Crib Dilemma

I've been going back and forth on this dilemma for several weeks now. I'd really like Wesley to be out of his crib and into either a toddler bed or a twin size bed before the new baby comes in September. For one, it would be really nice to use his crib with the new baby. Yet I am fearful of changing his whole routine before such a huge change happens to our family. The kid is a wonderful sleeper. He sleeps 12 hours during the night and takes a three hour nap in the afternoon. I don't want to ruin that.

The research I've done about transitioning a toddler out of the crib says to do it between 18 months and 3.5 years. They say it usually comes about once the child starts climbing out of the crib on a routine basis. Now Wesley has never climbed out of his crib nor has he ever even tried. He sits and plays in his crib with his oodles of toys for half an hour in the morning if I'm still running around feeding all the animals. If he was in a toddler bed he would just appear out of his room and I'd have to take him with me outside to do my morning feedings of livestock. It would be a lot of work.

So option two is to get another crib for the new baby and just let Wesley stay in his crib and cross that bridge when we get to it. I believe we're going to go with option two. I'm not going to push the kid out of his comfort zone anytime soon. My friend Jessica has graciously agreed to loan me her extra white crib which is one less thing I'll need to purchase. Thanks Jessica! Then last week I made my first big purchase for the new little Skittle"ette". I ran across this crib set online and just fell in love with it. We have a sage green bedroom upstairs that this will look darling in (that is when the crib moves up there from our bedroom).



I'm excited for it to get here so I can start making drapes and decorations. Fun stuff! Does this mean I'm already nesting?!

My laundry helper

We are in the midst of getting drenched with rain this week. This is wonderful for my new baby grass but not so good for a toddler with an excess of energy. Needless to say we are very bored. This also means there is nothing to blog about, so I shall leave you with a couple of pictures. Wesley "helps" me fold laundry every week. He does this by pulling each article of clothing out of the basket, identifying what it is and then throwing it at me. I then have to try and fold it properly before the next piece of clothing is hurdled at my head. It's kind of a fun game....laundry folding has become a speed event in our house.

This is now what I get when I ask him to smile for the camera. Mister Cheesy Smile.


He doesn't usually go around without a shirt on, he lost it due to his new fun trick of spewing whatever he's drinking all over himself. Grrr.

Finds

I got back today at 1:30 in the afternoon after four straight hours of searching garages sales. I found some awesome finds. Several things for Wesley, several things for the Little Skittle"ette". My biggest find was an older antique looking dresser. It's got style and will look just precious in a girls room. It needs to be refinished but I can do that. I got it for a whopping $10 (talked down from $20), I love good deals. I have no pictures of it since it is still in the back of the truck parked in the shop. Since the truck gets driven once every blue moon I imagine it will stay back there until I find time to refinish it.

I got Wesley about 30 new used books which we have already read today. I'm sure we'll get to read all of them tomorrow and the next day too. He really enjoys new books. I also found a little tykes table and chairs yesterday which he has fallen in love with. He'll just park his little butt in a chair and play with his little figurines. Whenever it's time to eat he runs over and gets in his little chair instead of running to the dinner table. It's cute.



I also ran across an antique Sesame Street toy that I couldn't say no to. It's a Story Telling Big Bird. I figured since we had a talking Cookie Monster and Elmo why not a Big Bird? But this thing is really quite neat. It has a cassette player stuffed in its rear end (literally) and you raise its tail to put the cassette in. Then Big Bird moves his beak to each word in the books that it came with as it reads the story. Very neat toy. Of course Wesley is a bit freaked out by it, as he is with most talking toys, but I feel he'll warm up soon. The toy was made in 1986. This is a toy I might have wanted when I was a kid....considering it came out when I was 7. They sure don't make things like they used to.



For the Little Miss Skittle I found all sorts of tiny clothes. I just couldn't resist those little pink onsies. I also couldn't resist this dress:



I feel like I'm starting to embrace my girly side (who knew there was one) and this little girl will probably be dressed in pink her whole first year. And I'm ok with that.

Crazy lady

It's official, I've become the crazy garage sale lady. I swear I was never like this before I had kids. When kids come along so does the need to fill your house with brightly colored, obnoxious toys and books. Seeing as the house is already filled with said toys, you might think I would just stop, but no. Now I need to find new and exciting age appropriate toys. We are done with the baby toys (until September anyways), now I'm looking for little boy toys. The race cars, the building sets, and of course anything Sesame Street. We also desperately need a new infusion of kids books in this house. If I have to read "Where the Wild Things Are" one more time....

