(Day 15) sleep deprived

So today I have been trying to think of something to write about, and the only thing I can think of is sleep deprivation. It's been a part of my life for about a year. Because of this sweet boy:

Wearing Richards hat :)

I love his real "genuine" smile. I am sad it's out of focus! 

A year ago Liam started getting sick with everything under the sun, until about April or May. Anything from RSV, croup, horrible flus and colds etc. Several times the doctor told us to sleep in his room to make sure his breathing wasn't compromised, go in when he cried to make sure he was ok etc. Then when he wasn't sick, he has been teething or something. Anyways, from all of that we got in bad habits with him of going in when he cried during the night, and sure enough each time he was thirsty, teeth were hurting etc. Now he wakes up every night at around the same time and wants us to hold him. That's fine, but then it started not only being at the same time, but he wouldn't fall back to sleep for 2 hours. It's killing me because I have to deal with him for 2+ hours and then also for another combined hour when Brielle nurses during the night (she sleeps great but eats around 2 and 7 and eats for a long time). I get no more than 2 hours of sleep at a time, and 3 on great nights. So needless to say, Richard and I are going to be changing some things around so Liam sleeps better at night and breaks the habit of expecting us to come in several times during those 2 hours he is awake. We have tried EVERYTHING from putting him to bed later, earlier, cutting back on his naps, putting him in timeout when he cries out for us over and over again after we have checked on him once, making sure he has eaten enough during the day, making sure the room is the perfect temperature etc. I have done everything they say to do from all the sleeping books I have read. I feel like the walking dead a lot and it makes things hard to deal with. I hope things change. I am pretty desperate that they do. I am praying that they do. 

Good thing he is so darn cute and even with the sleep deprivation, being the mom is the best.

p.s. Wondering why I am posting on my blog so much all of a sudden? With the New Year I decided I wanted to take at least 1 picture a day and blog about it. I call it "Project 365" and I explain it more here

(Day 13) Saving his little brain

I am sure a lot of mommies are in my shoes right now for several reasons.

Freezing weather not allowing your kids to go outside

+

Tiny (not kidding) apartment with no room for little man to run & explore

+

Little man is tired of all his toys

+

Needing to nurse and have him distacted (that is the only time he gets remotely jealous)

+

Richard being gone all day (12 hours) and needing to get things aroumd the house done

=

Sometimes I cave and let him watch "kids TV shows" on Netflix

Don't panic. He really doesn't watch that much. Relatively hardly at all. But still, today I decided I wanted to limit the dependence on Curious George and Blues Clues as much as I could. So we had fun doing other things during Brielle's naps. 

Like playing with colored puff balls,

making finger paint and him painting with the paint we made

He loved making it "squishy" (his words)

We also cleaned the house (he had fun spraying things with his spray bottle of water and wiping it up with a rag), had a dance party, he helped me make dinner etc. I would say project "save his brain" went well.

While Brielle was awake, they had fun loving on each other and playing together like normal.

Relaxing in the sun

Brielle has found her cute little feet and LOVES them :)

Today was a good day. Even though I didn't get a nap, I still got a lot done. It was so nice! I re-arranged the decorations in our house, deep cleaned, played with Liam and made a yummy dinner. 

Even though it was Friday the 13th, it was good.

p.s. Wondering why I am posting on my blog so much all of a sudden? With the New Year I decided I wanted to take at least 1 picture a day and blog about it. I call it "Project 365" and I explain it more here

(Day 12) When it's quiet...

I learned something over the almost 2 years of being a mommy to a little boy.

If it's quiet, you should run. Fast. In their direction

Because chances are, they are up to no good.

Yesterday I forgot that truth and let it go quiet for too long. This is what I found when he walked into the living room:

Yeah he took out all the floss from the container and was running it through his mouth. Looks like he likes mint just as much as his mommy.

Not a flattering pic of me, but I never get in the pictures so I thought I would include it

(Day 11) One of "those" days

Rough [ruhf] adjective: When yous husband has 16 days left before the MCAT. To prep and in the last push before said psycho test, it was decided it would be best for him to study (for his classes and the MCAT) from 7:45am-8pm. 6 days a week. Leaving you to parent and do it all. Alone.

See: impossible, crazy


Yeah today was the second of those crazy days. And it's not easy. It is dang hard. Plus...
-I am not feeling 100% well
-Didn't sleep good last night
-It was too cold to leave the house
-(but still) Went grocery shopping and little man dropped everything (including half a deck of cards...don't ask) on the ground and then almost fell out of the cart. It was stressful.
-Liam was feeling cooped up and was acting up. alot more than normal.
-Tons of whining (from us all)
-Food battles over dinner
-Even with cleaning almost constantly, the house stayed a wreck
....

But, despite the "rough", there were many glimmers of wonderfullness (like my word?) that made me smile. Like...

-Liam, Brille and I's dance/jumping party before dinner
-Watching Liam color a beautiful picture with 5 different colors
-Liam and Brielle rolling around on the floor together playing
-Waking up to a clean house
-Yummy smelling dinner cooking in the crock pot all day
-Liam wanting to cuddle with Brielle before bed
-When he kept putting his "fish" that he made out of play dough asleep, making it happy (his words haha) and feeding it milk
-How excited Liam was to see Richard when he finally came home
-Taking an almost hour nap while the kids slept
-Richard cleaning the house for me after Liam went to sleep while I blogged
...

So despite the bad, it was still a good day. Because of my wonderful family. It's not "perfect" and without difficulty and trying-of-patience, but its wonderful. beautiful and I love it.

