News

Well this is big news. In my world, anyway. Madi slept from 11:30 (I know!) at night until 6 this morning whence upon I stuck a pacifier in her mouth, rolled her over and got her to fall back asleep until 9. So I feel half human. Maybe just a quarter. I think the night before she slept from 10:30 til 7:30 but woke me up at 1:30. I still got almost 6 hours in a row. I know some of you might be thinking, so what? Well the night before that, Pedro watched her and she kept him up from 2am until 5. He came and got me at 5. I finally got her to sleep at 6. It's been like that for a month. Really.

I've come to the conclusion that Madi might just not need as much sleep as other babies. She has a short nap in the morning, a couple of hours in the afternoon, then she's good until really late at night. I'm hoping that after getting her on some kind of routine that I can start waking her up earlier to get her to bed earlier. Cuz in all honesty, I stay up reading a book waiting for her to fall asleep. I'm tired of fighting with her to get her to sleep earlier. Like I tell Pedro, you can't make someone fall asleep.

I guess that's it. I just sort of limp through my days. Don't feel sorry for me, I just need sleep. :)

I'm a bad mother

Yesterday, Lily would NOT stop whining. So I finally asked her if she wanted a ride in the Waahbulance. Her look was priceless and I'm lucky that eyes cannot actually throw daggers.

Also, Madilyn cannot fall asleep on her own now. I will admit that sometimes I feel like finishing a game or a movie so I keep Madi on my lap and she quietly falls asleep. I tried to put her down when she was tired tonight and she screamed at me. So I put her on my lap and she was asleep in two minutes. Sigh. Granted we're all sick this week so it's not the time for changes. And quite frankly, I like it when she snuggles beside me in bed while I read a book. Sigh

Busy

I know, I'm always busy. I think it's going to be that way for a while. Here's some Lily-isms to tide you over.

Me (trying to entertain Lily in the car): Hey, do you want to sing ABC?
Lily: NO, mama. It's too dangerous.

Awesome

Me: "Lily, did daddy yell at you?"
Lily: "Yes, he's in a bad move."

*snort*

Add this to cupcapes and Snow Whipe.

*yawn*

I went to bed super early last night but I had insomnia from 12:30 til 3am. yay! Maybe I'm just used to less sleep?? I think Madilyn pretty much slept through the night so that was awesome. That figures, right? The one night that she sleeps, I can't. :P

So today in Lily-speak:

Me: Get ready Lily. We're going into town to meet Daddy.
Lily: MEET daddy?!
Me: Yup.
Lily: Not again.

Snap.

I call this one: I Fought the Squash and the Squash Won.

Even tireder

So we're all sick. Not stuck in bed in a plague ridden way. We all share the same head cold. Madi's been doing pretty well but she still keeps me up at night. A lot. Part of it has been because of the warm weather. The heater isn't on all day and my room is at the back of the house so it's COLD. Space heaters can only do so much. :P This morning she kept me up from 2 til 3, when I finally took her to bed. I figured a pillow might help her drainage. And so she kicked me for I don't know how long. argh

And of course, this week is pretty busy. We have playdates or doctor's appointments (sometimes both) every day. That's okay. I mean, it's a day in the life, right? I just could really use a couple of good night's sleep. And that's not likely to happen for a while. Sigh. And I have figured out why I consume so much chocolate. It's a much needed boost in the middle of the day. I didn't buy any chocolate this week and I am seriously dragging. Yesterday, I almost paid Lily to take a nap. I think it's good though. When other moms are crying because their babies are going off to college, I'll be thinking about all the sleep I'm going to get and be happy. :)

Anyhoo, I'm going to take it easy today because I have a 3pm doctor's appt and I'll need to be semi awake for that. :P The pictures? Taken this weekend when g-ma, Aunt Nicole and cousin Claire were visiting. I think the real party happened when daddy and Lily were asleep. :)

Baby Kong

Madilyn has been inhaling food the last couple of days. Yesterday, she had three dinners. Don't ask. She's been sleeping a little better too. yay! I can almost see her growing. :) She's started clapping her hands too. Still no crawling yet but she's trying her best to communicate with us. She really is a dear heart. It cracks me up when we all argue over who gets to hold her. I wish I could think of more to write about but I'm feeling very relaxed and joyful this morning. :)

Sigh

I have just inhaled 6 chocolates in the last minute. I really should eat something normal but I have "stuff" to do. I'm busy getting everything for our taxes together so that I can take it to the accountant. I'm really REALLY bad about keeping track of stuff. Sigh. Anyhoo, I just need to talk to the CPA and I'll be ready to bring by my stuff. And yes, we get it done by someone else. For some reason, whenever someone else does my taxes I get way more money back, even when I copy what they did when I try and do my own. Also, our taxes are a little convoluted. Thanks to Canadian pension payouts and stuff.

