PreK

I've decided it's time for me to start trying to work with Alli on some PreK activities. I've allowed us to spend too much time in front of the tv (although PBS is very educational) and have allowed it to teach her instead of me. So after having my memory jogged by Kara about the PreK curriculum put together by a lady in our church, I downloaded Week A and began a few worksheets with Alli. She already knows the letter A so we worked on tracing letter A. We talked briefly about Adam and Eve (since A is for Adam in this week). I realized very quickly that Alli wants to learn but I will have to have patience if I'm going to teach her. She became very frustrated and upset when she couldn't follow the dotted lines on the paper with her pen. She is a perfectionist (probably my fault) and got upset when she couldn't stay on the line. So I calmly tried to encourage her to keep trying and I helped her by holding her hand as she traced. She gained confidence and began doing the tracing while my hand was on hers. I made sure to show her that my tracing wasn't perfect too and that is ok. I'm going to make every effort to try to do this program three days a week. For anyone interested, the packets can be found here Confession of a Slackermom.

10 Weeks

Ethan is 10 weeks today and officially slept through the whole night for the first time last night. We put him in bed around 7:30pm and he slept till 6:40am...but didn't fully wake up until 7am. We are so excited!

On a side note. I got a random email today from Parents.com with some information on how to help make your baby comfortable during the summer heat. The one thing I honed in on was the need to keep your babies hydrated during the summer months. Babies under 6 months can't have water and babies over 6 months can have a little. So it said the way to keep them hydrated is just to give them extra milk/formula. Now this wasn't the big news to me. The big news was that it said babies should take in an extra 50% in fluids from their normal intake during summer months. Normal intake it says is roughly 2 oz for every 1lb. So Ethan is 12lbs and should be getting on average 24 oz a day. Well what do you know...that's exactly what we feed him. So a 50% increase would put him at 36oz a day. Holy crap! No wonder I feel like this kid acts like he is in a constant growth spurt! Maybe he just needs more fluids than we "think" he needs because he isn't staying as hydrated. I don't stay in the house very well and we are on the go a lot. So he is in his carseat and probably sweating off some of his fluids. Poor kid! Ugh. Being a parent is a constant learning process. I wish kids came with a manual. I'm so thankful for the little tips and helps the Lord does send along the way to help us out.

Observations

Sometimes I like to sit back and observe my little family and take time to reflect on how blessed I am to have them in my life. Alli is a joy and is so sweet and thoughtful. She is a wonderful big sister and helps me tremendously with Ethan. She loves her little brother and will come and randomly hug him.

I think he already has a great fondness for her as well. It makes me wonder what their relationship was like in Heaven before they joined our lives. Today I was sitting outside with Ethan while Alli was jumping on her trampoline. Alli hopped out and wanted to sit in my lap as well. I moved Ethan to my left leg and Alli sat on my right. She then reached over and grabbed both of Ethan's hands and just held them. Then they both just looked at each other for the next few minutes. Ethan just starred at her and smiled at her over and over again. It was the sweetest moment to observe. I love my children and truly hope they become each others best friends. Family means so much to me and I'm thankful to see how much Alli loves all her aunts and uncles. I hope my children always value their immediate and extended family.

On a very different note...I thought we were in for a rough night tonight. I walked into Alli's room tonight while she was playing with Ben before bed. She was running around the room with her pacifier in her mouth. Our rule is no pacifier unless it is bedtime. So I told her to take it out. (This thing was only on by half of the plastic. She's been chewing on it and we've told her once it breaks...that's it). So she refused to take it out. Ben reached out to pull it from her mouth but she clenched her jaw and refused. Well...that was the end of her pacifier...it bit the dust tonight. Alli immediately began crying as we explained to her that her pacifier was broken and we don't have another one. Ben ripped off the broke end and she was left with just a small nub. He told her she could have it and try to put it in her mouth and bite it with her teeth. This gave her the satisfaction of feeling like it wasn't being taken away but after it fell out of her mouth about 15 times, she gave up on the pacifier. By the time we tucked her into bed it was no where to be found. I thought for sure as we left the room that she would be asking for her pacifier. But here I sit at 10pm at night and she is sleeping wonderfully without the sucking sounds of her and her pacifier....Yes!! One thing accomplished before age 3. Now if only she would have interest in potty training.

Update on Ethan:
Some of the family has asked if Ethan is sleeping any better and how the crying fits are going. This made me realized that I hadn't updated the blog on this issue. He is doing so much better. I think he's had numerous growth spurts and during these times he tends to wake every 2 hours for a feeding. So he's typically up an hour and down an hour (which can be very tiring and you don't get much accomplished). So during these crying fits at night I believe now he wasn't being fed enough due to a growth spurt. So now we are feeding him 4 oz a feeding and he's much happier. He still isn't on a consistent schedule like Alli was. I wish I could get him on one but at the same time each child is different and I don't expect him to be just like Alli. He is closer to sleeping through the night. If he wasn't, then I would make his schedule more of a priority. As of right now he takes his last feeding between 7 and 8pm. Then he is down for the night until somewhere between 2 and 6am. The last two nights he has slept from 8pm-5:45am. So he is practically sleeping through the night and we're excited. He is 9 weeks old and this was the same time Alli began sleeping through the night so he's right where I'd like him to be. Thank you for the concerns and well wishes on his behalf. He's wonderful.

