Funny stuff: September 2010

These are just a couple of the funny conversations Morgan and I had this month:

-There was a cat in our backyard and Howie chased it over the fence.
      Morgan:  "Mom, I want a cat"
      Me: "Me too. But Daddy doesn't like cats, so we will probably never have one."
      Morgan: "Ummm, it's okay. I will teach Daddy to like cats. Lets go get one."

- When we woke up this morning she starts pulling board games out of a box and asking me to play one with her. I told her we had to clean up the game upstairs from last night before we could have breakfast, and maybe after breakfast we could play a board game. We are cleaning up Blokus from last night and this happens:
      Morgan: "After we clean Blokus we can get a different board game out?"
      Me: "Probably not till after breakfast. Maybe we can play a game that doesn't make a mess, like Simon Says."
      Morgan:  "I wanna go first! I wanna go first! Simon Says, 'Mommy, go downstairs and get us a board game."

- I came downstairs and Morgan has poured a bag of Goldfish crackers into 3 separate bowls from her play kitchen and is "making dinner". I sit down at the computer and say:
    Me: "Can I have some of your delicious goldfish dinner?"
    Morgan:  "Sure. Here's one"
    Me: "Thanks!" (I pop it into my mouth)
    Morgan: "Sure. It was on the ground."

The Last Year Or So...

It has been a year, at least, since I have had a decent night's sleep. This time last year, I was about 3 months pregnant and already having a hard time sleeping. Add to that Morgan's uncanny knack for waking up regularly and I can honestly say I don't really remember the last time I actually slept a night through.

Ian has been a bad sleeper since the day he was born. I remember sitting in the hospital laying him in his bassinet and thinking, "I am not going to hold this one all day because I want him to be able to sleep without me." Yeah. Right.

This is a basic breakdown of our average day:  Ian is grouchy and cranky because he fights sleep so bad. We are talking the kid will not even lay down in my arms, the only time he falls asleep is when he gets so exhausted that he literally slumps over sitting up. And the moment I lay him down, he's awake again. If it is not within moments, it is most definitely within the half hour.

Then, there's bed time. Oh and by the way, let me preface all of this by saying that if I leave Ian in his crib while he is awake, he will, without fail, crawl into the side of the crib repeatedly. He comes out with his head and face all red, bruised, and on a few occasions he has even had a goose egg. So, that said, I don't know how letting him "cry it out" will ever work. Okay, so back to the bed time routine:  We don't have one.  I hope and pray he will just fall asleep and let me sleep.

Alright, now I am at the point where I feel like I need to explain myself. You know, excuse away all my bad mommy behavior. We don't have a bedtime routine, I still nurse him at night, and yes, he still sleeps in my bed. I know that everyone of these issues is probably causing its own set of issues all on their own, but that is where the biggest problem comes into play:

  How can I be consistent with anything when I am so sleep deprived that I sob in my bed when he wakes up for the fifth time at 3 o'clock in the morning?

And don't even get me started on how I react to JD when he tells me to just go put him in his crib- since that is all my husband wants to do to help- tell me what to do.

Oh, and the other problem I would love some advice on is that him and Morgan are sharing a room. I don't know how it is going to work for me to put him back in his crib and go in and out of there 5 times a night without having a double fit from the two of them- no wait, make that a triple fit once you throw me into the mix.

That's it. That's all. Just a random rambling of my newest crisis.

Chubbsters like to Eat. Duh.

I could say this post is about me, because, well, I do love to eat :) But, for the most part when I am talking Chubbster these days, I am talking Ian. The kid is 18 pounds and counting at 6 months old! So, it should come as no surprise that he is 100% content to eat and eat and EAT.

 The first couple of times he would grab my hand or the spoon and shove it into his mouth. Now he just kind of chills and waits for the next bite cause he has faith in his Mama to not starve him :)

Processing the flavor...

Hey, that's not so bad after all Ma!

Who woulda guessed?

As a mom, I try to remember to do fun and exciting things with Morgan every now and again. They are usually what I blog about.
The good days.
Today was good, but I have nothing exciting to report. I have no colorful pictures to post.
But I do have a story I never want to forget.

Here we are, driving along in the car (why do all the good stories always happen in the car?) and Morgan has been quiet for a while. I am starting to worry a little about her falling asleep in the middle of the evening she's been quiet so long. I guess she was just reflecting on our day because she says,

"Mom, thank you for helping me crack that egg."


What? Huh? Oh yeah...that egg I let her crack at 8 o'clock this morning for breakfast. It's 7:00 now...I'm thinking, "What made her think of that?" And then I realized I can do all the big giant fantastic things in the world that I want and I am sure she will remember some of them. But it sure doesn't hurt our relationship to let her crack an egg every once in a while either :)

Bumpy Slides and Astronauts!

Today I was doing the dishes and Morgan yells,

 "HEY MOM! COME RIDE MY BUMPY SLIDE!" 

