Home Alone

It's Sunday morning and I'm sitting in my house, completely alone, enjoying a cup of hot tea and checking email. I am LOVING the quiet.

Walter and the boys went to spend the night at his mom's house yesterday. This gives me 24 HOURS OF TIME AWAY FROM MY KIDS. I have not been child free for 24 hours in exactly 3.2 years (that would be since X was born). This was my first night ever being away from Wesley and only my 4th night ever being away from Xavier (and 2 of those nights were when I was in the hospital having Wes!)

Yesterday I watched a little TV, ran some errands, got myself a new pair of maternity jeans, went to church, and then went to celebrate a friend's birthday with a bowling night out. This morning I'm having breakfast out with another friend then I think I'll come back home for a nap! 

It's strange to be in the house alone, and really strange to wake up to an empty house. Thanks to X's lovely (read - RIDICULOUS) sleeping habits lately, my body is so wired to get up before 6  that I couldn't sleep in this morning. Oh well, even though I'm up early at least I don't have to make breakfast for anyone or change any diapers or watch Mickey Mouse Clubhouse.

I thought I would miss Walter and the kids like crazy and feel guilty, but I'm actually really enjoying this! And don't worry, I plan to take the boys for a night at my parent's house soon so that Walter can have the same enjoyable kid free 24 hours at home.

Happy Sunday!!!

Tool Bench Boys

The other day Wesley was playing at the tool bench. He had on his red puppy dog pajamas and it reminded me that I have pictures of X in the same pjs playing at this same tool bench. So of course I quickly went for the camera. To me they don't actually look as similar as I thought they would. I think it's the hair and face shape that throws it off. Wes' hair is much lighter than X's was at this age and his face isn't as round. Either way, they are both still really stinkin cute (in my completely unbiased opinion of course).

Wes at the tool bench:

Xavier at the tool bench:

Ultrasound

Yesterday I had my 20 week (although technically I'm only 19.5 weeks) ultrasound for baby #3. In a stroke of luck for us, the technician was training someone so we got to see the baby longer than normal so the trainee could get in some practice time! I love having ultrasounds. I am always amazed at what you can see and what is going on inside of me.

The baby is doing great and everything looks normal - whew!. The heartbeat was ranging from 145-155bpm. Baby is about 11 oz right now. This one's a mover too. At the beginning of the ultrasound he/she was head up and facing right. By the end of the ultrasound he/she was head down facing left. At one point we saw the baby reach his/her hand up and scratch the top of his/her head. So neat!

As with our other kiddos we opted not to find out the gender. We are a minority according to the technician. I laughed when she told me that when she was pregnant she would scan herself almost every day and determined the sex of her baby at 14 weeks.

Here's our baby! The quality isn't great. I was too lazy to go downstairs and scan it, so I just took a picture of the picture with my camera. You can still see the cute profile though. Can't wait to see what he/she looks like in person this summer!

More Snow

We got more snow this week. Ice at the beginning of the week (not so much fun) but a good 3 inches of powder last night. So today we all went out to play. This was Wesley's first time in the snow. He's been sick every other time we've gotten snow.

I was very excited to see how Wesley would react. He was in X's old snow stuff so it was a total flashback for me. They look almost identical in a couple pictures all geared up at the same age. Wes seemed to like the snow. He wasn't bothered by all the clothes and boots, didn't try to take the mittens off, liked riding in the sled, and enjoyed walking around the yard. He fell over a zillion times and we'd have to help him up, but he just kept on going.

Xavier ate about 10lbs of snow and ran around like a crazy person jumping all over the snow fort and sledding down the hill on the side of the house.

Walter and X inside their little snow fort.

Me and X sleddin in the backyard.

Wessa in the snow! Click here to see how much he looks like X did in this snowsuit.

Hard to tell, but Walter is standing in the middle of the (frozen) lake.

You can't hear it, but I'm yelling at X to get off the lake -- too risky!

My little snow bunnies!

Making good use of the neighbor's swing set.

A Few Thoughts on Having Three

• How the heck am I going to manage them all???
• I will NOT gain as much weight as I did with Wesley.
• Xavier better keep napping every day!
• I wonder if it's a girl ???
• It's so nice to have the baby "stuff" already.
• As of this fall I will have a child in preschool for the next 5 years straight - OY!
• I am not worried in the least bit about physically caring for a new baby - been there done that!
• Wesley will be the middle child before he's even 2 years old.
• We got the minivan just in time (and didn't even know it at the time)
• We will probably never be able to afford to fly again.
• I've always wanted more than 2 :)
• Sooooo excited to have a summer baby.
• Xavier LOVES little babies -- hope he loves this one too!
• No one is going to want to babysit for us now.
• I feel even better about my purchase of a double stroller.
• WE ARE BLESSED.

I Need to Write That Down

Xavier is saying and doing some really funny things lately and I don't want to forget them. Here's a few funny phrases that have come out of his mouth recently......

