First day of preschool

Cade started preschool today. It's only 5 hours. And right now, it's only once a week. But still...I was a mess last night.

I cried while I was getting all of his stuff together last night. I cried while Ryan and I were praying before we went to sleep. And then this morning...I was ok. I prayed with Cade before we got Ava up, and I got a little teary while I was praying, but it made me feel better. I know that no matter what, God is in control and is watching over my sweet boy when I'm not with him. For that matter, He's in control and watches over Cade when I AM with him :)

It's been really rough around here lately. And that's one of the reasons that we needed to do this. It'll be good for Cade socially, and I know that he'll learn some things earlier than he probably would being here with me and Ava, just because Ava needs so much attention right now. It'll be good for me to have a break from him every now and then (can I just say that it was A.M.A.Z.I.N.G to eat lunch by myself??? [Ava was napping]). It'll be good for Ava to have some peace and quiet and undivided attention from Mommy. I know this is the right thing for our family right now.

But. That little boy has been with me all day every day since he was born. Two years, 4 months, and 13 days ago. The times he's been away from me have been with family. It's hard for me to know that he's having experiences that I'm not a part of. It's hard for me to let go and trust that someone else is capable of taking care of him. It's hard for me to let someone else teach him new things. But I am. With God's help. And a few tears. :)

The fruit of the Spirit

Galatians 5:22-23
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Against such things there is no law.


Yesterday at church, our pastor mentioned these verses during his sermon. I've heard them many, many times in my life. I know that because I am a Christian, the Spirit lives in me and therefore, the fruit of the Spirit should be evident in my life. The sad truth is that most of the time, they are not. On a good day, several of these might be displayed in certain areas. On a bad day, though, very few, if any, are shown.

My pastor said something that I hadn't really thought about before. He talked about how if you are a Christian, these should be evident. Whether it is in your personality to be gentle, or patient, or peaceful, doesn't matter. The Spirit is all of those things and since the Spirit lives in you, you have no excuse to not display these attributes. If you are incapable of it, you probably should re-think whether you are actually a Christian.

Wow. It's so easy to try to get by with not being patient by just chalking it up to not being a patient person. But in Matthew 7, Jesus reminds us that good trees bear good fruit, and that we will be recognized by our fruit.

I guess I just needed this reminder that I should be producing "good fruit." All of the fruit of the Spirit are things I want my children to see and emulate, but it's difficult for them to do that if they don't see it in my life every day.

No pressure. :)

Rescue Pack! Comin' to the rescue!

Is it in your head now? Because I can't get it out of mine!!! Seriously, I've watched Go, Diego, Go probably 4 times total IN MY LIFE now, and that song is stuck in my head constantly!!!

Let me back up...

Cade is 2 years and 4 months old now. We have been adamant from the beginning with him that we were not going to sit him in front of the TV for the purpose of entertainment and/or a babysitter. And we haven't. For about the last year, he's gotten to watch about 5 minutes of whatever we put on (usually something we've DVR'ed for us to watch :) while he drinks his milk before bed. But that's pretty much the extent of his TV-watching. Well...except for college football season. But he wasn't really old enough last year to notice much about it, so I don't really count that. It was on, but he definitely wasn't paying attention. And that's one of the reasons we've held on as long as we did to the no-TV-watching rule. He just wasn't really interested.

I don't know whether I believe all the stuff about kids who watch TV before they're 2 being more likely to have ADD/ADHD, but I do believe that there's really not a good reason to plop them in front of a TV when they're a baby. I'm a stay-at-home mom. My job is to be a mom and interact with my children, not keep them entertained with something else so I can do what I want. .....And stepping off my soapbox now.... :)

(Disclaimer: if you are pregnant and/or sick, you have a free license to keep your child/ren occupied any way possible...if Cade had been willing to watch TV for hours while I was so sick with Ava, this might be a whole different blog post ;)

Anyway, so FOR US, that was the choice we made. No TV for our kids for as long as possible.

Last week, Ryan took off work for 3 days, giving the 4 of us 5 whole days to spend together. No plans except for a few things around the house. It was glorious.

