Sunday, January 31, 2010

Adventures of a short vacation pt.2

The first night was rough, it usually is. It took both boys much longer to go to sleep than normal. Monkey usually goes to sleep instantly, no problems, no whining. He cried for an hour. Such a sad sad boy. Jellybean wasn't too bad. Unfortunately, half way through the night, Monkey woke up. His sweet father thought it would be the best idea to bring him into bed with us. I guess the journey upstairs was long enough to really wake him up. For two hours he climbed around our bed, not sleeping.

The boys have been joined by some great friends, Blake and Parker. They all played so well. I even have pictures to prove it :). I'll post them when I get a chance to put them on the computer.

It was a fairly uneventful day. Lots of playing and eating and sleeping. After dinner, all of the kids when down remarkably well, leaving us parents time to play Wii and watch A Night at the Museum 2.

Sleep to come.....

Friday, January 29, 2010

Adventures of a short vacation pt. 1

We started off this morning with the best of intentions.  Wanting to leave by 9. As most of you with kids know, especially those with nursing babies, you are rarely fully in-charge of your own schedule. We left the house about 45 minutes later than we intended.  I would complain but this is actually because Jellybean decided to sleep later than his normal 7 am.  I won't complain about getting extra sleep. Not now, not ever. Especially since everyone in our house has been sick (i.e. me and the boys) and there has been little sleep the last few weeks.

Ok, we were off. Jellybean fell asleep instantly, YEA!! Monkey decided to talk to us for a while, pointing out every car, truck and train that we passed. I do mean every single one! He also was pretending to hide by covering his eyes.  This is a recently new game for him. He is amazing at it, he will cover his eyes for the longest time.  We have actually run out of things to say waiting for him to "appear".  Eventually he fell asleep too. Blessed quiet. Which preludes to my falling asleep too. Thankfully I was not the driver.

Both boys woke up just as we arrived at our home away from home, aka grandma and grandpa's house. We were instantly welcomed by the sweet* barks of little dogs. Once inside we are enveloped into the warm embrace of love and all things good.  We love being here.

Monkey helped grandma make cookies. All went well, with a slight exception of an egg incident, but we won't mention that. Jellybean sat on the floor, played, spit-up, cried, and played some more before it was nap time for him.

After much playing it was dinner time. Monkey has proven to be a little bit difficult at mealtimes lately. I guess that should be expected when you've been letting him eat anything he wants while he is sick just to get him to eat. After he finished, we let him sit with us at the table and eat one of the aforementioned cookies. Yum! He decided to "put it to bed" (tucking under into the place mat) and then wake it up. This was very funny when I was able to sneak it out from under the place mat without his noticing and he couldn't find it when he went to look for it.  He looked all around under the place mat and at each of us asking "where'd it go?" in his sweet little voice. It was the greatest puzzlement to him. I was laughing so hard I had tears running down my face.  I think he was even more surprised when it "re-appeared" out of nowhere.

Off to bed. The first night always takes the longest.  Can't wait to see what adventures await tomorrow.


*The sweetness wears off after a little while, especially when its nap time.
Sick little Monkey watching his Choo-Choo's

Jellybean full of smiles

We're off to a rough start

Ok, so my goal was to write often. It hasn't happened. In fact I haven't written at all. I think that sometimes I think I am more on top of things than I really am. I decided to give myself a break and start fresh at the beginning of 2010. Well, its now the end of January but atleast I'm trying.

Both boys have started off the new year rather sick. Monkey has never been sick before, so this was drastically different from our normal. He went from being happy, healthy and independent to being whining, crying and clingy. I will say, as much as I disliked the whining and crying, I loved his desire to be held and snuggle. We are happy to report that after 2 weeks he is back to his old self. Funny to say, "old self" when you are dealing with a 19 month old!

Jellybean is a different story all together. He started off on the wrong foot. Being a preemie brings its own sets of challenges. I feel like we are finally starting to get everything figured out and then he throws us a curve ball. He unfortunately caught Monkey's cold. Being as little as he is, 13 pounds at 6 months, this was much harder on him. After a few days with a fever, cough and little sleep, we brought him to Children's hospital ER, per his doctors orders. We discovered that he had rsv and an ear infection. Praise the Lord he didn't end up with pneumonia and didn't need to be hospitalized. What a blessing it is to have him home with us, even when we are up in the middle of the night. He is on the mend. No more rsv!!! He still has his ear infection but he has started to sleep a bit better at night, only waking once.

I am continually amazed with how Monkey learns new things everyday. New words are forever coming out of his sweet little mouth. A good reminder to watch what is being said around him as he now copies what we say, not that we really say anything horrible.

We are working on the concept of apologizing and asking for forgiveness. Teaching your child to not only say that they are sorry to the person they offend but also to Christ for the sin is seemingly not heard of in our culture but is utterly important. I am overwhelmed as a parent in the responsibility to teach my children what it means to love Christ and to serve Him daily. I am not perfect at it and won't be until the day I die and am made perfect by Christ. It is a work in progress, thankfully, the state I am in now is not the finished project.

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