Our city is having its city wide garage sale today and tomorrow and since it is supposed to pour buckets of rain tomorrow I feel today is my day to scavenge. I took Wesley around town yesterday for some of the early sales but it was a pain having to get him in and out of his car seat every two minutes for garage sales that had nothing. So today I'm dropping him at Grandma's house for an hour so I can race around baby free (except for the one that is kicking my insides right now).

I'm also pumped to look for little girl stuff. Everything that Wesley had as an infant will be used for her so I doubt I'll need much of anything. But I'll still keep my eyes open for tiny girl clothes, decorations and a dresser. I'm about 95% sure we found the name we are going to use. We have two that we both like but one is quite a bit less popular among little girls right now so I think we'll go that route. As with Wesley we'll keep it under wraps until she's born.
Have a great weekend everyone!

Mister Wesley is going to have a.......

LITTLE SISTER!!

I get to shop for little dresses!! Holy cow!
We had the ultrasound today and were just shocked and delighted to find out the news. I thought it was going to be a boy, even though this pregnancy has been like night and day compared to the first pregnancy. With this one the morning sickness was a lot worse, I'm carrying differently, the heart rate has consistently been in the 140-150 range (Wesley's was always 170-180's), quite a bit less weight gain (gained 8 pounds in 18 weeks). The ultra sound technician said Wesley was going to have a little sister and I even cried a little (just a tad bit hormonal) they were tears of joy of course.

I had my 18 week appointment right after the ultrasound and got to talk about my latest problem. It's not so much my problem rather that the ticks around here think I am the tastiest piece of white meat they've ever seen. Wesley and I have been spending a lot of time outside enjoying the beautiful weather and once I come inside I, inevitably, find at least one tick on me. This has happened the last three days. YUCK! I really hate ticks. It happens to be one of the downsides to living in the country. City folk don't seem to have this problem. Of the three ticks, two have been attached to me. So now I have to monitor the bites and make sure they don't start looking scary. I've already started a little collection of dead ticks in dated zip lock bags in the freezer. You might ask "why do you have ticks in zip lock bags in your freezer?" Well, you are supposed to keep the ticks that you find attached to your body so that if the bite starts to look bad you can take your little tick friend in to be tested for lyme disease. Luckily they all seem to be little teeny tiny baby dog ticks, not usually the carriers for lyme disease.

Anyways, just thought I'd share our good news. Gosh I'm going to have to start thinking of a new name for the blog eh? Guess I have a few months.
Hope everyone has a great rest of the week, I know I am!

Enjoying Spring

I thought today would be a picture day since Wesley, the camera and I spent the morning outside soaking up the rays and eating playing with chalk.



You'd think he was standing in a field of wildflowers, nope that's our weed filled lawn. Yep, time to get the mower out. Kind of pretty though.


Wesley always wants to go see the horses and tries to feed them walnuts he picks up.


Tiny body soaking up the rays.


He always asks me to draw Elmo or Zoe or Ernie or....you get the drift.


Mister Smiley.

Delicious

One of Wesley's favorite dishes that I make is Green Chile Chicken Enchiladas. I made them last night and he ate one and a half enchiladas. They were pretty big so that's amazing for a little guy. They are quick and easy so I thought I'd share the recipe.


Green Chile Chicken Enchiladas

1 can (19 oz) Enchilada Sauce (any variety although I like the green chile sauce)
2 cups shredded or diced chicken (I use the leftovers from a rotisserie or roasted chicken)
1 1/2 cups Shredded Monterey Jack cheese (6 oz)
1 cup light sour cream
1 can (4.5 oz) chopped green chiles
8 flour tortillas
1 cup shredded cheddar cheese

1. Heat oven to 350 degrees. Spread 1/2 cup of enchilada sauce on bottom of 13x9 inch pan. In a bowl, stir together chicken, monterey jack cheese, sour cream and chiles.

2. Spoon 1/3 cup chicken mixture down each tortilla. Roll up and arrange seam side down in baking dish. Top enchiladas with remaining enchilada sauce. Sprinkle with cheddar cheese. Cover baking dish with foil.

3. Bake 35 minutes. Remove foil and bake an additional 5-10 minutes.

I'm already drooling, I want to make them again. Hope you like them!

Random Stuff

Just some random things to say today.


• Wesley has started singing lately. There are a few songs that I sing to him routinely and he's picking them up and will join in on the words he knows. Generally he'll get the last line to most all of the songs. It is hilarious because he doesn't just sing the line, he screams the last line of the song. I'm going to post some video of him doing it soon.


