xmas day

Since the Scotts were skiing, Stacy and the kids came over for a jammie Christmas morning.
There was playing...

Book reading and personal space invasion...

and toy eating.

Later, we opened our stockings.

Who would have thought 3 chapsticks would be the hit gift?

Well, those and the M&M gumball machine!

As a family of blended religious backgrounds, we are still fine tuning how we celebrate the holidays (my Hanukkah post is coming but I have to get some pics from Cathryn). I have only asked for a little Christmas celebration because of the continued meaning that it has for me, but this is not in a religious way whatsoever. This year I finally feel that we've figured most of our traditions and they should be in full swing next year.

Stacy and the kids came over while the daddies went skiing for a laid back Christmas morning. I made a yummy breakfast, the kids played, we tried to watch a princess movie, and the big kids got a bath. Later, we opened stockings and next year I need to be more specific that not every gift needs to be a gag gift or something that we need for house (seriously, sponge tops?). However, the ear plugs were funny considering the amount of whining I had been listening to.

It was a good Christmas, but I know the day will only get more exciting as the kids get older and understand what's going. The same applies for Hanukkah :)

thoughts on this morning

1. It is not fair when one child wakes up at 6am and the other is still sleeping (it's past 8am).
2. Having the kids share a room is not currently working for our family.
3. My baby is a terrible sleeper. The two nights of A.M.A.Z.I.N.G. and all of the work that went into them were undone by one little cold.
4. I witnessed Vivi blow the perfect raspberry yesterday and she has been trying diligently to recreate said raspberry every since. Even from 2-4am. Mostly she's just blowing spit all over her face.
5. It is now 3.5 hours since she woke up and she is in desperate need of a nap, yet I can hear her in the nursery blowing raspberries.
6. I am reminded of my favorite reason for odd baby behavior, as told by our pediatrician, after I took Avery in for a suspicious cough (of the fake sounding variety) when he was about 4 months old, "Because they can."
7. No good deed goes unpunished. I slept on the couch so that I could attend to the kids while Scott got a good night's sleep in order to speed his recovery and when I went in this morning he asks, "Why did you abandon me? I didn't sleep well."
8. Scott is now very sick. I actually just hand fed him a piece of toast. Frankly, I'm surprised by my own spously devotion.
9. It's unnerving not being able to see a clock when you wake up in the middle of the night.
10. Even when Vivi starts sleeping consistently, if that happens, I will have to be retrained to sleep for long periods of time. Even without the prompt of a baby or sick toddler, I'm up at 2am.
11. Only the first half hour of the Today show is worth watching.
12. I do not like being up early enough where turning on the lights is a necessity.
13. I feel surprisingly good for only getting 4 interrupted hours of sleep.
14. The following is a video of the noise I listened to for two hours in the middle of the night and am currently listening to now. Enjoy.

it sucked

Scott, "Write a blog about it so that everyone can feel our pain."

Last night sucked. It sucked so bad. It sucked so much that it's going to take a few days for Scott and I to recover and wash the suckiness off of us. Avery got sick about two weeks ago, was very sick, got better for the two days around his surgery and then started running his low grade fever again. He now has a double ear infection. This was ample time for Vivi, Scott and I to also fall ill. Vivi has mostly recovered, I was terribly ill on Sunday and Scott's sinus infection was getting worse. We were all counting on a good night's sleep last night to help us recover and move on. I haven't left the house since Avery's surgery, fyi.

Well, Avery had a different idea. I kid you not, he did not go to sleep until 4:30am. He was whining every 20 minutes for some supremely ridiculous reason; can't find his water, needs it icy cold, someone hold my water, someone cover me up, etc. At one point, I heard a crash and thought he fell out of bed because of the screaming, but alas it was only the effing water!

All of this commotion, woke the baby who could not fall asleep for almost 2 hours and spent those hours crying. I tried bringing Avery into bed with me but the whining continued and I ended up with his foot up my ass more times than I could count (he likes to sleep sideways).

Scott was on the sofa. Vivi was in the crib and then we played the Turbow Bed Shuffle and put Avery back in his bed, Vivi in the co-sleeper in our room, and Scott and I back in our bed. Yet, the fits of whining and crying continued. It was hell. We had exhausted our patience.

Now, I have to give Scott lots of credit. He seems to have endless patience when it comes to the erratic whims of our 3 year old and I've never actually heard him yell at Avery. He came as close as he ever has last night (and I still wouldn't qualify it as actually yelling, just a very stern Daddy voice), and would you know, that's what got the kid to shut up and go to sleep.

