Crazy Flying Brother

My little boy is getting more and more adventurous in his jumping endeavors. Soon he'll be jumping off the roof.

Forever Missed

It's official, nap time is no more. Wesley has been flirting with the idea of giving up his naps for several months now and I finally threw in the hat and let him. It's tough and we're still adjusting but I'm happy to be done with the battle. Every day nap time would come and he would fight me every step of the way (sometimes literally). Once in his room he would just cry and plead that he didn't need a nap and that he'd be good if only I'd let him stay up. If I refused, he would cry in his room for at least 20 minutes before giving up and playing by himself. Rarely would he actually nap. What made this all the more frustrating is that Greta takes her nap around the same time Wesley did and her room is right below his. So when Wesley screamed and cried in his room, he was directly over Greta trying to get to sleep. Therefore I was left with two miserable, awake children. So no more. He stays up and quietly watches a movie in the afternoon. I've finally accepted that my afternoon nap is a thing of the past, but I'm ok with that and I'm just happy to not have to wrestle with Wesley anymore. Goodbye nap time, you will be missed.

Tis the Season

It's here! Garage sale season is upon us. I don't know why that is so exciting to me, maybe I have no life. Maybe the thought of hunting for the unknown just brings out the best in me. Whatever it is, I just love hitting those garage sales. Once again our little town hosted it's annual city wide garage sale this past weekend and I was a kid in a candy store. I got up super early (6:45), got the animals fed, Greta fed and back to sleep and was out the door by 8 am. I had a small list of things I needed to look for (toddler bed, booster seat for grandparents house, Toy Story toys for Wes). Got them all plus tons of cute little girl clothes to dress Miss Greta through this year (have I mentioned how much fun shopping for little dresses are??). I found a darling little wooden toddler bed for Wesley for $20 that was just the buy of the century. So cute and he's so excited to start sleeping in his "big boy bed". I also found a diaper pail that I'll use the heck out of. I've always been a "just take the dirty diaper directly out to the trash can" kind of girl, but I think I'll try using a diaper pail for awhile. They sure are convenient. How have I gone this long without a diaper pail? Crazy.

We spent the rest of the weekend doing outside yard work. Sean was mower man pretty much all weekend. When he wasn't mowing he was chain sawing branches. And when he wasn't chainsawing branches he was helping me clean out the koi pond. I swear it's always something around here. I did manage to completely finish sowing vegetable seeds. I'm done. It's now up to Mother Nature and my watering skills to see what comes of the garden. I think I might have gone a little overboard in my selection this year but I'm anxious to see what produces well and what putters out. When it's all said and done I hope to be harvesting broccoli, cauliflower, eggplants, okra, peppers, green beans, corn, summer squash, zucchini squash, carrots, onions and tomatoes. Phew. I'm exhausted just thinking about all the work I'm gonna have to do to that garden this summer!

Oh and 10 days until my baby chicks arrive!! *smile*

Bjorning with Greta

I couldn't resist posting more pictures of Greta in the Baby Bjorn. Poor kid is in the carrier at least a couple of hours each day. She enjoys it though and squeals in delight when in it. It's hard to take her picture while I'm wearing her so I just smush the camera up in her face and snap away, some turn out, some don't. Fun times.

Scribbles in Soap

The nightly shower. It's the only time in a day that I'm guaranteed not to have a baby stuck to me or a whining two year old hanging off of my leg. It's my relaxing alone time. It's also the time when I do my best thinking and planning. My shower is a single enclosed stall with a glass door. Now I don't know if this is common knowledge or not but you can take a bar of soap and write on glass with it like a pencil. It works great. So when I'm in the shower I often (like nightly) take my bar of soap and do all sorts of planning on my shower door. I do mundane things such as writing out my shopping lists and estimating my checkbook balance. At one point I did things like deciding baby names, writing them out in full to see how they looked. I believe Greta's name was thought up in the shower. I'm currently in the process of designing my chicken coop on that glass door. Every night I get in there and add a little more. Just give it a little wipe with my wet finger and, poof, it's erased. I often wonder if other people do this strange nightly ritual in the shower?

Month Seven

Another month has come and gone. They are going so fast these days. Miss Greta is seven months old today and we just can't imagine her not in our lives. She's such a blessing.