• For about a week now I've been feeling the little Skittle moving around. In the beginning it's hard to differentiate between gas and baby flutters but I'm finally sure it's actually baby fluttering and not the bean burrito I scarfed down. This is about two weeks earlier than with Wesley, but I've heard that is common with the second pregnancy.


• We've officially entered into the rainy season around here. It seems to rain every other day. Unfortunately this came before we were finished laying down the compost on the filled in pool hole. Sean got about half covered and can't finish it because it is constantly too wet to drive the truck around the lawn. I debated what to do all last week while imagining how beneficial all this rain would be to baby grass seed. I decided yesterday too just bite the bullet and get the seed down before my open window of grass planting is shut. I figure clay isn't the worst thing for grass to grow in. So I went to Wally World and bought 40 pounds of seed and fertilizer and went to town raking and spreading seed. I got it down within an hour of a huge storm that dropped two inches of rain last night. Yeah! I can't wait to look out the back window and see green grass instead of a pool or worse, a demolished pool.


• The big ultrasound is this Wednesday afternoon!! Woo Hoo! We are so excited. We moved the date one day sooner so that my Mother could come along. I think it's the first time she's seen an ultrasound. It will be great having her there to enjoy it with us (plus another set of eyes to watch Wesley). If the little Skittle cooperates and shows us the "goods" I'll post the outcome Wednesday evening.


• Wesley has been hamming it up at the dinner table. He's really taken to his booster seat and seems to be happy to be out of the high chair. One of the pleasures of the booster seat is that he now has the ability to push himself away from the table and place his feet up on the table. I always know when he's done with his dinner because a foot will appear. It's hard to be strict with him and tell him to get his feet down when we're giggling.

It got under my skin

We have one little crazy counting kid on our hands. Wesley loves to count. He'll count everything in sight....dog paws, green beans, our toes, crayons, books....you name it he counts it.
He'll get two through ten with no problem, he never learned one very well because we would start him out with one. As soon as he gets to ten he continues thereafter saying "fourteen, fourteen, fourteen until you actually get to fourteen. It's really cute.

Anyways I was flipping through one of the "How to raise a toddler" books in the bathroom during Wesley's bath the other day and came across something that really bugged me. The book was "What to Expect during the Toddler Years" and it is comprised of a bunch of questions that would help out parents during each month of life. I was reading ahead into the 23rd month and one of the questions was:

"Some of the kids my son plays with can recite the alphabet and count. My son doesn't seem interested in learning any of this. Is he going to be behind when he starts school?"

The answer is: "They're counting, saying letters and a few are recognizing words. Is this rampant precocity in today's toddlers a sure sign of giftedness? No. More often, it's a sign that these tots have been watching a lot of television. Most early alphabet reciters and counters owe their premature proficiencies to TV shows, which teach these skills with captivating characters, catchy music and repetition."

I read this and it really made me mad. Sean and I spend a lot of time teaching this kid his basics. I feel this is our job as parents. We read all the time, sing songs, recite the alphabet over and over, learn letters in the tub. And here I read that when our kid finally starts picking up what we spend all of our time teaching him, that is due to him watching too much TV. What a bunch of bull. I can't imagine the hour and a half of Elmo's World a week is teaching him to count our fingers and say his ABC's. I don't know why that got under my skin but it sure did.

Anyways, here is a video of him counting his Easter eggs last weekend. It was pretty busy in that house so I'm not sure he was really into it but you get the idea.

More of the same

I haven't blogged in a few days due to my attention being elsewhere. My friend just got done reading the Twilight series for the first time and we were talking about it and I couldn't remember certain parts she was referring to so of course I had to re read the series. I started last week and think I'll finish up the fourth book tonight. I swear they are the most addicting books I've ever read. The first book I can meander through slowly and the second usually goes a little faster but the third and the fourth book are about 36 hour books each. No it doesn't take me 36 hours to read them, it takes me a day and half of naps and after he goes to bed in the evenings to read a book. I just gobble them up.

I've also been caring for a sick husband since yesterday. Poor guy came home early from work with something causing him body aches, headaches, fever and drainage issues. I'm guessing (and hoping) it's just a bad cold and not a case of late flu. Wesley got his flu shot (both of them) this year so I'm not too worried about him, but having two parents incapacitated would be bad. I slept upstairs last night so Sean could be quarantined to the bedroom, this wasn't too bad since I still have my book obsession stated above and I stayed up late lying in bed reading. I'm hoping he's feeling better soon. Poor Wesley is confused as to why Daddy's car is in the garage yet he can't find Daddy (we're keeping him totally away from Sean).

