Think big

I had another ultra sound today. It's always so exciting to get a sneak peak at the newest member of the family. He was yawing and sticking out his tongue. Darling. He looks a lot like Karaia did as a newborn.

Anyway, there were some questions if there was a blockage in his urinary tract (nope all clear), hence the ultra sound.

He is measuring at 5lbs 6oz already.

Now here's some math for those of you who crave it but don't get enough of it in your daily lives.

At this point, the baby is said to gain an average of a 1/2 lb a week.

I have 6 weeks left.

AHHHHHHHH!!!!

We are looking at another 8 pounder.

I still remember delivering Beckham. I wish I didn't.

That epi is looking nicer and nicer with each passing day. ( I know, mom. You are thrilled to hear that)

A little perspective

I've seen this before, but a friend sent this to me today and it couldn't have come at a better time.



I suppose I am not a failure, but simply a mom. It's amazing how funny something so tragic can turn into when it's put to music and condensed. I bet my kids get sick of me saying the same things too.

Maybe I should just sing it to them........

Failure

It is quite obvious this morning that I have failed as a mother.

My children care not for the instructions I give them and chose only to fulfill their immediate wants.

We talk about not doddling every day. Literally. We talk about the things that are considered doddling. We talk about what they need to do first BEFORE they can do what they want.

But if I am not right behind them checking up, they somehow magically forget the nice, well thought out, talk we had a mere 15 mins. before. Everyday.

They have consequences for doddling but they hold no lasting, if any, effect.

So it is obvious to me, that I have failed. I don't know how to succeed. It is not from lack of trying. How in the world are these children going to grow up to be productive members of society if I can't even teach them the importance of doing what they say they will regardless of whether or not someone has reminded them of it or is watching them.

It is also obvious that Tennyson will grow up to be a graffiti artist as he, this morning, yet again, found a random crayon and felt the need to tag Beckham's wall.

We have tried everything to curb this behavior. We try to supply him with plenty of paper and supervised coloring time every day. We put up the crayons when he cannot be supervised. He has a chalk board that he can color on whenever his heart desires. But even then he has to be supervised because he cannot control his desire to draw on everything....thank goodness chalk comes off easily.

The feeling of failure. What a lovely feeling to have so early in the morning. It goes nicely with a bowl of cereal and a large cup of tears.

Twitch

My eye is twitching. Well, it's really my eyelid, but you get the point.

My friend tells me that is an indication of a lack of sleep.

Sleep? Ha (twitch)

When it takes 10 minutes to roll from one side (twitch) to the other only to find that other side is not comfortable either, "sleep" becomes a word you used to know.

It also might not help that we spent ALL DAY (twitch) Monday prepping and painting the kitchen/dinning room only to be so displeased with the color we (read I) chose that we had to stop. Now we have diarrhea colored outlines above our cabinets and all along the wall. Nice. (twitch)

The problem is I don't know what color I WANT it to be. Sigh. (twitch) The thing with paint color is you either love it or you hate it. There really aren't very many, "Eh, not my fav but I can live with it" colors.

This is when I need to become friends with a famous interior decorator, Candice Olson will do just fine. Please and thank you., that they will take such pity on my dilemma and come and design my room for free. Because that's the kind of friends we will be....Candice and I. Yup, just those very kinds of friends.

Until then, I think I'll avoid the laundry because

A) I hate folding and putting away laundry

B) I'd have to walk through the diarrhea outlined (twitch, twitch) kitchen to get it. Which will only exacerbate my eye twitching condition.

And

C) I would much rather lay on the couch and close my eyes while Tennyson is napping for a few more minutes.

Good bye (twitch) and good night (twitch)

They've got to eat

And I SO do not know what to make for dinner.

These are the days I wish I would run across some misplaced gift certificate to a local restaurant that I had forgotten I had.

That or someone randomly feeling the need to leave a meal at our door step.

I'd take either one.

That's the kind of not picky girl I am.

5:40 AM on the dot

It doesn't matter the time he fell asleep the night before. Makes no difference. 7 PM or 10 Pm.

