Merry Christmas!

We had a wonderful day celebrating Christmas with our family! We feel so abundantly blessed! We are most thankful to have Jesus as our Lord and Savior...the best gift of all.

Sleep update

Apparently I've taken a major blogging break over the month of December.  I actually was pretty shocked to see that I hadn't blogged since the 1st!  Where did the time go?  December has certainly flown by but it has been such a fun month filled with Christmas shopping, Christmas light looking, lots of warm drinks, a brief but beautiful snow, and preparations to go see our families.

I was so thankful for everyone's comments regarding the sleep dilemma at our house so I thought I would give you a quick update.  So after I wrote my last post about sleep here, we tried the recommendations from the book (as little social interaction as possible when bringing the kids back to bed), and when she slept through the night two or three days in a row, we thought it was successful...until she started waking up again.  More and more frequently.  We quickly realized that this technique was NOT working on our sweet little girl, and sleepless nights certainly make you feel frantic/desperate to find a solution.  We hit our low when she got up 13 times one night, so we decided to figure out a way to lock her in the room.

This was a really hard concept for me.  I had several friends who successfully used this technique, but the book said it should be used as a last resort, last case scenario.  Once I read what the "experts" recommend, I have major mom guilt to think about doing otherwise.  It makes me second-guess everything.  To make matters worse, we live in a really old house with old door knobs that are too big for the normal child proof methods.  To make a long story short, we found some contraption off amazon (have I mentioned I love amazon) that after nailing two paint stirrers to the door frame (don't ask), works great!  The first night she was sad for about 5-10 minutes, but then she went back to bed...and slept through the night.  Then she slept through the night again, and we thought, why didn't we try this sooner?  Then she started waking up...again.  However, now she wakes up maybe once (sometimes not at all), usually around 3, and starts knocking at her door, saying "mom, mom, mom."  Usually by the time I make it to her bedroom, she's turned on her lamp, she has no clothes on, and she's picked out a whole new outfit she wants to wear.  We always have a conversation about how she wants to be awake now and I try to look as tired as possible (which isn't difficult) while assuring her we are all asleep.  It would be really funny if it wasn't the middle of the night.  However, waking up once a night?  I'll take it.  I'm thankful for the sleep we're getting and feel much more refreshed these days (although I still depend on coffee for extra energy during the day).  

When we're visiting family I'm sure all the "sleep training" will be reversed and we'll be back at square one.  Sigh.  Never.ending.battle.

Advent

I'm pretty proud of my homemade little advent calendar. It turned out pretty well if I do say so myself with fairly minimal effort. I feel like the cool numbers really made it. Don't kid yourself...I did not make those. Gotta love etsy.

Each day, I will put a note with a fun activity (I'll post my list later), a special treat, or something little (from targets dollar bins). Miss E loved her special treat today. It's so fun coming up with new traditions!

Our ball of energy

Sweet E, my life would be so boring without you.  

My precious little girl has so much life and energy that sometimes I wonder if I can keep up.  Her language has grown by leaps and bounds the past several months, and it has been amazing to see her put words together.  She has been calling me "my mommy" and Kev "my daddy" which cracks us up.  "My mommy I need help please."  When we're listening to a song she doesn't know, she says, "What's this song about my mommy?" and I find myself trying to describe the theme of a song in words a 2-year old would understand.  The other day when we were driving we were stuck in some traffic and she said, "these cars go to pootball game?"  Yes, we live in a college football town. :)

 There is 2 things I love about this picture.  First, she's wearing her favorite shirt (aka "kitty cat shirt") that she got last year from my mom.  She seriously wakes up every single morning asking to put on her kitty cat shirt and is devastated if I tell her it is dirty.  Thankfully, she has one other shirt she likes (a short sleeve shirt with a puppy dog on it) that we try to alternate with.  Second, her hair is down and messy.  This girl HATES getting her hair fixed.  Hates it (unless Momo does it).  I always think, who would want hair hanging in their eyes, getting stuck in their boogers, but it never seems to bother her.  She does occasionally request a pony tail.  Otherwise, she fights getting her hair fixed like I'm trying to do something really mean.  So sometimes I don't fight it...hence the hair in this pic.

 We had a big month for Miss E.  Two days in a row she sat in the potty and actually went peepee.  Oh the things you get excited about with kids.  Unfortunately it hasn't happened again, and now I think she just wants to sit on the potty so she can wipe.

