Is Whining Annoying?

Last night we got little sleep.  Nothing new there.

This morning Bella was up and fussing at 5:30am.  Not even sure if she slept much last night at all.  Jesse was debating how well he felt and if he should stay home to recoup another day before going back to work.

After listening to Bella for 10 minutes this morning, he decided to go into work.

I would have left too if I could have.

Bella fussed all morning, no matter what was happening.  What she really wanted was drinks, but even if you were giving her drinks, she would fuss.  Boy would it have been nice if the child could give herself a drink. 

When Oliver went down for a nap, I sat with her, 2 hours straight, giving her drinks, feeding her, etc.  30 minutes in she finally stopped fussing and just enjoyed getting drinks.  The second Oliver was up and I couldn’t give her my undivided attention, she was back to fussing again.

By 1:30 today I was sitting in my closet alone, screaming because I was so frustrated.  At 2pm I put her in her bed, I told her I wasn’t going to check on her for an hour, because I needed a break and the best thing for her would be to fall asleep.

Luckily she did, and some 2 hours later she is still sleeping.

Tomorrow needs to be better than today, or I will seriously be checking myself into an insane asylum…you can sleep there right?

And looks like I’m not alone…

Science Confirms It: Whining Is The Most Annoying Sound Ever
Read more: http://newsfeed.time.com/2011/06/22/science-confirms-it-whining-is-the-most-annoying-sound-ever/#ixzz2HWXtFKLZ

It’s a Flu Outbreak

Have you ever been at the dentist’s office getting your teeth cleaned and had an overwhelming urge to throw up?  Knowing that your son just went through some type of sickness a few days earlier.

Yep, we have officially all gotten the flu.  Oliver had it on Saturday night and then myself and Jesse started getting symptoms yesterday within hours of each other.  I didn’t actually puke at the dentist’s office, I luckily made it home before it happened, but it pretty much happened immediately when I got home.  Just when the worst was over for me, Bella started throwing up at 2am. 

And in typical fashion Bella seems to have it the worst, she threw up maybe 16 times.  I lost count.  But from 2am until 4pm today she absolutely couldn’t keep anything down and was miserable.

There’s nothing like still feeling sick yourself and having to deal with other people’s puke.

And I’m not even going to try and explain how extremely difficult it is to get a child who doesn’t have control of their body to puke into something without it getting over everything or choking on it themselves.

In the past three days we have given 8 baths and done 9 loads of laundry…enough said.

Why Not

This past weekend we incorporated a little bit of therapy for Bella into our home improvement project.  Bella was thrilled.  Okay maybe not thrilled, but she actually didn’t seem to mind it for a few minutes.  Then of course she started whining and Jesse needed my help, or was it the other way around?

The particular therapy (in case you are curious) is bearing weight on her knees.

We are working on finishing up the family room by tiling the hearth.  Here is what it looked like with the remaining original brick.

And here is what it looks like now.

Yep that’s right.  We aren’t done.  We have it blocked off from Oliver so it has plenty of time to cure before we grout. 

Looks like we will be finishing this one this week or maybe pushing it till the weekend, or the next.  And then you will get to see the real after pictures.

Thanks

Thanks to everyone who has taken the time to take the survey.  If you haven't please do, it will only take a couple of minutes and it's super easy.  Just CLICK HERE

This is all leading up to something I have in the works.  It's almost complete and ready to launch.

In the meantime everything should stay pretty normal over here.

Thanks,

Kristen

P.S.  In case you were wondering it was 4 times.  Oliver threw up 4 times last night.  But since 10:30 pm he hasn't done it again and luckily so far no one else seems to be sick.  Even when he was sick, he was still crazy and running around, seeming to be fine.

I just cleaned up puke

Oliver just puked all over his bed.  It might end up to be a bad night with the flu, or it might have been something bad he ate.  Or maybe it was too much static electricity…I hear it’s going around.

But in all seriousness, hoping it was just a onetime thing from an upset stomach.

Jesse is conveniently out running errands…lucky him.

Last night we actually slept through the night for the first time in….I have no idea it’s been so long. I have a feeling we won’t be having a repeat.

Brightly colored candle sticks

I have had these wooden candlesticks in the basement for 5+ years.  I have been meaning to paint them and add them to one of our living spaces.

The reason I want to paint them, I actually have 4 of them.  I figured all 4 didn’t need to be brown.

So using some leftover paint from our bookcase backings, the candle sticks got a coat of turquoise paint.