However. We started noticing that Cade was getting crankier and needing more attention the more Daddy was around. Crap. I guess he had gotten used to Mommy not giving him her undivided attention anymore, but when he had all that time when one of us COULD give him undivided attention, he got spoiled. OK, not really spoiled, but came to expect more attention again. I started panicking. He was throwing fits every time I nursed Ava. What was it going to be like when Daddy went back to work and I had to deal with the monster by myself???

Seems like everyone I know advised us to let Cade have something special that he could only do while I was nursing so he wouldn't resent that time. We hadn't really done that because there hadn't been a need to. Sure, he had thrown a few fits here and there, but for the most part, it was manageable. But I didn't see that working much more. So we made the decision to try the TV. As a "only-while-Mommy-is-nursing-Ava" distraction. I honestly didn't know if it would even work. Oh, but it has. We've watched some Diego, some Dora, some Sesame Street, even some Ice Age and Madagascar.

Here are my thoughts: I like Diego better than Dora. Ryan hates them both :) Sesame Street is NOT the same as it was when I was a kid and I don't like it. It's fun to watch the kid movies with Cade (even if it's only in 10 minute increments...kinda hard to follow a storyline, but oh, well :), BUT I noticed that he was SO focused on them that he ignored me. With Dora and Diego, when they ask a question, I repeat it to Cade to see if he'll answer. A lot of times, it's still too hard for him, but most of the time, he at least acknowledges that I'm talking to him.

So for now, we're sticking to things like Diego that have at least a small amount of educational value to them. And I'm stuck with random songs in my head. Small price to pay for some peace while nursing ;)

Bathroom makeover

This post is for an entry to a giveaway, so don't feel obligated to read it, unless you just want to :) If you want to enter, too, head over to A Year With Mom and Dad. But you need to hurry. It ends soon! (It's for a $250 gift card to WalMart so you can makeover a room in your house!!! How cool is that?)

Here's a picture of our bathroom:



Please ignore the hanging laundry. And the stuff all over the counter :)
Our bathroom is the only room in our house that has not been redone since we moved in. It has wallpaper. We have already removed lots of wallpaper from this house (can you say built in the 90s??). I personally don't really want to touch this room. I think it looks fine. Well, fine, as in, not worth it to me to do anything about it :) It drives Ryan crazy. He despises the wallpaper. He wants it gone. The other reason I don't want to do anything about it is that it costs money :) So if we were to win, I would be much more agreeable to actually taking down the wallpaper and painting. Oh, and something else that would be nice...notice the shower. In front of it is a towel. Yep, we don't have rugs in our bathroom. The rugs that we got for our wedding are in the guest (kids) bathroom, leaving us with none. So I'd definitely buy some rugs, too :)

Playgroup

I love playgroup. It's a sometimes-super-chaotic time to let your child run around with other children and not worry (too much) about what they're getting into. And it sometimes is the only reason that said child is not locked in his room. For his own safety. :)

The group of SAHMs I spend most of my time with (when I'm not actually staying-at-home :) has been having playgroup twice a month for about a year now. We rotate who hosts it every month, and it's always unpredictable who will actually show up. We had one earlier this year with 3 moms. We had one earlier this month with about 12 moms. Which means about a million children. But we have a great time talking (read: yelling to be heard over the children) with other adults, and our kiddos just run around playing. It's great! Saves my sanity on a fairly regular basis.

Terrible Twos

Well, it's been a while. Life with 2 little darlings is a whole new world. We're adjusting, though. Baby girl is almost 3 months old...I'm not really sure how that happened, but I'm actually okay with it. She's sleeping much better. Still has some off nights (like last night when she didn't go to sleep until a little after 10:30, then woke up at 4:30 and 7:30 wanting to eat), but overall, definitely better. I don't really understand people who just LOVE newborns. They don't sleep. At least, not when you want them to. Give me a baby who's a little bit older and sleeps through the night, and I'd be more than happy to have several more. :) She also eats. A lot. And it shows. She's got the chunkiest thighs ever. And more chins and neck rolls than you can count :)