(Day 10) Sad egg and beekures

I need to make dinner and clean the house, but I wanted to write down some things Liam did today before I forget...

Sad Egg: This morning when Liam woke up, he asked for an egg. I started making him scrambled eggs like I normally do, but he also wanted to play with one. This is common and I am usually too busy to watch him to make sure he doesn't break it. But Brielle was still asleep, so I thought it would be ok. When he opened to carton to pick one, he found one and told me "sad egg". So he carried it around with him, very gently and cradled it in his hand for about an hour. While he colored, ate and then explored until the table. 

After all that attention, he informed me that "egg happy". So it worked. Egg was happy.

seriously love this picture of them. He was telling her about the beekures, and showing them to her.

Beekures: Today just minutes before Liam woke up from his nap, I tried to lay Brielle down. She had just woken up from a 3 hour nap, so I wasn't expecting much. It was quiet for about 20 minutes then she quietly started to cry. Liam (who was awake at this point) heard her and said "mom! Baby sad! quick!" He rushed into her room and standing next to the bed asked "baby, you ok??" then he basically told me in his little boy language to get her because she was sad. So I brought her in the living room and put her in the swing so I could start dinner. Liam wanted to join her and sat in her bumbo chair. For some reason, whenever he sits in that chair, he loves to "read" the beekures (aka: scriptures). So he started "reading" and then quietly told Brielle about them and asked her if she wanted them.
 "baby, beekures? here beekures".

I love watching him teach her, even though it's very simple still. 

He's going to be such a great older brother.

(Day 9) The fam at 2:30pm. Unedited.

When we went home for Christmas break to Washington, both of our families were in our home town and we were very spoiled by both sets of grandparents. So much so that we walked onto the plane headed towards Seattle with 2 suitcases, and boarded the plane headed towards Salt Lake with 4 suitcases and 1 we had to send home with my sister in their car because the airplane only allows 4. Most of it were toys and clothes that our parents bought for the kids.

(More coming on Christmas break when I get time to write for longer than 15 minutes...)

Well today we got the last suitcase from my sister which had some of Liam's Christmas toys. It was like Christmas all over again. Sort of. When he woke up from his nap, we opened the suitcase and he was so excited to find the treasures. So we played. And then Richard came home and he took a break from studying for the MCAT to play with his little man.

Brielle learning a thing or two about how to play pretend

And for your viewing pleasure, a peek at our family this afternoon at 2:30pm.

In all our unedited glory.

Like me with my "cleaning" clothes on since today I am attacking our house (with no mercy) and my unwashed hair pulled up

Once again, the link won't embed from youtube, so here is the link to the video on youtube which is better quality:

http://youtu.be/MhsqCyEoW8Y

(Day 8) 23 Months

My dear, sweet boy is 23 months today.
I can't believe that I can say he will be 2 years old in a month. Thinking that almost brings tears to my eyes. And I don't know what I will do when I actually say it for the first time. Richard and I lay in bed every night before we go to sleep and talk about how much we love and adore our sweet children. I tell him funny things they did or Liam said and then we fall asleep smiling. The other night we were talking about how freakishly fast he is growing up. There is no way that this wonderful day was almost 2 years ago. No way.

Building blocks during brielles nap

I wanted to write some things about my favorite boy at 23 months. So here are some of my thoughts.

--He is almost 2 and I thought that the terrible twos would be awful. A couple months back it started to get kind of daunting with the hitting and the tantrums. But we quickly got on that with time outs and the hitting has completely stopped and the tantrums are almost none existent. Want to know what he does now? Walks around saying "Dank you Mom", "Dank you Dad" when he gets anything or we do anything for him. Like while I am changing his diaper, after I get him when he wakes up, when I give him food, when I hug him...when we do anything. He even said "dank you Mom" when I got him from one of his few timeouts. He's an angel. 

--And when he does do something naughty, or he knows we won't like he says "wharry mom". It's so cute and the way he says it is so sincere. If he screams when he doesn't get his way, instantly his face changes and he says "wharry" with the sweetest "sorry" face I have ever seen. He knows when he does something wrong, and feels bad about it. It's so sweet to see an almost 2 year old boy say sorry right after doing something wrong. It really melts my heart. Like the other night he woke up after a nightmare in the middle of the night and when I went to pick him up he whispered "wharry mom" and then as I rocked him to make sure he was ok he whispered "dank you mom". Like I said, it melts my heart :)

--He is also very independent and stands up for himself. Which I really like. He wants to do things by himself and is regularly heard saying "my turn" when he wants to do something, like walk down the stairs by himself. And if a kid is bullying him or trying to push him around, he won't have it. He stands up for himself (granted he is learning the appropriate way to do that still) and doesn't let people push him around. I love that he has that trait from his Dad and won't be a push over. 

--He is so sensitive emotionally like me. I don't mean that we get offended easy or anything, but we feel other peoples emotions and it's hard for us when others feel mad or disappointed in us. Because of this, Liam can't watch movies (which he hardly does anyways) where people are mad or loud or be around people that act like that. He gets the saddest face and starts whimpering if anyone on TV shows or movies look or sound mad or angry. At all. He's my sensitive little man :)

--Whenever he sees someone he loves he always say "Hi" as a way to say that he loves them and they are special to him. He will go up to his little friends and say hi over and over again in their face. My favorite is when he comes up to me randomly through out the day and says "Hi Mom. Huggies?" and then when I pick him up, he gives me a hug, tight hug around my neck and then plays with my hair. He is so loving!

Just wanted to write down some of the cute things he does before he changes and grows up.

Cause he is always doing that.

Changing and growing up.