In a nutshell..

Just a few random things from this week:



1) I came home from the laundromat yesterday with someone else's boxers in my laundry. Gross. Ben picked them up with his foot and threw them in the trash. ha!



2) Zakkai threw a total fit in the store over buying "Berry Kix" because he wanted "Lucky Charms" instead; a cereal that I will never buy them. He swore he did NOT like Berry Kix and would NEVER eat them. He ate a handful this afternoon quite happily:)



3) I was preparing to give Eliana a bath last night and Samuel came in and...how shall we say, "passed some gas." Then had the gall to say, "Ew! Something smells bad!" I said, "It's the toilet because you boys pee everywhere." (I have a daily cleaning battle with the toilet:( ) and he said, "No, it smells like a stinker!" I said, "It must be you then!" He swore it was not and I said it was and then he retorted, "Do you have my bottom?" What a stinker! Literally....



4) Zakkai was sad tonight that he can't play the "Blues" on the guitar like daddy but perked up immediately when I told him that he could learn when he got bigger. That guitar was one of the best gifts we ever gave him! Now what to get him for his bday that's in 9 days...yikes!



5) For his birthday meals, Zakkai has requested and I quote: "Breakfast~yummy eggs, sausage, apples, pears and strawberries. Dinner~Tortellini, sugar snap peas and crepes. Cake~Chocolate with chocolate and vanilla icing and for School Treat~Mini strawberry cupcakes."
Wow! I'd better get busy cooking!



6) We watched Napoleon Dynamite tonight. Never fails to make me laugh!



7) Eliana is adorable.



8) Ben and I have a date planned (hopefully) for Monday and it will be our 3rd or 4th date in a whole year. That's really sad. Babysitting anyone?



9) Zakkai has been playing with our broken cd/tape player (from the 90s:) the past couple of days. (It got broken in the move) He cracks me up! He came out with it and set it up on the floor. Pretending to plug it in by tucking the plug under a chair cushion, pressed a tape player button and started pretending to make music. "Buh, buh, buh, buh, buhbuhbuh, buh, buh." Then changed the volume. "BUH, BUHBUHBUH, BUH, BUH"....turned the volume way down "buh, buh, buh" I'll have to take a video of it. He changes the stations and makes different music for each station:) This kid has imagination!!



10) I really need to go to sleep now:) Isn't that the story of my life?!

The Too Tired to Think of a Title Post

First of all, I just want to say in response to yesterday's post...thank you so much to the people I heard from who commiserated with me on the agonies of motherhood:) I guess it really frustrated me that mothers attack each other so easily over the dumbest issues when we should be encouraging and loving each other!

Does it really matter whether you co-sleep or not, nurse or bottle feed, never let the baby cry or let the baby cry a little, give birth naturally or with pain meds, and on and on? It doesn't make you a better mother (or person) because you make different decisions that you feel are "right" for you.

