Rough week

This week has been a complete circus.  Pure chaos.  I feel like I am barely surviving.  Things HAD been going really great too...

To sum it up, all within the past week:

• Joey catapulted himself out the front door in his walker - and smashed his head into the brick wall.  The walker then tipped over and he hit his face on the cement step.  All in all, he was scraped up and had a bloody mouth - bumped a tooth that's about to come through.  I'm constantly checking it to make sure it's not dead.
• Later that night, I was putting Joey in the wagon for a walk.  I didn't see Morgan when she walked in front of me and I totally plowed her over.  Into the cement.  More scraped baby skin.  More blood.
• This same night, Morgan started having "attacks" where she started screaming & crying "It HURTS, Mommy It hurts!"  We could get her to confirm it hurts "down there".  We've been to the doctor & ruled out a UTI.  For which they had to catheterize her to get a urine sample.  It took 3 of us to hold her down and she almost vomited (I could hear & smell it coming).  I thought I was going to pass out (and I've cath'd plenty of people in my nursing days!  But not my baby girl...I've also had it done to me with my 2 c-sections, and one of them I wasn't anesthetized yet.  Better believe that shizz hurts.)
• So we're still trying to figure this mystery out, and it's day #3.  No fever.  Poor appetite.  NOT PEEING - she seriously had a DRY diaper in the morning after wearing it 13 hours?! - unless I put her in the tub or pour warm water on her while she sits on the potty.  She's miserable, crying a lot, clinging to me and just wanting to be held.
• Both kids have EXTRAORDINARILY snotty noses.  I've never seen anything like it.  I will have juuuust wiped it, and the other one's already got snot full-on dripping over their mouth, down their chin!?  But no other cold-like symptoms, so I still think it's allergies. 
• Joey's been a maniac.  If you hold him, he jumps & thrashes around, smacking you, scratching you, all while laughing.  No more cuddly-sweet baby :(  He plows over our feet with his walker.  He chases me around the house thinking it's hilarious!  Basically he is kicking my ass single-handedly.
• While I'm busy dodging him, Morgan is still whining/crying/wanting to be held.  
• I finally saw a Physical Therapist for my neck pain since I injured it a few weeks ago and he diagnosed me with a sprained neck.  And a bunch of other back/hip issues that are post-partum related.  Awesome. 
• And I have no pictures for this post.  Hmmph.

All that doesn't sound so bad when I read it, but there's just been no pleasing anyone this week.  And nobody wants to eat what I fix them.  (Except the hubs...he's been amazing.  Even offered me his car to just get away.  I told him "If I leave, I promise you, I won't come back!"  A little dramatic?  Maybe.)  Forget about getting anything like laundry or dishes accomplished. 

In better news:

• it's warmed up nicely here.  And to think we WERE gonna get out of the house!  Ha!  HAHA!  
• I took a respite day yesterday; suckered the babysitter to come over (pretty sure she's never coming back, lol) and went to a movie & lunch with a friend.  I needed that.  Just being away a couple of hours refreshed my soul.  I also went to visit a friend & her new baby boy in the hospital, but I had to rush home so my babysitter could get to class.  I would've loved to have stayed and snuggled that sweet pea all afternoon!
• Joey's getting the hang of crawling on all 4's.  He's a little clumsy, but he's getting it!
• Daddy's finally off this weekend, ending his 12-day call stretch (HALLELUJAH!).
• We are making summer plans to travel and I. Can't. Wait.

I promise I won't complain as much in my next post ; )

Life Lately

I haven't felt like blogging lately...probably because there's not a lot exciting going on.  Just every day life, ya know?  The weather has finally warmed up and is supposed to be in the 80's this week.  And then down to the 50's again, but whatever.

I've been trying to get the kids outside every day since the weather has warmed up.  They have both started sneezing a lot and having runny little noses, so I fear they might have seasonal allergies.  But they LOVE being outside.  The fresh air does everyone good!

But first...they both had checkups last week.

Morgan, at 25 1/2 months weighed 25.4 pounds and is 33.75 inches tall.  Very healthy, right on track.  I was informed her 2 year molars are about to come in.  Great...

She is in a phase where she will ONLY wear her DO-WAH (Dora) shoes and a HOWT (Heart) in her hair.

Joey went a couple of days later.  He weighed in at 21.25 pounds (I was close guesstimating him at 22 pounds) and is 29 inches tall now.  So you see there's only about a 4 pound weight difference between the two!  She's in a size 5 shoe, he's in a size 4 (already!).  They both wear size 3 diapers.  Makes life easier on me. 

Joey got another round of his Hep B Vaccination and a finger poke for Hemoglobin/Iron levels.  He is healthy!

 As mentioned, we've been getting outside.  If you follow me on Instagram (tkremer) these are repeats.

