Friday, September 30, 2005

September 2005

 

September 2, 2005

Today is the day Katherine is 3. I simply can not fathom how quickly this has happened. Today she had a small birthday celebration at Ms. Candice’s and they had cupcakes. This morning, I’d put her hair in buns and she thought that was pretty funny since she calls her butt, buns too. It did cause some confusion though. When I picked her up she said “mom, my butts are coming loose”. I had to laugh at that one.

 

We went to our favorite pizza place and all of the waitress & the owner sang happy birthday to her. They love her there and they don’t usually sing to people. She really enjoyed that. We came home and let her open the presents from the family. She got a vacuum, a cleaning set with a broom and mop, a musini (a motion activated toy that plays music when you dance around it), a doll house, a little people van and a Dora Candy land game. The vacuum and the doll house were the big hits of the day. She also received a few gifts in the mail that we let her open a few days ago. She got a ton of play do accessories from an online friend of mine and a write on board for practicing her writing skills. She also got a cute doll that she’s been toting around constantly.

 

Grandma and uncle mike are coming in tonight. Tomorrow is the birthday party. Should be fun.

 

September 3, 2005

We had Katherine’s birthday party today. Here are a few things I learned about children’s birthday parties.

 

  1. Eating contests go over like a lead balloon when children are encouraged to keep neat and clean most of the time. NOT one kid would put their face into the whipped cream pie...not even to get to the pudding at the bottom. K stuck her chin in but that was it. The decorating of the pies went over ok though.

  2. Children do not come out of the womb knowing how to hop in a pillow case. The "potato sack race" was won by Katherine because she is a natural hopper.


3. Announcing "present time" and having all of the gift bags in one spot on the floor is not a good idea. I swear you'd have thought we had a bunch of football players lined up to go ransack her gifts. That was out of control! I would recommend tying all non birthday children to chairs before announcing the gift opening.

4. Pin the tail on the donkey is a good idea...even if some of the kids cheat. Kids this age cheating is just plain funny. They are so obvious about it.

5. Put all breakable toys away. Katherine received a toy vacuum cleaner from us the night before. All of the kids loved it and more than once I saw parts being ripped from it. Luckily it's a pretty sturdy piece of equipment so it's not actually broken but I feared for its life.

The party went off pretty well otherwise. K had a blast with her friends and she enjoyed being the star for the day. Jenn and Bailey came down for the day and they spent the night at our house. They had so much fun playing together but the next morning; both girls woke up in awful moods so Jenn and Bailey scooted out of here pretty early. K kept asking when her friend was coming back. 

 

 

September 8, 2005

 

Ever have one of those days where you know you shouldn’t get out of bed but you do anyway? I had one of those days today. My cold is hanging on but I felt a bit better than I did yesterday. K was being a bugger last night so she went to bed at 8 which means an early morning wake up at 6am. I believe that I’ve made my “morning ritual being upset and how it affects me” clear in previous journal postings so I’ll leave that alone.

So I get up early and luckily K is in a pretty good mood. Minimal whining & Lauren sleeps in a bit. K and I get on the bed and hug on Lauren for awhile and I take Katherine to Miss Candice’s. I come home and at 10am I begin the nap time ritual for Lauren. I’ve decided that I’d like her to stop napping in her car seat (which she’s great at) and have her nap in the crib instead. Two hours later, no nap, one angry baby and one exhausted mommy later we both crash hard on the bed together. So, I’ll try again tomorrow.

Then I leave the house at 2:30 to pick K up and take her to her swim class which starts at 3:15. I got behind every stinking slow car in town. Apparently today was “go at least 10 mph below the speed limit” day. Someone forgot to fill me in. We get to swim class late but the teacher agrees to take K into the pool for the 6 minutes that are left in her lesson. Cool! Then I get a whiff of Lauren. The child has made what I’ve come to refer to as a “clothes trasher”. The kind of giant poop that explodes out of the diaper and up the front, back and sides. It was literally up to her chin. I think she must have pooped out half of her body weight. It was pretty impressive. But I’m prepared. I take the 6 minutes that K is in her swim class and I use about 60 wipes to give Lauren a good wipe down and I throw away her outfit. But, since we’ve not had a “clothes trasher” in the last few month’s I no longer keep an extra outfit in the car. Not as prepared as I thought. DOH! So we have a nakee baby. Luckily the rest of the afternoon has gone more smoothly.