Anyways. Just wanted to say thanks. It's nice to have friends when you're feeling discouraged!

`````````````````````````````

Just a few pics before I head off to bed (while I can:) Samuel begged me to take a picture of him with his little sis the other day. Can't get enough of her!

he looks so chubby in this pic, which is funny because he's most definitely NOT! She is:)

Warning, next picture is sad!


I know, isn't this really sad? Poor little guy has had the WORST cold the past 2 weeks and he poor face is just raw. This was yesterday and it's even worse today:( I am now putting neosporin on it because it it has been bleeding today. If you know of anything else that will help, please let me know!

This is the first picture that Zakkai has ever taken with a real camera:) He begged me to let him take one. Hence, a blurry picture of a tired mama! He also took a picture of the couch but I was pretty sure that you didn't really want to see that...

I am off to sleep off a very busy day!

For my own guilt

I suffer from a guilt-complex.

Yep, and it got much worse when I became a mother! Am I going to ruin him/her? Was I too harsh? Am I too soft? Am I spoiling him/her? I'm such a bad mother. She's a better mother. I'm not making the right decisions. And on and on.

Definitely something I need to work on:) But I have a feeling I am not alone in this! You may wonder why I am writing this and to be honest it's completely spurred by some articles/comments I read on the internet when researching baby+self-soothing and by my inadequate feelings as a mother. A guilty feeling one.

When you become a parent, you are told by many sources that your baby needs to learn to self-soothe eventually; that it is healthy for them and beneficial in the long run. I mean, you really don't want to have to follow your kid to college with their favorite blankie and have to rock them to sleep, do you?

I have always tried to teach my kiddos to self-soothe to help with their sleep~usually they all have found their fingers and were INCREDIBLY happy once they did!

See exhibits A and B.

A.

B.

Well, apparently, I am the only horrible mother in the world who believes that your child should learn to self-soothe at some point. I saw comments from other mothers such as, "I can't believe anyone would be cruel enough to let their child cry for even 5 minutes!" or "It isn't natural for a mother to let her baby cry." or "Your baby is going to grow up and have disattachment disorder (Or something like that) and have trouble relating to people and feel lonely and unloved."

Great. My worst fears just came true and all my children will end up in counseling later in life! Score three, Heidi!

I guess, for the sake of my own guilty feelings and incredibly strong desire to be a good mama, I must clarify my sleep solutions with my sweet Little Miss. I have probably mentioned several times her inability to be consistent with sleep and it has driven me insane at times because I get so frustrated that I don't know how to help her! She is SO different from the boys and what worked with them doesn't work with her.

Let me back up. With Samuel, it took ONE night of letting him cry 5 minutes to get him to start falling asleep on his own. Seriously. But he's always been like that. You teach him something once, he learns it! It killed me to hear him cry but it helped him because he wanted to sleep so bad.

Zakkai, was just a little harder and I couldn't bear to let him cry more than 2 minutes at a time. Cry, go in and soothe him, cry, go in and soothe til he gave up. He found his cute little finger at 8 weeks old and started his great sleeping within week.

Now comes my tough cookie, Miss E. We started our "sleep-training" at about 2 months and by that I mean a good consistent bedtime routine and maybe letting her fuss a couple of minutes if she refused to be soothed. She, opposite to the big bros, got super upset by crying only 2 (of the longest minutes of my life) and effectively broke my (and Ben's) heart into a million pieces. She would only sleep well in her carseat and not on Saturdays (?) and we backed off for one month, helping her get to sleep with repeated reinserts of the dang pacifier til she gave up.

It really helped to give up for a bit with having her fuss for a minute or two as I was feeling so stressed about her sadness. And we had some peace.

For a couple of weeks.

And then we got to the past 3 weeks. Where I have been running in and out of her room ALLLLLL day and evening every 5-7 minutes to put the pacifier back in because she would wake up the second it fell out. Talk about stressful when you cannot get anything done because you are doing that for up to 2 1/2 hours in the evenings! And that makes for one frazzled mama and one overtired baby!

She did find her fingers a few weeks ago which led to her sleeping through the night because she could put herself back to sleep. (Til she quit this week. grr)

However. And the 'however' is the point of the whole post! However, she absolutely could not put herself to sleep without help, to the point where she would be so tired she would cry no matter what you did! Cry when you held her, rocked her, put her down, gave her the paci, took the paci away, and on and on.

That's when I got to the point of letting her cry for a little bit because sometimes she likes to cry. Really. I barely have made it to 5 minutes of her crying up to this point before going in to "help" her. I cannot stand to hear my babies cry and especially cry hard.

It is in my strong motherly instinct to comfort them and fix whatever the problem is! But we got pretty desperate last week with the not-sleeping and back to nighttime wake-ups, hence the 10 minute rule. Nothing else was working.

Harsh? Maybe. Necessary? Yes. Desperate? You betcha! Maybe I will be labeled a bad, uncaring mother who is leading her child into abandonment issues and later-in-life counseling but honestly, I see it that I am helping my little girl sleep better so she can be better rested and happier, which is good all the way around. Not to mention a more peaceful mommy who can better care for her children.

And let me tell you, this little girl gets more love, more kisses and hugs, gets cooed at and talked to, touched and tickled and soothed and plain old adored more than any baby I know! (slight bias may be present.)

So am I doing this wrong? I don't know. I don't know what else to do with a baby who wants to sleep/doesn't want to sleep/wants to cry/wants to fight/is overtired and needs a little push to sleep on her own.

So call me human. Call me fallible. Call me tough. Call me whatever you want.

Or call me what I am: In love with the 3 little people entrusted to my (our) care. All I know is that I try my hardest, by the Grace of God, to love these children to the best of my ability and trust that God will cover me in my mistakes.

Because I make a lot of them.

Ole' Boots

It's so great...

to have a daddy with big feet and

big boots and to have

little feet that try to fit

inside the daddy boots.

Whoever said kids need toys?

