I love dirt!

(Lets just ignore the ratty swing cushion in the background. Making a new cushion is one of my upcoming projects. I'll get to it. One of these days. Really I will.)

Disneyland!

We went to Disneyland today. The kids had such a great time. We are so lucky to live close enough that we can be there within an hour. Having an annual pass is pretty nice. I didn't take pictures today, but here are some from a couple weeks ago.

This one is where Anthony explains to me how he really feels about cotton candy.




Amelia of course adores the cotton candy. She begs for it every time we go. Once in a while I actually say yes.





She also loves to go play in the Bug's Life water area. It's really cute, the area is set up like a yard would be if you were bug sized. There's a garden hose nozzle that has to be at least 12 feet tall. Amelia has a great time chasing the water drips.










Unfortunately, she tends to chase the water away from me (no matter where I sit) so I get lots of shots of her backside.









Anthony isn't as crazy about the water area, so he usually sits with me on the benches and watches the other kids play. This particular day he was so ready for a nap. I think this was actually Anthony saying cheese for me. Ha. He's a funny guy!




I love this picture because all that's really in focus are her feet, which are at least a foot off the ground. The girl likes to jump. A. Lot.

Wordless Wednesday- When Ant finds a marker...

Tackle it Tuesday-Books books everywhere!

My kids love their books. Sometimes, however, I wish they would read only one book at a time. Apparently in our house, you must pull every book off the shelf before you can read. And when you're done reading, and Mom makes you pick them up, you must throw them on the shelf in a heap.

So this week, we are tackling their shelves. Anthony's shelf didn't have any books on it, and Amelia's shelf had too many. So we took all of the board books and put them in Ant's room. I think it looks way better. What do you think? (And yes, more often than not, my son is only in a diaper. That boy hates wearing clothes and really hates wearing shoes. He runs off as fast as he can when I put a new diaper on him.)


The before pictures:




The after pictures:

The new do

Isn't he a handsome little man? I took him to get his hair cut on Friday. My kids can sure grow some hair! He just turned 1 and this was his 4th hair cut! Look at the picture of Ant eating the sand above to see how much was really cut off!

Random

Another Random post. You're all shocked aren't you? We're home today because Amelia had a fever last night. She slept a ton and seems better this morning. Not sure what was going on with her, but after a long nap yesterday, and sleeping 13 hours last night, she is fine now.

Anthony is doing well. He is doing great with a mix of formula and breast milk. He is sleeping better and he's generally happier over all. Makes me know that I made the right choice giving him formula too. I am having a hard time convincing Amelia to not feed him food. She is trying to feed him some corn flakes as I type this. Be right back.

Okay I'm back now, crisis averted. The funny thing is he usually loves whatever she tries to feed him. He gets so mad when I take it away from.

Oh and since you all already know I'm kind of obsessed with buying a house, I thought I'd share about a cool place I found for homeowners. It's called directbuy. They actually were talking about the company on the news the other night. This woman wanted to redo her kitchen, but didn't have the $60,000 to get the dream kitchen that was shown in her first quote. So she joined directbuy, and saved a fortune on her cabinets. She also ordered everything herself, and bid out the installation to different installers. She got the exact same kitchen for $20,000. It was a beautiful kitchen!! You can't buy online from this company, you have to go to the store, and you have to pay a hefty membership fee, but it sounds like it's really worth the cost.

Skin, cute babies, Etc

So since having Anthony, my skin seems to be pretty clear. I guess having a baby is like the best acne treatment or something? Who knows. He sure is a cute little man. He's laying on the floor playing with toys grinning at me.

He Slept!!

Anthony slept in his crib all night last night! We put him to bed around 10 o'clock and he slept until 2:45. I went in because he was crying, but by the time I got there, he was quiet already, sucking on his fingers. He went back to sleep on his own, without even waking up his sister! He slept through until about 5:30. I may actually get something done today besides sitting here trying not to fall asleep.

I'm doing a little better at drinking water and eating my points every day.

This post is probably going to be a little all over the place, I'm kinda exhausted. Anthony is not sleeping at night. He sleeps for 30 or 45 minutes, occasionally an hour, and then he wants to eat again. It's kind making me crazy. I can do one night with no sleep, but this has been going on for days now.