(totally random) "Mom, I don't have a receptionist, I just have a phone."
(getting ready for my gma's funeral) "Mommy, after Mia's funeral let's go to the store and get Strawberry Mini Wheats."
(during my gma's funeral mass) "Mommy, did you see Jesus' bathtub (the baptismal font) back there?"


Lately we have had much success using the microwave timer as a 3rd party motivator to get X to transition to something different. He may refuse to come eat dinner if I just ask him to come to the table, but if I set the timer for 1 minute then when it goes off he will get right in his chair. What's ridiculous though is that he just stands behind his chair for that minute staring at the timer waiting for it to go off. Why not just get in the chair to begin with? It's not like he's using that minute to go play. CONTROL ISSUES!!!!!

The other night X kept asking us over and over to take him to "Professor Von Drake's House" (a character from Mickey). But he couldn't tell us where the professor lived. So while we were on our way home from small group a few hours later, Walter and I decided to humor him (and in an effort to silence him) and we drove around looking for a completely dark house. We pulled in the driveway of a random house, told X that this was the professor's house, but explained that there were no lights on so the professor must not be home. X was slightly taken aback that we actually found the house, but was satisfied with this and decided we should try back later. So we backed out of the driveway and continued on our way home.  THE THINGS YOU WILL DO TO APPEASE YOUR CHILDREN.

X also decided to get me at my own game recently. He loves to drive down this certain street (Street B) in our neighborhood on our way home. It's out of our way and sometimes I just want to get home. So when it snowed last week I told him we couldn't go that way because there was too much snow on that street. Fast forward to yesterday and he decides to tell me we can't go the regular way (Street A) because there is too much snow on that street and we need to go Street B (his favorite way). Sneaky little guy!!!

Not a Single Drop

As of this past week Wesley is no longer nursing. My goal was to nurse him for a year, just as I had done with Xavier. Wes starting drinking whole milk in a sippy cup just before his first birthday and he loves it. So, once I new he was established on milk, I slowly weaned him over the course of about 6 weeks.

I am thrilled to have made it to a year and even more thrilled to say that Wesley has not had ONE DROP of formula. I've said it before, and I'll say it again, that I am not against formula. This was more about me achieving a goal that I had set for myself. Having so many struggles with nursing, and supplementing, during Xavier's first year, I really wanted to be able to exclusively breastfeed Wesley.

Nursing my second child was a completely different experience for me. I felt that I was armed with so much more knowledge, not to mention and an entire year of experience. It wasn't the blind leading the blind this time. I was able to help Wesley learn to nurse, be able to read his hunger clues better, trust my intuition, and just be more relaxed about the whole situation. It's not to say we didn't encounter any problems, but I knew how to respond to them.

It's pretty neat to think that for his first 6 months of life I completely sustained Wesley with no outside food source. That has to be one of my greater accomplishments.

And I'll get to do it all over again in just 5 short months - OY!!  (Is it really that soon???)

Where Did He Go?

Wesley loves to play peek-a-boo. On this day the laundry room door provided his cover! ("Isa" is one of Wes' nicknames - you will hear X say it several times)

Wes is a Mess

My poor little Wessa is having such a rough time. After another night of fevers I took him to the doctor this morning to find out he has his first ear infection.....and probably a flu virus. So right now he has a fever, an inflamed ear, a very snotty nose, a nasty cough, a sore throat, a wicked sneeze, and eyes that just won't stop watering.  I'm literally chasing him down with a kleenex every 4 minutes. He's lost 10 oz since last week because he will not each much beyond fruit and cheerios. Thankfully I did get him to drink more today than yesterday.

And he's not sleeping well. AT. ALL. Which of course means neither am I. I'm starting to think I will never sleep through the night again. It's been over a year, and with another baby coming it's not like it's gonna get any easier (insert my personal pity party here).

I miss my happy go lucky little boy that's fascinated with coffee cups. Wes, get better soon buddy!

Snow Day

We got a huge dumping of snow overnight and had a good old fashioned snow day around here today. Even Walter got a snow day - that has NEVER happened the entire time we've been married. It was fun to have him here for the day and I enjoyed the extra help.

I volunteered to shovel the driveway this morning. That was my "alone time" for the day - ha! Walter, the good dad that he is, made everyone pancakes while holding sick little Wesley. Poor baby has been running a fever off and on for days and was pretty miserable this morning.

After breakfast Walter and X tried to sled, but the snow was too powdery so they just played in the yard and watched the snow plow.

Me and Wes watched from the front door. I would have loved to get him out in the snow, but not while he's sick. Bummer!

Xavier was kind enough to shovel the front yard for us.

All bundled up you would think he'd be miserable, but he LOVED it out there and played for an hour.

 After a PB&J lunch and a good nap, we broke out the finger paints. But, someone had an aversion to getting paint on their fingers so we had to use brushes and stamps. Funny kid!

I made potato soup for dinner, we played playdoh, the boys took long baths, I did 5 loads of laundry, and Walter cleaned the bathroom. It was a good day. I'm a little worried about tonight though - Wes became more congested this afternoon and I have a feeling he's going to have a lot of trouble sleeping. We'll see....