March and April

So....2 months have passed....

What can I say? We have been busy.

First this happened...




Then this happened...



And I got a Kindle which has sucked away untold hours of my life. We are also deep in the midst of potty training with Bear. Which is about as much fun as it sounds. But we are making progress so I am happy about that.

It has just been a crazy, crazy last two months. Like the huge party we had on Tater's 1st birthday with 30ish adults and 12 kids in my house. And Tater got sick that night with a 103 temperature and I got to be the mom waiting outside urgent care when they opened at 8 am that Sunday morning which also happened to be his birthday. He had a nasty ear infection, poor baby. He was also cutting his top tooth at the same time which made for a miserable birthday. Luckily we had the party the day before.

Plus my beloved pug got diagnosed with heartworms at his annual checkup so we have been going through the long and costly process of curing that. Let me just tell you how fun it is to get a pug to swallow two pills a day for 3 weeks so he can get ready for shots that will put him on the dog equivalent of bed rest for 2 months. Just trust me, give your dog his heartworm medicine on time, every month...In my defense I believe he got infected last summer when I was dealing with a newborn and a two year old and I could barely remember my own name much less when the dog got his medicine. But now it is on my calendar on the 1st of every month.

I promise I will try to be more faithful with the updates. And I will even try to comment on your blogs as well since I promise I have been reading them. I am just bad about writing and commenting.

Awkward

Is it weird that I had to Google the word awkward to make sure I was spelling it correctly for this title? BTW, I spelled it wrong. It is just one of those words that looks wrong when you write it out. Anyways, not what I was going to talk about.

Today I went and met my best friend for breakfast at IHOP. It was 10 a.m. but this IHOP is always busy even on a random Thursday mid-morning. We got seated at a table with a booth on one side of us and a wall on the other. As we are chatting I notice that the older (like my parent's age, not old) couple in the booth next to us were being super quiet while eating.

Now I've been married awhile and I understand that it isn't abnormal to not talk a lot with your spouse while eating a meal since you live together and don't always have a lot to catch up on like my friend and I did. But what I noticed as we chatted is that it appeared they were listening to our conversation. Like the entire 45 minutes we were eating there. It wasn't even all that subtle like they were just overhearing an occasional comment.

We didn't discuss anything all that juicy but we did have a few things that we discussed that I didn't really appreciate someone listening to. So I ended up just steering the conversation to topics like my new yard service I hired this week and baby sleeping patterns, etc.

I understand that you really have no expectation of privacy out in public when it comes to conversations but I do find it annoying when people make it very obvious they are openly listening to your conversation. Seriously. Can't they at least chat amongst themselves about the weather or something? I catch myself occasionally listening in on part of a conversation if something catches my attention or I am in particularly close quarters with someone like a person on their cell phone in an elevator but this wasn't like that. The restaurant was busy enough to generate background noise and they obviously had each other to talk to.

What was even weirder is that when we left they were parked next to me and the guy actually waved at me as he was getting in his truck. Weird.

Progress

It has been a busy week at my house. This past Saturday found me outside Urgent Care at 7:45 a.m. waiting in line behind 7 other people for the doors to open at 8 a.m. This was after spending an entire night waking up every 45 minutes to a screaming, feverish baby. Add in a lovely cold sore for me and we were quite the chipper pair at the doctor that morning. Tater had a double ear infection and the doctor took pity on me and prescribed me an antiviral medication to speed the healing on a cold sore along with prescribing antibiotics for Tater's ears.


Unfortunately the antibiotics took a couple of days to take effect for Tater so he was up a good bit of the night Saturday too. By Sunday I was exhausted so my husband let me take a 3 hour nap Sunday and spent a good bit of the weekend taking Bear out and about on errands while Tater and I rested at home. Tater is doing better now but I got sick yesterday so it has just been one thing after the other.

In better news we have been making progress with Bear on the potty training front. I'm almost afraid to say anything because I don't want to jinx it but I am just so excited. We have been talking to him about the potty and read books about it for a year now with virtually no results. No amount of bribery could get him to actually do anything on the potty. All the sudden this week it just clicked and now he has peed in the potty at least 1-3 times a day every day for the last week. I am just happy to finally be making a little progress. I started with just having him go as soon as he got out of the bath at night. After 3 nights of that I added an afternoon potty break for the last 2 days and tonight I added a third potty break before bed. I will probably give him another day or two and then add another potty time in the morning and go from there. He has been getting 2 Hershey kisses for each sucessful visit to the potty but he didn't even remember to ask for them after his 3rd visit tonight.

