Snow Day

It snowed here a little last night so I decided to take X out to play this morning. It was his first official play in the snow. Last year he was only a few weeks old during the thick of winter so he pretty much just watched the snow from the comforts of his bouncy seat. I knew that getting dressed would be a challenge, and I was right. There was some crying and the Binky had to make an appearance, but I was hopeful that once we got out there he'd be fine.

Within 1 minute of being in the yard X fell over, got a face full of snow and lost a glove. He wasn't happy to say the least. I took him back in the garage and cleaned off his face and redid the gloves. I was determined for him to enjoy this! We decided to take a sled ride down the sidewalk of our street. He liked it!

After our little ride I let him go free in the back yard and walk around. While slightly unsteady in his "abominable snowman" getup he did pretty well and seemed to enjoy it.

A few minutes after these shots were taken X fell face first into the snow again and we decided to call it quits. He lasted about 30 minutes so I'm calling our first time in the snow a success!!

Keep It Clean

We decided to put our house on the market. In response to that decision, we now must keep our home immaculate in case people want to come see it. Because really, who wants to buy a dirty, messy house? I consider us to be very clean people in general, but this has taken on a whole new level of cleanliness and organization. We spent 2 weekends doing the massive "deep" cleaning and de-cluttering. The garage was a day's worth of work on it's own. Walter braved the cold (OK, he did have a propane heater) and made me proud by finally agreeing to get rid of some things. Xavier worked the room with his push cart as the "supervisor" of the job.

Man on a mission!

Gee Daddy, it's really messy in here. You can barely see me in my camo suit amongst all this junk!

(and yes, Walter is wearing MY purple hat because he couldn't find his own)

We had to barricade the propane heater with buckets to keep X from it.

I finally decided to part with my paint covered high school graduation t-shirt (tear!) amongst many other items that have been around too long. I guilted Walter into parting with his pair of decrepit "teva-like" sandals that he's owned since before we met. I'm pretty sure they were not make to last 11+ years! Painting the laundry room was also a part of the major to-do list. Now we are onto just the maintenance.

One of my biggest challenges is a little 13 month old who obviously didn't get the memo that we're in organizational lock down. X still roams around the house leaving his toys all over and taking every opportunity he has to hide ping pong balls in various locations. It's like a mad dash when we leave the house to pick up all his toys and get him out the door before he has a chance to mess them up again. I've thought about strapping him in the car seat and then running back in, but I haven't had to resort to that yet! I usually keep a bunch of toys out in our bedroom that he plays with while I'm in the shower. But, they've been banished to the closet for now so that's become the new play place. Keeping with the idea of streamlining, we've decided not to dress him either!

Please say a prayer for us that the house sells quick and we find a new place to live! Oh yeah, and that Xavier gets to wear clothes again - he he!

Playground

The past few weeks we've had some relatively warm days here and there. I love these because it allows me to get X outside for some play. We run errands and stuff, but he's inside a bunch when it's cold. I've been taking him 2 places. One is an elementary school playground down the street. He's too little for the equipment, but they have a big open space with basketball hoops that he just loves to walk around in. They have a handicap swing that I've made double as a baby swing too. It's a little big, but X seems to like it. And of course playing the mulch is the funnest thing ever according to this 1 year old. He's actually been pretty good about keeping it out of his mouth too.

Once school started back I needed to find a new place to take X since they kinda need that playground during the day. So, there is another playground tucked inside a connecting neighborhood and it has a tennis court too. While he's a bit too young to pick up a racket, it's great to go in and close the gate and just let him walk all over. It's a nice flat surface and X can be easily contained! We do play around in the yard some too, but X likes to walk right into the middle of the street, and the backyard has been kinda muddy lately. I'm quite enjoying our little playground outings for a change of pace.

How To Cure A Crabby X

Put him in the bathtub!

On a recent Saturday X had a terrible night sleep and was really crabby during the day. It seemed that nothing would make him happy. We usually do baths at night, but Walter and I were desperate for something to change his tune. So, we decided some playtime in the bathtub was worth a shot, even if it was noon. I joined in for a change of pace and we played for almost an hour. I know you're not supposed to put much water in with a little one, but I was freezing so we filled it up more than normal which made X slightly boyant at some points! He enjoyed the distraction from his crabbiness and then happily slept for 2 1/2 hours.