This is what I found:

She then proceeded to explain the slide to me and said,

"This pillow is so you can land on yours head, like this"

Ian could tell how silly his sister was being:

Morgan insisted I give it a go, so this is a picture I took while I was takin' a ride, on the bumpy slide!

So then Morgan decided she had to take pictures from the top too!

So, I let her have a chance taking a picture of Ian's first trip down the bumpy slide. Looks riveted, doesn't he?

Earlier today Morgan asked me if she could be an astronaut. I told her that was a good idea, and she could pretend to be one if she wanted to. She replied with an emphatic

"Mom. I. CAN. NOT. BE. AN. ASTRONAUT. BECAUSE.

WE. HAVE. NO. STARS. OR. PLANETS!!!!!"

So I told her we could make some if she helped me clean the house.

 (yay for bribery!)

We made ourselves a cardboard rocket too...

Finally blogging TURKS AND CAICOS!

Well, I could give you the whole LONG story, but it's late and I'm bushed. So here's the condensed version:

We left our house Friday night at around 7 and didn't make it to Turks and Caicos till around noon the next day. Needless to say, we all felt like Morgan looked.

Judie found out all about the branch there and where they met before she brought us all to the island. Going to church there was such a good experience. I will never forget the lessons I learned from those humble people when they spoke on tithing and the word of wisdom. If they can honestly live in bushes, they seriously live in bushes, and still do their best to pay their tithes...so can I.

Ian totally got the good end of the deal, he got to wear his everyday clothes to church; plus a few accessories. :)

One afternoon while we were there we did family pictures and 

played some family olympics. It was fun!

There was a lot of time spent trying to get everybody on the same page, so here are some random pictures taken during all that mess :)

JD was just so excited to dump Alex out of that hammock.

                    

 Being a monkey...

There was so much good food and free drinks EVERYWHERE! (When we got to Disneyworld I was so used to the all inclusive thing that I almost snatched a banana right off a cart...that would have been bad. They may have decided to punish me Aladdin style)

(not nursing, he's just sleeping)

The menfolk went deep sea fishing and got themselves some barracuda.

Me, snorkeling. Oh come on, you wish you were this cool :)

Okay I took this picture while I was frantic because the masseuse is asking me through the door if I am ready for her to come in. I didn't want to sound dorky and say "Ummm no! I'm taking pictures cause I'll never get an opportunity like this again, so please just wait one more minute for me to de-robe!"

Hands down the best place on that whole island was the beach. We had so much fun...it almost doesn't even seem like it was real!

And then there were the pools...

Don't the girls look so worried while they are watching their Daddies try to surf?

And then, some more of the BEACH!

And, one last picture of the fam with Cookie Monster. It was so fun to see the Sesame Street characters walking around all day!

A little reminder:

Ugh.
Today was one of those days.
You know the type. The all over-horrible-not an ounce of patience left in your body-bad days. Morgan woke up at 5:30 and well, if you are a parent, you know the rest.
But in case you don't, here's a small overview:
Potty Accidents: 2
Time-Outs: About a Bajillion
Waking up the brother that is miserable cause he can barely get to sleep anyway: 5 or more
Random Screams: 738,982,415
And then there was the time I put her in the corner and scratched her arm up by accident on the "textured" wall which resulted in me feeling immediately guilty and her screaming about me hurting her.

We were just trying to get out of the house to get some groceries. That's it. And it took 2 hours, so I just called it quits and turned on a movie cause I was SO not doing this anymore.
After The Land Before Time, Morgan decided she was now ready to go shopping. I knew JD would complain if we didn't have milk for the morning, so even though I thought I was basically heading to my doom, we buckled up and went to the store.
I was so afraid Morgan was going to fall asleep at 6:00, which would mean another day like today in the works for tomorrow. So I sang pretty much any silly song I could think of with her in the car.

Giving her those 15 minutes of attention flipped our world around.

I was laughing, she was laughing, even Ian was laughing. And now, I kind of feel like crying.

I have been such a stress case lately and I have only been giving her attention when she acts out. So is it really any wonder that she's been rotten? Before our world got shook up, she was my entire world. And now she has to share that with this stupid move and a little brother that I know she loves, but she is just 3 years old and she needs her mommy. She needs HER mommy. The one who loved her more than anything else, and showed it all the time. I feel awful when I think of the heartbreak she must feel every time I tell her "Not now" and then when she starts to whine I tell her to knock it off...of course she's whining...she's lost her mommy.

What is it that brought about this avalanche of remorse? I had given her maybe a half hour of my time, real loving, happy time, and as I'm driving down the road she says, in the most sincere voice you've ever heard,
"Mommy, I'm sorry for all the trouble I've caused."
It broke my heart. And I am sure it came from some movie, but she still found it applicable to things right now.

So, I am writing this post just to remind myself of what a little angel she is. The next time I'm having a hard day, I might need to remember what it felt like to hear that.

And starting tomorrow, I'm going to try my darndest to give her back her Mommy.