I took the kids grocery shopping this morning. At the store I like they have those cool shopping carts that have a car on the front of them. So Amelia could ride around in a little car, and I could put Anthony's seat on the top of the cart (he was sleeping.) So we go to checkout, and I find out that the cart won't fit through the check out aisle. The lady says it's okay, leave it there. So I had to unload everything, get the kids out, and try and check out while holding a sleeping Anthony in a 30 pound carrier and hold onto a trying to escape Amelia. Don't think I'll pick that cart again.

Amelia and I are going to make some zuchini bread now I'll let ya'll know how it turns ou.


Oh and if anyone has advice on getting a baby that has until now slept for 6-8 hours straight, to start doing it again, I'd love to hear it!

No way

There is no way my little man is growing this fast. He is barely fitting in 6-9 month jammies! He weighs 18 pounds. At 3.5 months! Amelia weighed that much at a year! Crazy.

I was going through my desk and found a bunch of old checkbooks. I looked through one from years ago when I lived in Los Gatos, and found a check I had written my Dad and never mailed. I promptly burst into tears. It's been almost 2 years that he has been gone and it still catches me off guard sometimes. I think it's been a lot harder since Anthony arrived. He is the first boy, so he is the first Grandson. I know my dad loved all of his Grandaughters, but I think he would have gotten a kick out of having a Grandson. I'm over getting mad at him, now I am just sad. ( And I know all the postpartum stuff doesn't help. I'm emotional anyway. After I had Amelia, I was really angry. This time around I'm very cry-ee. ) I'm hoping that will dwindle in the coming months.

To snip or not to snip...

When I found out Little Man was a boy, the first thought that went through my head was "Oh fuck. I have to decide whether or not to circumcise him." It was a really hard decision for me. The academy of pediatrics does not recomend it anymore. It's considered cosmetic, and therefor not covered by our insurance. The man in the house didn't care either way. In the end I think I made an informed decision. The point of this post is to share an article I found about the rates of circumcision in the US. According to this article at babycenter only 30 percent of boys in the west are circumcised. Other areas have a much higher rate. I wonder what that is? If you are the parent of a boy, how did you decide whether to do it or not?

Twelve Weeks Later

My baby (the little one) is twelve weeks old today. Twelve weeks ago today, I was at the hospital for my Non Stress test. A totally normal occurance, I went twice a week from 32 weeks on. Little Anthony was not very active at all. My NST's were usually so easy; he would generally move around like a crazy man and I'd be done in 15 minutes. After an hour and a half he still wasn't moving a lot. The nurse did my ultrasound and couldn't find much amniotic fluid. She told me to wait a minute while she went to talk to labor and delivery, but that I probably wasn't going home. And I didn't. They admited me and eight hours later I went into surgery. Because I had just eaten before the NST, we had to wait that long so I wouldn't have food in my stomach for the surgery. An hour after that I was on my way to recovery and Jeff was in the nursery with my new baby.

Where does the time go? I hear people saying that and think it sounds silly, especially when you spend all day every day with your babies, but it really does go by so fast. Some of his lastest accomplishments include rolling over (both ways!) which we saw for the first time last Friday, sleeping for much longer stretches at night, and growing like a weed. He is in 6 month clothes already. He is so long. I am finally realizing this is my last baby. I've probably shared this before, but I had my tubes tied during the surgery, so we're done. I have no interest in having more babies, but at the same time since I know this is it, I want to savor every minute of it. And it's going by too fast. He's already past the totally immobile, floppy necked newborn stage. He holds his head up pretty well, and he loves to smile at his Mama (as well as the wall behind me, but we're working on that. :-) ) I am so thankful that I get to be home with my babies. I never thought I wanted to be a stay at home mom, now I can't imagine doing anything else.

Wordless Wednesday #11 Disneyland

This was Anthony's first trip to disneyland.

Random Wordless Wednesday

Here we pictures of everyone but me. The first one is Anthony around 2 months. The second is Amelia around 3 months old and the last one is Jeff in his suit at Christmas. Ain't he handsome? :-D

Wordless Wednesday #8 Merry Christmas!

