Wishful Wednesday

~ I wish my neck/shoulder muscles would relax.  Spence gave me a wonderful neck massage, but it's still bugging me.

~ I wish for the pregnant mommies I know safe and easy labors, and healthy pregnancies for the ones who aren't ready yet.

~ I wish for world peace.

~ I wish for good health to all members of my family.

~ A big congratulations to my sister-in-law and soon to be brother-in-law on their engagement!  I wish for them a long and happy life together!

~ I wish for my mom, and all of the moms reading this, a relaxing and happy Mothers Day!

The one where I'm embarrassingly dense

I seem to be on a Babydoll blogging kick these days, maybe that's because I've put her up for sale 12 times in the last couple weeks.  Just yesterday I told Spence that I was selling her to the highest bidder.  Babydoll was really driving me crazy, and I was so busy being mad at her and putting "sale" stickers on her forehead that I didn't realize the extremely, ridiculously, embarrassing to not have realized it sooner reason for her misbehavior.... SHE WANTED ATTENTION!  Excuse me while I slap myself on the forehead. 

I realized one evening that I hadn't been paying any more attention to her than I was to the other kids in my life.  I had been paying just as much attention to her as I had to my daycare kids, plenty of attention I must add, but it wasn't enough for her.  I am HER mom and she wanted a little extra attention.  After work I would jump into the kitchen and start making dinner while Spence would spend time with the kids.  By the time dinner with my little screamer (aka Little Man) was over and stuff was put away I was exhausted and didn't do much of anything until a couple hours after the kids went to bed.  This was time I should have spent paying more attention to my kids outside of daycare hours. 

After this realization I started taking time several times a day to cuddle with Babydoll.  A few minuets here and there to pull her into my lap and hold her in my arms.  Boy did she need that!  All three of our kids are big cuddlers and I had neglected my snuggle duties! 

Her behavior instantly changed!  She was calmer, I was calmer, my daycare kids were calmer, and we all got more cuddles in our day!  This morning I forgot to fit in some cuddle time with Babydoll and she reverted to that behavior that wound her up on a clearance rack.  I of course remembered my former revelation and her afternoon was a whole lot better!

So in a nutshell, Babydoll needs extra cuddles in her day, and that's a behavior modifier I can thoroughly get behind!

Night Terror

I'm still consider sharing our story, the one I told you I was considering sharing last friday, but for today I'm going to blog about Babydoll's less than wonderful nights lately.

Babydoll has not been behaving well, at all, at bed time. Supernanny has taught me how to get children to go to bed at night, but I haven't yet found the answer to a three-year-old who shares a room with her big sister and refuses to leave her sister alone and go to sleep every night. 

We put her to bed, she goes happily.  When we put Sweet Pea to bed an hour later Babydoll decides it's party time.  She talks to SP, talks to herself, sings, reads books, does puzzles, gets out of bed, "accidently" climbs up the bunkbed ladder into her sister's bed.  We struggle, SP cries because she wants to sleep, BD cries because she doesn't.  We've started putting happy faces on the calendar for the nights when she stays in bed and stays relatively quiet so that she and her sister can get enough sleep.  She knows when she gets 7 happy faces (not necesarily in a row) she'll get to do something fun with Nana. So far in the last week she's had 2 happy faces, which means 5 nights in the last week I wanted to pull my hair out. 

BD is tired at bedtime, and even if she's not, it's bedtime and she's going to bed.  Tonight we tried something else.  I put Sweet Pea to bed in our bed to wait for BD to fall asleep.  Without her little party buddy in there Babydoll did fall asleep pretty quickly, and then I moved SP back to her bed.  It is now 9:30 and quiet in the girls' room.   It worked for tonight, we'll see about tomorrow, but it can't be a perminent solution because I don't want SP to have to wake up everynight in order to go to bed.  If this continues to work, it'll just be long enough for BD to get used to falling asleep right away (since she will not be expecting her sister to be coming in an hour later, and staying up for her).  Hopefully once she learns how to fall asleep right away and not stay up for SP, we'll be able to go back to putting SP to bed in her bed without BD waking up to start the party.  Under no circumstances will either child be sleeping with us, just in our bed on a temporary basis, and just for an hour or less.

I just remembered that I was going to blog about Babydoll's rough patch (yes she is our "free spirit") and what I did and how it helped.  Perhaps tomorrow, because this post is getting long, and I need some water, and a glass of wine, and a massage, and a vacation, and a magic wand...

I'm Considering....

I'm considering blogging about something very personal, extremely painful, and something too common to be fair.  I've been inspired by another blog to consider sharing our story of grief and joy, in the hopes that maybe it will help others going through it, and shedding light on a very dark time in millions of couple's lives.  I kept a journal during this time so I could look back and reflect, and as hard as it is to read through it, it also ends in such joy that I think it would be worth sharing, at least a majority of it.

OOPS!! Wishful Wednesday!

OOPS! I forgot ALL about Wishful Wednesday!  Better late than never right?

