a and it was 8:45a before I got into the car, she immediately fell asleep once I put the car in reverse.  I dropped a few bags of clothes off at Goodwill and had a few minutes before heading to church.  What's a tired mom to do?  Head over to Caribou, of course ;-)

I was a little hesitant about the Moms meeting today.  We had an "Accessories Swap" and I wasn't sure I would find anything I wanted.  Once again, oh contraire!!!!  I snagged a super cute scarf and an unbelievable (and unused) Coach wallet.  Seriously, a Coach wallet.  Although I was really excited for my new accessory, I felt a little guilty taking it.  After all, did the woman who brought the wallet realize what she was giving up?  Lucky for me!

The next 2 hours of the day were a little rough, but I got through it.  To make a very long 50 minutes short, Kyleigh screamed at the top of her little, but powerful, lungs.  She just would not give in and go to sleep.  I decided I would let her go until 1:25p and if she didn't give in by that time, I would get her and forego the afternoon nap.  Fortunately, at 1:15p she finally let go and went to sleep.

Hooray for me!!!!  Both kids were sleeping and based on Reagan's normal nap schedule, they would both be sleeping for a significant amount of time.  During the hour and 45 minutes I had to myself, I was able to accomplish the following things: finish one module of online traffic school, dust ALL of the blinds in the living room, breezeway, and dining room (if you've been to my house, you know how many blinds I'm talking about!), sweep the floors in the living room, breezeway, dining room and kitchen, clean the bathroom, and make food for Kyleigh (bananas, sweet potatoes, and yellow squash). During all of this, the sun was shining brightly into the house and I couldn't be happier.

My whole attitude for the rest of the day was different.  I had more energy and interacted with the kids with a much better spirit than I have in the past several days.  I just felt so great and incredibly thankful.

I'll take more days like these!

Discouraged

I'm discouraged.  It stinks and I wish I didn't feel this way right now, but I do.  This is probably petty and I'll look back on this post and think it wasn't a big deal, but for now, it is a big deal to me.

We (as in Kyleigh and I) are going through napping issues again.  Shortly before we left for CA and definitely since we've been home, Kyleigh's napping has just been off.  She still sleeps at night, for which I am very, very thankful.  However, her napping is so erratic and causing me much discouragement.

As I'm thinking about what's off, there are no common threads.  Some days she won't take her morning nap.  Other days, she'll sleep for 30 minutes in the morning and take an afternoon nap.  Still other days, she won't take an afternoon nap.  Then, she'll sleep for 2 hours in the morning and 1 1/2 hours in the afternoon.  She'll fall asleep nursing; she'll fall asleep on her own and in her crib; or I'll have to drive somewhere to get her to fall asleep in the car, only to have her wake up within 15 minutes of getting home.  Kyleigh is all over the board and I'm frustrated.

Today, as I'm typing, I decided to let her cry it out for what seemed like a really long time to me (total of 20-25 minutes).  The poor girl is tired and I thought about picking her up before her screams woke Reagan, but I know she needs rest.  This time, she gave in.  But who knows what will happen tomorrow.

Ugh...I don't like complaining and I don't want to complain, but the past 6 weeks of her napping being all over the place is very discouraging and exhausting for me.  I keep thinking she's teething; after all, she is 7 months.  However, there are no other signs of teething and I certainly haven't seen any pearly whites pop through.  Maybe it's because she just learned a new skill (crawling) and she feels like she doesn't have time to sleep because she's got places to explore?  Very possible.  Or maybe, she's just being an infant, going through a phase where napping isn't her thing.

At the moment, and I emphasize moment, both kids are asleep.  I don't feel like doing my traffic school lesson (shame on me!), so I'm going to try and get a few zzz's myself.

Crawling, Mine, and Everything in Between

On New Year's Day, I was on the floor encouraging Kyleigh to crawl.  "C'Mon, girl, c'mon.  You can do it."  She smiled and continued to rock back and forth, back and forth, but didn't crawl toward me.  Then, I looked at Ryan and said, "Why do I want her to crawl so badly?  It's just going to make my life busier with TWO on the move."

