South by Seattle

(Check… check…. this thing on??)

So I haven’t been posting lately. Sorry. Why, you may ask? Good question. Here’s why:

(Sometime between 6am-7:30am): Wake up with the kiddies (or should I say, get woken by the kiddies )

By 8:00am – kiddies and myself are dressed and we’re working on breakfast. After breakfast, we play a bit (usually have a “dance party” to our favorite kiddie songs to burn off some early morning energy) and get Jolie ready for school – pottying, shoes/socks on, etc.

By 9:00am – Getting Jolie off to preschool.

By 10:00am – Back from preschool and Sam has been changed and is now napping. This is Mama’s limited window of opportunity to do some cleaning. Usually I tackle the kitchen first because it’s ALWAYS MESSY!! Then, depending on the day, I do something else, like bathrooms or mopping the floors. I also do laundry. Everyday. Otherwise the laundry gets way piled up. But on days after a really bad night’s sleep and I’m exhausted, I try to also take a nap.

By 11:30am, Sam is up and we play or take the dogs for a walk if it’s nice outside. Or go to the grocery store if it’s shopping day. I eat lunch at some point, usually one-handed while I hold and/or nurse Sam.

By 1:30pm, we are back from whatever activity we’ve been doing and play some more. I might try to sneak in an easy chore here while Sam “helps” (meaning, he sits next to me on the floor playing while I fold clothes or something and try to sing songs to him to keep him happy for a few moments).

By 2:30pm, Sam is changed again and I’m putting him down for another nap. If I’m lucky, he naps for about an hour. This is my other window to finish chores, and also to think of something to put together for dinner.

4:00pm – Sam is up from his nap by now and has been fed. We play again, check the mail, do whatever possible to get dinner as ready as possible so that I dont have to spend time prepping food when Jolie gets home.

5:00pm – LEave to pick up Jolie from preschool.

6:00pm – We are back from school by now and are sitting down to eat.

6:30pm – Sam, Jolie and mom are in the bath. Sometime between 6:30-7pm, Daddy DJ arrives home. Often, it is in the middle of our bath time. DJ helps me scrub Jolie while I take care of Sam, who is likely getting fussy by now.

Now after this point, DJ takes Jolie and gets her ready for bed. She goes to bed between 8-9pm, exact time based on whether she took a nap or not.

Sam goes to bed between 7-8pm, depending on what time he woke up that morning and how long his naps were. He hates getting ready for bed and screams… usually because he’s so dang tired by now.

If I’m lucky, I can nurse Sam down to sleep, put him in his swing (since he refuses to sleep in the crib) and he will sleep there for 30 minutes before waking up.

During that 30 minutes, I either take a shower, clean the kitchen,pack Jolie’s lunchbox for the next day, etc.

When he wakes back up, I try my darndest to put him back to sleep by himself. During the past couple of months, he has refused to do this. The only way I’ve been able to get him to go back to sleep has been to put him in bed with me and nurse him to sleep. And he nurses ALL… NIGHT… LONG… meaning Mama wakes up with a lovely full-body ache from having to contort my body to and fro all night to enable him to suckle.

2am. Jolie joins Sam and me in the bed. DJ is sleeping on the couch at this point, which I’m sure is just great for his chronic back pain. Our couch is not the most comfy…

6am-7:30am – Start over!.

This is why I have not been blogging – or doing much else that would classify as a hobby – lately. I’ve also been not really communicating with family members (sorry, everyone. I hope the phone calls will resume soon!). Promise I love you all and I am not purposefully ignoring you.

DJ and I are working on getting Sam to sleep independently right now. Sam’s poor sleep habits are really becoming… hmm, what’s the best way to say this while still sounding kind… it’s becoming old? DJ and I rarely get alone time at all. I rarely get to do anything non-kid or chore-related. Yeah, it’s getting old.

So DJ and I are working to help Sam learn to self-soothe and sleep independently. Please send us good vibes. It would be so awesome to put Sam to sleep by himself at a decent time and have at least a couple of hours to myself to do something… fun. Wow, what a concept!

On the bright side, our kids are happy (usually )and very healthy and we have had a very good week (not counting the poor sleeping issues). DJ and I have been watching our diets and this has had a great impact on our ability to maintain positive attitudes. Seeing the numbers on the scale move in a different direction (down, rather than up) for once is a great feeling.

April 17, 2010 at 4:45 pm Jill 2 comments

A sigh of relief on this Good Friday

Good Friday! And yes it is…

We’re doing much better today, it seems. Sam slept better last night – not great (still got up for a 2-hour midnight waking) but better, and he and I slept in until almost 9am while DJ cared for Jolie and took her to school.

DJ is amazing. He got horrible sleep last night, thanks to Jolie who woke him up multiple times in the night, yet he has such a great attitude today. DJ is a special person. A great dad, a great husband. Sam, Jolie and I are lucky.

Sam’s hives are better. I decided to make an oatmeal paste to rub directly on them. That seems to be helping a lot and they are fading quickly now. Hopefully whatever it is that triggered this reaction is also leaving his system and he will be 100% again soon.