K has her 3 year checkup at the peds tomorrow. I have a lot of questions to ask him like. Why won’t my child eat? Why won’t she sleep? Why is she so flipping cute? Is she really mine all mine? Geez, I’m going to sound like her. Woody has started calling her “cause why” since that’s about all she says now. Oh the joy of Three!!!

 

September 10, 2005

 

Katherine’s doctor appointment went well yesterday. She’s 25 lbs and has jumped from the 3rd percentile at 2 years old to the 5th percentile. The pediatrician was pleased with her growth. She’s also 36 inches tall which puts her in the 25th percentile for height. Other than that, she’s doing great. He was a bit worried that she will be board to tears in Kindergarten since she missed the cutoff by 2 days. She will not be able to enter school until two days before her 6th birthday. I am going to look into what grade you can test them up and possibly just home school her until then. I believe that would entail home schooling for K, and first grade since I believe that 2nd grade is when you can test up. Then again, socially, with her shyness, I’m thinking that perhaps starting later may benefit her. As you can see, I’ve made no decision yet. I need to research some things. Do I just put her into kindergarten at 6 years old knowing that she’s probably more equipped socially to deal and just let her be board academically? Bah! I just don’t know.

 

Lauren is the sweetest sleeper ever. I’ve been working on getting her used to sleeping in the crib at nap time so that when she goes to Candice’s in Dec, she will be prepared and not give Candice too many fits. I do love nursing her to sleep though. She is so different than K was. When I used to nurse K to sleep, it was a battle. She’d stay attached and as soon as I tried to pull her off she’d wake up and scream. Lauren on the other hand, will pet my arm while nursing then pull off a few times and roll over to go to sleep only to wake herself up a bit after a few seconds, and roll back over to nurse for another minute. This goes on until she starts playing with her hair. That’s the sign…I know she’s almost asleep. She lets go and passes out. Precious.

 

September 13, 2005

I think I jinxed myself with the “Lauren is a great sleeper” talk. She is now a teething demon. Someone has taken my sweet baby and left a screaming, slobbering monster in her place. The cold I've had for two weeks is not getting any better and that's most likely due to the fact that I've had 6 hours total of sleep over the last 3 days. I had been feeling better before the "baby switch".


Lauren is usually such a great baby. She plays alone long enough for me to get my work done, she eats great, and she sleeps great. Now, none of that is true. She's woken up every night since Saturday, screaming and won't nurse or settle back to sleep for more than 15 minutes at a time. She won't nurse much or eat many solids and lord help me if I try to put her down at all. The kicker? She won't nap for more than 15 minutes at a time either unless I'm holding her. That's the worst since I do work at home and I can nap when she does if we get a poor nights sleep. But not recently. It's like she's dangling the nap in front of my desperate eyes and I want to believe it so much. Then I do, and I lie down with her but I'm rudely awakened pretty quickly by the screaming & crying.


I normally don't mind holding her as much as she will let me but unfortunately my work is being audited and it's requiring some pretty intense brain work (really hard when you are sleep deprived) and time. I worked one handed all day yesterday from 9am until 11pm and I would say I actually got about 3 hours worth of work completed between double checking myself for errors due to lack of brain capacity, and holding Lauren.


Teething tabs, check. Advil, check. Ice pops, check. Sleep?? Not so much. bawling.gif
I don't see any bumps on her gums but the mild fever she's had and her attitude all point to teething. I hope they hurry up and pop through. K never really had a problem with cutting teeth...or maybe she did and I blocked it out...sort of a post-teething-stress-disorder?


I can't nap today even if Miss fussy-butt does since the maid is coming soon, I have a hair appointment that I will be charged for if I don't go, K has swimming lessons and I have to go to the grocery store or we will be having pasta with nothing on it for dinner. Ok, I know that sounds bad. “Oh, man, the maid is coming. Woe is me”. I can laugh at myself even when I’m wallowing in self pity.

 

September 15, 2005

Ok, things are better. She’s slept better for the last two nights. Whew! I was getting scared there for a bit. Lauren ate almost 2 full jars of baby food last night. Maybe she’s starving? That’s a lot more than usual. Weird. Still no tooth but I’m sure it’s coming.

 

She has started to repeat things you say and she can now say Ma-ma, na-na (nursing), da-da, dat (cat) and uh-oh. Super cute! Love it. She also has a sign for “I’m hungry, feed me now” and that would be the lip smacking when she’s looking at you. Funny stuff.

