Daily Life- Summer 2013

Many years from now I am going to wake up to a quiet house.  No children will have woken me up in the middle of the night and I will get to choose whatever I want to eat for breakfast.  I will be spending my days doing what I want to do and I will maybe even go a whole week without changing a diaper.  Many years from now I will also forget the little things about today/ this year.  It will all become one big blur and I will be that grandma in the store telling every young mom to enjoy these days because they go so fast.  So today, before I forget, I want to write about the little things that fill up our days and make them seem to fly by.

Basically I am going to write out our daily schedule.  We never follow it perfectly, but it is our general guide. 

Most days I am the first one awake around here.  I babysit a little boy and he comes before my kids wake up.  So I get up and put myself together enough to answer the front door.  Then he and I hang out till the others stir.

Adalyn is usually first.  Both of my kids wake up happy.  I here them "talking" in their rooms for about 10-25 minutes before they will start crying out for mommy to come get them.  I love that they do this.  I need the mental preparation that the day is about to begin.  Even if I am already awake it gives me time to finish up whatever I am working on.

I am a breakfast first kind of person so we move straight from our beds to the breakfast table.  No clothes, bed making, or anything until I get food in my stomach.  I think Adalyn would prefer a little while before eating because she usually wants to wait a little before she eats.  I could see her being one of those teenagers that skips breakfast for more sleep.

After breakfast we head back to the bedrooms for clothes, hair, teeth brushing and diaper changes.  These days it is common for me to change 6-8 diapers before noon.  :P  I am trying to really set this as our routine because if not, I am terrible at remembering to brush teeth/make beds etc.

Once everyone is ready for the day we head out for a morning walk/run.  I love getting outside this summer and our new stroller has made it possible to do so with 3 little kids.  Last summer Adalyn struggled alittle bit with wanting to actually stay in the stroller and would usually only last for a mile or so, but this year both my kids have loved riding in the stroller and can last for a LONG time.

After our walk I shower and the babies (not Adalyn) take their morning naps.  During their naps Adalyn and I will either go back outside, read books, or she will watch a movie. 

Lunch time (after morning naps) is crazy because everyone is usually eating different things.  Adalyn sandwiches, Jensen veggies or fruit, me left overs, and neighbor boy eats whatever was packed for him. 

After lunch we go in the basement to get our energy out.  We throw balls or color with markers on paper.  Adalyn's new little kitchen is down there so she loves cooking.

Now comes my favorite time of day which is afternoon naps.  My goal is to have everyone sleeping... at the same time.  That happens a few times and week and I will usually lay down for a rest once or twice a week.  So thankful they all still take a nap. 

After naps and neighbor boy goes home we relax and make dinner.  We don't have air conditioning in our car so we avoid leaving the house at this time like the black plague.  Once fall comes that will change, but for now we try and do errands in the morning or at night.  Adalyn will often play with her water table or have me read books to her.  3-6pm is the hardest time of day for all of us.  Adalyn is needy and Jensen is fussy, and I am just trying to make dinner.   Honestly we all just want dad to come home as soon as possible.  :)

Once daddy comes home it is like we all got energy shots and we are renewed for the evening.  I love that we all get to eat dinner together every night and am thankful that McKay makes this a priority.  But after dinner anything is fair game and these summer nights have had us going in a million different directions.  Between yard work, scouts, zumba, temple nights, errands, etc. we are busy in the evenings and we are usually left wondering where the night went.  Hopefully we can slow things down a bit this winter, because honestly I feel like we barely have time to get the "have to" things done before it is bed time.  Can't imagine what it will be like when the kids get older...

We do baths every other night and then the kids are put to bed between 8 and 8:30.  Then mom and dad finish things up and head to bed ourselves.  McKay's mornings starts fairly early so we try and get to bed by 10 these days. 

This is what I usually look like by the end of the night...

Glamorous right?

But I am happy to have my little family.  I learn so much from them each day and am happy to spend my days serving and loving them.          