It's kind of weird. The manager at the spa called me and said they didn't need me and would call me if they did. I'm no longer on the website so I guess I no longer work there! There's a little more to it, but I don't want to get into it on the internet. :) It's okay. I was getting a little worn out from not getting any rest. Saturdays I was busy getting ready for work, or being at work. Sundays we were out running errands. And I never get a lot of rest during the week so.... Everything happens for a reason. :)

The good news is, once I get a massage table, free facials! I still need to practice and I love to do them so... :) In other news, Miss Madi wants to be up and about so bad. At gymnastics today she was watching all the kids running around and kicking me and growling. She wants to run too! She had steak and baked potato last night. :) It's so funny to me because I had this feeling like she was NEVER going to grow up. Now she's taking off. No she still can't crawl, but she can eat steak and that's got to count for something. :)

Worth it

The furniture protection thingie that cost $100?

Worth. Every. Penny.

hmpf

Well, I was trying to desperately find my camera to take a pic of Madi holding the bottle but I couldn't find it fast enough. SIGH. I can't believe she's 8 months old now and finally looking it. I was worried that I was going to have a pint sized kid FOREVAH! I weighed her the other day and she's 17.3 pounds. Give or take. :) So I think she's well on her way to being 20 pounds by a year. She also only woke up once at 4:45 and fell right back asleep. So whew It will be nice to eventually sleep through the night but I'll take the little interruptions over the big ones.

I still want to take the girls to playgroup today but Lily has a cough. I think it's a post nasaly thing but I don't really want to take the chance. It sucks because Lily is so excited about it. :( She's not coughing a lot.... And yes that's the new sofa. It felt so amazing to sit on a sofa that actually supports my butt!

I guess we'll go to playgroup. I don't want to hear Lily whining for the next 3 hours. :P

Lily-isms

Lily: "This is my special scone!"
Me: "Do you mean your special stone?"
Lily: "Yeah!"

Lily: "Daddy you're bad and I'm going to smack your butt!"
Me: "Lily run!"

Lily to me: "You drive me nuts".
Thanks.

Madilyn only woke up once at 3:30 and fell right back asleep so woohoo for me! Today I'm trying to get ready for the new furniture. I'm trying to take advantage of the change to fix up more things than I probably need to. Pedro honestly didn't notice that I painted one of the walls in the living room yesterday. Today I want to get some new vent covers. I think rusty and covered in cat vomit is probably not going to match the new decor.

Whoops

I know I haven't been posting lately. We have a few problems at our house. Madi has started waking up in the middle of the night and keeping me up for hours. At first I thought that I had to get her to fall asleep on her own. Which sounds like an oxymoron but you know what I mean. But what happens is that M never manages to fall back asleep so after an hour and a half or two hours I finally take her to bed with me, where she proceeds to kick and whack me about the face with her fists, but eventually falls asleep. I bought a new sleep book hoping for answers but there are no answers for a baby that screeches in her sleep trying to figure out how to crawl.

So now, I give her 15 minutes and then take her to bed. Although, this morning she still kicked and punched for an hour. It's like the stuff she went through as a baby. Sigh. So I'm very tired and trying to keep up with the house and Lily and Madi... I'm doing okay and I've decided to do the best I can and that means taking M to bed with me so that I get SOME sleep. Well, the both of us. She needs it more than I! Maybe. She doesn't have to drive us anywhere. :)

What else? We're getting some new furniture on Thursday. Nothing too exciting but hey, it's new. I almost feel grown up. :) But in anticipation, I've been trying to clean the walls and the high high ceilings in the livingroom. Good thing my aim is decent. :) And I read one of my baby books that says she can eat more solids so I've upped her game. She had some pork and rice for dinner tonight. She had yogurt and some baby cookies for lunch, which she ADORED. It's nice because as I start to use more juice I use less formula and what a blessing that is on the checkbook!

Anyway, I'll try and write more in the future. When I actually start to get 7 or 8 hours of sleep a night. As it is, it's almost 8:30 and I can hardly keep my eyes open. SIGH

Peace

Well, I heard a big boom and the lights went out this morning but then came back on. I think instead of power line 0, trees 698. We now have power line 1, trees 698. I saw something sparkling across the street and through the trees. Pedro said that I should call but please, what am I going to say? If someone lost power, they'll call quickly enough. I do!