~ I wish my parents a very happy anniversary!  Today they've been married for 32 years!

~ I hope that my husband and I will be able to celebrate that anniversary some day, I wish that God will help us get there even more in love with eachother each year!

~ I wish chlorine didn't hurt the eyes, we went to the pool today and Little Man kept splashing water in my face :o)

A bit late, but Your Turn!!

Just Ten Minutes

Several hours of the week there are 8 people living in this house, three meals a day, 2 snacks per day, very little time between meals to clean up after them makes for a lot of dishes.  Family of 5, one has a dirty job, one gets food and/or booger smears on her clothes, 3 young children who can't keep their clothes at all clean makes for a lot of laundrey.  6 kids in the house playing and have a grand ol' time makes for a wide scattering of toys.  1 busy mom/daycare provider who would never be able to spend quality time with any of the children in her life if she kept up with all the clutter/laundrey/dishes/messes at all times.  It all makes for a pretty big cleaning challenge, one that I have been able to stay on top of before but it had me staying up until 2:00 AM every night, which was effecting my health.

I've read a few different books about getting organized and housekeeping and between those books, sharing methods with friends, and various blogs, I've gotten a few ideas here and there that I can apply.  One of them was to spend only 10 minutes cleaning each room at the begining or end of the day.  You set a timer or keep a close eye on the clock, and when the 10 minutes is up you stop and move on to the next room.  So last night my goal was the bathroom, dining room, kitchen, and living room (these are the rooms that get the most traffic during the day).  I started in the bathroom and spent exactly 10 minutes in there, a few minutes after that I was ready to start the dining room, then the kitchen, and last the living room.  I was surprised at how much of a difference just 10 minutes in each room made!  Not only did it make a big difference but it didn't feel like it took a lot of time.  It also wasn't nearly as overwhelming at the end of the day as looking at a messy house and feeling like it would never get picked up.

You should give it a try sometime and see how much you can actually get done around the house when you work hard for just 10 minutes in each room!  I'm excited to give it another try tonight, just as soon as I finish this episode of House!

The one where I show you our toilet paper

January of 2009 I found myself unemployed.  People all over were losing their jobs, and this effected me... the daycare provider, since if there was no job to go to there was no need for childcare.  I was getting calls from parents looking for daycare, but I was due to have a baby less than 3 months later, no one wanted to enroll until after my maternity leave. 

Suddenly down an income and expecting our third child, it was time to cut costs.  We cut down on a lot of things like going out to eat, entertainment, cable, auto insurance (yay Progressive!), almost everything we could, including finding ways to stretch a dollar at the grocery store.

My husband is a sewer and drain cleaner and has insisted on 1-ply toilet paper since we moved in together, so I found myself the perfect 1-ply - Cottonelle.  I loved that toilet paper because it wasn't like the stuff you find in public bathrooms and schools, but it made my husband happy.  The only problem with that stuff is the fact that we have a lot of people going to the bathroom everyday at our house, and we were burning through toilet paper like nobody's business!  In the spirit of cutting back I bought a big pack of Scott toilet paper.

I was adamant about not using this stuff before.  It was thin and flimsy and it takes more sheets to...um...do what it does than other toilet paper.  I can't believe I'm talking about this!!  But we were cutting back and I was going to sacrifice.  What I found out was this:  A roll of Scott toilet paper lasts forever compared to my precious Cottonelle!!!  I used to buy toilet paper all the time, but no weekly pack of toilet paper anymore!   And this giant pack I bought recently (that I haven't had to open yet) will last us about 14 years or so!   Well, maybe a little less, but, you get the idea!

I generally buy store brand whenever I possibly can, and I've found that several of the Target brand items I buy - I actually prefer over the name brand!   One example: I am a big fan of the Market Pantry milk at Target!

Also while trying to pinch pennies I gave the plain looking loaves of bread at the bottom of the shelves a chance.

I wasn't expecting to like this bread, it was only about 74 cents per loaf, but I was pleasantly surprised! I actually like this bread just as much as the bigger brands of wheat bread and it's dirt cheap which is good since we go through about 4 loaves per week!

I've also recently switched Little Man from Luvs diapers to Target's Up and Up diapers, and I like them better for him!  I think they fit him better than the Luvs did.  I'm not a fan of Huggies at all, but I do like Pampers diapers, but when you look at the price difference per diaper Pampers are just ridiculously expensive for something they're going to wear for just a couple hours or less before it gets changed.  Little Man also drank Up and Up formula back when he was using bottles.  I want to say the Up and Up formula was about $10 cheaper per can than the name brand can... with identical nutrition info!!

I also tried to be a coupon user, but haven't gotten myself disciplined enough to find them, print them, remember to use them, etc.  A huge money saver was planning all our meals for the week and making one trip to the store rather than 3 or 4!

I hope you enjoyed my ramblings about toilet paper, milk, bread, and baby stuff!  And just for the sake of keeping with the toilet paper topic... I changed 7 poopy diapers today between the 2 babies!  SEVEN!

Goodnight.