Adalyn's 2nd Birthday

Adalyn turned 2 on August 10th.  It was a Saturday so I thought it would be perfect to have a fun family day.  Maybe go to the park and then get a pretzel at the mall after (she is in love with pretzels).  Well Friday night came around and McKay informed me that he had Scout things all day on Saturday, oh and he would also need to car.  darn.... Out went my idea of a fun family day.  So in the end we had a nice family breakfast-  McKay made blueberry corn breakfast cake.  Don't you love the big t-shirt  on her :)

Then we spent some time at home, took naps and made cake.  That evening the festivities began :) 

We started with her favorite dinner of sauce and pasta.  She LOVES pasta, but only if it has sauce.  It was not fancy, but she ate a lot. 

Jensen was a good sport all day watching his big sister have her special day.  Some how I don't think Adalyn will be so gracious on his special day.  2 year old+ Presents that aren't hers= meltdown

After dinner we opened presents.  In her diaper.  On our bed (it was closer to the air conditioner).  Whatever the girl wants. :)

Thank you Grandma and Grandpa Cannon and Grandma and Grandpa Pace for her fun gifts! 

Our sweet friends from our ward heard that it was Adalyn's birthday and decided to give her their little play kitchen.  So Adalyn spent a good 45 minutes "cooking" for us.

Doesn't everyone cook in the nude :) 

After presents and dinner mommy got her gift.  What?  Yeah my new stroller came on Adalyn's birthday so it felt like Christmas to me too.  We set it up and took it for a test run around the mall.  Yep works like a dream.  Best. Purchase. Ever.  LOVE it!  The only down side to it is strangers love it just as much as I do and they feel the need to comment about it all. the. time.  One girl even said- "look mom there is a stroller for 2 kids".  Didn't realize double strollers were a rare thing in Idaho. ;)  Just wait till we have the third seat attached in public one day.  Can't wait for those comments. 

Here is Jensen chilling in the new stroller while we ate pretzels at the mall-

Oh and Adalyn loved her pretzels-

By the time we got back from the mall it was fairly late so we had to hurry and do cake and Ice cream.  I made an Oreo Cake (literally) and it turned out SO good.  We thought it was delicious and the best part was that it was super easy. 

Here is a play by play of her blowing out her candle.  Starts out low, but gets it eventually...

We are so happy that she is two (even if that brings some extra craziness)  We love you Adalyn!

 

Lava Family Reunion 2013

Every year McKay's step mom's family has a family reunion at Lava Hot springs.  They camp in a campground there and then spend their days hanging out, eating food, going down the river, and swimming in the pools.  Last year the reunion fell over Adalyn's birthday and we got to celebrate her first birthday with everyone.  Liz's family LOVES Adalyn and spoils her rotten so it is fun to celebrate with them.  This year the reunion was the week right before her birthday.  Unfortunately McKay was/is pretty busy at work so we were not able to take any days off for the reunion, but we did go down one afternoon for swimming and dinner. 

Originally I wasn't too excited about the swimming.  I thought both kids would have to be held the whole time in the water because it would be too deep and I am not usually a huge fan of swimming in general.  But when we got there we learned that they had just built a new kids playground section that A. was in warm water B. The playground was under a cover (no sun burns for Jensen) C. Had shallow water that both kids could sit/walk in and play.  Adalyn and Jensen had a blast!  Adalyn loved exploring on her own and going down the slide.  She also loved playing with her cousin Madison who was very helpful in entertaining her.  Jensen loved crawling around and getting sprayed by water.

As a parent it was just one of those fun moments where you can sit back and watch your kids having the time of their lives.  I loved it, even if we never even made it out to the big pools and water slides.

Going down the slide... She would only go down if someone held her hand, but Aunt Jennifer was always willing.

Playing with cousins

After a few hours of swimming, Jensen fell asleep in his stroller so Grandma Liz volunteered to push him back to the camp ground while Adalyn and Madison played for a little longer.

Then we changed and headed to the camp site for dinner.  For dinner we had white bean chicken chili and it was SO good.  Liz's sister's husband is the most amazing cook.  Some days I wish I lived at his house because he does all of the cooking and is REALLY good at it.  Like everything is homemade and done from scratch kind of yummy.  I still remember this delicious clam chowder that he made last year it was SO good and I do not even like clam chowder normally.  This year did not disappoint either and I may have had two big bowls of it.  :) 

After dinner and a quick catch up with the family we headed home.  It was a late night, but so worth it.  I still smile when I remember how much fun the kids had in the pool.  We will definitely be trying to fit in another visit to the pool before this summer is over.  Idaho Falls definitely lacks in nice swimming pools so the hour and a half drive is worth it to get the better set up.  Oh summer we hope you stick around for as long as possible!  Definitely has been a little bit easier of a summer not being pregnant like I was the last two summers. Kinda nice! 