The very next day, Kyleigh began to crawl!  After 6 weeks of watching her attempt to crawl, she finally did it.  Prior to this exciting achievement, it had been a really hard day.  Both kids had me at the end of my rope; it was my first real day back to reality, and Ryan had to work until 7p that night.  Then, within the last hour of the day, Kyleigh started crawling and Reagan and I had a really sweet moment.  He was sitting on his fire truck and I was on the floor.  He leaned into me for a kiss on the lips (which he never does), said "buh bye" and rode into the other room on his fire truck.  It was the sweetest moment!

Now, 6 days later, Kyleigh is crawling all over the place!  She's still not very fast, but she can get wherever she wants.  She's crawled down the hallway from the living room and she's crawled throughout the whole kitchen after leaving the living room.  These are just a few examples of her getting around.  Today, I had to move the cat food away because she crawled right to it!  It's like Reagan all over again.

While her crawling is very exciting and brings on a whole new element of life, Reagan is not handling it very well.  Kyleigh is constantly crawling to "his" toys or "his" car, or you name it.  The infamous word of a toddler, "mine," had entered his vocabulary with force.  Anytime Kyleigh gets near something he's been playing with, he snatches it out of her hands and says "mine."  Even if it's her toy (like her new purse teether or her little TV), he still takes it away with a firm "mine."  How do you teach a toddler to value of sharing?  His opinion is "What's hers is mine and what's mine is mine."  :-)

Reagan has had several sweet moments in the past week.  My favorite was the day he got his "beet" (translation: blanket) from his crib and crawled onto my lap for me to read him.  He just curled into me and sucked his thumb.  Our moment only lasted about 10 minutes, but it made me remember why I'm home and so appreciative of the ability to stay home.

Reagan's other sweet moment is that whenever he says "Daddy," I often respond, "I'm sorry, honey.  Daddy is working."  Reagan promptly replies, "Soon."  It's as if he's telling me Daddy will be home soon.  It's adorable and I love listening to him say it!

There are countless other moments throughout the day and week that I wish I could record.  I often think I should write these moments down so I don't forget.  It already happened today - one of the kids did something this morning and I wanted to tell Ryan about it tonight and I already forgot.  :(

Ah, life is good!

Christmas in CA

We had a great Christmas with our family back in California.  I can't describe how excited I was to go back to CA and get a break from everyday life here.  However, that part of the vacation wasn't what I expected (more on that later).

We flew out on Thursday, 12/20.  On our way back west, we flew Alaska Air and had a layover in Seattle before moving on to San Francisco.  Our travel day was tough...very tough.  Reagan, despite having his own seat, was more than a challenge.  I won't go into all of the details because who wants to read about it, but I'll just say this: he screamed and cried for more than 50% of the 6 1/2 hour journey to San Francisco :)

Bless their hearts, Michelle and Cooper came to pick us up and we met up with Brandon at a cafe in Marin for dinner.  Coop was hilarious!  Kyleigh decided it was time to exercise her voice on our hour long car ride and Coop wasn't a fan.  He was sitting next to her and almost the whole way, he had both hands in his ears trying to block out the noise!!!

We spent Friday up in Santa Rosa with Brandon, Michelle, and Cooper.  This was a really fun part of our trip because it was so relaxing.  Michelle made a FANTASTIC breakfast (bacon, eggs, and white chocolate pumpkin pancakes) and we just chilled at their house for a few hours before visiting Santa at the mall and then going to a local burger joint.  The ONLY drawback to our visit with B&M is that we didn't get to see Jacob very much.  We saw him for a few hours Thursday night and then just for an hour Friday morning before he left for school.  I wish we could have spent more time with him, but scheduling just didn't work out :(

Friday afternoon we made the 2 hour drive over to Lodi.  Brandon was gracious enough to lend us his car for the whole week we were in CA.  The drive over was uneventful; Reagan did not nap like we had hoped, but he did suck his thumb most of the drive over!