The whole project to paint them took about as long as it did for me to take pictures.  Someone was following me around and getting into every shot.  And if he wasn’t in the shot, he would conveniently place a toy in the way.

And because he likes to play with them too, they are living in the back corner of our family room for now.  Maybe at some point they can actually move out to be beside the fireplace.

And maybe someday soon we will actually finish the fireplace!

A New Year a New You

Isn’t that what everyone hopes for, that’s why we all set New Year’s Resolutions to be better.

I feel like I have a million different resolutions.  Some are obvious.

1.  Lose Weight (or more specifically lose the 6 pounds I have put on during the no holds bar holiday season-how does that even happen? and then lose 6 more pounds to get me to my happy weight)

2.  Get more organized.  In fact we spent the past couple of days organizing different areas of the house and we have a bunch more to do.

3.  Get our priorities in line.  If you remember Jesse and I asked ourselves some questions as to what we felt was the most important things to focus on in this post here, and then we didn’t do anything about it.  But cooking healthy was one of the top things that will get more attention this year.  Oh…Jesse thought I was going to say cleaning…that’s too bad!

Some are big picture items.

1.  Figure out a better balance for me.  I have touched on this subject and have been doing some thinking and planning.  I will let you know more as I get things lined up.  It might take a leap of faith, but I need to act more and think/complain less.

2.  This is the year of “the house”.  Meaning we are planning on sinking a bunch of money and time into the house to get some of the projects finished up.  And I do mean sink money into it.

Our foundation wall has been sinking in one corner of the house.  We had a company come out and they confirmed one corner has settled 2”.  We knew it was bad, I mean you could tell when walking in this area that you were leaning, and we had drywall cracks all over. 

Looks like we will have to fix it, something to the tune of $12,000 or so.  $$Cha-ching.  Our biggest and spendiest projects so far on this house have been replacing the sewer system and now fixing the foundation.  Exciting huh?

In other big ticket news, our oven has broken.  One would normally just replace the oven or try and get it fixed.  I hate the oven.  I love the double oven feature, but it’s a super skinny apartment size width oven.  I believe I have mentioned before that some of my baking sheets and pans don’t fit into it.  So if I’m going to replace it, I would buy a normal size oven.  That snowballs into a whole new kitchen.  Yeah for me…I really want a new kitchen.  Boo for Jesse….he really doesn’t want to work on this project. 

And we have to start working on Bella’s bedroom.  It is getting hard for family members to carry her upstairs.  It is starting to limit our choices in babysitters also.  Not that we have many sitters, but usually we try and have the kids to bed before we leave so they don’t have to worry about it.

And this leads me straight into my next topic.

Last night was New Year’s Eve.  We had plans to go over to a friends house, with the kids along, since we couldn’t find a sitter.  In the end we had to bail.  Bella was a fussy mess all day long and we didn’t want to risk the kids not being able to fall asleep at a house they have never been at, and us being up late and then having to be up early (5:30 am with a short wakeup at 2am to be exact). 

Jesse and I stayed home.  Both kids were in bed by 7:30 and we looked at each other and said….now what?  Should we watch a movie..no.  Play a game…no.  In the end we ended up sharing a bottle of wine (mostly me) and talking.

When discussing what our biggest obstacles to being happy were…Jesse’s thought was the house and mine was Bella.  These are our two biggest challenges we face.  Always having to work on the house and always having to take care of Bella.  Both of these things add a huge amount of stress to our relationship.  And apart from selling our house, there really isn’t too much we can do about either one.

So this is where we have decided on ramping up and working on more of the house to try and get some things tackled (and make Jesse’s to-do list seem more manageable).

And.

3.  Finding a sitter and actually using them to take care of Bella (and Oliver) so we can get a break.  You know if we had been in this very same situation say 5-10 years ago, when Bella turned 5 we would have had assistance to build her a bedroom and handicapped accessible bathroom and we would have had a respite care provider who would have come over to take care of Bella and give us a break on a weekly basis. 

Because we live when we do and all the states and federal government are in a deficit, we are on a waiting list that at best chance gets us help when she is 13 years old.  So 8 years down the road her bedroom and bathroom will definitely be done, but maybe we can get help with a sitter if we are lucky.  So we need to step it up and buck up the money so we can get some sanity and time to be together.

I think that about sums up my New Year’s Resolutions.  Here’s to a successful New Year for everyone!

And for a little reminiscing since I figured most years there was a picture of the two of us in Husker gear.