In this picture she's trying to get my camera which is basically the only way I could catch a smile.  She does not like getting her picture taken, and definitely will not smile for me.  She's an ornery little girl. 

This is the face she usually gives me.  Stinker.

She has really strong preferences: she will only wear this pink hat, she hates wearing jackets but if forced, she will wear a little thin fleece jacket she has, she is obsesses with putting her shoes on but will only wear the blue shoes because the buckle is a challenge, and the list goes on.

Things she has loved lately: reading (especially Clifford...kind of getting sick of ol' Clifford), listening to music (especially Disney songs, and she has loved listening with head phones lately), going to the mall (so we can go to the pet store and the Disney store), Chipotle, special treats, milk, peanut butter and honey sandwiches (every.single.day), eating dinner by candle light, playing on the monkey bars, swinging "high," jumping on her bed and off her bed, watching Curious George (I think she would actually would watch just about anything we let her...not necessarily a good thing), singing, being "nakey," building tents with dad.

 I love the way her nose wrinkles when she talks. 

Things she hates lately: any adult dressed in costume (the Chick Fil A cow, santa, etc), bed time and nap time (basically sleeping), being told what to do, being told she needs to wear clothes, when I leave to go to work or to go to the gym, being left in her Tiny Tots class at church or the gym nursery

 She certainly keeps us on our toes but she is such a joy!

11 Month Update

Another month has flown by and in 1 more month, we'll be celebrating his birthday.  This month has been so much fun because the little man has really upped his activity level.  However, it has given me two kids to chase after versus one.  Gone are the days of plopping him on the ground surrounded by toys.

 He's still wearing 12-18 month clothes and size 4 diapers.  To be quite honest, we should have moved up to the next size of diapers but I mistakingly ordered a huge box of diapers from Amazon so now we're squeezing them on him, bearing through the blowouts (which don't seem to bother me as much since they almost always seem to fall on Kev's watch).  Poor guy.

He is still drinking 4 bottles a day of 6oz, but his table food consumption has exploded this month.  He eats anything we eat...and has loved almost everything.  Today he ate an entire piece of pizza (don't worry, Mom, I gave him lots of water too).  His favorite thing that I can tell so far is cheese and noodles.  He can't get enough, but he didn't care for canned peaches (sliminess maybe?) and eggs.  He has yet to master the sippy cup (I'm thinking maybe I should try the one with a straw), but he can actually easily drink out of a regular straw (thanks to Momo).  He also can now blow bubbles in his water as well which he thinks is hilarious.

He typically goes to bed at 7pm and wakes up about 6:30 or 7.  He still takes a 2 hour nap morning and afternoon.  2 hour naps make this mamma a happy camper.

 

His crawling speed has really increased!  He can get places fast, even on the wood floors.  He also stands on his knees to get things.  This kind of surprised me since I found him sucking on a piece of my gum I'd put on the coffee table (wrapper on).  He really didn't understand why he couldn't have that piece of gum.

Love this mischievous little look.

His absolute favorite things to play with lately is the DVD player/surround sound player knobs, remotes, the cover over the fire place, Elliott's little potty (which has now been peed in...sick), and paper.  He is a little stinker and definitely determined to get what he wants.  He still gets really sad when we have to take something away.

This is the best picture I could get with them together.  Ha.

I've found this past month that he and Elliott really egg each other on.  He blows bubbles, it makes her want to blow bubbles.  He touches the DVD and surround sound player, she touches them.  If he eats his food, we can sometimes get that to make her eat her food.  It's interesting to watch.  

When she lays on the ground, he comes and hits her face.  Paybacks.

 Poor guy needs a haircut.  Looking a bit like a mullet these days.

 He still loves to snuggle and loves touching faces.

He got another top tooth and one is on the way.

He still loves playing with balls and loves singing.  He also loves to clap.

Love him so!

More sleep please!

I'm certain I've written about sleep before, but let's face it, isn't sleep/lack of sleep a constant battle with kids?  For me, one kid was easy.  It was when we added a second one to the mix that it started feeling like someone was ALWAYS awake at night.  Maybe that's an exaggeration and it certainly has gotten better, but I definitely don't feel rested a lot of the time.  Maybe that's why I love coffee so much.