So yesterday, I decided to make things a little more special. I was going to make pancakes and then I remembered that we still had strawberries. So I cut them up, sprinkled them with sugar and let them make their own juice. Then I made pancakes (from scratch, thanks). We had them with the strawberries, maple syrup and powdered sugar. Tah dah!
Lily loved it. But then I remembered that she loved pancakes when she was on the "inside" too. :) Pedro was a little jealous as he was at a class while we were getting our pancakes on. :) I put in more effort because of the winter blahs. We magically kept our power last night. Although, I had a bout of gastritis again and I didn't care if the roof fell in (but that's another story). We might lose our power today because of more snow, very wet ground and high winds. Sigh.

So, SO, tired of winter.

Color me Ready

Well, I got more water and baby food today. If things look ugly tomorrow I'm making Pedro go to Lowe's to buy a generator. If they have any left. I was worried about being bored, but really without power, there's too much work to do.

And therefore, there was time to think. This is what I have learned from the most recent storm:

- Our water heater rocks. I had a hot shower Saturday morning, 8 hours after the power had shut off. Pedro had a luke warm shower Sunday morning.

- Our kitchen floor sucks. There was a leak from the ice cubes melting in the freezer and now our boards are sticking up. boo

- Gas powered grills are amazing. You can cook and heat up your water!

- Washing dishes with cold water is torture. And yes I had to wash because I only have so many baby bottles.

- Hot water is the best thing on earth.

- It's possible to survive power outages during sub-freezing weather you just have to get used to living in the same pants for 3 days.

- Battery powered dvd players are awesome.

- Cell phones are absolute life savers. And sorry about the bill, Pedro. (I found Netflix on my cell phone! But Pedro yelled at me)

- I need curtains or weather proofing stuff around all of my windows. In related news, I'm very glad that I did a lot of caulking last year.

- So, SO glad that I bought my pink rubber boots. I thought the purchase was frivolous at the time but really wanted them. I've worn them every single day for over a week.

That's all I can think of for now but you get the idea. There are some things that Pedro and I know we have to do that we weren't sure of before. It's nice to have clarity. Too bad it came at the expense of a power outage!

Hope everyone keeps safe and is ready for round 2.

Enough already

So yes, we made it through what? Winter storm #3? 4? This one was really bad though. We had a thick layer of sleet over and under a fair amount of snow and that has brought a lot of trees down. I feel lucky that we have our power back already. It went out 12:15am Friday night(Saturday morning?) and came back 11:15 Sunday night. So almost 48 hours. The first day I was kind of excited to have my mettle tested. By Sunday, I was definitely over that. Okay, so I made scrambled eggs Saturday morning in a cast iron pan on the grill Paula Deen style (1/4 stick of butter) and I heated up water to clean with and made soup. Then it got old. Tromping out to the wood pile. Watching the fire all night. Even when it wasn't my turn, it was hard to sleep as the pops would wake me up.

All in all, not a good time. But we made it. The house at its lowest got to 52F, which was warm, apparently. Someone from Pedro's company walked by and said his place was 38F. OUCH I'm glad we all stayed warm and well fed. I guess I feel like, since I know that I can do it, I don't need to do it anymore. I spent hours (HOURS!) shovelling the heavy snow/sleet from one side of the driveway, only to have the pine trees there break and block the way out. I can't even print what I said when I found that out. I took this pic around 7am Sunday morning. Oh and after all the snow fell it went down to 11F overnight. yay

I know, we could've gone to a shelter but the thought of mingling with others and not having stuff handy would've driven me batty. I am grateful that we had a fireplace and a good supply of wood AND that I made sure we had enough food and drink for a few days. Madi, thankfully, took everything in stride but now she's so used to sleeping with a bed full of people she's not so interested in her crib anymore. SIGH I think, out of all of us, she had the best time. She was always around people and entertained by us. Even when we were ready to all kill each other.

I guess it's like I just told Pedro "I know that we can do it and now I never want to do it again". This was the first night. You can see the potty in the lower right hand corner. Lily wasn't so sure about using it in a dark bathroom. Until we got the candle going in there. :)

This was night #2. Everyone's sleeping just a little bit closer. I think that it probably stayed in the 60s in the living room but it was never balmy. It's funny how used to sleeping in your clothes you get. Or something.

AND there's more wintry mix due here Tuesday....