Reminders for my Family

Here are some reminders for my family, from just this morning:

Matt- Please remember to put the milk back in the fridge after you have breakfast. I know you eat about 6:30, but we don't eat until about 7:45, I don't like warm milk on my cereal! And if the cereal is gone, please throw the packaging away.

Megan- Please pick out your clothes the night before if it is going to take you so long in the morning. Next time, I am going to let you miss your bus!

Christian- Please, night time is for sleeping. Being up at 3 and 6 doesn't make your mama very happy. Especially when you think you have to eat to go back to sleep.

Courtney- You've done good this morning! I usually have to remind you over and over to eat breakfast, but today you ate it right up. Great job! And yes, I keep telling you I will play with you and I will!

5 am?

Christian,

We were doing so good. You slept through the night for 5 nights straight. Sleeping from 9-6:30 counts as sleeping through the night for me! Ahh. I've been waiting for this day!

I can get up at 6:30 with you, I am fine with that, but 5 am. Why?? And then you look at me with your big blue eyes and smile..very funny. Don't you understand that we had a big weekend and your mom is tired? very tired?

And what you also think is funny is that you don't have to go back to sleep until 6:30...an hour and a half? Please Christian, let's get back into our new habit of sleeping ALL night...please?

Thoughts from the Weekend

We just got back a couple of hours ago from camping the weekend in Fremont and here are a few of my thoughts.

1. I hate packing to leave and I hate unpacking when we get home. But I enjoy the time in-between!

2. I really missed my rocking chair. There is really no comfortable place to nurse Christian in the camper. AND, I always had to cover up because I never knew who would be popping thier head in or what little kids would be playing in our camper at feeding time.

3. Next time, we need to take fire wood.

4. I need to be more creative in my meals. Cold sandwiches for lunch and hot dogs/ hamburgers for supper for 3 days. Yikes! My kids don't care, I don't care, it's easy, but we're camping, we should cook something over the fire! And yes, we have before. We made a roast once on the fire and pancakes for breakfast, but since we didn't take fire wood, it wasn't possible this time.

5. I am out of practice. This is only our 2nd time camping this year and I am not quite in the swing of things.

6. If I "think" we have enough of something in the camper, I better bring spare along just in case. We "thought" we had enough bottled water and dog food in the camper, so we didn't take any. When we got there, we realized we didn't and had to make a special trip into town. Also, if I "think" that 1/2 gallon of milk will last us 3 days, I am wrong too!

7. Is it bad that I need to know where my kids are at all times? Sometimes I feel bad because I don't let my kids run wherever they want, whenever they want. Really, should I feel bad about this or should I be responsible for them?

8. Megan is doing a great job riding her bike, but I almost can't watch her! I am afraid that she is going to fall and hurt herself. Her and Matt rode their bikes all over the campground and she didn't have a bit of problem. She did hit a "stop" sign here at home the other day and that didn't help my anxiety any about this at all!

9. Expectations- I don't like it when they are placed on me and I don't like it when I place them on others. Matt always says, "Expectations always lead to disapointment" and he's right.

10. Some day we will need a bigger camper. Adding a third person to our family has really made the camper feel smaller. It's amazing what stuff you need to take with a baby and how much room it takes up. I feel we are constantly stepping on one another.

11. I enjoy taking the girls swimming and watching them jetski, but sometimes I wish I could just get in and enjoy the water with them. With having a baby, I am stuck on the beach watching them and watching everybody else have a good time. And yes, this is temporary and it is the stage of life we are in right now, but I do sometimes wish I could get in and have fun. If somebody watches Christian, I get a little break from the beach, but it usually doesn't last that long.

This also goes for bike-riding. Matt was constantly taking the girls on bike rides this weekend. He said he rode over 10 miles with them! As for me, I asked my brother once to keep an eye on my three kids once so I could go for a short ride. Christian was sleeping when I left and I guess he woke up right away after we left and fussed until I got back. If I wanted to go along, I had to take Christian and push him in the stroller and watch everybody else ride thier bike. Again, this is our stage of life right now, it will be better next summer.

