Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Soccer!

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On Saturday Desmond had his first soccer practice.  A friend from church thought it would be fun to have a group of three year olds get together and play soccer mostly for the social interaction.  Perfect!  It was so cute watching Des run around, kicking the ball, chasing friends, and mostly playing with the cones.  He made his first goal and felt so proud of himself!  It’s fun exposing him to things like this.  I’m curious to see what will capture his interest.

Seven Weeks

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Kaylynn is seven weeks old.  She still prefers her milk from a bottle though I’ve been keeping up with breastfeeding once a day.  Usually it’s the early morning feeding while everyone else is asleep and I know I won’t be rushed or interrupted.  I think the calm, dark setting also helps her not fight me.

Kaylynn likes to be awake more during the day looking around.  She gives big smiles and coos when her tummy is full and I talk to her up close.  It melts my heart!  She is also getting better at controlling her head though I should give her more tummy time.  I often sit her in the swing rather than put her on the floor because unless I’m right there, I don’t want to leave her on the floor with Desmond.  He isn’t always aware of where he’s putting his body.  He accidentally hurt her the other day and when she cried Desmond did too.  He felt so bad!

Desmond is a good big brother and is doing great with the transition.  Right now he really likes to help wash the bottles.  We are working on obedience and respect with him which isn’t easy for anyone.  At one point yesterday Kaylynn was crying because I had to interrupt her feeding to deal with Desmond who was crying because he wasn’t getting his way and was in trouble for being disrespectful.  We’ve tried a few different methods of discipline to find the most effective one for him so now he requests to sit on the stairs to avoid a spanking.  Hmm.  If he is getting a spanking he asks us to give him a slow one.  It’s so hard not to laugh!  God grant us grace, patience, and wisdom in loving and shaping our children.

It feels normal now to have two kids.  Kaylynn fits right in.  We’re finding our rhythm though it’s still hard to get out of the house by myself with both of them.  I find I need to feed someone, pump, or get someone down for a nap all day long so I tend to stay home.  We made it out to pick strawberries over the weekend with Davin so that was fun!  We need to go back for more soon.

Monday, June 27, 2011

Aurora’s Birthday–Memorial Day

Davin had Memorial Day off of work so we were able to join the family celebrating my sister-in-law Aurora’s birthday with a barbeque at their house. Also I got to do my first ever target practice with Daniel’s pellet gun. Yeah, it was fun! If I didn’t have a newborn I probably would have been out there with the guys the whole time.

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After the party and before we left Albany, we stopped in to see Grammy. She doesn’t remember me, but I wanted to introduce her to her new great-granddaughter. Grammy didn’t say much, but she was obviously captivated by Kaylynn which made me smile. It was nice to see her and Grandpa together, too. DSC_0052

Friday, June 24, 2011

Back Together with Jillian

I was cleared last Tuesday to start exercising again.  I have 50 pounds I want to lose which seems daunting on this side but I know I can do it because I did it before.  It’s just hard knowing I have to make lots of right choices that I often won’t feel like doing at the time and I won’t see an immediate benefit from it either.  Getting up early to exercise and limiting desserts will be the hardest for me.

Last Thursday I started Jillian Michaels’ 30 Day Shred video.  I used this before as my “easy” workout when I didn’t have time for the full workout in Jillian’s book Making the Cut.  Well, a year with little to no exercise and an additional 50 pounds sure makes a difference!  It’s not an easy twenty minutes now.  I’ve got a long way to go, and I can barely do a proper push up, but after a week of working out and making some better eating choices I’ve already lost two pounds.  Today’s workout was also the first time I felt a little stronger.

My first goal is to lose eight pounds by our anniversary in a little less than one month.  My second goal is to be three dress sizes smaller by Christmas, and my third goal is to be at my ideal weight by my birthday in March.  Now, just so I don’t lose the weight too quickly and affect my milk supply.

Monday, June 13, 2011

Flood

We had an unexpected adventure this week. I shall tell you the story.