Our particular sleep woes right now lie with Miss E...again.  She used to be an amazing sleeper...until Mason was born.  It feels like we have gone through all kinds of sleep battles since then.  We would have seasons (that felt awfully short) that she was sleeping well, but those were usually the times M was up.  Never ending.  Well Mason is finally sleeping great!  He goes to sleep at 7pm and usually wakes up at 7am or a little after.  Amazing!  However, Elliott for the past month or so, started waking up really early in the morning.  It started at 5 or 5:30 then was progressively getting earlier.  Trying to do some trouble shooting, I decided to lay her down earlier at night thinking maybe she was not getting enough sleep.  This caused her to start waking up in the middle of the night...every.night.  And she was not just waking up once, she was getting out of bed MULTIPLE times, coming into our room.  I just thought waking up at 5am was bad.  I would much rather have her sleep through the night and wake up early, than wake up in the middle of the night and then still wake up fairly early.  A friend reminded me about Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child (which I owned and would definitely recommend), and by reading the section for her age, we came up with a plan for the middle-of-the-night wake times.

The author's recommendation was to give as little social interaction as possible.  He recommended walking them back to their bed without saying anything, seeming as disinterested as possible.  He also recommended sticking to one parent each night (we were alternating).  I took the first night and it was by far the worst.  She got out of bed 10 times in a two hour period.  Needless to say, I was pretty tired the next day.  Kev took the next day and she only got up about 3 times but then couldn't get her door open for some reason and after screaming for a little bit, went back to sleep.  The third day she got up once and then stopped getting up all together!  Amazing!  I'm so thankful it worked so quickly.  The book told a story of a couple that had to get up 69 times the first night then 145 the second night.  I seriously CAN'T even imagine.  Sounds awful!

However, she is still waking up pretty consistently at 5:30am.  We usually bring her back to her bed about 3 times, but then let her get up at 6:30.  She does get pretty grumpy as it gets closer to her nap but she is able to make it to 1pm.  She is still taking a 2 hour nap.  I'm just wondering now if she needs to go to bed later.  Maybe she's getting all the sleep she needs by 5:30 (that would be about 10 hours).  I feel selfish in saying this, but I kind of hate to put her to bed later because I treasure my time in the evening with Kev.  She has really been fighting bedtime and naps (regardless if she's tired), and she says repetitively, "I'm NOT going night night, I'm NOT going night night."  Any thoughts or words of recommendation?

I am thankful that she takes a long nap consistently in the afternoon, that she goes to bed fairly effortlessly (after she realizes that she WILL lose the battle of going to bed), that Mason is sleeping well at night and at naps.  I know it certainly could be worse.  I even like mornings, I'm just not always ready to deal with a toddler at 5:30am.

Christmas Traditions

Last year around this time, I looked like this.

I was, obviously, really pregnant and waiting in anxious anticipation for my sweet baby boy.  Don't get me wrong, I was excited about Christmas, but it felt like almost an after-thought.

Especially when this little guy decided to come on Christmas day.  Side note...has it seriously been a year since he was born?  Feels like yesterday.  He was most definitely the best Christmas gift ever, but I felt like I wasn't able to give much thought to the season.

 This year has been a different story.  In fact, I have felt so excited about Christmas, I couldn't wait to bust out the Christmas decorations until after Thanksgiving.  I even got my Christmas cards ordered before Thanksgiving.  I have loved the hustle and bustle of the season...all the deals in the stores and on-line, yummy food recipes posted EVERYWHERE, Christmas craft projects all over Pinterest.  My mind has been spinning with crafts to do with Elliott, potential presents to get friends and relatives, and on and on.

 And yet with all the excitement, I have had this nagging reminder that THIS...the hustle and bustle, the gifts, the decorations...these are not bad things and yet they are NOT what the season is about.  It's about God's gift to the world, His one and only Son that was born a baby and would eventually die a death on a cross so that we might live.  As we celebrate the birth of Jesus, it's a reminder that we are watching for our Savior, Jesus to return.   

 I want these things to be in the forefront of my mind so that I am able to communicate them to my children.  I want Elliott and Mason to be MORE excited that Jesus was born than the fact they are getting gifts.  Sounds simple enough but it's so easy to get caught up in the gift-giving, the sale-searching, the hot chocolate drinking, that the season passes us by and we realize we missed an amazing opportunity to celebrate Jesus.

I have been looking through several resources, and I thought this information on Focus on the Family was really helpful.  It has verses to be read every day and the simple activity of lighting a candle.  I know Elliott and Mason will not understand everything that's read, but it helps refocus our minds which helps us communicate with them more effectively.  I also have made an advent (pictures to come) that they will open each day in the month of December with fun family activities and treats.  I'm so excited to find traditions that make the holidays more meaningful!