12. Maybe going from Friday to Monday without baths for the children is too long...we would've given them a bath on Sunday, but we were just going to get into the dirty lake later that afternoon. Why bathe them? And Monday we were going home. We just waited, but they were filthy. Even little Christian needed a bath.

I do admit though, we had to wash Megan's hair this morning. I couldn't get through the tangles, so I just put her head over the side of the tub and I washed it. We'll wash the rest of her tonight before she goes to bed.

13. Even though camping is supposed to be relaxing, it's not. Especially when you are by a busy road and the kids are riding scooters and bikes by the busy road or you are trying to keep track of two older children as they run between two campers, the swing set, and monkey bars. Ah, I am almost glad to be home. The girls can run free all they want inside of the house, I don't have to worry about them anymore!

14. Next time we got camping beside my brother, I need to make sure my girls are using our bathroom. They didn't want to go potty in our bathroom because there were too many flies in there, so they thought it was fun to use his bathroom all weekend! Well, he ran out of water by the 2nd day! 50 gallons! Yikes, Sorry!! (and it wasn't just our girls in there using all the water, but they contributed it to it for sure!)

15. Ok, now that my thoughts are done, I should go unpack or make something besides hamburgers for supper!

Packing Fairy?

Does anybody know of a packing fairy who will come to my house and pack everything we need to go camping this weekend?

Just thought I would ask...

2 nights in a row!

We have slept through the night two nights in a row- this may be the start of something good! Roughly 8-6:30. It is wonderful!!

I don't know what happened, but we've had a much happier baby lately. And a much happier mom!

Then and Now...

I noticed in my last post that I had a picture of Megan holding Christian. I went back through my pictures and wanted to find one of her holding him right after he was born and then one that I took a couple of days ago.

I think Christian is going to be too big for Megan to hold pretty soon!

Night and Day Difference

I haven't had a chance to blog in a couple of days. Partly because of little Christian and partly because my hands still hurt from my pinched nerve in my back. I've been going to a chiropractor and it's getting better, but we're not 100% better yet! I'm feeling really good right now and Christian is sleeping, so we'll try to do this quick!

I was thinking today about how smooth the day was going. Christian has been happy, he has ate good, and has taken good naps in his BED! When he's been awake, he's been content to lay on the floor or in his swing. Therefore, I am much happier! I have energy today and even got some housework done. After Megan got home from school, they helped clean too. Ahh, I love it!

Megan and Christian also had some time to bond after school.

I think Courtney put the rabbit ears on his head, but both girls thought it was hilarious!
Poor Christian, I think he's saying, "What did those sisters do to me now??"

This is so much better when compared to last Monday! Christian was a trainwreck! He woke up at his usual time and by 10 am, he was down for a morning nap. I thought we were doing good! (I'm figuring out that instead of putting him back down for a nap an hour after he got up, that I really should feed him again and keep him up a little bit longer). He woke up at 11, so I thought he would be happy. I was WRONG!! I fed him and tried until 1:30 to get him back down for another nap. Obviously nothing ws working and the poor boy was just getting crankier (somebody was tired)!

I tried to put him down in his swing, in his swing swinging, in his swing swinging with music on, in his bouncy seat, and in his crib. Nothing worked. I would always rock him to sleep and five minutes after I put him down, he was back up crying. I was so frustrated! I was trying to get lunch in the middle of all this too and Courtney was contstantly asking me to play with her. I feel terrible when I have to say, "Not now Courtney, I'm working with your brother."

About 1:45, I was ready to pull my hair out and I said, "Fine, I'll hold you then!" So I sat down in the recliner and for the next hour and a half, I held him while he slept. In the meantime, Courtney had come downstairs and asked if we could watch her new movie, Snow White. I thought, if I'm going to sit here and hold this child, I might as well watch a movie too!

The movie was over about 3:30 and I decided to put him back in his swing so I could be ready when Megan got home. He went into his swing great and then slept for another hour. After a 2 1/2 hour nap, he was happy again! AHHH.

Like I said, today has been completely different than Monday! Whatever it is, I hope it lasts!