I know he’s feeling better today – he took a 3.5 hour nap! Without being held! It was heaven – for him and for me. I got to exercise, take a shower by myself, do a little cleaning, bake lots and lots of bunny and egg-shaped sugar cookies for Easter, and drink a lot of green tea. It was wonderful. I loved every minute of it… and had to check on Sam multiple times to ensure he was still breathing. I was skeptical…

More good news – I signed up to attend a yoga retreat in October. I could NOT BE MORE EXCITED!!!!!!!

And on top of all this, my good friend Whitney surprised me today with flowers and a mocha at my door step. She knows I’ve been having a hard time here lately, and this was her way of cheering me up. It totally worked. Thank you, Whitney – you are a great friend and I love you!!!

Tonight, we’re headed out as a family for a little dinner and dancing at Crossroads shopping center. Always a good time.

So yes, happy Good Friday to all! And a happy Easter weekend. May it be filled with lots of love, relaxation and chocolate eggs.

April 2, 2010 at 3:44 pm Jill 2 comments

I love my kids.

Love them with all my heart.

But they make me question my sanity on nearly a daily basis.

They DEFINITELY make me question my abilities as a parent on a daily basis. And my desire to parent an third child has completely gone out the door. After Sam, I am through. No more for me, please. Thaaaaank yooooou.

To their defense, though, neither kid has been feeling totally great lately. Jolie is battling a case of a mild ear infection and gets up screaming for her daddy almost every night (more so because of her need for a sleeping buddy than anything, though). I tried to break her of this the other night (so that DJ could get some sleep) but it only resulted in her being awake from 1:00-6:30am, playing in her room by herself for half of that time because I was so exhausted from trying to get her back to sleep by herself (unsuccessfully).

Sam is allergic to something. I’m not sure what. My hypothesis is that it was the pesto sauce I ate the other day that contained pine nuts. I’ve not eaten pine nuts in years. It’s the only new thing I’ve eaten lately, and I believe the pine nut proteins may have gotten to him through my breast milk. It’s the only thing I can think of.

He’s currently broken out in hives all over his body. I’m keeping him comfortable with Benedryl and oatmeal baths, along with Tylenol and garlic ear drops for the mild ear infection that he also has. Combine these with teething (he’s gone a front tooth that is trying its best to cut through) and you’ve got a very cranky, needy child who wont sleep. He wakes around 6:30-7:00am every day and doesn’t go to bed until 10pm. He requires that I hold him pretty much all day. And he all night (assuming he sleeps). He’s forced DJ out of our bed and poor DJ has been sleeping on the couch now for weeks. It’s exhausting.

DJ and I are both exhausted.

By the end of the day, I am mentally drained and ready to throw in the towel.

On the nights that Sam doesn’t sleep, I dont sleep, and it takes great quantities of caffeine to keep me sane the next day.

And I won’t even go into the details of trying to reason with and discipline a toddler while ensuring that she still respects me at the end of the day. That in itself is absolutely…. ugh, I can’t even think of a word to describe it right now. It’ll just drive you crazy sometimes. Crazy, crazy, CRAZY!

But so far, I’m sane today. So that’s good. :-)

And I love my kids. I just don’t love parenthood at times.

April 1, 2010 at 8:46 am Jill 3 comments

Jolie turns 3!

Yay! Jolie is “FEE”! (otherwise known as “three”).

I am bringing my blogging dry spell to an end by posting about our week of Jolie-inspired celebrations. We kicked it off with cupcakes at her preschool on St. Patrick’s Day – the day before her birthday. She was thrilled!

When we got home, we noticed that a little leprechaun had paid us a visit. He turned the potty water green and sprinkled gold coins on the floor for Jolie to find. Jolie wondered why he came to use our potty. I told her it must have been because he was so excited that she is a big girl and goes potty in the toilet all the time now. She also wondered why his pee was green. I wasn’t sure what to tell her on that one.

(Side note – here are some festive shamrock cookies that I intended to send to my grandparents, but the little shamrock stems were so thin that they broke off. I didn’t want to send broken cookies to you, Mimi and Papa, so maybe you will get Easter cookies in a week or two instead! :-) )

We had a big party for Jolie over the weekend. Lots of her little friends attended and she had a BALL. She absolutely loved it. She felt just like a princess all day long! Can you guess what the theme of her party was supposed to be?

Here we are, ready to load up the car and head over to the community center where we hosted the party.

You can see all 100+ photos of Jolie’s birthday week/weekend by clicking HERE.

Happy birthday, Jolie! We love you!

March 22, 2010 at 11:01 am Jill 3 comments

A half-year already? Wow!

Half a year has passed since my little man came into the world. I can’t believe it! He looks happy in these photos, but the poor guy is down right miserable this weekend. His bottom two teeth are visible in his gums but haven’t cut through yet, and he’s really uncomfortable. He also has a nasty cough. But you’d never know it from this cute smile :