 Joey loves flying down the driveway in his walker.  Then I get to push him back up the driveway so he can do it all over again.  That face!  He's tearing up his shoes AND the walker, but he has SO much fun doing it, I don't care.  This is life with a boy, I'm guessing?

Little Sassy here is helping herself to the pantry, as usual.  I'm gonna have to put a lock on that door!

 I'm back to healthy eating, for the most part.  We tried out a new(er) pizza joint last week (Strong's Brick Oven) and it was SO good!  The next night, we had Smashburgers.  So I was needing to detox a little, lol.

Spinach, greek yogurt, strawberries, kiwi & a splash of almond milk.  YUMMY.  Even Morgan loves this.

I've been working out more, on my own, plus still doing Pilates & Strength training twice a week.  I'm finally seeing a little teeny bit of muscles.  **Note the ankle biter in the photo below.**  We started playing around and she BIT my thigh.  Broke the skin.  Man that hurt!  I scared her enough with my spastic reaction, I didn't need to scold her.  I could tell she felt bad.  I still explained (again) that we don't bite.  Hitting's been a real problem too lately.  She's been in timeout a fair amount in recent days.

Lately, whenever she's in trouble, she immediately yells for her blankies ("Backies?!")  It's like her security/comfort thing right now.  About once a week, I man Operation Steal Blankies for Washing.  It's tough to sneak them out of her sight for an hour!

Joey in his Reds outfit w/Dada.  So cute.  Love these boys.

Me & my girl before our big grocery shopping outing.  Since I had both kids and got more groceries than I originally planned, they nice peeps at Kroger put it all in a 2nd cart for me and took it out to my car.  So helpful!

 I wasn't looking for a hot second and Joey inch-wormed his way out to the back porch.  (I'm serious when I say I can't find him all the time, lol!).  He had to crawl over the patio door entrance; I was impressed!  He was filthy ; )

 Morgan is definitely bored.  I'm trying to come up with new activities for us to do.  Found these washable paint dobbers at Michael's and so far, they're a hit.

Morgan helping Daddy dry his car.  She loves to help!

I'm looking for fun things for us to do this spring & summer.  I realized I've gotten better at taking them both out & about as long as one or both kids can be contained in a stroller or shopping cart, ha!  I like my Ergo carrier, but Morgan ALWAYS needs to be picked up at some point.  Lately, when we're outside, she likes to take off (toward the busy street) or not come in when I say it's time to come in.  So it's tough to carry both of them all the time...all nearly 50 pounds of them.  One day I'll miss this phase, right?

On another note, while we're at home, I'm finding it harder to leave them out of my sight, even to go to the bathroom.  They are always up to something and I'm always cleaning up a new mess, separating a fight, or soothing somebody's boo-boo.  I wish I had all their energy!

Joey 9 Months

Joey turned 9 Months old last week!

It is so much fun watching his little personality unfold with each day.

The big news of Month 9 is that he is ON THE MOVE!  He army crawls everywhere.  He gets up on all fours and rocks, will even attempt a crawl or two, but usually topples over.  He doesn't give up though!  He also just started making this face in the pics below...probably just the past week or so.  Cracks me up!

He is nothing, if not determined!

When he's not on the move inching and dragging his little body around, he LOVES being in his walker.  He can zoom all over the house - forward, backward, through doorways, in and outta rooms.  Sometimes, I can' t find him right away, ha!

Other news of Month 9:  We "manned up" his room a bit.  We swapped furniture with Morgan, who now has the white set.  We also added some jungle animal wall decals (apparently we like the big tree since Morgan has one too).  The white poms still need to be taken down, but I sorta like them ; )

Nevermind my chronic photobomber...although she is awfully cute.

Still want to add some things to this wall, just not sure what yet.

He has the SWEETEST disposition.  People have asked me if he ever cries, haha.  He's easy to put to bed (thank GOD).  he just pops his thumb in his mouth when he's tired and that's the end of that.  He sleeps through the night, unless there's a problem.  And by "problem", I mean a middle of the night poop or teeth popping through.

You woke me from my nap for sunshine & grass?

Speaking of teeth:  He has 2 on the bottom and the top 2 have cut through.

See my top two teefers?

We have been more adventurous with food this month.  He is eating 3 meals of solids per day and usually 4 bottles per day, anywhere from 4-8 ounces.  He's been trying more and more soft pieces of food such as steamed broccoli, pancakes, crackers, puffs, scrambled eggs, and avocado.  He seems to like it all!

He LOVES getting in on whatever Morgan is doing or playing with.  I see some fights in our future...actually, I've had to referee a few times already!

My Monkey!  NO! MINE!

He always has the BIGGEST smile on his face when I come get him out of his crib in the mornings.  He usually sleeps from 7:30 or 8pm until about 7am.  No complaints here!

 And now for a few actual "9 MONTH" shots:

 Every month gets harder & harder to try to capture a shot.  You don't even want to know how many shots I took this time!!