-Greta's sleeping habits are still going good. She sleeps through the night about 50% of the time, otherwise she get gets up around midnight but goes right back to sleep with a little nursing. I love that she and Wesley both sleep in every day until 9:30 or 10, it makes my life a little easier being able to accomplish tasks in the morning.

-Over this past month she's stopped taking her nap in my arms and started napping in her swing every day. It's kind of sad to say goodbye to that tradition since it was a nice mandatory afternoon break for me as well. It is nice to have some free time for at least an hour every day. Life is slowly returning to normal as the months go by.

-Greta is interacting with Wesley now more than ever. She loves to watch that little boy and will always crane her neck trying to find him. He loves to make her laugh, and he is one of the few reliable ways to get her to laugh these days.

-Her love of solid food is starting to show more and more. Where as last month she would humor me and eat her cereal, now she actually seems to enjoy it. She gets a fruit like applesauce or pears in the morning with oatmeal mixed in and at dinner time she has sweet potato, pumpkin, squash or carrots with rice cereal mixed in. It's nice to have her sit with us for meal time and be together as a family.

Dirty Work

There's something icky going around. I believe it to be a stomach bug and it's taken its toll on our household. I got sick Sunday afternoon and was feeling better Monday morning and then Sean came down with it Monday afternoon. He's feeling better tonight so it seems to be only a 24 hour bug, thankfully. I'm just waiting for it to hit the kids. I sure hope it doesn't.

Before Sean and I got sick this weekend we got quite a bit accomplished. I worked on the garden pretty much all day Saturday (of course when I wasn't on baby duty). I hauled about 2000 pounds worth of composted horse manure out to the garden which wasn't very easy. We've talked about buying a garden trailer for the tractor but just don't want to shell out the money for something we aren't sure we'd get much use out of. Turns out it would have come in handy for this task. I ended up using our garden cart (four wheeled pull cart) with an empty Rubbermaid stock tank on top of it. I think each load was around 500 pounds. I certainly got my workout pulling that thing around. Wesley, of course, had a ball riding on top of the full cart of manure. He would sit up there with a big smile on his face while holding my shovel as I pulled it over to the garden. I got two rows planted with things that can generally hold up to a little frost: broccoli, carrots, onions and some flowers. I'm holding out on planting the rest until the first week on May, which will be corn, beans, zucchini, squash and tomatoes. I thought it might be neat to watch the garden grow, so here is week one (pretty much just dirt, the orange flags represent rows):



I've been wanting to redo the front of the horse corral for awhile now and we started it this weekend. When the pool was removed, the deck around it was also taken out. That left us with a whole ton of pressure treated lumber. Two hundred 2X6 boards to be exact. Not knowing what to do with all this wood Sean stacked it up for later use (or maybe to give away on Craigslist?). I knew uses would eventually come up and so the horse fence is now being revamped with it. It will look great when it's finished. And now we can forever remove the unsightly welded wire fence and just leave a slatted board fence.



The happy kissing inhabitants of the corral


Wesley ran around entertaining himself the whole time we were working outside. He's hit an age when we all go outside and do our own thing. He still needs supervision but he's happy to be involved in his own exploring. Mostly this exploring involves getting into anything and everything in the shop (much to Sean's dismay). This involves collecting every tool he can get his hands on. If Sean had a hard time finding his tools before, well now it's pretty much hopeless. Wesley has also taken to collecting screws and bolts found throughout the shop. He hoards them and will place them in little piles. For instance, this pile was found on the seat of his wagon.



He really has fun playing with Dad in the shop.


I hope everyone is having a nice, sick-free week!

A Walk in the Wide Wide World

The kids and I took a walk today. Nice weather plus an almost three year old little boy (with boundless amounts of energy) equals a lot of time outside. In fact, we spend most of the day outside exploring. I strap Greta into the BabyBjorn, grab the camera and off we go.



Today I couldn't walk past the wisteria without taking a few photos. Three years ago I found two little pitiful wisteria vines on clearance at Wal-Mart so I took pity on them and brought them home. We have a rather ugly little chain link fence that was erected to keep the dogs away from the bay window on the house. The dogs had a fun trick that involved jumping up on the glass and scratching when they wanted inside. The chain link fence was nothing to look at so I planted these two little vines with the hopes of them covering it. For three years they grew and grew, with only maybe three or four blossoms a year. Never enough to even take notice. Well something happened this year. I have no idea what but there has to be 85 blossoms on these vines. Giant, bundles of flowers in purple and white draped along the fence. It's just the most beautiful thing ever. And the fragrance! Oh it smells heavenly. I'll find myself just standing out there immersed in the scent. It makes me what to go buy 10 more plants to place all over the property.