Early Birthday Gift

We've been wanting to get Alli something to be able to play with and enjoy outside for the summer. We got a call today from Grammie and Papa with an idea for Alli's birthday and they surprised her this afternoon with a fun new toy for outside (Marilyn won't be able to be here during her birthday since we'll be welcoming a new cousin around Alli's birthday). She loves it and it was like pulling teeth to get her out this afternoon.

All tuckered out!!

Having fun

Working on tummy time.

Alli has loved playing in her pool this week so I got her a new pool toy. She found great joy in shooting Pepper with water.

Pepper enjoyed it too!

8 weeks

Excuse the horrible picture...Tonight I was changing Ethan into his PJs before bed and looked away for a second. When I looked back, he had rolled himself on his side without any help. He's been close to rolling onto his side for a long time now but never did. I don't think it will take him nearly as long to start rolling over completely as it did Alli.

Ethan's 1st Haircut

I think it's sad that I'm posting about Ethan's first haircut before Alli's. She really needs a good shaping haircut but...I digress...we haven't done it yet. Anyway, Ethan was blessed with a beautiful head full of hair. It took less than 6 hours after being washed to look oily again. I love the personality that it gave him but it needed a trim.

Julie so lovingly cut it for us and now he looks like a trimmed up little man.

He looks so different doesn't he?

Being crazy has its downside...

Alli was being silly last night before bed and ended up losing her balance and busted her lip on her bed...So here's her first busted lip.

2 month check up

Ethan is 7 weeks old this week and we went in for his 2 month check up. He had been starting to try to smile this week and we had yet to catch it on camera. We had some time to kill while waiting in the lobby and little man decided he would cheese it up for the camera. So I finally captured his adorable gummy smile! He's been cracking me up during the wee hours of the morning showing me this smile but I never caught it any other time until now!

Now onto his stats. We are now measuring a whopping 12 lbs even! He has grown from 22 inches to 23 3/4 inches! Ethan is in the 50% for his weight (so much for my Dr being worried about him over eating and getting too big) and he is in the 98% for his height. Where did this tall kid come from?? I guess he gets it from his grandparents. I don't remember specifics because I was so shocked over his height but I believe overall (when you compare height with weight) he is in the 90 something %. Dr. said "he's a lanky kid". haha. yes...yes he is! So instead of the worry wart lecture I got at his 10 day check up, today we got a "good job mom" report from the dr.

Ethan continues to sleep well at night. We might increase what he's eating during the day to try to help him sleep better during the day. Since he's only in the 50%...I feel like he has some wiggle room to eat a little more.

6 weeks and improving

Ethan is 6 weeks old and has been showing signs that he might sleep through the night. So last night I experimented. After his 8pm feeding I let him sleep instead of waking him to feed before I went to bed. He didn't get me up until 2:45am to feed. He then slept again until 7:40. So I'm pretty excited about this. He still fusses some in the evening but I'm beginning to think he just likes to cluster feed before bed.

Ethan I also starting to smile. I got 2 or 3 out of him last night at 3am. It's such a cute toothless grin!

Stay Classy

Our neighbors continue to defy our understanding of decency and common sense. I guess you get this privilege as a renter. I guess you don't have to care about your property or neighbors when its not your home.  Anyway...over the last few years, no matter how much work Ben has put into our yard, we continue to battle weeds because our neighbors (current and previous) fail to see the need to mow except once a month or more. So we get the pleasure of our good grass being ruined by flying weed seeds. Ben is trying to counteract this by mowing the half of our neighbors yard closest to us so that the weeds never get that tall. We've asked the management agency to send them letters in the past telling them to mow but we've helped mow their half in the mean time. Anyway on to the point of this blog...

Yesterday Ben was mowing our yard and it was the second time we've mowed since our neighbors had. Ben was almost done with our yard and would have moved onto the neighbor's next. As he was mowing he saw our neighbor pull his mower out and thought, "oh great he's going to mow. Now I won't have to mow his side". As Ben was finishing up, and ready to put the mower away, he saw our neighbor putting his mower away, WITHOUT having mowed our side of his yard. So this pompous twit thought he didn't have to mow his yard on the side of our hard because we had done it for him the last 3 times!! Not only this but he didn't even mow his back yard where his daughter's play set it. Lazy...just lazy! Way to stay classy! So Ben out of spite did not mow his half of the yard to purposefully leave this guy with part of his yard un-mowed. It is moments like this that I am thankful for our management agency over the homeowner's association. One more letter from the association agency and then they start getting fined without warning. They got the hint with the last letter after we complained about them working on their loud racing truck. Now I haven't had a baby lose sleep from the revving of an engine for 30 minutes! Hallelujah.

Losing my ability to trust...

What used to be outlets for me to keep family and friends informed and involved in our lives, regardless of distance, have now become opportunities to be potentially hurt and exploited for the gain of others. I have never felt so censured in my life and that isn't the purpose of my blog. I should be free to share with my family and friends any aspect I desire in my life but this isn't always the case. That being said, I don't want to have to worry about who is reading our family's blog and so we are going private. I didn't want to have to do this but I don't feel I have a choice anymore. If you frequently read our blog and enjoy following us, please give me your email and I will give you clearance to follow our blog.