Mom, the water's getting chilly -- let's refill!

The favorite toy...a cup!

Watching the elmo submarine.

Look, the water's almost up to my armpits!

I Can Do It Myself

I'm not sure when kids really start to use a fork and spoon, but I figured I'd give it a try with X the other day. He likes to grab the spoon while I'm holding it and guide it to his mouth, so I wondered how he'd do completely on his own. When I was pregnant I bought an Ziploc bag full of baby spoons and toddler utensils from a garage sale. What a find! I've definitely gotten my money's worth out of that dollar. I pulled out the little curved fork and put pieces of scrambled egg on it then gave it to X. He did surprisingly well with it and ate the entire egg that way. So, of course I took pictures of his newest skill.

Open wide!

Goin in!

(disregard the lazy eyes -- the flash threw him off)

Ummm, that's good!

Oh, and on another good note, X has finally decided that it's ok to drink milk in the sippy cup! Yippee for small miracles. Now he won't be a 5 year old with a bottle.

Painting the Laundry Room

In my last post I promised to have more exciting things to blog about this week. Does painting the laundry room count??

The laundry room was one of our tasks this weekend. We had a spot on the ceiling that needed to be patched so that started it all. Since the laundry room is the entry from the garage into the house it's seen it's fair share of abuse during the last 6 years (can you believe we've had this house 6 years) and definitely needed a fresh coat of paint. Truth be told it didn't get that good of a paint job when we moved in because I was running out of paint and had to stretch the gallon! Saturday morning we got to work. First we had to clean the room. I consider us pretty clean people, but I was absolutely disgusted with what we found behind the washer and dryer (oh, and apparently our washer is leaking oil from the motor -- a nice added "sticky" bonus). It's funny how perceptive kids are because X was very aware of something different going on and was really leery about us being in the laundry room so much. At one point he stood staring into the room with a very low continuous moan. Here's a shot of the room mid day.

Doesn't it look lovely!

Putting on shoes for a trip to Home Depot

We were very lucky that X ended up taking a REALLY long nap that afternoon so we were able to get a lot done. But, once he was up we wondered how to keep him out of the room and occupied?? So we gated him off and bribed him with apple slices.

What ya guys doin in there? If you let me in I'll share my apple!

Finally by 10pm everything was back in place. I didn't think it would take that long, but I guess when you continually stop to take care of a 1 year old time gets away from you! Here's the finished product.

Some of you may think that the color didn't change, but alas, it did change slightly from a tan to green. As the always budget conscious gal that I am I decided to use paint we already had. There was almost a full gallon left from when our bedroom used to be green and I felt it was a crime to let that go to waste. Plus it complements the kitchen colors pretty well.

Attention KMart Shoppers

There is a "Blue Light Special" on Xavier today!

Not much has been going on this week to blog about but I was going through some photo files and found this one. When I looked at it my mind couldn't help but think of the old Blue Light Specials at KMart when I was a kid. (I haven't been in a KMart recently so I don't know if they still do that). This was the "bili-bed" that X had to be in for a few days when he was born to help with his jaundice. While it was a waaayyyy better setup than what he was first in, it still just looks funny and I hated not being able to just snuggle up with him all day long. I've read about blue light pads that go under clothes so you can still wrap up and hold the baby. Seems like that would be a much better idea to me.

Anyway, I'll try to come up with some more interesting posts this weekend!

Not Me Monday

I know I haven't participated in a few weeks, but I'm joining in again. Time to go over all the things that didn't happen last week. Head over to McMama's blog to read more. As for me....

• I did NOT find that X had taken off his diaper and then peed on the floor in the spare bedroom.
  


• When gathering clothes for donation, I did NOT look in the garage for black trash bags and finding none, then make a specific trip to Target for black trash bags, come home and pull into the garage to find a full box of black trash bags staring me in the face on the shelf.
  