``````````````````````````````````````````

Operation "Shovel" is going great!! Today, Z, who is still sick, opted to stay inside while Samuel came out to play. It was freezing out today but the sun was shining so it made the snow a little softer. I was working on the same car I was trying to dig out yesterday when this man pulled over in his H2 Hummer and asked if he could help!

He took the shovel (I admit, I was a little worried that he was going to hit me over the head with the shovel and take me away or something but turns out he was just a really nice guy. I must read too many books...) and just pitched in shoveling while I got my scraper and worked on the windows! It was fun:)

And the best part? While Samuel was helping scrape the windows off, the owner of the car (whom I have never met) came out of his building and stopped dead in his tracks and said, "You're....cleaning off...my car?" He looked so surprised and I was afraid for a instant that he would be upset. I promised him that we were being really careful but he was completely speechless! He said, "I just don't know what to say! I mean...thank you!" His name was Andy and we've lived right next door to each other for who knows how long and we just met.

It felt really great to do something kind for someone I don't know! Then we went in and Ben caught on to the enthusiasm and went out to do some shoveling himself:) He cleared two beautiful spots which were taken up immediately.

We feel proud tonight:) Hopefully it won't be too cold to shovel tomorrow!

`````````````````````````````````

I really needed a happy afternoon after a frustrating morning. I managed to find a parking spot in the chaos of school drop-off, only to get out with the boys in such a hurry that....you guessed it. I locked my keys in the van.

I was upset b/c I had left E at home with Ben because she was still asleep but I knew she'd wake up any minute ready to eat and we don't have a spare car key (but we'd better get one!). The school engineers (the new fancy name for janitors) tried to help me with a hangar but it was not working so we ended up calling the police. They were able to unlock it with a nifty Slim Jim tool and I sped off to find a very hungry and overtired little girl at home. She had a grumpy morning but was back on track with a super nap this afternoon.

And I got to spend good time with my boys while she was sleeping so that helped melt away any frustrations;) I love my boys!

Snow mess, sick mess and otherwise..

I have a confession to make. My hand was forced so really I had no choice!

Today....I became a parking spot hoarder.

You can't imagine how guilty I feel! For those of you non-Chicagoans, you are probably wondering what in the world I am talking about! Unless, of course, you have read the newspaper where there was a recent article about this supposed "tradition."

We didn't have this problem down south so I was very surprised as I was making my first venture out into the white wilderness of Friday after the blizzard, to see what looked like trash lining the sides of the roads: broken chairs, milk crates, buckets with random pieces of wood stuck inside...even kids bicycles and trash bags!

It took reading a friend's FB status to realize that these people, these selfish people were hoarding their parking spots! And seriously, it's not like they did a great job digging out their cars or making these great spaces. They literally shoveled a hole just big enough to get their car out and then staked their claim.

And what's really crazy? It's illegal to do it but there is actually "ettiquette" about this sort of thing like "don't touch the chair/trash or get your tires slashed" (it actually happened) or leave a note if you "must" take their spot, explaining the reasons why and leave as soon as possible.

It made me really mad most of the weekend because a)they didn't pay for those spots! and b) what are you supposed to do if you can't find a spot anywhere else?

But today, as I drove the boys to and from school, I noticed so many new "saved" parking spots that had cropped up over the past day or two that there were almost NO available spots in my neighborhood.

It was then that I made the fateful decision to join the ranks of the...well, the parking hoarders.

I feel much shame. But to make myself feel better, we have shoveled out two very nice spots in the past week, only to have them taken and I was trekking a far distance through snowy muck with all 3 kiddos several times a day and it makes it SO much easier to know that I have a spot available for me.

And also, I am on a mission to shovel the whole street, little by little this week to bring back all our spots so the chairs, orange cones, broken furniture and plywood can all go back to...the trash can.

I'll let you know how it goes.

