Why are we boycotting naps??

As of the last couple of days, Christian has not napped when we are at home. When we're out and about, he'll sleep in the car or stroller, but just not at home.

It all started last Thursday night when I went to mom's night out. I came home and after I nursed Christian and I went to lay him down, he would not let go of me! Once I peeled him off of me, he ended up crying for 2 hours because I would not sit and hold him all night. He fell asleep about midnight.

I had the same problem Friday. I went to put him down for his morning nap and he just grabbed onto my shirt as tight as he could and would not let go. Again, after I peeled him off, he cried for a couple of hours until he fell asleep.

Ever since then, I think it is pointless and I am refusing to wait for him to cry it out. One thing I have learned the last ten months is that he will not lay down and go to sleep on his own. During the last couple of days, I have nursed him to sleep like usual and when I move to lay him down, he wakes up. Even though he is extremely tired and needs to nap, he'll wake up. So, I've let him stay up and don't fight him for a nap.

I know, another bad habit, but really, I can either listen to him cry endlessly OR I can wake him back up and keep going with what we were doing. Plus he is usually happy once he wakes up a little bit. It is like he just needs a little catnap to get him through the next five hours or so. Today, he probably slept 1/2 hour the entire day and he was up at 6:45 this morning and I put him down at 9:30.

One thing though that is that he is exhausted by the end of the day and he crashes!

He has also had a runny nose the last couple of days, so you think he would need some rest to get better, but apparently not!

But really, can we give mom a break? Just a half an hour??

A Heart for Others :)

Yesterday, I was watching the World News about all the devestation that happened in the southern United States. Courtney was watching it with me and out of the blue she said, "Mom, we should pray for those people."

Next thing I know, she bows her head and I hear, "Dear Jesus..."

How sweet is that! I didn't hear the rest of her prayer, but I can almost imagine what she said!

When we sat down for supper last night and I ask who wants to pray, Courtney raises her hand and said, "I want to pray for those people in the tornado." And she did!

I hope she continues to have a heart for others!

Where's Waldo?

This week has been busy.

Tuesday night, we had Megan's one and only school music program. It was very cute and lasted a whole 15 minutes! They did a great job!

Last night, we had AWANA awards where they both received their book completion awards. Very proud of my girls for all the Bible verses they learned over the year.



Now some fun, can you find my girls in each of the group shots??


Here is the first grade class at Aldrich Elementary, there are about 100 kids.



Megan's sparks group from church. These are kindergarten through 2nd grade.


Courtney's Cubbie group from church, these are 3-5 year olds.

Any luck finding the girls??

Good Reports!

Megan, Courtney and I all had our 6 month checkups today at the dentist.

We all left with good reports, no cavities! Plus I didn't need a root canal or a crown. Yay!!

I'm pretty excited that I don't have to go back to the dentist for awhile, unless I decide to do invisalign, but that may be awhile.

Courtney and Megan both have spots on their teeth where they could brush better, but we're getting there. They both did good for the hygenist too, I'm very proud of them!

No Mario for a week??

Matt and the girls finished "Paper Mario" last weekend and Courtney is already begging to play another game with her. Matt said he is not going to play anymore Mario until next Saturday.

We have already begun a countdown: 4 days to go!

PS Courtney and I were in JCPenney's yesterday and we saw a t-shirt with all the Mario characters on it, including Peach. I let Courtney get it for her dad. :)

To nap or not to nap?

It has been apparent to me these last few days that how much sleep Christian gets during the day correlates to his bedtime. Maybe he's been like this all along, but I've just noticed it more this weekend.

For example, yesterday (Saturday), he was up at 6:30 am. Not very nice of him to get up so early on a Saturday. :( Anyway, no morning nap and then I took Megan to dance and let him home with Matt. While we were gone, he slept an hour on Matt's shoulder while he played the Wii. When I got home, he was awake and ready to go for the afternoon. He stayed awake until about 8 pm. By then, he was ready to crash! I nursed him and he was in bed by 8:30.