DSC_0014DSC_0020Early Friday morning Kaylynn woke up at 1:30 am to be fed. Davin was taking this feeding so he went downstairs to get the milk. I jumped out of bed in a flash when I heard what I thought was the sound of him falling down the stairs. On my way down I heard loud rushing water and for a split second the thought went through my mind as to why Davin was doing laundry. Then I realized this wasn’t a normal washing machine noise, and something was very wrong. I was astonished to see a flood in the living room and about that time the waterfall sound stopped and Davin quickly came back from shutting off the water main. I realized later the sound that jerked me out of bed was the sound of him slipping in the water as he ran toward the laundry room knocking out a leg of his desk as he fell.

DSC_0025We quickly set to work moving everything out of the flooded laundry and living rooms. The water was a quarter of an inch deep in the laundry room and flowed down into the crawlspace. It spilled into the living room and spread all the way across to the patio door. Thankfully none of our furniture or electronics were damaged. We discovered the cause: a connection hose on the washing machine had burst.

DSC_0024I propped up Kaylynn with a bottle and we sopped up water with every towel we own, wringing it out into bowls. Three hours later we had done all we could and there was no more standing water, but already there was a noticeable musty smell.

DSC_0030We called our insurance company and a water damage restoration company in the morning. The restoration guy showed up within a half hour and assessed the damage. The floors, some of the walls and the crawlspace insulation were saturated. We basically hired him on the spot and by the end of the day we had the insulation pulled out and our entire living room and laundry room flooring ripped up with fans and a dehumidifier going.

DSC_0042So right now we’re living in our dining room and play room. Thankfully it’s a huge space and can accommodate all our living room stuff, too. We are all noticing the air in the house is hot (80-90) and dry. The fans are loud, too, so it’s not very pleasant to be home. The guy checked our progress this morning and said the house will definitely be dry by Monday when he returns again.

Thank goodness for babies needing to be fed in the middle of the night and for home insurance though we still have to pay a deductible on this. The whole downstairs flooring will have to be replaced since it’s all the same stuff and they can’t match it exactly. This floor was a do-it-yourself project by the previous owners so there are minor things that we thought would be nice to fix, but it wasn’t anywhere near the top of our priority list. Well, now it is, and we’ll be picking out new flooring soon. What a mess!

His Favorite Toy

DSC_0008Desmond’s favorite toy right now is his tricycle from Grandma Linda.  He rides laps around the house since we have a good loop through the living room, kitchen, dining and play rooms.  Who knows how many miles he’s put in, but it’s quite a few since it seems like he’s riding most of the day.  I taped some containers on the back so he could hold his cars and toys without them falling off, though now he fills them so full stuff is still falling off.  So there he goes with his big load.  He’s quite good at maneuvering around the corners at a fast clip.  He still occasionally takes a spill, but he doesn’t crash into walls since he lost his tricycle for a day from doing that.  He’ll beg whoever comes over to do laps with him so our company gets exercise, too.  He’s sad he can’t ride now with half the floor ripped up and the other half of the house too full of furniture.

Wednesday, June 08, 2011

Some Feeding Progress

Yesterday I had the joy of hanging out with Beka at the Enchanted Playhouse, and while the boys played we talked. Conversation consisted mostly about nursing our babies since that's the stage we're both in. We have similar situations with needing to teach our babies to breastfeed while dealing with the challenges of dealing with a three year old at the same time. She's just a few months ahead of me. I left feeling encouraged to keep trying breastfeeding with Kaylynn. For the past three weeks Kaylynn has had all of her feedings through a bottle. I've basically given up putting her to the breast since it makes her so mad. Every now and then when I have an unusually calm moment I may try for a minute or two before she gets too worked up, but that has been less than once a day. Yesterday evening I tried twice. This morning before Desmond woke up I tried again, and she actually nursed for fifteen minutes! I feel so excited about that, you have no idea! It wasn't a great feeding since she mostly did her flutter sucks rather than deeper sucking, but she was getting some milk and she stopped fighting me which is the first step. I'm trying to prepare myself for things going back and forth awhile before they get better and perhaps not working out at all in the end. Still, I'm hopeful for the first time in several weeks that maybe we can get back to breastfeeding with hard work and a lot of patient persistence. Meanwhile I've been pumping, and unlike last time, supply is not an issue. In only twelve day's time I have a full gallon of milk stored up in the freezer with another 15-20 ounces in the fridge. Even with so much extra milk I cringe if any of it spills. Yesterday I dropped a bottle and the cap broke spilling three ounces. I had to stop and remind myself of how much milk I have. It's okay.