• When making said trip to Target, I did NOT forget my Target gift cards (for the second time that week) and have to pay cash for the black trash bags. I also did NOT tell Walter we were not buying the cereal he wanted to get because I refused to pay cash for anything more than I had to knowing good and well there were gift cards sitting on my counter.
  


• I did NOT get very excited to organize all the empty hangers by type and color once I'll piled up the clothes for donation.
  


• I did NOT pass on the free sundae at Red Robin that came with my free birthday burger. (Seriously, I must have been out of my mind...pass on a FREE sundae? Who does that??)

So, what did you NOT do this past week?
Happy Monday!

New Year, New Milk

Now that Xavier is 1 year old and he's drinking whole milk, I decided to stop nursing. I'm happy with the decision and equally happy that I made it a year. I actually never thought I'd stick it out that long. For those that know me well, you know that nursing did not come easy for me and I struggled with problems pretty much the entire time. By far, nursing has been the most difficult thing I've ever done in my life. I have great envy for those that sail through it with ease, but that my friends was not me! I'll spare you from the un ladylike details, but name a problem, and I probably encountered it at one point or another!

So, would I do it again? Absolutely! It's an amazing thing to be able to nourish and bond with your child. But, in the meantime I'm happy to move on to the next stages in Xavier's life. Getting him to drink the whole milk in a sippy cup has been a challenge. He chugs it from a bottle, so it's not that he doesn't like the taste, but he seems to think I'm trying to pull something over on him when anything other than water comes out of a sippy. I keep trying everyday and figure eventually he'll get it. If anyone has ideas on this feel free to speak up!

Shaky Start to '09

Had I written this post at 5:30am this morning it would be drastically different at than it is now (just after 3pm). It would have been entirely a rant full of complaints. Now it will still have some of that, but I have a little more perspective and can grin (slightly).

I'm pretty much always disappointed in my plans for New Years so I've kind of just stopped making plans. This year we decided to do dinner, rent a movie, and call it a night. I was ok with that. We headed to Outback Steakhouse because we had a gift certificate and Walter started talking about Prime Rib on Monday. Well, we got there last night and there was a 2 hour wait even though we went "early". (I guess everyone else did too!) So we ended up at the Pasta House and that was fine. We had a nice meal and X ate spaghetti and rolls like they were going out of style! Then we went to Blockbuster where X ran all over the store (wear yourself out kid!) but then tripped and got a nasty carpet burn on his chin...time to go! Got home and it took over an hour to get X to go to sleep -- not a good thing. It was 9:30 before we started the movie, (X usually is asleep between 8-8:30) and 11:45pm when the movie was over. We went right to bed forgoing any watching the ball drop celebrations because I had a sneaking suspicion X would be up during the night. I should be a betting woman -- 3:50am and he's up. Normally you can sway him for 5 minutes, pop him back in the crib and that's it. Long story short, it's now 5am and we've rocked, we've swayed, he's been in our bed, and he's still wide awake..and feisty! I give up and take him downstairs where he starts to play. Walter and I sit on the couch commiserating about how we've only slept 4 hours and we hardly ever stay up past 10pm so why does he have to do this on the one night we stayed up a little?? We already battled it out getting X to sleep in the first place, isn't that enough? Meanwhile X is tooling around the living room like it's party time despite the fact that he's only slept 6 1/2 hours for the night. Fast forward to 5:55am and X is sitting in Walter's lap playing with a stuffed dog when this happens....

THANK YOU LORD!!! We quickly pop X back in his crib and go running to our bed saying "OK, now fall asleep as fast as you can because we don't know how long this will last." Thankfully we got to sleep another 3 hours. I mentioned awhile ago it would be nice to sleep until 9am, I just didn't know I'd have to be awake from 4-6am in order to get to do it!

So our first day of 2009 is another example of how we must expect the unexpected, take it in stride, and have patience. I mean after all, if X had slept all night I wouldn't have gotten this sweet picture, right? (no, I'm not that selfless, I would have gladly forgone the picture for some shut eye!)

Happy New Year to all -- I hope that someone out there went to a good party so I can live vicariously through you!