 But he is just too darn cute....I may be biased ; )

Speaking of him not sitting still for even a hot second, changing his diaper is an all-out battle.  It's terrible.  It's a wrestling match every time and boy, is he STRONG.  We try to distract him with a toy (or a tube of diaper cream or whatever's handy) but he still manages to flip & attempt to high-dive off the changing table.  Yes, he gets strapped down and yes, he hates it.

Also, when holding him?  He does NOT STOP BOUNCING.  Unless he's asleep.

Some FIRSTS:

• His first time away from Mommy & Daddy at the beginning of March when they went to Gatlinburg for 4 days.  Nana took good care of him & his sissy.
• His first St. Patrick's Day
• His first Easter
• He moved up to the bigger car seat, still rear-facing.
• He rode in a shopping cart in the seat (strapped) for the first time.

He is wearing mostly all 12 month size clothing now.  I just bought him some more clothes at the recent online GAP sale...40% makes it worth it.  I've been loving the stuff I've gotten for both him & Morgan from there - so soft and durable.

He loves exploring and will "sing" if I sing to him, although these are nothing new.

I had to reschedule his dr. appt. from last week to this week, so we'll find out then what he weighs.

We just love him to pieces....he is the sweetest boy I've ever known!!!!

Easter 2013

Overall this Easter was so fun with our little family of 4.  I was just happy Joe wasn't on call this weekend and could be with us.

Saturday we went to an Easter Egg Hunt at Tower Park.  Nobody forewarned me that we should've arrived the night before and camped out.  Since I'm not from here, I need to learn all the ins & outs of this little town.  Anyway, I read in the paper there were going to be over 12,000 eggs hidden for the kids.  It was to start at 12:00 and the Easter Bunny would be there!  We showed up at 12:05 (by the time we were able to get dropped off & make our way through the crowds to get to Morgan's age group).

NOT. A. SINGLE. EGG. LEFT.

Merely a small fraction of the number of people who came out for the Egg Hunt.

I really had to reign in MY inner 2-year old tantrum that was brewing.  I was so irritated!!  All the hype (I'd been talking it up to her all morning) for nothing. *sigh*  

Morgan didn't know what was going on, so she just started collecting leaves, haha.  A nice gentleman saw we had missed out and offered us an egg.  So we went home with ONE egg.  A Pity Egg, lol.  Morgan didn't realize til the ride home that there was even anything inside, ha!  So her day was made!

Kissing her single egg

One of the many leaves she collected

 I quickly tried to get over my disappointment and was reminded that we got out as a family and got to enjoy some fresh air and sunshine.  Morgan still had fun. That's all that matters to me.  I finally quit giving the stinkeye to all the little kids walking around with 200 eggs in their multiple grocery bags.  Hmmph.

Moving on....We went out to eat Saturday night at Outback -- with the kids -- and THAT was probably not the best idea.  Long story short, our food took forever (we were there for almost 2 HOURS), and the kids were CRAZY.  Screaming, thrashing, throwing things.  We know we have a small window of about 45 minutes when we're out with them, but this was nuts!  I don't blame them though...I had my wine to occupy the time.  That, and picking up knives, plates, toys, crayons and anything else they could get their hands on.  They were B-O-R-E-D!

The manager came by to apologize 3 times.  They did end up giving us our appetizer for free & 1/2 off one of our meals, so that always helps ; )

How old does she look here?!?!

 I finally pulled out my last weapon of sanity:  My iPhone.  Morgan was supposed to be playing with her little games on it, but instead decided to take about 20 pictures EACH of the next two scenes....too funny!

Sunday morning we hid baskets for the kids and helped Morgan find them - so fun!  Then later on, we went to Joe's Aunt's house for dinner.  She puts on a big Easter Egg Hunt for the kids.  Luckily there were only about 6 or 7 other kids to hunt against, and most of them helped Morgan gather eggs.  They are really the sweetest kids.  Morgan had the best time!

Freshly awake from her nap.  Would NOT look at mommy/the camera for anything.

 I kept Joey inside and we'd walk out onto the deck to watch Morgan during the Egg Hunt.  It was chilly & windy and he was really tired.  I was happy to snuggle up with him.

I learned the hard way that you really shouldn't let your toddler have as much chocolate as they want.  She doesn't get candy hardly ever, so I thought "Why not?  It's a holiday!"  Um, BAD IDEA.  Morgan wouldn't go to bed til 10:30pm last night!!  She was SO wound up.  Joey was his usual go-with-the-flow laid-back self.  Although he did wake around 2am screaming, which is SO unlike him.  I think his teeth are bothering him because his top tooth has just begun to poke through.  He turned 9 months last week - and EEEK! - I have yet to get his 9 month post written.

I hope everyone had a safe & Happy Easter.