Before Greta came along, Wesley was my main photography subject. He never complained, he just let me shoot oodles and oodles of pictures. Well, he's decided enough is enough and this is usually the only side of him I can photograph anymore.



Oh well, I'll take what I can get. He is very helpful though (as long as the camera is turned off). I've been in a buying spree lately, getting Greta summer clothes off of eBay. I was in Target last week with my Mom looking at little girl clothes and was just about to buy some cute little summer rompers for $10 each when I thought about how many pieces of clothing I could buy off of eBay instead. So for $20 I got several darling dresses, a couple of rompers, some onesies and a couple of short sets. Most of them brand new with tags. They've been filtering into our mailbox over the past few days and Wesley thoroughly enjoys traveling up there and carrying them back to the house where he promptly rips them open and flings the contents across the living room.



Very helpful indeed. While we were at the mailbox he spotted this thing pull into the field across the street.



He was captivated with it and we stood there watching it until it had driven out of sight. What is it about boys and machinery?



From there we wandered over to the redbuds. I mentioned to my Mother that the row of redbud trees were blooming and she had no idea what I was talking about. Between our neighbors property and our own is a long row of mature redbuds. There's probably 30 of them and every spring they erupt into this long hedge of pink flowers. It lasts for about two weeks (if we're lucky) and then it's over. Apparently my Mom hasn't been over in that little span of time to see how pretty they are, so here is a picture Mom.



That was our adventure today. Pretty much a snap shot of our daily lives.

Thursdays Thoughts

More random thoughts all combined into one rambling post for your reading pleasure. Lucky you!

-Last week Greta went into the pediatricians office for her (somewhat overdue) six month well baby visit. She's our little chunk! Growing like a weed. Doctor always says she's perfect, I tend to agree.

Weight: 17lbs 9 oz (71%)
Height: 26.5 in (68%)
Head: 44.25 cm (85%)

-My garden is now officially rototilled and ready for planting. Sean got it about 2/3rds tilled when the belt broke on the tiller (naturally). Turns out the belt that drives the tiller is this ginormous thing that costs a little over $100(!). So I plan to start a tally to see just how expensive this garden ends up being, and how many organic fruits and veggies I could have purchased for the same price. So far we have a $100 belt, $20 in seed and a new $25 garden hose (to reach all the way out to the back of the property). I'm doing all this for the experience right? Yea, I'll get back with you in August on that.

-The count down till I get my chicks is on. T-minus 22 days until my six little chirping bundles of fluff arrive. Can you tell I'm excited? I've decided to name them all after flowers since they will all be female (oh they better all be females). Right now I have a huge list of flower names taped to my refrigerator and I keep adding names when I run across them. So far my favorites are Sweet Pea, Poppy, Goldenrod and Begonia. I need two more. Maybe Petunia and Magnolia? Oh and to Sean's utter joy the chicks will be spending their first few weeks inside in our dining room, after which they will move into the shop and then out into their coop. I really can't wait!

That's all I've been up to. Slow week.

Wednesday Weigh In

I achieved my 10 pound weight loss goal last weekend. Finally. Phew. Took three months. The body is not the same as it was before two babies but I'm happy with how it's looking six months postpartum. What I've learned after loosing a combined 80 pounds of baby weight (two babes) is that there is no excuse to not exercise. It's free. You don't have to buy any fancy athletic shoes (I work out in bare feet in my living room) or buy any expensive workout equipment (libraries have workout videos to check out) or gym memberships. The biggest challenge is to drag your butt out of bed, which is one of the more difficult things to do when both kids are sound asleep. I am amazed at how much more energy I have! Also, the old wardrobe is back in use...no need to keep buying bigger clothes. Now I just need to stay motivated to keep working out, which I'm finding difficult since achieving my "goal" weight. Oh well, just wanted to share since this has been an important part of my life since the beginning of the year.

Captivated

I knew the day would come when Wesley would come across a movie that he enjoyed so much that he would sit through the whole thing, captivated by it.

Then he'd want to watch that movie the next day and then the next day after that.