I know. He's sick. He doesn't feel good. It's our job as parents to care for him endlessly, but yesterday went too far. Scott and I are exhausted and now we're sick. I swear, being sick and having to care for a sick child is probably the hardest thing as parents that we've had to endure.

All day today we talked about his behavior and how tonight has to be different. Vivi is sleeping in our room and Scott and I have our fingers crossed. We really, really need some sleep.

good eatin'

Among my wishes for Vivienne is that she will love food. Okay, I'll settle for liking food. Avery eats only because he's hungry or we're forcing him to eat. This does not compute. Looking back, I would not do anything differently about how we introduced food to him. He just doesn't like it.

So, here we go again. Vivi seemed to enjoy eating but could not figure out the mechanics of keeping the cereal in her mouth and swallowing it, which is very typical, so all of her cereal ended up in the bib. Such advanced skills take practice. She's eaten a handful of times since and seems to be getting better at it. She does seem to enjoy sitting in the high chair as it offers a new perspective on her house.

merry christmas

Merry Christmas, everyone!

surgery

Walking with Daddy to go potty sideways for the last time.

Hospital bracelets...check.

He got to watch some cartoons as we waited.

About to go into surgery. I'm wearing a bunny suit.

He didn't think it was as entertaining as I thought he would but the TV was still on.

Scott and I had a few conversations about how to handle this post. We are fairly open books, but Avery, in time might not be and we want to respect that one day he might not appreciate a fully detailed post being out in the Internets about his first surgery. So, I'm not going to write out explicitly what he had to have done, but please infer as you wish or just ask.

Scott and I both took the day off of work to be with him and see him through what could have been a potentially traumatizing experience. Avery, however, was a rockstar. The only moment of hesitation he had was when he had to change into the hospital gown. I had told him about this the evening before but I'm guessing his hesitation comes from the fact that they did not provide feety jammies and everyone knows how Avery feels about his feety jammies.

At the beginning, there was just a lot of waiting. Doctors and nurses came in and out and Avery answered all of their questions and didn't seem to be unnerved by the situation at all. Even when it was time to go to the operating room he enjoyed his crazy 'sleigh' ride and the nurse let him push the buttons to open all of the doors. When we got to the room, we just played 'Eye Spy' and pointed out all of the interesting things we saw. Things got underway pretty quickly and Avery was soon breathing strawberry scented gas. We talked about donuts and ice cream and with a few wiggles of his legs, he was asleep. I had anticipated that watching him go to sleep would be awful, but it really wasn't. I didn't even cry. I kissed his cheek and walked back to the room.

Scott and I packed up our things, I pumped in the bathroom for 5 minutes and then the Doctor came out because the procedure was over. It was that fast. Soon, after that, a nurse came out saying that he was starting to wake up and we walked back to his recovery area. I was hoping to be there as he woke up, but when we arrived, he was already up. The nurses were surprised at how quickly he came to. He seemed unfazed. We read a book. He talked to Scott in a weird angry pirate voice which was hysterical and had a popsicle. For the record, I do not think anyone every has enjoyed a popsicle as much as Avery enjoyed his. It was like his own toddler, post-surgery ecstasy.

Soon, it was time to go home, and so we did. The whole things was remarkably unremarkable. The anticipation was certainly much worse. On a final note, a new play dough factory makes everything better.

I have to go to the dicktor because there's something wong with my wang.

sick

Avery is not the type of kid to fall asleep in semi-random places (over our shoulders, in the car, in the stroller, on the sofa, etc). He has been this way since he was a tiny baby and it always left me scratching my head when I would see a kid asleep on their parent's shoulder while walking through Target. Well, this is about as close are we're going to get and it's only because he was so sick. Last week, Avery was as sick as he's ever been. Too sick to even play quiet games which is saying a lot. At one point, he got the pillow from his bed and set up camp next to the kitchen. We asked him if he wanted to go to sleep in his bed, but he wanted to stay on the floor. He ended up sleeping there for over an hour and a half. Scott kept asking me if we should move him, but since this was the first consistent sleep he had gotten in days, we left him there. Now I have photographic evidence of the one time he hasn't slept in his bed.

avery's first time

Hey, look! Turns out Avery used to like to play photo shoot and enjoyed his first time on the swing. However, he didn't get to swing until he was the ripe old age of 7 months.

swinging

Vivi loves to play photo shoot

We fed the birds and boy do those seagulls figure out quickly where the bread comes from. They were grabbing it out of the air before the geese in the water got it.