Today is a completely different story. He was up at 6:30 again, so he slept 10 hours. He was still tired when he woke up, so I knew he was going to take a morning nap. He fell asleep on the way to church at 9:30. When we got there, he woke up and he spent the next hour in the nursery. When I went and got him, he was giving me the "I'm really tired" cry, so I took him out to the car and buckled him in. Within 5 minutes of leaving church, he was out again. This was about 11:15.
We had to go to Lincoln today, but we had to go home first to get some things and change clothes. When we got home, we just let Christian sleep in the car. Twenty minutes later, we were back on the road. He did not wake up until we pulled into Lincoln at about 12:45. He slept about an 1 1/2 hours. Wonderful. :)

He was great at great-grandma's house, but by about 5, he was ready for another nap. We got in the car about 5:30 and before we were out of Lincoln, he was asleep again. He slept until we pulled into the garage at about 6:15-6:30.

Right now, it is 10 pm and he is still wide awake and crawling around everywhere!

Do I prefer one short nap during the day and an early bedtime OR two or three naps and then he's up until 10 pm??? I'm not sure!!

Saturday

I decided to throw all three kids in the bathtub today, just to see what would happen.
Christian decided to pee, that's what happened. The girls jumped out as soon as they could, I drained the water, refilled it, washed Christian, and then they continued with their bath. Too funny!

This picture is for April- the dinosaur pajamas fit him great!

I also took the girls to get thier very first pedicure this afternoon with some family members, they were great! Very cute- I will post the pictures soon!

Another set of tears...

Every morning when Megan leaves for school, Courtney always races over to give her a hug and a kiss (I hope this never ends!). Well this morning, Courtney came running down the stairs and Megan met her to get a hug.

But this morning, Courtney did something she doesn't usually do. When she gave Megan a hug, she also picked up her feet and wrapped those around Megan! Unfortunately, Megan couldn't handle the weight, they bonked heads, and fell backwards against the wall.

Megan is crying, Courtney is crying and it's time to send Megan out to the bus stop! Megan was holding her head, so I think she got hurt when they hit each other. I think Courtney just felt terrible!

I hate to send Megan to school crying, but she can't miss the bus. I made her give me a big smile as she ran down the driveway. Hopefully she's doing fine. Courtney is fine now too, but let's not do that again!

Tears :(

We had a couple episodes of tears from Courtney here at the Ruwe house today. 1. Courtney got upset because I wouldn't let her eat lunch in her playroom., There are tables in there and it would be fun, but the last time, I let her eat in her room, she spilled milk all over! 2. Everyday Courtney looks forward to getting the "junk mail." She is guaranteed mail almost everyday and it's fun for her to open everything and look what they sent her. She always gets excited when they send her "invitations" or empty envelopes. Today, there was no junk mail. Only a bill from Children's Hospital for Megan's bronchiolotis a few weeks ago. The poor thing, she was sitting in the backseat crying because there was no junk mail!! I guess Megan shed some tears at school today too. Another girl in her class got in her face and was being a bully and hurt her feelings. Poor girls..hope we have a better day tomorrow!

A Very Rainy Friday

Seriously, can the rain just stop for a few moments so all of us moms who are trying to load and unload kids in and out of cars not get soaking wet?? Please?? For example, I had MOPS this morning. Lucky me, I got a parking spot right beside the door to the church, so I could just run in with the two kids. How dreadful it would've been if I would've had to walk all the way across the parking lot in the pouring rain! (I'm sure some moms did though!) Then it was off to a birthday party and again, unload and load kids afterward in the pouring rain. Not the best of times! I even had to take my stoller in, so that got all wet too. I hate when that happens. After it all, I got home and it was only 62 degrees in my house. Yikes, it was cold! What happened to our 70 degree weather??

Kitchen Pictures

Good-bye old flowered curtains...

Hell0 newly painted kitchen!!!

One room down!!

Today was the day. The day my kitchen got painted!!!

My entire house is white with white carpet and the walls are getting really filthy. My kitchen is where I spend most of my day and I have been itching for awhile to get some new curtains in there, but I also wanted to get it painted while we were at it. Matt refuses to paint it because of the cupboards and woodwork, so last week, I called our neighbor who paints and got an estimate. Matt thought it was a reasonable price, so he agreed that we could get it painted!