Wesley and I needed to get out of the house this morning so I loaded up the stroller and we went to the mall. I can't even remember the last time I went to the mall, definitely not a common occurrence. I got two cute maternity tops and a cute pair of pants from Old Navy. I'm sure I've got a full maternity wardrobe from the last pregnancy but buying new clothes is just too much fun to pass up. I wanted to spend some time looking through the Motherhood store but Wesley had had enough so we headed home. I'll have to return there without the youngin next time. Maybe for my upcoming birthday I'll get a day to myself. That would be nice.

Here is a picture of Mister Cheesy Smile himself while sitting in his beloved Elmo chair with his beloved stickers (that he plasters on every flat surface in the house).

Happy Easter!

I hope everyone is having an enjoyable Easter! I'm happy we did all the festivities yesterday since it is 45 degrees and raining here today. Wesley had his first Easter egg hunt yesterday and it went far better than I expected. The evening before, I dyed the eggs and then offered a few to Wesley to look at and examine. He refused them, shaking his head and saying "no no". So I was curious if he would even want to find the eggs yesterday. It seems he had a change of heart and gladly ran around picking up as many eggs as he could. His little basket was so full he was literally dragging it around. He had a lot of fun.

I wanted to send out a huge Thank You to Aunt Jessica for hosting a great Easter egg hunt. You have a great backyard for screaming kids to run around in. Happy Easter everyone!

Happy Birthday Miss Abby!

We had a wonderful day today. My friend Jessica's little girl turned one year old today and she had a cute little party to celebrate it. Wesley thoroughly enjoyed himself as did I. There were eight little kids there in total and I don't think my kid has been around that many kids, ever. He fluctuated between joining in on the fun and clinging to me for dear life. Over all it was a good time had by all.

We also celebrated Easter today since the weather is supposed to be rainy and 45 degrees tomorrow. You couldn't ask for a more beautiful day than today. Clear skies, sunny and no wind. I'll do a post tomorrow about the Easter egg hunt since it was Wesley's first.

I'm also excited because we sold our big old tractor today. I love Craigslist! We bought it to fill in the pool hole and now that it has been accomplished we no longer need it around (it was kind of an eye sore). We sold it for what we paid for it so I feel great about that. Good bye big green machine!

Here are some pictures from today's festivities.

Jessica did a really nice job on the cake, see the art degree is good for something...right?


Wesley and the birthday girl


Opening presents, she sure had this down to an art!


Hamming it up with birthday sunglasses

Cuteness

Wesley has been cracking me up lately and I thought I'd share the cuteness. His new thing is to lift up my shirt and point at my belly button and say "baby". I taught him this a few weeks ago and he does it often now. Sean, Wesley and I were in his room and Sean yawned and stretched his arms over his head causing his shirt to raise up a bit. Wesley immediately pointed at his non-existent belly and declared it a "baby". It made our day.

Anyways, I just thought I'd share. I'm off to hard boil a ton and a half of eggs.

Count down

Three days, two hours and nineteen minutes until the pee pee dogs go home. I'm certain that they are counting down the days just as much as we are. Wesley has been terrorizing them on a daily basis. His newest thing is to find a spatula, any spatula, and chase them around the house with it. The other day he cornered Max and whacked him with the spatula. Max had had enough of this not so fun game and went after Wesley, teeth bared. I, of course, immediately took the spatula away and put it up on the counter out of reach. I have four up there at the moment, and he keeps finding new ones. I never knew I had so many spatulas.

Poor Dieter, the mini schnauzer, just shakes and hides by my feet when Wesley is in the room. I think they are both going to jump into my parents arms when they return Sunday evening (that or I'm going to throw them into their arms). It sure makes me realize what an angel our little terrier Chance is to take all this toddler brutality every day and never show any aggression or shyness. He's our little saint.

Through the eyes of a toddler

It turned out to be a beautiful 70 degree day today so Wesley and I loaded into the van and drove over to my parents house to go check on their kitties since they're still out of town. I thought it would be a good change of scenery for the kid and allow me to take some pictures (something I've been slacking on). We brought the wagon and took a walk around their neighborhood.