`````````````````````````````

Oh, and I will be doing my shoveling (with Ben's help:) with my "new" used shovel graciously sold to me by Home Depot for $5. Apparently, we're a little slow on the uptake and most people got their shovels last week:) That particular H.D. sold almost 600 shovels on Friday alone! They went and found one of their personal shovels to sell to me. Thanks, H.D.! I'll make you proud...

This pretty girl's been changing so much! She has always had issues with sleeping and eating and we have fixed some of those lately (to her relief and mine!) She had what's called a foremilk/hindmilk imbalance (too much low-calorie milk, not enough fatty milk from eating too few minutes) which caused excessive gas, fussiness, green poop (cool, huh?...not)etc.

I am happy to report that we have corrected this problem and noticed an almost immediate increase in her happy self, lots of yellow poop, less gas and she's eating better than she ever has! So, she's getting nice and fat which makes her awfully kissable;)

Also, she is ONE tough cookie with sleeping, hence her llloooonnnngg journey to sleeping through the night (okay, maybe a slight exaggeration) and pitiful naps. I had to get tough with her last week and enforce a 10 minute crying rule when laying her down.

It has worked wonders!! She didn't like it at first (and neither did I...) but she gets that it's sleeptime now and is taking better naps than ever, with usually minimal fussing (5 min or less) and is happier and better rested! She used to only take her long nap of the day in her carseat but has taken several 2-3 hour naps in her cradle! Hooray!

She also:

is really reaching for toys now! It started very timidly and accidentally but in the past 2-3 days, she's gone from one handed to...

two-handed!! I even caught her trying to tug that blue birdie into her mouth:) I was talking to the boys at lunch yesterday and heard my plate moving towards the edge of the table and looked down to see Little Miss grabbing my plate and pulling it towards her! We've gotta be careful now!

The boys have thoroughly enjoyed watching the shoveling and snow clean-up jobs this past week. Here, they were watching Daddy shovel out our car last Thursday:)

Today they came out with me to "help" me shovel. Really they just dug holes in the mounds of snow and they did not want to go back inside! I promised we'd go out again tomorrow:) Little did I know that all my our hard work would be erased by yet MORE snow minutes after we went inside, which makes for an additional 5+ inches on top of the 20+ from last week.

Fun times.

Zakkai is still a snotty, juicy, sick mess:( It's almost like he got another cold on top of his cold as he regressed yesterday with more sneezing, runny nose, etc. His poor nose is totally raw and sore looking. Oh, and did I forget to mention pink eye? Fun. He has a bad cough still and I am hoping he will be on the mend soon as he was a B.E.A.R. today. Boy, can that kid throw a rockin' tantrum!

Samuel, thankfully, just has the annoying lingering congestion and cough that come with a good old-fashioned cold.

And the boys generously shared their colds with daddy:( He was thrilled, especially since he had jury duty today and who doesn't love jury duty while sick? Or ever? (and might I add, that I might possibly know where Z get's his "bear-ness" when sick from?)

Thankfully, he got out of being chosen for duty because he is presenting 2 papers at a conference this weekend and had to cancel class last week (blizzard) and today (jury duty). The judge wasn't very happy with him but hey, Ben got paid a whole (are you ready?) $17.50 for his time. Woohoo, we're rich!

I'm off to plot ways on how to spend it....

Just kidding;)