Kicks and Giggles

…your children were up 5 times during the night

…it’s gross, foggy and snowing outside, but you have to go out for groceries

…you have dishes piled way too high on your kitchen counter

…your laundry basket is overflowing

…your wisdom tooth is coming in funny and so it hurts to chew, talk, swallow, and anything else you do with your mouth

…both your kids are teething and you are just about out of infant Tylenol and Advil

…your floor needs to be vacuumed for the 10th time this month, and it’s only the 8th as your dining room is carpeted and you have a toddler

…and then this little guy wakes up and gives you a great big smile and you realize that it might not be such a bad day after all!

This Saturday, Brian and I are going to a farewell party for some friends from church.  It is a childless party, so we had to find a babysitter.  I’m a little nervous.  This is the first time they will be with a babysitter that is not a grandparent or an aunt/uncle.  It is the daughter of a woman I used to work with.  I’ve never met her, but they are coming over on Wednesday after school so she can meet the kids.  Also, the kids will be in bed before we even leave, so hopefully they won’t even know that we are gone.  If she works out, it will be nice, because we will have found a babysitter who lives close by.  So, I’m hoping it works out.  Then Brian and I can maybe manage to go on more than one date every 15 months   Also, on average, what is a good wage for a babysitter for about 3 1/2 hours for two kids?

A while ago, Jacob was sleeping through the night at least 4 out of 7 days.  He even went for a 6 day stretch!  Now I am lucky if he stays asleep past 1:00 before waking up.  He takes a bottle and then goes right back to bed, but he was sleeping so well, and I want that back.  Anyway, I was reading through my sleep book, Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child (which I highly recommend if your child of any age has any type of sleep issue) not really expecting to find anything when I came across a chunk on mouth breathing/snoring.  Over the past few days, I have noticed Jacob snoring.  A few times it was loud enough that I could hear it in the next room. It stated that snoring/mouth breathing can greatly affect a child’s sleep and often causes night waking.  The two main causes were allergies/colds and enlarged adenoids.  So, I went on a purge.  If it is a dust problem, that is easily fixed.  So, I took out the rug, vacuumed my chair, swept, dusted, and changed all his bedding, including blankets, which don’t get changed too often.  I also took out the mobile which had cloth fish on it.  Also, since it is incredibly dry here, I turned the humidifier on in his room.  I also gave him some saline nasal drops.  I have no idea if that is the problem, but if it is, it sure was an easy fix.  So I’m crossing my fingers as I go to bed, hoping that this works!

Yesterday, I repotted a hanging plant.  When I was done, I closed the bag up (or so I thought), placed it by the back steps to be taken downstairs, and went to lay on the couch, as I was really tired yesterday.  I woke up to a little girl hitting my face (she has started this habit, as Jacob laughs when she hits him in the face, we are trying to get her to stop, but Jacob is not very helpful when he laughs almost every single time!)  The hand felt dirty, so I grabbed it to see what was on it (and now my face).  It was covered in dirt, so I immediately thought, Oh great, she got into another plant.  I got up, preparing to go pick up my plant and clean a little dirt.  I looked on the end table and the plant was still intact.  I looked in the kitchen to see this:

It also goes halfway down the stairs.

A while ago, I wrote a post about how I was doing my menu planning.  While it is still working quite well, and I find that I like it, it does tend to lack variety and I know that we could be eating healthier.  The two things that I most want to add into our diet are fish and vegetables.  We mostly eat vegetables in the form of salads.  Neither of us really like cooked vegetables, so we do eat a lot of them raw.  The biggest problem with this is Chloe doesn’t eat vegetables very well.  Of course, she doesn’t eat cooked vegetables very well either.  I think that she would be content to live off of peanut butter and jam sandwiches and cheese, although she did eat a few bites of a carrot yesterday!  One thing I do a lot of is casseroles, and other one-dish meals.  We don’t do a lot of  meat and sides meals.  This week, I am going to attempt my first ever tuna casserole.  We will have to see how that goes over.  If anybody has any good, healthy recipes that they would like to share, please do, especially casserole like ones with fish.  Hopefully we can start eating healthier and incorporate some fish and more vegetables into our diet, and Chloe will stop just looking at her supper, drinking her milk, and then pushing the bowl away saying “all done”!

While he is not yet crawling, Jacob is very mobile.  He rolls and creeps all over the place.  The other day, I had laid down on the couch for a bit and so the blanket had not been put back yet and was hanging over the edge of the couch.  I went into the kitchen for a sec, and came back to find this:

I moved the blanket off of him and received a great big smile for my efforts!

So this morning, when I went to get the kids from their rooms, somehow they had both gotten themselves half undressed.  No idea how they did it, especially Jacob.  Also, I think that it is weird they both did it on the same day.

While deciding whether or not to have any more kids, one of the things that I was thinking about was the fact that Chloe would never have a sister and Jacob would never have a brother.  However, I do know that my brother’s wife is really close with her brother, so I know it is possible to be close with your siblings and that not having a same gender sibling is not the end of the world.  Also, watching these two play together, I think they will be ok!

Jacob has been on solids for a while, so I recently gave him his first baby MumMum.  He loved it.  I never gave them to Chloe because at the time that she was ready for them there was recalls of them out.  I don’t think it was in Canada, but just to be safe, she had rice cakes instead.  Chloe saw Jacob having one, and asked me for one.  I obliged, and Chloe also had her first baby MumMum.  She also loves them and calls them numnums, which may be due to me calling them those at first.  She also seems to think that it is very important to eat them with Jacob, so once Jacob is in his high chair and eating his, she will grab hers and climb into the chair that I use to feed him.  Together they eat their mummums and giggle at each other.