He won't seem to go anywhere these days without his well loved sticker book. We got back to their house and I let him go explore around their pond. As we got closer I noticed some turtles on a downed limb in the pond. Then I noticed some furry brown thing on the limb next to the turtles. I was shocked to see a beaver in their pond. I've never actually seen a beaver in real life and especially in their pond. This is a pond that I spent a great deal of my childhood in or around collecting snails, tadpoles and other slimy little things. A beaver family would have been a lot of fun to watch back then. It kind of made my day to see it.




After the pond Wesley high tailed it over to the wind mill. He found it highly interesting and kept looking up at it as it spun in the wind.




It's very cool seeing new things through the eyes of a toddler.

Weekend rewind

This is going to be one of those rambling posts where I have nothing of importance to say but I feel like writing anyways. Aren't you excited? We had a dud of a weekend. It turned out to be beautiful Saturday and freakin' cold Sunday. So Saturday Sean went out to spread compost on the former pool site. The soil that filled in the pool was 100% clay so there was no way to get grass to grow on it. We were going to have some top soil brought in to rectify this and then we remembered the huge pile of compost that Sean scooped out of the horse pen last fall with the tractor. So he set to work moving the pile with the tractor. This worked for several scoop fulls until the tractor started shooting craps. I guess one of the belts or chains that runs something vital came off (aren't I so technical?). So he changed his plan to using the truck to move the compost.

Wesley and I went out there and helped as much as we could by raking out the piles. Wesley decided to take a bath in the dirt and had it all over him, even in the crevices of his eyes. Now when I say "dirt" I mean old poop that now resembles dirt. Yea, yum. The kids building his immunity one poop "dirt" bath at a time. Boys will be boys, and he sure had fun.

Sunday I went into town and picked up all the essentials for Wesley's first official Easter. I'm excited! Last year he was only 9 months old and wasn't walking so we didn't do anything. This year I got some cool egg dye and an Easter basket. We are going to get together with Jessica and her kids to dye eggs this week. We hope to have good weather to do an Easter egg hunt next Saturday (as Sunday is supposed to be nasty out). I don't really trust him with candy like jelly beans and such just yet so I found some cute little toys to fill his basket. I'll throw in some 100 calorie packs of cookies since they are the perfect size for him. I think he'll have fun. I'll get tons of cute egg hunting pictures.
That's all for now.

Movable Canvas

Wesley thinks all these little dogs running around is super awesome. Lately he has taken to plastering them with stickers. He does this until they tell him otherwise, such as last night and a growling episode with Max. Here is his artwork:

15 Weeks

I'm going to attempt to document this pregnancy better than I did the first one. This is going to be easy since I have a blog, unlike I did with Wesley's pregnancy. I must force you to endure belly photo's. I'm 15 weeks today and plan to photograph the old belly every 5 weeks from here on out. I think it will be interesting to see the differences. So I present "the belly" and my little shadow down in the corner. He has absolutely no clue what's going on.

The return of the Pee Pee Dogs

They're back. It's been over a year since their last visit but alas they have returned. My folks have, once again, left for a week and a half to travel around Europe and we are watching their miniature schnauzer Dieter and dachshund Max. They have already made the rounds and peed on everything in sight. I hope now that the house smells like them they will stop. At least it's hard wood and not carpet. They also growl at my kid. I guess since the last time they were here he's started walking and talking (yelling) and has become somewhat scary to little dogs (this morning he chased them around with a whisk). They are feeling they must show their dominance over him. We'll see who wins this battle. Oh well, I'm happy we can help my folks out in this small way as they do a lot for us. On the up side, Chance is thrilled to have other little dogs to play with all day.

Max has fallen in love with the Elmo chair.


Here is the gang hanging out on the couch.

What will they think of next?

I've mentioned in the past that this kid is in love with Play-Doh. The cabinet where the Play-Doh lives also the cabinet where the medicine and phone books live, so whenever it gets opened he'll come running from across the house screaming "pla-duh" at the top of his lungs. I have decided he needs some of the cool play sets that Play-Doh makes so last night I went searching online. Who knew they made so many things for that stuff. I mean there are countless play sets out there. My favorite was this one:

Magic Swirl Ice Cream Shop Playset


This ice cream shop allows youngsters to make swirled soft serve "ice cream" in cones along with mini candies, cookies, pretzels - even decorate cakes. Seriously cool (although I'm always hungry so maybe that's the appeal for me). I thought about buying this for about half of a second before clicking out of the screen. The poor kid likes to eat it when it doesn't look like an ice cream cone with sprinkles for goodness sake. There would be no stopping him, I'd have to dig the Play-Doh out of his teeth. Nope, we'll wait until he's older for this one.