Wednesday, September 29, 2010

9-29-10 The Day Started in the Middle of the Night

Oh, boy! I have two little ones teething right now. This caused our day to start at 3 o'clock in the morning. My hardest moments in motherhood have been when I have two crying inconsolably at the same time in the middle of the night. Last night was one of those times. It breaks my heart to have to put one of them down while they're crying; I actually feel better about it if I'm still holding them and they're both still crying.

This morning I turned on the light in the nursery and let Max play while I fed Caden. Caden was wide awake so the three of us were just hanging out for a while. The morning before, I solved this problem while setting Max up with his bottle and his "B" in the rocking chair while I sat on the ottoman and fed Caden. It sounds like a short awake stint even when I write it, but, seriously, our house is a nighttime circus and I'm the frazzled ring leader.

12 - Conrad came into our room
1 - Caden woke to eat
2 - still awake because I can't fall back asleep
3 - Caden woke to eat
3:10 - Max woke up screaming (I can only assume it's due to cutting teeth)
4:15 - Caden back to sleep and lied down with Max
7 - Conrad up for the day

The boys were perfectly happy today even with the lack of sleep. I don't think I did too bad myself. But they were all ready for early bedtimes tonight!! Who knows what time tomorrow will start. I did give Caden a formula bottle in addition to his last nursing feeding tonight. I figure he's not getting enough to eat during the day because he's waking twice to eat now and he didn't even do that when he was a newborn.

Saturday, September 25, 2010

9-25-10 Babies Making Baby Food

Tonight I recruited the help of my big boys for making baby food for Caden. It didn't take much recruiting effort, Conrad and Max love to help in the kitchen. For at least a year now, Conrad's been helping me cook by using a butter knife to cut vegetables. This has been a great way for us to spend time together while I'm preparing a meal. Now, Max cannot bear to be left out so he also pulls his chair over to the counter. I let him use a plastic knife. So far, so good. I may trie giving a butter spreader next time and see if he finds that a suitable tool.

Tonight they were cutting green beans to be pureed as baby food. It was a lot of fun!! We talked about why we needed to make this for toothless Caden and how nutritious green beans are. Max chewed on some uncooked beans while we worked and Conrad helped operate the food processor.

I only had a couple of pounds of green beans, but it made 10 servings. It saved me a few bucks for what I would have spent to buy packaged baby food.

Conrad's ready to make applesauce and I'm sure Max will jump right in. I'm glad I didn't wait until the boys were in bed to do this little project, I would have been able to check it off of my to-do list, but it would have been very boring! I wish I would have gotten a pic of my little cooks.

Sunday, September 19, 2010

9-17-10 Trial Run

Today we did a trial run to the zoo. Just me and the boys -- no friends for a play date. I was curious how it would go with all three boys and didn't really want witnesses if it didn't go well. My trio of boys surprised me. It was no problem at all. We went specifically to go to the petting zoo section. It was cool to see Conrad and Max's reactions to the chickens and goats. Conrad is fascinated by the whole concept of "laying eggs" and he enjoyed the responsibility of brushing the goats. Max was more stand-offish with the goats and we couldn't go into the pen with the stroller anyway. Max was more into making animal sounds with each animal that we saw.

Caden, well, he's just happy to stroll along as long as he's included at lunchtime! We had geese and a squirrel try to join us for lunch. Here's a tip: Don't throw a pretzel to the geese as you sit down to eat your lunch. The geese were not apprehensive about coming right up to the kids at all. I told Conrad that if he got scared because they were so close, just yell and they'll go away. This worked and Max though it looked like fun. It was a noisy lunch.

It got really noisy when a squirrel got too close for Max's comfort. The squirrel is more used to toddlers than Max is to squirrels. Max squirmed and then got upset. I had to shew the little animal away. I must have looked like Wonder Woman to Max. I probably looked like psycho mom a few minutes later when I had to run after Max who had decided to climb the play equipment that he was way too little for! I climbed down from the jungle gym with a baby on each hip. The big one was protesting with his entire body.

Aside from that incident, the day was glorious. Conrad even learned to spell the word zoo. We left the zoo with everybody smiling and the car lulled them to sleep. We'll be going back again soon.

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Ahhhh. MOPS tech support wants to call me tomorrow to walk through some online things with me. Yes, yes, you can call me tomorrow!

Saturday, September 11, 2010

9-9-10 Preschool? Whatever you need to call it

This morning I loaded up our car and took two of my boys to their first day of school. . . sort of school.

It was hard, but in a different way. There was a feeling of relief for the level of productivity that was about to happen. I also felt joy in how much Conrad was looking forward to it and leaving them both with smiles on their faces.