Tennyson will still wake up at 5:40 AM every.single.morning.

Do we get him up? Of course not.

We do what has worked on the other two to change an unfortunate sleep schedule. But no effect on Mister Stubborn Pants.

We go in, we don't make eye contact, we lay him back down, cover him up, and leave.

We then let him cry for 15-20mins in the hopes that he will go back to sleep.

If he doesn't, which is more often than not, we will get up, change his diaper in the dark, lay him down, cover him up, and leave. No talking, no smiling, no eye contact. All business.

Sometimes he'll go back to sleep after that. But the better bet is that he continues to cry/talk until 7 am when we decide that that is an appropriate time to get up and we will then get him out for the day.

I am exhausted and terrified I am going to have TWO kids who don't sleep through the night in a few short weeks.

So I am putting out a plea.

PLEASE!!!

If you have any tips or tricks send them my way. Family, Friends, and Blog lurkers alike this is your time to shine. I don't care if I've never met you and we've never talked. I need advice and a new game plan. Share your wisdom with the weary!!!!

This momma needs some sleep.

December 6, 13, 17, 20, 21, 24, Christmas Morning

Might be a boring post, but it's more for documentation than for entertainment.........


On December 6, my mom and Dave had their Christmas party. They always go all out and everyone has a great time.

They have breakfast foods, like bacon, biscuits and gravy, eggs, fruit, french toast, yummmmmmmm.

My mom likes to do Christmas Bingo for the kids. It's something my grandma did for us as well and you can bet my grandkids will get the same treatment. I think it's something the kids really look forward to.

We got spoiled, of course, with a membership to Discovery Gateway and have already put it to good use. Thank you!!

It was a really nice way to kick of the holiday.

On December 13 my dad and Emma had their Christmas party. They too always go all out and have way more food than can be looked at let alone consumed. Which is what Christmas is about right?

My favorite dish is the tourtière. It's a meat pie they serve in Canada. I really have to make sure I have the recipe. I can't remember ever having a Christmas without eating it.

We were spoiled there as well. The kids got a fantastic kitchen that they just can't get enough of. Thank you!!

On December 17 Beckham had his pre-school party. A special someone came and I was pretty sure we could have canceled Christmas and all those pre-schoolers would have just been fine with that.



Tennyson only went up there because he knew there was candy. The second the candy touched his hand he ran away....quick

On December 20, Kevin's parents had their Christmas party. We had aebleskivers, which I love, and they tried to tell us Christmas was going to be slimmed down this year, but the presents nearly reached the top of the tree!!! I got fabric and gift cards to go buy more fabric, which I have spent all but $8 already!!! Thank you!

Spoiled, spoiled, spoiled.

But where are the pictures? This season, my pregnant brain took over and I forgot the camera most of the time. HOWEVER, we lucked out with the third Christmas party because I had kicked myself for forgetting the camera at the earlier two.

So here is a picture of Grandma Candace and Tennyson

Don't you just love this picture!

December 21 we had Kevin's Grandma and Grandpa Daly's Christmas party. The kids always find something fun to do there and Bob and Julie spoiled them like no other this year. Grandma and Grandpa gave us a beautiful hand-crafted statue of Christ that Grandma made and I just adore it. It reminds me of the work my grandma used to do.

December 24, we spent the day with Kevin's Grandma Janice and all his cousins. There are so many of us now, which makes it super fun, that we will probably have to switch locations next year.

That evening we came home and the kids opened one present, PAJAMAS! Aren't they so cute! Beckham kept grilling Kevin and I on making sure we knew to jump into bed and pretend we were asleep if we heard Santa on the roof.


Christmas morning turned out just as I had hoped. The kids were bouncing off the walls and they didn't get up too, too early

Beckham got a smart cycle. Super good exercise for the winter
Tennyson got an Easel. We are still working on him ONLY coloring on the easel. Luckily Santa only brought him chalk.