Halloween

Anthony will be two months old in a few days. When he was only 6 days old we celebrated his first Halloween. Amelia was so excited to have her baby brother here, but she was even more excited to dress up and go trick or treating, and see all of the Halloween lights. We live in an old neighborhood without many children, so there were not a lot of trick or treaters. Many of the people in the neighborhood are also older, and we could tell they enjoyed having trick or treaters. I had only been out of the hospital for a few days, and just wasn't ready to walk around the neighborhood so Amelia and Jeff walked and Anthony and I drove. It was a great way to spend our first holiday together as a family of four.

My Smiley Boy

Look at my handsome little man. He is 8 weeks old today. He's growing so quickly, he weighs almost 11 pounds.

And isn't his outfit cute? Thanks Sophia!

Arg

I'm frustrated with our health insurance company again. Anthony is 7 weeks old, and I still haven't had my 6 week check up from the surgery. The way it works is they open the schedule around 4-6 weeks ahead of time. Once it's open, I can schedule my appointment. I called the day I got home from the hospital, and the schedule wasn't open yet. I called a week later and made an appointment. They appointment center called me back a few days later and canceled my appointment and told me to call back and reschedule. It was around 2 weeks after I had him that I called back to reschedule. Of course by then there were no appointments available with my OB. Most pregnant people don't get to see OB's, with our insurance, you get to see a midwife unless you are high risk or have problems. So the OB's appointments fill up quickly. So anyway, they say they will take a message and have someone call me back. No one calls, so I call again. We did this 3 times. Finally last week someone called me back again. Um the kid is 7 weeks old now. It's a little late to be scheduling my 6 week appointment, don't ya think? I need to call them back since I wasn't home when they called me.

So then today, they call to tell me they are canceling Anthony's 2 month appointment. It's scheduled for next week. It's been scheduled for a month. Apparently they just noticed today, that the doctor won't be available on that day. Then they wanted to reschedule for sometime in the middle of January. The kid was seen last when he was 5 days old, I think 2 months in between appointments is long enough, we don't need to wait for 3 months. So I threw a fit and they scheduled an appointment with another doctor for this week. I should be able to make Amelia's 3 year appointment soon, hopefully that will have less drama than her check up last year. (They wouldn't let us see her ped for her check up, only a nurse practioner.) We have never actually met Amelia's pediatrician. I'm contemplating changing her to Anthony's ped so we can just have one doctor, but I'm not sure how much drama that will involve.

I got nothing...

I'm supposed to be blogging everyday, I have nothing exciting to talk about today.

Let's see. We were going to go to Disneyland today, but got as far as the parking garage. It was a mess so we left and went to the mall. I got some pants that fit me and are comfortable. Funny thing is they are the size I normally wear. I guess since they aren't jeans they are just more comfortable. I also got a few shirts, two of which are in a size smaller than I was wearing when I got pregnant. That's weird but I'll take it! In 3 more weeks I can start exercising again.

The house is starting to get back to normal, since having Anthony, it's still kinda cluttered though. If only the cleaning fairy could come between now and Thursday (which is when My mom and Grandma arrive. Eeep.)

Let's see what else is exciting around here? I decluttered a bunch of clothes this weekend. I even parted with my wedding dress. I am never gonna wear it again, and I swear it was taking up half the closet. And I don't want to pay $200 to have it cleaned and a couple hundred more to have it preserved, so why not donate it to someone else who can use it? That's what I keep telling myself anyway. :-)

I am starting to figure out Amelia's crazy behaviour a little bit. She goes completely over the edge when she is tired or hungry. Or when we have unfair expectations of her. Like today, Jeff thought she would be fine going to the mall with no stroller. At nap time. She is not taking naps much anymore, but still needs some down time in the afternoon. We ended up taking Anthony out of his stroller, I had him in the dressing room with me, and Jeff put Amelia in the stroller to calm down, she was being such a crazy girl in the store. by then we had already been wandering around for quite a while, and she was just done. At least putting her in the stroller helped her calm down a bit.