Monday, June 06, 2011

Nearly Pulling My Hair Out

I’ve barely had a minute to stop in the last two weeks. How I'm doing totally depends on the moment you ask me. I’ve thought often of blogging but I seriously haven’t had any time to sit at the computer. The only time I am sitting still (when I’m not trying to sleep) is when I’m pumping. Yep, that’s my down time and even then I often have to listen to one or the other of the kids fuss about something. Today I haven’t even gotten dressed yet. (Yes, I could be doing that now, but I just HAVE to write first. It helps me process.)

I’ve been on my own as a mother of two for a full week now. It’s one on two. While it’s nice to figure things out on my own, it’s very clear that I’m outnumbered. I feel like a ping pong ball bouncing back and forth between the two kids often leaving one discontented while tending to the other just long enough to calm them so I can get back to the first one. And all this on five or six hours of interrupted sleep. It’s exhausting.

DSC_0010Desmond has really done quite well with the transition, all things considered. He’s been more clingy to me, but as long as I’m around he has been playing by himself fairly well and I only have to tell him “No, I can’t play right now I’m feeding Kaylynn,” every couple minutes, but he usually doesn’t fuss too much about it. We’ve also watched lots of TV which I feel slightly guilty about but I must survive.

I was trying to feed Kaylynn this morning for the fourth time in the past hour or two so I could get her to sleep more than a couple minutes so I could fix Desmond lunch so I could get him down for his nap so I could pump. I felt like I was a broken record telling Desmond to stop doing things. “Stop climbing on the crib, please don’t take all the clothes out of the dresser, don’t go behind the chair while I’m rocking, stop swinging on the door, please don’t climb on me!” I like to state things in a positive way saying what he can do rather than saying “no” all the time, but with Kaylynn in what felt like non-stop crying mode I nearly melted down. I couldn’t understand why she would just eat or sleep. “Those are your two options,” I tried to tell her. Then out of frustration I sucked on her bottle to double check it wasn’t too cold (I don’t take time to warm up the milk from the fridge) and I realized the bottle was clogged. I’d been trying to feed her this bottle all morning. Once it was unclogged Kaylynn gulped it as fast as she could pausing only long enough for necessary breathing. Poor thing. No wonder she was crying.

After that I bounced back and forth between trying to get Kaylynn to go to sleep and feeding Desmond lunch. Kaylynn cried while I read Desmond a story and sang his naptime songs. Desmond then cried because I had moved the rocking chair out of his room and into Kaylynn’s so I could feed her in there. I got him settled into bed finally and went to pat Kaylynn’s back. Soon Desmond was calling for me again and asked for the little light to be turned on. He cried again when I told him we don’t sleep with the lights on. It took me awhile to realize he meant the monitor light. I had put it in Kaylynn’s room too. By this time Kaylynn had finally fallen asleep in her crib so I unplugged the monitor to move it back to Desmond’s room. He settled down now that his little green light was back and – dare I say it – both kids are sleeping right now! Quick! I need to… do something! In about an hour it will be time to feed Kaylynn again.

DSC_0099I remember thinking this with Desmond, too: It’s a good thing babies are so cute and snuggly and that the peaceful moments are so perfectly glorious because this is a lot of hard work! It’s doubly hard with an almost three year old to care for as well. The newborn part of it is a bit easier because I know some tricks already, though they don’t always work the same with Kaylynn. I’m also much more relaxed this time around about all the things me or my newborn “should” be doing. We’ll figure it out.

DSC_0002Caring for Desmond is the part I feel most guilty about. I don’t have time for him like I used to. In fact, I feel like I barely have time for him at all! I try to play for five minutes here and there, and we did manage to make a “birthday chain” this morning to count down the days to his birthday. I was bouncing and trying to feed a fussy baby on my knee the whole time so I wasn’t enjoying it like I wanted to, but his long chain is now hanging in the playroom and we’ll take one link off every day.

Well, that was therapeutic to share about my morning. Now I need to eat something and pump. Also I should probably see who called me several hours ago, and maybe I should get dressed.