Not sleeping

Last Tuesday Elsa and Gwen were in their room taking a nap when a neighbors horn went off for about 20 seconds. My kids are real sensitive to things that sound like alarms and this sounded like an alarm and it terrified them both! Gwen recovered quickly, but Elsa hasn’t. Since that incident nearly a week ago, she has not been able to sleep in her room at all.

We’ve tried so many things I can’t even recount them. The only thing we haven’t tried so far is moving her crib into a different room. It feels like this is not so much about fear any more and a lot about “if I hold out long enough I can sleep with Mommy and Daddy!”. Yet she displays some other behaviors that lead me to think that at the very least she does not like her room at all now (she won’t play in there for instance, even if we all are in there).

For the first few nights we eventually would give in and put her in our bed where she’d fall asleep almost immediately. Then we’d put her back in her bed and she’d sleep through the night. The last 4 or so nights though, she will wake up every hour. As you might imagine, this is extremely exhausting and frustrating.  This also applies for naps so its something we’re struggling with all day long and the wee little bit of free time I got every day has been eaten up.

I hate going to bed frustrated and upset, waking up every hour frustrated and upset, and starting my day frustrated and upset! There is no one to blame… its just something to get through. But its still very draining.

I’m having a hard time staying positive. It feels like I’m crying every day.  We seem to just be in a real tough streak and that little black raincloud just hangs over our heads wherever we go, making things as complicated and stressful as possible. I feel so worn down. Usually pregnancy is a time when I feel pretty good. As detailed on this blog, I usually have at least one semi-major home improvement job I tackle during pregnancy and I like to get things in order. I don’t know that’s going to happen this time. Seems hard enough just staying on top of day to day tasks, let alone any big projects.

Anyway, enough whining. Off to make some order out of chaos.

Elsa turns 2

Our little blond surprise! Our stubborn, funny, talkative, and charming baby girl. She has kept us hopping since day one and will probably continue to do so as the years roll by. Happy birthday my Elly-Belly!

Newborn

6 months

1 Year

2 Years

Updates, part 2

My garden has been doing ok. I went on a little buying binge and changed my plan around, but I’m happy with how its come out. Somehow I ended up with 9 tomato plants! Holy moly, all my local peeps, you may be getting bags of tomatoes from me later this year. We had like 2 days of very strong winds, complete with rough crosswinds, and it demolished some of my tomatoes, despite my efforts to protect them. I had to replace all the special ones I ordered online which was a major bummer for me. I just pray that everything else goes fine. Gardening is supposed to be fun, not stressful! I’m going to try to get a new picture up soon. Here’s what I have though:

• 9 tomatoes (Purple Cherokee, Gardeners Choice Cherry, Black Krim, Black Cherry, Brandywine, Goliath, Manitoba, Patio, Roma)
• 1 Brussels sprout (Thanks Aunt Margaret!)
• 2 squares of beets
• 3 basil plants
• 2 parsley
• 1 thyme
• 2 rainbow Swiss chard
• 2 chive
• 2+ zucchini
• 2 sugar snap pea plants
• mint/lemon thyme
• 1 butternut squash (thanks again to Aunt Margaret!)
  

I finally completed a year long project of obtaining a new seat for our Suburban. We have bucket seats in our first row and we needed a bench to comfortably seat 4 kids plus guests. Gray leather bench seats that fit our Suburban are much harder to find than you might think! But I bought one, sight unseen, from a junkyard in Bellingham and I think it will be great. My Dad is going to pick it up on Monday (he is up there for work all the time) so hopefully by Wednesday I can have it in! It’ll be nice to have the full space utilized in the car.

Yesterday we went with G’s pre-k class to a local fire station. What fun!

Ethan, such a good helper, pushing Elsa for me.

Gwen

Elsa in her fire hat

Fireman giving the kids a talk

Inside the ambulance

Gwen driving

Ethan in the captains chair

Elsa liked the back seat

Sisters

Talking about the Jaws of Life

Showing off their newly remodeled kitchen. I love how Elly immediately found the one item of food out in that whole building.

The closest thing they had to a fire dog

Later in the day, I was about to Elly in the tub and noticed how much gunk there was in her hair. Its very fine and straight and resists most attempts at controlling it. So I decided I was going to cut in some bangs. Now I’m bad at cutting hair. Last time I tried it was on Ethan when he wasn’t even a year! And it was bad. But I just got an urge to do something so I did.