Karaia got a pink Leapster 2, that she has been asking for for 365 since she saw Beckham's Leapster last Christmas.


And to add a cherry on top of the perfect morning, we had the grandparents there to watch all the excitement. Thank you for coming!!! It meant a lot to us and we know the kids loved having you there.

Smart? ***Update at the bottom***

It's 8:10 pm.

Where are my husband and oldest son?

Headed to the Insta-care.

Why?

Because Beckham swallowed a dvd remote battery....yesterday....that he just told me about.

Why was it in his mouth?

That's what I asked too.

"Because I wanted to check to see if it was still good."

I thought people could "check" that by pressing a few buttons and seeing if they made the dvd player, oh I don't know, DO something. Apparently I'm up in the night. Because OBVIOUSLY the proper way to check a battery is to place it in your mouth.

When I told the poison control lady that he had put it in his mouth to "check" it's power level she said, "He's only 4?! Wow. That's pretty smart to know you can check a battery like that."

Hmmmm.....I hadn't thought to label his action as...smart.

Let's just hope the nickel sized battery isn't lodged anywhere.

Smart. Huh. Yeah, I'm still not buying it.

*****************************************

UPDATE:

They returned home 40 minutes after they left!

Fastest. Insta-Care. Ever.

They found the battery right away. It's the next thing to come out.

He was cracking up the Dr and Nurse the whole time he was there:

"My mom says batteries are poisonous."

"They are. She's right"

"Oh. My mom says not to put batteries in my mouth anymore."

"That's a good idea. Your mom is pretty smart."

So the next time you see Beckham ask him about his x-ray. Then sit back and prepare for a 15 minute edge-of-your-seat-roll-on-the-floor-laughing story.

Pretend it's December 5, 2008

Ummmm....yeah......

So it's been well over a month since I've posted. Lame I know. December is really busy for us and I, well frankly, I have been too lazy to download the photos that need to go along with these posts.

"But what about your previous post about not caring if you have the pictures or that things are posted chronologically...you are just going to post anyway?", you may be thinking to yourself.

Apparently I do care. And it's enough to keep me from posting. It's not that it's hard to download pictures, but we lost our cord so now I have to walk ALL the way downstairs to get the pictures from the camera to the computer. And I'm talking ALL the way downstairs. You can see my point.

So, pretend this post came on December 5, 2008. That was the day we had Karaia's 6th birthday party for her friends. It was a pajama party. We had pancakes with all the fixins', i.e. cherries, chocolate chips, whipped cream, you know, the good stuff. We put the candles right into Karaia's pancake and called it good.

Then everyone got to make ginger bread, read Graham cracker, houses. The kids had a blast! Everyone's houses came out so differently and it was interesting to see the kids that took the time on theirs and then the ones who's main goal was to see just how much candy would actually stick to the frosting.


Her actual birthday was not until December 18th, but that is just too close to Christmas to have a friend party. We did have family over for cake and ice cream.

Funny story about the cake

I asked Karaia what kind of cake she wanted. I asked her on the morning of her birthday. But when I asked her, I was thinking, chocolate, white, yellow, or confetti cake.

Her reply? "My Little Ponies, please!"

Conversation you would have heard had you been in my head,

"My little ponies? That's not a flavor. Oh.....yeah. I forgot a 6 year old NEEDS a decorated cake."

I think it came out OK for not having very long to think about it.



I don't think she noticed it was quickly done......Probably because of all the love that was put into it. (can I be any cheesier? Yes. But I will spare you."



I cannot believe she is 6!

She is a pretty amazing girl. She loves to read and be my helper.

She's my little garden buddy and finds weeding rewarding and fun, just like me.

She is starting to be her own little person who wants her space and for me not to know every last thing about her life. While this is hard for me, I do appreciate that she feels comfortable enough to tell me to stop asking questions because she just wants to think for awhile.

She has a little crush on a boy at school and I just can't believe that she is old enough to blush when she says his name!

I love her dearly and am so glad I am her mother.



Happy Birthday, Sweetie!!!!!