Bear also started a 6 week baseball program today for 3-5 year olds. It meets once a week and is for kids and parents. We had a really good time tonight. My husband and I took turns holding the baby and helping Bear. It is hard to believe that he is already so big.

Never send a Daddy to do a Mama's job

As many of you know, Valentine's Day is fast approaching. Today Bear is having his class party at Mother's Day Out. I have known about said party for 3 weeks. Being the super Mom that I am I could not just go out and purchase a $1.99 package of Valentines at Target for my firstborn to take to his friends. No, no I decided to go on Etsy and purchase some simply adorable personalized Valentines for my boys to take. (Although Tater only attends on Tuesdays I still dropped of Valentines for his classmates as well). I may have procrastinated a tad and waited until the middle of last week to purchase them. After much hemming and hawing I decided on Pirate themed Valentines for Tater and Fire truck ones for Bear. The lovely girl I ordered them from notified me on Friday that she sent them first class mail that day. From Maryland. The same Maryland that seems to be under about 40 feet of snow right now.

So yesterday the Valentines still had not come in the mail. So not her fault. I blame my procrastination, and Mother Nature, and the Postal Service. I couldn't send Bear to Mother's Day out with no Valentine's today especially since I had already bought cookies for the class and little Valentine cans of play dough for each kid. Plus dragging both boys to the doctor yesterday morning so I could get Bear some antibiotics for his ear infection so he would not miss the party. Poor kid woke up with a cough and fever yesterday but we got him fixed up. By God my kid was going to have Valentines.

At 5:00 my husband called and said he was on his way home. Thinking it would save me a trip across town to Target I asked him to stop in on his way home and pick up some Valentines for the boys. He was passing right by on his way home and I knew there was plenty to choose from at that Target because I had just been there the day before. I explain twice where exactly the Valentine's section was in the store. All 5 aisle of it. Of course he calls when he gets there and cannot locate the Valentines. I explain yet again that there are aisles and aisles of pink, red and white animals, cards, candy etc directly next to the food section of the store. He says he found the section and doesn't see any Valentine's cards. Seriously. I tell him to keep looking because one aisle is nothing but the boxes of kids Valentine cards. After 5 minutes he indicates he found some Hello Kitty Valentines. Grr..Seriously? He wants to send my all boy 3 year old with Hello kitty Valentines? I tell him to keep looking. Finally he says he sees a box of 30 G.I. Joe Valentines. Great. I tell him that will work just grab one box because I only need 20.

20 minutes later he arrives home with these....
*

Not sure how much you can tell by the picture but they include a samurai looking guy with a huge sword, some scary looking bad guys, a woman in skin tight black clothing with a large gun, etc. Not exactly what I had in mind when he said G.I. Joe. I was picturing the army men in Toy Story or something. I explained to my husband that while I appreciate the thought there was no way I could send my 3 year old and 10 month old's friends at a church Mother's Day Out program Valentines that include scary looking bad guys, guns, swords, and women in skin tight outfits. Gah.

So I hop in the car and drive back across town to Target where I locate the entire aisle of completely age appropriate Valentine's for the boys to take. After picking up ones that included the characters from Up, Finding Nemo, ones with puppies etc I finally decided on a multi pack that included characters from all of the Pixar films. I bring them home and my husband is like "where did you find those I didn't see anything like that".

This is why you never send a daddy to do a mama's job...

*picture taken from www.Amazon.com

Three!!!

On Sunday Bear turned 3. Whoa. That was just so crazy for me. He went from a 5lb 0 oz 18 inch baby 3 years ago to a 34lb 4 oz 38.5 inch boy in just 3 short years. When did this happen? He was in the 75% for weight and 70ish % for height at his 3 year checkup. Not bad for a baby who came out 7 weeks early and spent 16 days in the NICU.

We had a lovely weekend at my parent's house celebrating his birthday and my brother making Eagle Scout. The Eagle Scout ceremony was Saturday and carried well into Saturday evening and then we got up Sunday and celebrated Bear's birthday with more cake and presents.


I know people say that 3 is worse than 2 but I have a feeling this is going to be a good year. For me 2 was extremely challenging and at 3 I feel like he is easier to deal with. Yes, he still has his stubborn moments and throws the occasional tantrum but it just doesn't seem as overwhelming as last year. Maybe I am just getting better at handling it. Honestly I think kids just go through their difficult phase at different times.