We spent the first three nights at the Kelsey house and this was fairly relaxing as well.  We didn't really have any set plans, which was really nice!  We had King Tsin Chinese food on Friday night.  Ryan and I got away Saturday afternoon to have lunch at Butcher Shoppe with Ginny and her boyfriend, Ed.  The Hust family came over Saturday evening for lasagna and games.  I ate my beloved In-N-Out Burger Sunday after church and then we had a little playdate with Darrell, Jorden, and their daughter Bradlee.  After they left, we had dinner at Strings, one of my favorite Italian restaurants!  Between eating and seeing a few friends, the rest of the time at the Kelsey house was very low key!

Monday (Christmas Eve) afternoon, we headed over to the Hust house for a four night stay.  Our time here was also low key with minimal plans.  Ryan made us a gourmet chicken dinner before attending Christmas Eve service.  It was a different service than I would have preferred, but the message of Christmas was clear.  Christmas day was different than any other I've had in the past.  Since Jeffrey was working and B&M didn't come to Lodi until 12/27, we did not celebrate Christmas on Christmas day.  So, that whole day didn't really feel like Christmas to us.  It was kind of strange.  The Husts invited friends over, including my parents, for a soup dinner.  People started to show up after 12p and we just relaxed all afternoon.  I was appreciative that my parents came so that they were not alone on Christmas day.  Jeffrey came to town the next day in the late morning.  We didn't expect him until 11:30, so Ryan and I spent the morning visiting Grandma/Grandpa Hust and Grandma Jones at their houses.  It amazing how quickly time passes.  We left at 9 and didn't get back until after 12!!  It was a nice break from the kiddos, though.  It was also nice to see the grandparents in their element.

Our last two days of the trip brought intense craziness!  Thursday we celebrated Christmas at the Hust house.  We opened gifts without the grandparents in the morning (best decision), ate a wonderful breakfast and relaxed a little before the grandparents all arrived around 2ish.  We then had a second round of gifts with the grandparents, ate an awesome steak dinner, and then put the kids to bed.  Doesn't sound too crazy, but throw Reagan's temper tantrums into the mix and the stress level went through the roof ;)  After the grandparents left, we played a game with Jeffrey, Megan, Ron, and Darcy and just had a great time!

Friday morning we packed up all of our stuff and headed back over to the Kelsey house to celebrate Christmas.  As soon as we arrived (about 8:30 or so), we ate a delicious breakfast before opening our presents.  Kyleigh slept through this part of the morning, but that was okay - she needed her sleep!  Cousin Mike, Laurel, and Mark came around 3 that afternoon, so we had another round of present opening before mom's big dinner.  One absolutely precious moment from this day was finding Reagan asleep in Brandon's arms while Brandon read to him.  It melted my heart.  Brandon then went to put Reagan down and he immediately woke up.  We left Reagan in the room for a little while, only to then find out he crawled out of the Pack-n-play and put 11 of my dad's books in the bed.  That little stinker ;)  After dinner, we put the kids down and then played a few games with the family.  All in all, another great day.

Saturday morning brought much sadness for many people, including us.  We packed up our stuff early and Brandon drove us back to SF for our flight back home to Chicago.  A few days before, we decided to purchase another seat for Reagan instead of having him as a lap child.  Right decision for sure, but the pocketbook won't agree ;)  This travel day was just as bad as the first, but at least we didn't have a layover; it was a direct flight.  We all made it back to Chicago in one piece and it felt good to be home.

So....why was this not the vacation I thought it would be?  I was thinking that I would get a break from work, just like Ryan was vacationing from work.  However, that was not the case.  I DID get A TON OF HELP from the family which I so very much appreciated.  But when the meltdowns started and the discipline needed to be done, I was still there to enforce (Ryan was too, don't get me wrong).  Then it hit me, there isn't a break from parenting.  Parenting is a full time job that never ends.  Even when family is around to help with feeding or distracting, my job as a parent and mother doesn't go away.  I'm not saying this is a bad thing, but this thought process hadn't really hit me until this trip back to CA.

Til next year...