house update

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Words escape me as I try to figure out how to sum up the last week and a half. Our first week living with my parents has not been without bumps in the road, but I believe we're get past any initial issues. It's like a college dorm room without the 3am undie runs and late night trips to Denny's. Our schedules are all different and we all seem to be able to do our own thing without disrupting others' plans too much. I'm optimistic that our time here will be good, however I am getting rather nervous about this entire short sale process.

We started our home-buying adventure six months ago and if you asked me then if I thought it would take more than six months to move into our new home I'd tell you you're lying. Ha, goes to show how much I know about buying a home! I suppose this is almost like becoming a parent for the first time. You have all these preconceived notions about how everything will go, what you will and won't do, and expectations but once you begin the process everything changes. Buying a home is no joke, which we knew, but we know very little about the short sale process. Now that we are in the thick of it, I can say we are still naive about it, but willing to learn. What sucks is our realtor does not seem to know very much about short sales so getting the info we need is challenging.

We want this house and we want it bad. It's perfect for our little family and well worth the wait. I just hate to think that we could be living with my parents for more than a month or two, for both of us. It's more than a blessing to be here and without my parents help I'm not sure what we would be doing.

So cheers to them for opening our homes and please send prayers that we get a closing date very very VERY soon!

the early bird gets the....wait...not here!

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One of my biggest never-ending struggles has been becoming a morning person. Before Logan was placed in my arms I had no problem staying up very late and sleeping in all morning long. I have never been much to follow a personal schedule and have always been okay with just doing whatever. A baby not only changes the love you feel for someone or your daily priorities but it also, quite obviously, changes your sleep patterns.

I can confidently say that I am now a morning person and while it is still hard to get going in the mornings, I do enjoy watching the world wake up over a hot cup of coffee and Logan's high-pitched shrieks while he toddles around the house chasing after the cat.

But wait. It's not that easy, is it? It's never been easy and honestly, it still isn't. If it was not for work getting up with Logan at FIVE AM would/is certainly not easy. Even on the days when he goes to bed later he is still up around 5:30. I'm very thankful that he sleeps great through the night but those early morning wake ups are never easy to get used to.

Two mornings ago he woke up at 4:30am and that was it. He was not going back to sleep and wouldn't you know it he slept three and a half hours at daycare! I was wishing for a 3 hour nap too! Now, we have more new adjustments being at my parents house. All three of us plus our dogs are in our little room. Logan has been sleeping great on his crib mattress on the floor no problem EXCEPT when he wakes up super early like that. He knew we were in the room with him and was wide awake. Normally, we would have let him just talk himself back to sleep or play quietly in his room. Needless to say, this week has been rough with the move and all the changes. I am insanely tired!

If you happen to room in with your toddler, please send along your wisdom on how to get him back to sleep. I will pay you in brownies. Yum. :)

Have a fantastic Memorial Day weekend!

I'll Be Back...

>Just a quick shout out that we're all still here! It's been a REALLY long, crazy, exhausting--you name it kind of weekend and it really has not slowed down yet! We have moved in with my parents and that is a HUGE adjustment. Both B and I are working this week, he leaves for Vegas tomorrow night and I head out of town on Friday. Finally on Monday we will all be able to relax! I'm visiting a few friends and that will be nice and relaxing on some level however, traveling is ALWAYS tiresome. And now it's well past my bed time. A few things to note:

• Logan loves ice.
• He is walking so well now he is nearly running!
• He STILL has a cough! I cannot decide if this has anything to do with teething, which I think it does, but I hate to just assume that. However it's his only symptom. And not just a dry cough. It's rather congested and yucky.
• Because he was sick at the beginning of the month he will not have his well baby check up for 15 months until he is just a few days shy of 16 months so I have no new stats to report.
• Logan is UNBUCKLING his seat belt that goes across his chest! I have no idea how the kid even figured it out but he's mastered it. We've tried everything to make him stop but he won't. I called Graco and they are sending us a new clip with the hope that the clip is defective. Ugh

A year ago today....

>Just a fun little post while I am in packing/cleaning/moving hell. Here is a post and a pic from a year ago. Enjoy and Happy Friday!!

(I did not write anything between the 14th and 23rd last year so here's a pretty good post. But first, a pic from 1 year ago:

May 14, 2010 “Boy do I have a treat for you! A FREE manual to parenting! Honestly, it will tell you eeevvveryhing you need to know when it comes to caring for that new little one of yours. Spit up? Weird poop? Inconsolable crying? Just use the index and you’re on your way!”Now, wouldn’t that be wonderful, to have a hard copy that says yes do this, no don’t do that, and why they hell would you think of something so crazy! I mean really, parenting is supposed to be easy! OMG, I wish y’all cloud see me smiling and laughing right now. I’ve only been a parent for a little over 3 months now and I am already eating words I voiced months before I became a parent of “I will nevers” and “This is the only ways” and so on…Well, the other day while eating lunch with a few coworkers, they were asking me how things were going. Three of the four people sitting with me were mothers. The forth person, bless her heart, has been trying to have a baby for next to 4 years now. I pray for her often and have made suggestions to her try certain things BEFORE doing any fertility treatments and I think she is having a hard time taking me seriously since the first time we officially tried to get pregnant, we did. This is one of those things you don’t tell someone who has been trying to have a baby for so long. So I didn’t, but she gets to sit and listen to me talk about how amazing my baby is…Anyway, I am not sure of the specifics of our conversation at the time, but somewhere in there she started to tell us (the mommas) about this parenting manual she and her hubs have about how they are going to raise the children the have someday. I could hardly contain myself, as I laughed, thinking of all the things I said I would never do and how I would do certain things one way. And now, now that I am that parent, how breaking those so called rules is so easy to do, especially out of sleep-deprived desperation. She was a good sport as we all laughed and said “Good luck with that!”. It just made me reflect on so many things I would talk about pre-baby. Even regarding our birth. As a first time mom, it was hard for me to take anyone seriously who was trying to tel me to be open-minded about our birth plan, about sleep habits, breast-feeding vs. formula feeding, etc. For example:While I was totally aware of my lack of pain tolerance, I was determined to have a pain meds free birth and well, back labor is a bitch so bring on the epi!I swore up and down that if I was hungry during labor, I was going to eat. Well, come labor you’re really not hungry anyway and that cherry Popsicle was the best damn Popsicle I had ever had! Never was I ever going to let my baby sleep in a swing at night. Well, when it is the only position baby is comfy in and you’re running on 2 hours of sleep, the kid is gonna sleep in the swing! People told me to sleep when the baby sleeps and I kept thinking, ha, I won’t be thattired…ha, I have never been so tired in my life!I would never take my kid to daycare, and I still haven’t, however I considered it when we were two weeks away from my going back to work and we still had no sitter. We would have paid more for childcare than I would have made working so…not worth it. Vaccines. A very loooooooonnnng time ago, even before B and I were married, I believed vaccines caused autism and that has since been totally bunked (and if you disagree with me, sorry). Well, in the last year I went from thinking I would not be vaccinating my babies to feeling strongly about doing so, only on a slower more drawn out schedule. Reasoning here deserves a whole other post all on it’s own. There’s more, but these are the things I can remember. All I know is that there is no such thing as a parenting manual and even if there was one, it would not work on every baby. It may even work one night and not the next. Babies are so unpredictable and our thoughts and believes, while with good meaning, can become unpredictable too. I love what I am learning as a parent.

busy busy busy!

>Just here to mention that in the last two days I have spent nearly 4 hours cleaning the kitchen. For the first time ever I invested in SOS pads and OMG they have become my cleaning lifesaver! I have scrubbed the inside and outside of the stove, oven, and stove tops and it sparkles pretty like. Also, the microwave, outsides of cabinets and fridge are done. Tonight I plan to accomplish boxing up all of the dry foods we will not be needing until we're at my parents house (ha! more on that later), box all of our books, and scrub the bathtubs. By the time I'm finished it will be more than bed time.

I'd also like to note for more of a personal record that I took an anxiety pill tonight. I've been doing great all along until this week hit and I am a frantic, panicky mess. Bless B, he has been so much help and done everything I've asked. He is currently scrubbing mold spots off the walls in our bathroom. I'm so blessed! On that note, I feel mildly drunk so I may have to go back and check my work tomorrow.

Peace out lovies! Only a few more days until our move!

i heart faces-may flowers

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i heart faces is taking a break this week with challenges, but they did encourage everyone to post lovely photos of flowers to share. I LOVE LOVE LOVE our state flower, the Columbine. Those yellow ones in the bottom right corner? My faves!! And that hillside of multi-colored Columbines? To die for! I love that Columbines have a very mild, if any, scent and they are strong-willed. They have to endure harsh, cold, long winters here in Colorado and the reward is this. So lovely! I took these photos at the Steamboat Springs Botanic Gardens which is where B and I got married. So yeah, I'm a bit partial. Enjoy! And check out all the other lovely photos below.

PS I know that the photo in the bottom left does not feature Columbines. In fact, I'm not quite sure what they are but they're also in the gardens and I loved the white outline. :)

Daycare, revisited.

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Logan has officially been in daycare for a month now. His start was more than rough and now that the biting has stopped, we are in full blown separation anxiety mode. I kick myself because I always bragged about how well Logan did with other people when he was younger. He never cried when we'd leave him with a sitter or my parents. He was such a happy guy and now that he is old enough to notice our absence he wastes no time expressing his anger over it.

The rip-your-heart-out-don't-leave-me cry slapped me in the face two weeks ago Friday. Logan is usually one of the first kids at daycare when I drop him off and I wonder if that makes it harder for him. He doesn't have the distraction of the other kids to play with and so far he could care less about the toys. Since then, he beings to cry the moment we walk into his classroom. I take his coat off and grab his paci to help comfort him. He's still crying when we get into the other classroom with his morning teacher whom I really like. She is sweet and does her best to help Logan calm down. I never have enough time to stay there until he's better but maybe that is a good thing. I literally have to set him down and dash out the door without looking back just so I can keep it together. All while he is screaming his little head off.

Logan's teachers reassure me that within five minutes he isn't crying and is happily playing. I believe them and I believe that this is the right daycare for Logan. The first week was gut-wrenching but I am glad we did not jump ship. I am usually a "trust your gut" type woman and while I was worried about Logan's safety, deep down I knew it would all pass. And it has. Logan is still sad when we leave but I know it will get better. Thankfully, none of this has caused me to regret the job change. Adjusting to working during the day was hard (I was napping with Logan every day!) but the job has been amazing! I used to hate hospitals. I would get a terrible feeling all over when I walked into one and it was not until a friend had a baby 6 years ago and I visited her did I get over that phobia.

Overall, daycare and work are getting better. Each day is new and different.

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On a side note, I spent 5 hours packing with my MIL and we did an awesome job! Just a few things left in Logans room, our entire bedroom, some bathroom things, and then all the dry foods. Moving next Saturday! Can't wait. :)