Mr. Cade, on the other hand, is having a rough time. We changed his bed from a crib to a toddler bed one week ago. It hasn't been nearly as hard as I had prepared myself for, but I wouldn't say it's been super-easy, either. He's had several days where he's refused to take a nap at all (and it is only by the grace of God that he and I both survive those days...it's looking like today is going to be another one). Adding his lack of sleep to his already two-year-old-temper-tantrum-throwing-self, and you've got the potential for disaster. These days, it takes the simplest things to set him off into a full-blown hysterical crying fit. And I am simply not the most compassionate person (shocking, I know). Pretty sure that yesterday, he got as many spankings as I am old. If not more.

But I wouldn't trade any of it. I am so blessed to be able to stay home with them and see all of the new things they learn as they learn them. I just have to remind myself of that when there's a screaming 2 year old in the middle of my living room floor. :)

Baby girl

She's here! OK, she's been here for 5 weeks as of about 3 and a half hours ago. Life has been pretty busy since then, and I think this is the 3rd time I've been able to get on the computer at all since she was born.

Here's what happened...

Early in the morning on May 1st, about 3 am, I woke up to go pee (shocking, I know). I realized I was having what I thought were contractions, but since I didn't actually go into labor with Cade, I wasn't completely sure. After 3 more contractions that were about 4 minutes apart, I woke Ryan up. We stood around for a few minutes trying to decide what to do. It was so weird...I didn't think I could really be going into labor (Cade was a day late, and we were only at 37 weeks, 5 days with this one!) and the contractions were already so close together. We called my mom for her to come stay with Cade so we could head to the hospital to have everything checked out. By the time we got there and got to a room, it was about 4:15. I was praying the whole way there that I wouldn't have the baby in the car because the contractions were getting closer together and definitely stronger.

They got me hooked up to an IV (yuck) and checked me (which was equally as painful as those contractions!!!), and I was just at a 3. At that point, the plan was that I would be admitted for a 23 hour observation, and see what happened.

The contractions kept coming. They weren't super consistent, but they were definitely painful. The nurse kept asking if I wanted anything for the pain, but I toughed it out. The dr on call for the group I see made it in to check on me around 11. I think. He also checked me (seriously, that was one of the worst parts of my labor experience!), and said that I was almost a 4, but he could feel the bag of waters (what a weird name for something) bulging and he felt sure that it would break soon, so we needed to go ahead and have this baby.

I met the anesthesiologist, who explained everything (which was nice since we didn't get that last time), and off we headed to surgery. Pretty sure it was the same room I had Cade in. They did my spinal (during that whole process I decided that it was not worth it to have any more children) and got me laid down on the table with oxygen on and the drape up. Ryan finally got to come in, and they started.

At 12:22, Ava made her debut into the world. They brought her over for me to see her (she looked like a squishy-faced little bitty Cade, and I decided maybe I could do this again. If I had to :) and then got her a little cleaned up. Ryan took her up to the nursery while they closed me up (it is absolutely AMAZING what drugs can do...seriously...I was CUT OPEN and didn't feel a thing! Until later :)

Ryan was waiting for me in the recovery room, and after we had been there a little bit, they brought Ava to me to try to nurse. We didn't get to do that with Cade. Have you ever tried sitting up while you can't feel anything below the top of your ribcage? No? Well, it feels like you're going to slide right off the end of the bed because you can't do anything to brace yourself! Ava latched right on...much easier than Cade. We hung out there for a while, and then got to go up to my new home for the next 4 days.

The end.

Well, not really. :) Here we are, 5 weeks later. We're finally feeling slightly less sleep-deprived because Ava is sleeping for a little bit longer at a time. But only SLIGHTLY less sleep-deprived. Pretty sure that I could sleep for about 24 hours straight if given the chance. And if my boobs wouldn't have busted open by the end of that :)

She is absolutely precious. She looked JUST LIKE CADE for a while. She's now starting to be her own person, but there is definitely still a resemblance. We love her very much. And her big brother cannot stop giving her kisses. And telling us, "A-va cwying." :)