Before

After

Now, I don’t think I did too bad considering that it was basically snip here, snip there, between keeping her distracted and happy. Since its dried, it looks a little football helmet-ish on the front, and honestly, she doesn’t even look like my little baby any more! She looks older. But its really nice not to have to constantly battle with the hair.

As for me, well, I haven't been doing so well. For about 3 weeks I've felt like a walking ball of stress and tension. Crying at the drop of the hat, zero energy, just blah blah blah through and through. I posted on Facebook how I feel like a little black raincloud settled over my head for a couple weeks and it still lingers. Everything seems difficult and hard and frustrating. Hoping that things improve soon. There is so much to do and not much time to do it.

Much to update

We’ve had an exhausting and stressful couple of weeks around these parts. Blogging was something I couldn’t even think about! But I *think* we’re slowing down now and there is so much to write about.

The 25th was Gwen’s birthday and it started off inauspiciously with Elly throwing up a couple times the night before and the morning of. We cautiously hoped that it was a 24 hour bug and made the decision to bring her with us to the party and keep her somewhat isolated. She did ok. My Mom tended her and she held it together for most the day. Unfortunately (or fortunately), right after the party ended she threw up all over the floor. But the staff of Pump It Up! barely batted and eye and had it cleaned up right away. Everyone had a blast and you can’t beat a bouncy house place for wearing out kids (and adults!).

One set of slides. So fun!

Gwen coming down head first

Sick Elsa

 

Gwen posing

Aunt Jenni taking Elly for a slide

Another of the bouncy things

Group pic

The birthday throne

Ethan and his friend directing gift opening

The boys got a kick out of being teased by the girls

  

After the party, we decided to go to Burgermasters as a treat and get dinner. We figured since Elly had already puked she wouldn’t do it again, right? Oh wrong. WRong wrong wrong! We placed our order and BAM! Elsa pukes all over herself and the car seat. I hustle to clean it all up and I’m feeling like this is not going to be fun and we need to get home. Our food comes and I’m holding Elly and she throws up again! Oh heavens. Nothing ruins a meal like the odor of vomit. So I tell Jason, “Lets go, NOW!”. He goes to start the car and… nothing. Nothing at all. Huh? He tries again and again and the car is dead. This is not happening. But it is. Our car battery died! We just got AAA so we give them a ring and they say it could be an hour or more. That bites. However, the Burgermaster lady notices our dilemma and says, “Hey, we can jump you right here with this neat thing” and she does and we’re on our way in 10 minutes. What a day! What a stressful, stinky, messy day :)

Unfortunately, the fun did not stop there and one by one we all fell sick. For Elsa it was the worst. She had both vomit and diarrhea for 10 days. For everyone else it was a 24-48 hour thing. We didn’t have it all at once though, it staggered out through the week so it felt never ending!

After recovering from that, I decided to get Elsa off the bottle. She usually had one at nap and bedtime, but since being sick she’d been totally off them and we thought this was the time. It was hard because she did start to want them again, but we persevered and she seems ok with it now.

Then I decided last weekend to potty train Elly. I don’t know why I decided to do this when we were all still recovering from the stress and hassle of being sick, but there ya go. My friend April had recommended http://3daypottytraining.com and I used their method to good success! She’s now 100% dry during the day and naps. She was dry for a few nights but has started wetting again at night, so I think we may put her in pull ups at night for now. She’s still so young and might not be ready for night time dryness on a consistent basis.

Mother’s Day was rather stressful for me as well! We’d made plans to celebrate at my Mom’s house and combine it with Elsa’s birthday (which is on the 19th) since May is busy for everyone and we weren’t sure we could all get together again later in the month. My Mom came down with the flu though and thought we should cancel because she didn’t know how long she could still be infectious after feeling better. I didn’t get this email though until I’d just completed a HUGE 3 layer 9 x13 cake filled with lemon-white chocolate whipped cream and strawberries. It must have weighed 10 lbs! The thought of all the time and money put into this cake being wasted was enough to drive me into my bed in tears. Luckily though, everyone decided to still get together and we had a wonderful day. I got no pictures because I’ve been HORRIBLE about that lately.

See the next post for more…