My little swingers

He might be a tad big for the baby swing

This is Vivi's first time swinging. Um, I think she liked it.

No, actually she LOVED it.

First time swinging, first time in cowgirl boots!

In addition to my photo shoot with Avery and other fantastic Friday activities, we also made it to the park. We played, zoomed a truck down the slide countless time, fed the birds and went swinging. I had so much fun feeding the birds because instead of dropping the bread into the water I threw it up into the air to watch the seagulls maneuver to catch it before it hit the water. Well, it didn't take them long to figure out the system and started circling us trying to get the bread. I got a couple of pretty good shots.

By far the best part was watching Vivienne swing for the first time. She absolutely loved it and made the same silly squinty face each time the swing went forward and smiled while it moved back. Try as I might, Avery did not let me put her on his lap in the baby swing, but that was probably the safer choice.

friday morning

This is what my house looked like last Friday. Please note the comforter on the sofa from our photo shoot, the overturned chair that Avery uses as a slide and the pile of baby toys under Pinky.

This is Avery's camping bed in our room. It's where he slept while we were sleeping training Vivi.

What happens when your big brother brings you all of your toys.

We also played blocks

C'mon, it's like shooting fish in a barrel. You didn't think that I didn't take any pictures of Vivi, did you?

I love Fridays. Unless there is something pressing to do, the kids and I just hang out a home in a leisurely manner. I make a good breakfast, we play, do some chores and I attempt a photo shoot (see previous post). We also made it to the park but I'll save that for the next post.

Life is good.

avery | photo shoot

I know what you're thinking - it's about time you posted photos from a photo shoot dedicated to Avery alone. You seem to be focusing so much on Vivienne's photos these days. Well, faithful reader, I agree, but let me defend myself. Taking pictures of Vivi is easy, relatively speaking. When I'm done I just have to choose the ones where she has the cutest faces and smiles. With Avery however, the effort that goes into actually getting him to agree to let me take his pictures, getting him into cute clothes, setting up the scene and then getting him to smile in a less-than-ridiculous manner is staggering. Please observe:

I thought that playing in blankets would be something fun for him to do while I took the pictures. Pretty cute, but the light isn't quite right. There was zero time to adjust the settings.

What are you talking about, this is a pretty cute picture.

This is what I got when I asked him to look at the camera.

And then he does this to show me just how much he does not want his picture taken.

And then he gets distracted by something crusty on his jeans, yes the ones I pulled out of the hamper for him to wear OVER his jammies because he refused to take them off.

And then he wanted some milk.

So I decided to work with it.

You have no idea how long it took him to drink a 1/4 cup of milk. Yes, he's toying with me because I want something from him.

He finally finishes his milk.

And I zoom in.

And then he's done.

I would also like to point out that I included ALL of the decent shots and only a fraction of the pictures where he's got his hands over his face, picking at something, making a silly face or turning his head away from me.

The big HOWEVER is, that I love all of the pictures because this is what a 3 year old is supposed to be doing and boy do they tell the story of our Friday morning photo shoot.

Avery, I cherish you.

the jinx*

When Madelyn was 14 weeks old, Cathryn posted a blog saying that she had started sleeping 9-10 hours a night and that it was A.M.A.Z.I.N.G. At the time, Vivienne was only a few weeks old and her blog gave me hope that if I could only make it to 14 weeks, I could get some decent sleep.

The joke was on me.

However, I am pleased to report that at 23 weeks, Vivienne has slept 10 hours for the past two nights! This did not happen without lots of crying it out, ignoring her and Avery joining us on a camping bed in our room. We started sleep training at 13 weeks.

It was A.M.A.Z.I.N.G.

*Scott will inevitably think I am jinxing us by writing this post.

michigan | unkie

This post is alternately titled, "Unkie | Taking One for the Team." Unkie played horse with those kids for what seemed like hours. I don't know how he did it, but the kids had so much fun. The other little girls are family friends, Ava and Ella and they played so nicely with Avery at the party Grandma Heidi hosted. I love seeing him just be free and play without abandon. That's what childhood is all about, right? Thanks, Unkie for sacrificing your body for the enjoyment of my child.