  

Jensen- 7 Months old

On 7-27-13 Jensen turned 7 months old.

 

I have been putting off writing this post for a while for multiple reasons, but one of them was because I didn't know how to explain this past month with Jensen and I....  Lets just say that it was the best and worst month of his life thus far.  He was the cutest, sweetest, thing ever!  He learned so many new things and yet we struggled a little bit.  Nothing major.  He didn't have colic and he didn't even cry that much he just wasn't doing things as I had come to predict.  I actually had to pay attention to his signs and try and read what he was trying to tell me (not an easy task).  But lets start with the good things-
A week after we got home from vacationing this kid learned to army crawl.  He couldn't sit up, but he could crawl and he just took off.  I felt like I hardly saw him for days on end because he was off exploring the house.  Luckily our house is baby proof so except for the crumbs on the kitchen floor he was pretty safe to explore at will.  I was actually really disappointed when he learned to crawl.  I had been looking forward to a few months of him just sitting still in one spot and playing with toys, but no such luck here.     

Finally a few weeks later he learned to sit up.  He still preferred to be on his stomach for easy movement, but he could do it. 

He learned to rock himself in his carseat.  I am pretty sure a few of my cousins knew how to do this because I was not that surprised when he would do it, but we got a million comments for others around us whenever he would do it about how cool/cute it was.  He got pretty good and could keep it rocking for quite a while and then he would cry when he would get tired of kicking his legs.  It was often how we made it through sacrament meeting for a few weeks.  But like with all things kids learn they do it a ton for a while and then over time just stop and don't really ever do that particular trick again.  The past week I have noticed that he doesn't do it much anymore. 

Other things he learned were shaking his head no and saying "dada".  Not that he was actually saying no to mean "no" he could just move his head that particular way. 

Still a super happy kid most of the time and really loves his new found freedom in crawling. 

Hard parts this month were eating and sleeping.

 He was still nursing like a champ, but we decided to try a little bit of people food.  I didn't really have a game plan going into introducing solids to him and we were both thrown off our game during the process.  The 3rd-ish week into it he got pretty constipated so we backed off until that had taken care of itself.  Today a month later things still aren't perfect but I like where we are headed.  We decided to not go the rice cereal route and just go straight to veggies.  He doesn't love many veggies which is frustrating so we will see how things go in the end but right now feedings are slow.  He has had a few fruits but we are mostly sticking to veggies.  Currently he mostly just eats people food cut up into tiny pieces at meal times.  He "feeds" himself so he is obviously not getting tons, but he is still nursing full time so he isn't lacking nutrients.  Surprisingly he eats the best feeding himself.  We do try and spoon feed him pureed food about once a day to help get him a little more substance to his diet but a lot of the times he won't eat what we offer.    We luckily have not had to buy any baby food yet.  He just eats what we eat or we blend up some veggies for a pureed texture so that has been SO nice on the budget.  Would I introduce solids this way again instead of doing the traditional store bought pureed baby food?  I don't know!  Still trying to figure that out. 

Sleep.  I would never have thought that I would have a child that was still not sleeping through the night at 7 months old, but guess what I was wrong!  haha  We got WAY off his schedule in the middle of the month and he started refusing to go to sleep till like 1 or 2 am for a few nights.  Today we are back on track with 3 naps a day and to bed by 9.  It isn't a perfect schedule just a rough guide for us to follow.  One thing I did learn this month is that it is actually better that he doesn't sleep through the night.  I make more milk if he eats in the middle of the night so I am happy that he wakes up once or twice a night since he needs all the milk he can get these days.  Adalyn always slept through the night and I think that was part of my problem with her when I couldn't produce enough milk. 

In the end we learned some good things from this month and made a few mistakes.  Jensen is a joy and we adore him even if we don't always know what he wants/needs (we are trying buddy!).