Then he'd start recalling favorite phrases from this movie which he would yell while running through the house.

"To Infinity and Beyond!"

Yes, the child is in LOVE (L-O-V-E) with Toy Story (and Toy Story 2). He's never really been that into movies until now. In the past he might sit through 25 minutes of Nemo or Lion King, but never the whole thing. That was until now. I might add that I'm secretly thrilled he's fallen in love with this particular movie as it's one of my favorites as well.

I am so excited to take him to see Toy Story 3 this summer. It will be Wesley's first movie theater experience. Here's hoping he'll be able to sit through a full length film in the theater.

Movie time with Woody by his side

Happy Birthday Abby!

Jessica's little girl turned two years old this weekend. Happy Birthday Miss Abby! It's hard to believe it's been two years now since that April day when she arrived. I still remember being there for her birth, watching the whole thing with nine month old Wesley strapped to me in the Baby Bjorn. Time really does just fly by. We went over to her house and helped her celebrate with yummy strawberry cake and fun presents.

The Birthday Girl!

Opening presents!

Miss Greta always enjoying herself at Aunt Jessica's house

Mad Skills

I had to add this video because Wesley is so proud of his new mad skills. He's figured out that he can push his car up to the top of the hill (it's the only "hill" around, and it's not even much of one) and then he can ride it down and crash into the brush pile. Such a little boy!

Blog Book

For months now I've been intrigued with the idea of turning the blog into a book. I've seen several other blogger Moms who have done it successfully and now I want to do it. The problem? I don't have the time or energy for such an undertaking. You see, the process is pretty daunting at best. The route that I want to do is to go into Blurb.com, download their book editing software (already did this step), and to "slurp" my blog into a book format. You may be asking what "slurping" is? Slurping is where the software automatically takes all the information on your blog and places it either directly into a book format or into a library where you then take each post and place it into a page layout. Since I've got something like 700 posts (!?) I'd have to break them up into years. So I'd have a 2007, 08 and 09 book. I like this idea and I had planned to do this until I actually sat down and started on it last weekend. The software bogged down my computer, there was an overwhelming amount of text and photos (many of which weren't the correct resolution...thus causing me to go search through pictures from 2007), and I was tired and just not enthused about it all.

So, I looked at option number two.

My friend Jessica ran across a website that will take your blog and automatically turn it into a book with just a few simple steps (like three clicks of the mouse). Seriously easy. The site is Blog2Print.com. You literally go to their website, enter a web address of your blog and hit enter. It will take your blog info directly off the internet and make it into a book. This option is quick, painless and super cool. It does lack the customization that I'd like. It won't let you have any creative reign....you can't select different fonts, page layouts and such. But for someone who just doesn't have the time this is a great option. To do each year (some 250 entries/pages) it would run around $110. This is right around the same price as the Blurb.com option yet I would be able to design that book completely...although it will take me forever. Decisions decisions.

Either way we go I think this is a neat idea. To have a book of our lives to show to our children sounds like a fun idea. They can, quite literally, watch themselves grow up through the pages.

His BFF

The other day we're sitting on the couch and Wesley comes over and drapes himself over Sean's leg and says "Daddy, you're my best friend". It was so sweet yet it made me sad because he's never said that to me, the person that he spends every single day with. I understand it though. I'm more of the authoritarian around here while Daddy comes home from work and plays with him. But it still made me feel left out.

That was until last night.

I was in doing dishes and in runs Wesley clutching a wadded up ball of used duct tape. He holds it up to show me, so excited at what he found, and declares "this duct tape is my best friend!".

Oh kids are funny. I'm not feeling so left out anymore.

Baby Bunnies

Most. Adorable. Babies. Ever.

Easter

Another Easter has come and gone. Wesley had so much fun this year. It's so enjoyable having a child that is old enough to really get into these holidays. He's definitely at that age where searching for Easter eggs is fun. My sister Betsy, Blake and Emery came down for the weekend and it was great getting the babies together. Next year Wesley will have some stiff competition in the Easter egg finding department. I can't wait!

Here are some pictures of our weekend with the family. I hope you all had an enjoyable Easter Holiday!


The hunter

The Dads and the Babies

My cute folks

Everything seemed to start blooming overnight

Grandparents and grandbabies

Wesley sat at the table and ate candy until he'd stuffed himself....when the sugar high wore off it was not a pretty picture