I wil definitely be posting some pictures!

It makes me want to paint the rest of my house now!

Correction

Matt corrected me last night, he said our van came with 3 sets of keys.

I don't remember the third, so I think those are long gone and we will never see those again!

That's Where Those Were!

When we bought our van 7 years ago, it came with two sets of keys. For the last year or so, we've only had one set. One set mysteriously disappeared and I always thought that it would turn up in a coat pocket or in some drawer somewhere when I least expected.

Today it happened! I have a bin labelled "Holiday Items" and I was in there getting out our easter things for the next couple of weeks. I look into it and notice some keys, so I pull them out and lo and behold, they are our extra set!

How they got in there, I will never know, but I am sure glad we have them! There has been a few times where I cannot find the one set or Matt accidently took them to work and then I am stuck at home for the day (and we all know how much I like to stay home.:) Now that I have two sets again, I will always be able to leave!

Attic Shopping!

I know, sounds exciting, doesn't it!!

I mean, for Courtney, it is great! We open up the attic, pull out her next size of clothes and just like magic, she has her entire wardrobe for the next season! I love it! (Ok, she does get a few new things, but for the most part, it is all there already).

Thanks to end of season clearance sales, I have Christian's entire summer wardrobe too! I have plenty of shirts and shorts. He does need sleepers, so we might hit up a couple of consignment sales this week.

As for Megan, no attic shopping for her. She does need a whole new wardrobe. She may go along to our consginment sales this week. I usually have great luck with dresses there, but not much else. I'm not sure if anything from last fall fits her!

Thanks to the nice warm air, we have already purchased new sandals for the girls and I stopped yesterday and bought the girls some new dresses. They were excited! (I actually have to have Matt get the bins out of the attic yet, so we didn't have any summer-like clothes for any kids. When it is ninety degrees out and my children are still wearing long sleeve and jeans, we just had to get them some new dresses!)

First Sleepover!

Tonight Megan is at her first sleepover at a friend's house. I know the parents really well and I totally trust them with Megan. They were going to do some crafts, dinner, play Barbies, watch a Barbie movie, etc. I bet her and her friend stay up giggling- that is what sleepovers are all about! I am very thankful though that this is not her first time away from home overnight. She has spent the night at grandma's, two different uncles, and a friends house. I just hope she uses her manners and is on her best behavior! Now, what are we going to do the rest of the night? PS Sorry for the lack of blogging this week, it has been spring break with Megan and Matt also took the week off, we haven't done much!

Oh Mario!

Thanks to the re-discovery of the Wii and Super Mario and Paper Mario, my children are now addicted to playing. Ok, and Matt too. This is a time sucker that I really wish would stop. Or at least back off a little. The first thing out of the girls' mouth when Matt walks in is, "Daddy, can we play Mario?" The last hour before bed, they are playing Mario. Last night, I was gone and I came home and I asked what they did, of course, they played Mario. I said, "Did you play it all night?" Their response, "well, not ALL night!" Right now, playing Mario again. Ugh! Whenver I ask Matt to get off, I get, "I need to get to a save space." An hour later, still playing. And of course, children watching as obsessed with the game. Yes, it's good family time and all, but really, maybe we can pass just one day and not play Mario before I hide the disc somewhere where other family members cannot find it for awhile. :)

No recess and it was 60 degrees out?

One thing really drives me crazy at Megan's school- indoor recess as opposed to outdoor recess. Today it was 60 degrees out and I asked Megan when she got home if they went outside. I assumed they had. She said, "No, some kids had work to do, so we had indoor recess." What?? If it's 0 degrees out, sure, I understand, but holding the whole class in because a few didn't have thier work done (I'm not sure how many). Really? Let kids be kids and let them enjoy this beautiful weather!!! Don't punish my daughter because she had her stuff done! Yes, I know, how is the teacher supposed to be in two spots at once, but come on, let them go outside!