Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Kaplow!

You know how I didn't think I'd be spending this week?

Caring for 3 sick kids who I had to take to the doctor.

Juliette has an ear infection, Quinn's cough is making him miserable, he keeps throwing up from it and I think he's still teething, and Kiernan isn't bad but is kind of being a pain in the ass. Trying to comfort them, not getting much sleep and still trying to organize getting the new house painted and such... kind of feels like getting kicked in the head.



Even sick, they're still cute though :)

Friday, January 22, 2010

Today's the day!



We get our new house today and I am beyond excited. Here are some of the things I am looking forward to enjoying:

- Having a bedroom for my husband and I again
- Eating at a kitchen table instead of at the dining room table
- Not being stuck with no clothing to put on one of the twins because the other one is asleep in their room
- Not tripping over a step stool every time I go to brush my teeth (yay ensuite!)
- Having a bathroom on the main floor (this would have be amazing during my pregnancy but will also be super helpful with young bathroom users)
- Not hearing my neighbours through the wall or worrying that they can hear us
- Having a garage
- Having more room to spread all our crap around. I swear, this will make it look less cluttered for at least 2 years until we can catch up :)

We won't actually be moved in for almost 2 weeks, but we're getting there!!

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

8 months old!

The babies turn 8 months old today. As I feel every month, I can't believe it's been so long since I was begging for them to leave my body, and yet, it's been a long run. I'm tired and not sleeping well and I am stressed out (more than I want to admit) about our move in a couple of weeks.
All 3 kids on New Year's Eve


Here are some updates.

Juliette:

Her blocked tear duct seems to be getting worse instead of better. Although she isn't waking up with her eye glued shut as often, it seems to be running even when she's awake and causing her right eye to always look a bit swollen and like she's got mascara on. It's also irritating her cheek under the eye. Even when I try to clean her up, her right eye doesn't look quite right. Hopefully it'll clear up soon as massage and warm wash cloths don't seem to be doing the trick. Kiernan's tear duct issue had been cleared up by 8 months - I'm really hoping we don't end up having to see a specialist.
- Our little miss is definitely the front runner for bringing in teeth. She has 2 top teeth (the one to either side of the middle ones) cut and I think the middle ones are right behind them. 4 teeth pretty much at once. She hasn't been very happy, and maybe that's one of the reason her whole face is running.



Quinn

He loves to interact with us one on one and has little games he's figured out to play with us. He is still a cuddle bug and it's nice to have someone to sit with you and snuggle instead of jumping up and down while trying to kiss you, hug you, pull your hair and tell you a story!

After some false starts a few months ago, this last month Quinn actually brought in some teeth. His two middle bottom teeth are completely in - way better than the snaggle tooth scenario we feared a few months ago when he seemed to be cutting teeth at the back of his mouth first!


They are both:

- eating solids like mad. I think they eat 2 or 3 times as much as Kiernan did at this age, if not more.
- playing with toys really well. They got some new toys for Christmas and they will sit and play with them for really long periods of time. It's impressive. It's also nice to just be able to sit them on the floor to play and entertain themselves for awhile.
- interacting with each other. They are unintentionally cooperating in their play already, passing things back and forth to each other, accomplishing a task together they couldn't have done alone (for example turning the pages on the fisher price piano - One starts turning the page, the other gets it the rest of the way there). It is very cute. They are also already fighting over toys - grabbing them back and forth from each other/
- both showing signs of wanting to crawl. They flip onto their stomachs all the time and flop around. They slowly can make their way almost across a room with small turns, pivots, rolls but it is still pretty unplanned on their parts. Kiernan was immobile until about 10 months old. I am FINE with them staying in a controlled small space until we get to the new house.
- still not sleeping very well, although the last two nights they have have both had more than one 3-4 hour stretch. I, of course, couldn't sleep so am still exhausted.
- getting lots of hair and I think they will both have darker hair than Kiernan did.
- notice when the other is getting attention and they aren't and don't really think that's fair. Unfortunately, they're going to have to get used to that one ;)

By next month's update - we'll be in the new house!!

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

A little house game

I would like to introduce you to our little house. It has been a great starter home, and really it's not THAT small. It's a 3 bedroom house with a completely finished basement that has a rec room as well as another room that could be a guest room or craft room or some such thing. Most of these photos are from our house listing when we sold the house.


We've lived in this house for what I think will likely be the most dramatically changing years of our lives. We've been here for 4.5 years. In that time we got married and had THREE kids. Many many changes happened in this house.

Now, I'd like to play a little game. Here's how it will work. I will show you a photo of a room - you will guess what purpose this room currently serves us, and then I will tell you if you are right or wrong.

Photo 1 - what's your guess?

