Dining Room Week #2

It’s two weeks in and we have finished painting and installing the chair rail.  Jesse also got all the electrical outlets replaced (old ones were so bad you couldn’t even plug anything in without it easily falling out).  We also replaced the light switch with a new dimmer switch.

This week the dining room will be on hold as we have an extremely busy week.

This week includes Valentine’s day…which when your kids are in school and especially when you are a room mother means a lot of extra work during this week.

This week is also parent teacher conferences and kindergarten informational meetings, so that eats into two nights.

This week is also the beginning of Lent…Easter is super early this week.  So in our usual Lenten style we will be giving up a bunch of things.

This week I also need to get handmade gifts finished to give to certain someones….see upcoming post next week.  Can’t spoil the surprise yet.

And then of course we have a normal week of both working.

I’ll admit I’m a little stressed looking at my to-do list.

Diaper Dance

This morning.

Oliver pooped.  I changed him.  He doesn’t like to be changed, so it takes a little bit of patience to make sure he is occupied with something and that you are quick and efficient.

I was taking them to the sitters today so I can work.  I had gotten them both dressed and was going to put Oliver’s shoes on, when I noticed a smell.

Oliver had pooped again.

This time he kept running away from me and did not want me to change his pants.  I chased him down and picked him up.  He then proceeds to bite me on the shoulder as he is screaming.  I tell him to not bite me, and to stop screaming, he needs his pants changed because he is stinky.

I hand him a toy to play with and lay him down.  He proceeds to keep screaming and kicking and then chucks the toy at me.

At this point I am done.  I tell him that if he wants to run around in a poopy diaper all day long and stink up the house…fine by me.  If he wants to have that in his pants and make his bottom red, raw, and bloody…fine by me.

Of course I really couldn’t send him off to the sitters like that.  So I held him down and told him he was going to get his pants changed.  And finally we got it done.

I was so glad to drop them off at the sitters and get some time away from poopy diapers and tantrum throwing “I want fruit snacks” and fussing..try and guess what I want children.

A Valentine’s Day Attempt

I was attempting to recreate a photo shoot for Oliver.  The idea of course came from pinterest.  I am not a photographer.  I did get a better camera which takes better pictures than previous.  But I have a long way to go before I would say I am even taking decent pictures.  The main problem being that most of the photos I try to take are inside, and we just don’t have the proper lighting to pull off good pictures.

So I tried my best.  I used a red blanket to give a theme appropriate background, and I applied some lipstick kisses to Oliver.  And here is where the problem started.  If Oliver sees me putting on “chapstick”, he wants some too.  So I had to hand over some chapstick for him.

I tried to get him to give his puppy kisses, but he wanted nothing to do with it, since I had just taken the chapstick away from him.

He was more interested in running away from me.

I tried to get him to hold up a sign for me, but again he wanted to run away.

Until the chapstick came back out.  Then he would sit still.

So I didn’t quite get the shot I was looking for.  I guess you will have to wait till Valentines to see what I came up with.

Princess and the Pea

Jesse and I were just commenting on how we were starting to feel better overall.  We weren’t dragging as much as we had been.

No mystery there, we have been actually getting more sleep.  It does mean that our bedtime has been 8 or 9 pm.  And that includes the weekends.  In other words, we don’t have much of a life.

And then last night hit.  Bella woke up sometime around 1:30am.  After some investigation by Jesse, it seems she had a tiny turd in her diaper.  We are talking a pea here…your welcome for the visual.

Anyways at 2:30 am, Jesse is waking me up and saying it’s my turn to go into Bella’s room since she hasn’t gone back to sleep yet.  He thought maybe she had actually finished her business and got a bigger poop out.

I went into her room, and she just seemed wide awake to me.  I gave her some drinks and then when I noticed she was shoving her hand into her mouth, I tried some orajel.

At 2:45am she is still up and being loud.  Jesse asks if I even went into her room.  I did.  Then he asks if I checked her pants.  I reply no, it didn’t smell and I didn’t feel anything, she just seems wide awake to me.  So he then says I need to go back in there and check.  I think I yell something about “fine I will go check her butt crack for you” and I stomp out of the room. 

I check her pants…nothing.  I tell her to go to sleep and I get back into bed.

Now it’s 4am.  Bella is still up and being loud.  I think both Jesse and I have dozed off and on this whole time, but not really getting any good sleep.  Jesse decides to get up for work, since he isn’t sleeping and proceeds to put Bella in bed with me.  And of course she falls asleep in our bed.  I don’t remember the exact time, but I’m guessing it was sometime around 4:45am.

So to wrap up this really long story (which isn’t out of the ordinary for us).  We had a bad nights sleep again last night and all because Bella had a poop the size of a pea at 1 in the morning.  I think this is why we feel the world is against us!

Bella’s Fieldtrip

Bella had a field trip yesterday for school.  They were heading to the Children's museum.

Bella started getting really fussy on Sunday.  No big surprise since she had an outing the next day.  I would say Bella only gets to participate in about half of her planned events.  She usually gets sick and can’t go.  In the morning Bella woke up bawling at 5:30am.  She proceeded to wake up the whole house.  She kept the crying up the whole morning.  We tried orajel, we tried tylenol, we tried feeding her and giving her drinks.  She finally settled down around 7am.  And since I had already paid for the field trip…I sent her little behind to school…and silently wished her teacher’s luck.

She came home and it was reported that she was good.  Apparently there weren’t any crying spells, although I’m not sure how well she held her head up and actually looked at the things around her.

She must have managed to hold her head up so she could get her face painted.  I’ll have to admit she looked pretty cute riding in the car on the way home.

Dining Room Progress

I try to make small goals on what I think we can get accomplished for the weekend.
So it’s kind of disappointing when we can’t even finish a small goal.
This weekend was painting the dining room.  After the weekend we got to this point….

Which if you can’t tell, is showing you we only got the top color finished.  Check me out in the shadow!!  Too lazy to take another picture.
In order to start painting we did have to do some major rearranging and emptying of the large china hutch, which is now residing in the living room.

Now the rec room is a shared dining room/play room.

What will we do once this space becomes Bella's bedroom.  A catch all, junk room no more.

Maybe we can get the bottom portion of the dining room painted during the week.  But that might be asking a little too much.  More realistically, maybe we can have it finished by next Monday.

A touching story

I saw this linked on Facebook....not a big fan of Facebook but I do have an account for whatever reason.
I found myself tearing up during the awards ceremony... And then again when I watched a longer video later. See if you can make it.
I thought of Oliver and Bella the whole time. The past couple years I've wanted to run with Bella in the trolley run here in kc but the weather hasn't cooperated... Hopefully it will be better this year and she can go along. I often wonder what Oliver thinks of his sister and why she doesn't interact with him. Once he understands I'm sure he will surprise us all. I have always been nervous about when Oliver starts competing in sports, what we will do with Bella and how much time will be dedicated to Oliver and his activities... Maybe he will want his sister there with him as well.
Hope you enjoy the videos.
Jesse