 

September 16, 2005

Oh man are kids ever funny. Yesterday was “favorite animal” day at Katherine’s daycare. Apparently, all of the kids picked sheep as their favorite animal. When Woody asked K why a sheep was her favorite, she replied “because they have meatballs all over them”. Too funny!

 

So this morning I asked Candice where Katherine may have gotten the idea that sheep are covered in meatballs. Candice laughed and said that when they were doing their craft for animal day, that she was going to let the kids make sheep by gluing cotton balls on the paper but she didn’t have enough so instead they made lions with brown pom poms…I guess that in Katherine’s brain, all round brown things are meatballs.

 

September 17, 2005

Due to football season, your schedule will be temporarily revised.

 

So Woody wants to be able to watch football. With two young kids in the house, that’s pretty much impossible. So, we’ve worked out a fair solution. He watches the girls for 4 hours on Saturday and I get them on Sunday for 4 hours. That way we each get some free time to do what we want. Today, I will sleep. Last weekend I worked and it really didn’t feel much like a break at all. I just worked and wished I was playing with the girls instead.

 

This morning we all went for a swim and Katherine showed woody some of her new swim class skills.  She can now float on her back all by herself and swim a short distance from the wall to a waiting person. She’s really doing great.

 

Now for my rant. Stupid Nickelodeon. They are wrong. What are they thinking? Honestly, getting kids addicted to ‘Go Diego Go’ and then not having it on at all over the weekend?!!? Grrrrrr. All I've heard today is "can we watch go Diego go mom? I've been a good girl". How do I explain to her that out of 1000 channels go Diego isn't on a single one of them for 48 hours?

I did let her play on the website and she had fun with the Go Diego games and videos but it's not enough. It's like giving a virgin daiquiri to an alcoholic.

It's gonna be a long weekend

 

September 25, 2005

 

Quirky. That’s what these girls are. Quirky. For example, Katherine’s obsession with the drum that sits in the hallway. Every time she passes it, she must hit it. If she’s running to the bathroom, it’s usually a quick loud bang! If she’s coming to the living room after waking up in the morning, she will walk up to it slowly, place her babies and blanket on the floor, give it a sleepy tap, pick up the babies and blanket and continue on her way. She can not, not hit the drum in passing.

 

And Lauren is already exhibiting similar actions. I was playing one of the Baby Einstein videos in the car for her on the way to drop off Katherine and go to the gym. Lauren would start fussing every day. She’s never fussed in the car before so I was wondering what was up. Then I noticed that it was the scene where there is a yellow spinning top and a sun dancing. She hates them. Flat out can’t stand them. They make her cry. So now, I know the music cue to forward to the next section…which begins with Robots. Lauren does not have a robot phobia.

 

Speaking of Lady Lauren. That dang tooth still hasn’t popped through. Is she going to be one of those kids who teethes for months and is miserable then like 6 teeth come in at once. Well, I for one sure hope that’s the case because seriously, if only one little stinkin tooth pops through after the last two months of “signs” and pain, I’m going to be a bit more than miffed.  Poor kid. I’m convinced that it’s right around the corner. She’s had “drool stool” all weekend and she’s started to chomp me occasionally. Biting worse than pinching? Hmmmm. I dunno…which do I dislike more? Oh, both really about equally.

 

Katherine is still playing soccer but she’s not really playing. She gets all hyped up on the way to the game and she will kick the ball into the goal during practice but when the game actually starts, she distances herself from the ball as much as possible. Most of the other kids will get into the pile and kick each other & knock one another down but not my K. She’s hanging out in the corner of the field watching the madness and looking oh so cute in her soccer uniform. She’s also really great about cheering on her team from the sidelines. That’s my girl!

 

Just a side note for any of you who are anxiously awaiting news of any other Wright offspring. There will be none. We made sure of it Friday. Woody had the operation and is healing up nicely after taking only one day off of helping with the girls.  If we decide that we really must impose our parenting on another kid, we will just have to adopt some unsuspecting boy-child and call him ours. J  However that would but Woody and I at a distinct disadvantage as far as being outnumbered by shorties so I’m thinking it will probably not happen. Thus I’m trying to enjoy Lauren’s disappearing babiness as much as possible.

 

This coming week we have swim classes on Tuesday and Thursday and a Soccer game on Friday night. Next Monday is Lauren’s 9 month checkup.

 

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