A room for twins to sleep in? Ha! I think we've managed to get them both asleep in here at the same time a handful of times, and none of those have been in the last 2-3 months. I'm not sure why we still have 2 cribs in here except that we may as well leave the second one there until our move. Both babies sleep in this room, just not at the same time. These babies wake each other up every time they wake in the night. They do not remotely follow this whole "the babies won't wake each other" thing that advice about sleeping multiples seem to assume is a given.

That chair? Ugly but SO comfortable to sleep/nurse in. See those wings? It holds up my head instead of letting it loll to the side and get a crick that takes the rest of the day to get rid of.

Photo 2

Basement rec room you say? Of course, but it also doubles as my husband's bedroom. Why? Because after 5 months of waking many many times a night, he was no longer functioning. This is obviously an issue for work (and we NEED him to have a job) but also, on the weekends when he's home, I want him to be actively taking on some of the burden, something he can't do if he is too exhausted to function.

Photo 3

Our bedroom - yes, but it doesn't look remotely like this. First of all, at the base of the bed there permanently lives a playpen. Generally that's where Quinn sleeps because he is the SLIGHTLY heavier sleeper.
What generally happens is that Quinn sleeps in the playpen until he wakes up in the night after I've gone to sleep. At that point I bring him into bed with him to nurse and immediately fall asleep. He spends the remainder of the night in bed with me. I would SNEAK in for fear of waking up Quinn (hopefully I remembered to get some PJs out of my room before he went to bed) and just lie on the bed and try to sleep. I hate falling asleep without reading to unwind.

This is why I was in such a hurry to get a bigger house. Why I was willing to move in the winter and sell in December. When we move in, we are starting hard core sleep training. I have no issues with cry it out - with a few caveats. I can't handle letting them scream when they're in pain so there's always some regression during teething time. Also, I also don't think it's fair to let them suffer through the other baby's crying. In the new house they will have their own rooms and we can really get things back in order.

This past week I was sick and not only was I was afraid to sneak into my room at bedtime, I knew that my coughing would wake him up. So you know what I did? I found somewhere else to sleep, where I could still hear all 3 kids if they woke up and needed me.

Photo 4

My "nest" in the stairwell. I've been starting my nights here and eventually spending the remainder of the night split between my bed with quinn and the chair in the nursery nursing. The unexpected bonus, reading before sleep again, which I really really enjoy and missed (couldn't risk turning on a light and waking quinn. heck, i couldn't risk finding my book and book light and turning them on for fear of waking him up). I'm tired folks, and the stress of the move on top of it all is making me fed up and frustrated.

Less than a month to go. Less than a month to go. Less than a month to go.

Friday, January 08, 2010

Remember when it was fun to party til 1 in the morning on a weeknight?

The other night I got invited to this party, but it started late - around 11, and I was tired. And sick. And I didn't want to go.
And the organizers were all, "c'mon! it'll be fun!"
and I was all "I am tired and I don't want to party!"
and they said "that's fine, but we're partying with or without you"
and I said "I am too old for a party at 11 at night on a Tuesday night!"
and they said "c'mon! it'll be fun!"
and then at midnight I realized I couldn't fight it anymore and joined the party, or rather, I had the party come to me. And I took photos.









At 1am I declared the party over, much to the dismay of the party goers who yelled and screamed that it was too early and too much fun to end already. Fun times ;)

Sunday, January 03, 2010

If I were to start a book club...

A few years ago I started a book club. It was fun, but I started to really dread reading the books people chose and eventually I quit. I thought that maybe I just wasn't made for book clubs. But earlier today I was sitting in the glider nursing a baby (nice to know the blog title still applies ;) and I thought "maybe I just need better guidelines".

If I were in a book club I would want to read books that:

- weren't too heavy
- weren't too deep in meaning
- were fiction. NO non-fiction.
- weren't too slow. Sorry to say it, but I find most Canadiana sloooow and borrrring.

Here are some examples of titles of books that I would have been happy to read as part of a book club:

- Twilight (ha)
- Outlander
- City of Bones
- Wicked
- Da Vinci Code
- Ender's Game
- Book of Negroes
- The Red Tent
- Time traveler's wife
- Galilee

If I were to start a book club I think I would have my first book be Hunger Games.

Also, I would want my meetings to be a social thing. 2 hours long, socializing, eating, some discussion into the book that wasn't too highschool english class / deconstruct the book and then some more socializing.

Would anyone join a book club like that? :)

Friday, January 01, 2010

Some goals for 2010

Instead of resolutions for 2010 I have some general goals for the year (in no particular order except the first).

1. Sleep more.

2. Work on improving my photography skills.

3. Learn how to be a stay at home mom with a good routine and a well balanced schedule.

4. Find some regular freelance work to make some extra money and justify not going back to work full time.

5. Find some more me time to get out of the house on my own.