I left the house around 10:20 this morning and headed to my moms. She was already outside with her car running when I arrived. We jumped into her car and headed to the city for a day together. The plan was to do some shopping for the Christmas season and just pick up a few things that we needed that were fun rather than work. It was the perfect day, really.

Honestly, the date idea was sparked when I learned of the endless shrimp special at Red Lobster. We booked a date so we could take advantage of it. But of course, the shrimp did in fact come to an end just two days ago. We bucked up and changed course to Tony Romas, instead having riblings and a delicious shrimp appetizer for lunch. We made our game plan from there, while we ate way more than two people needs to eat for lunch. It was amazing.

I won’t list off all of the places we hit today, or all of the things we bought, but I will tell you it was incredibly successful! We didn’t buy every gift for every person on our lists or anything like that, but we had SO much fun, didn’t spend a ton of money, and we didn’t rush. We parked far and took our time and enjoyed our relaxed time together.

We were both pretty finished after supper, and headed back to her place for a bit of a rest and some last minute visiting before I made my way back home. We were both completely pooped from the day, and I called Brady and we chatted pretty much the whole way home. I LOVE those phone dates, because not only does it help me stay awake, but I haven’t seen too much of Brady today at all, and this was a really nice way to hear about his day and tell him about mine. I was thrilled to learn that Brady and the kids had a lovely, pretty much breakdown-free day together! The kids had played well, ate well, complained little, and Brady had even done all of the laundry, which I was NOT expecting! Needless to say, it felt nice to arrive home to such a welcoming place <3

Speaking of that welcoming place, a bubble bath is calling my name, and I’ve been outside in the chilly weather a lot today! I’ve earned my soak, and a little bit of Halloween candy.

Best. Day. Ever. Thanks, mama.

But I can’t help it! I love the Christmas season! Part of me is nervous that I’m going to struggle with Christmas a bit when I come to terms with still living here when I was so confident that last Christmas would in fact be our last Christmas in this house. However, I’m currently super gung ho about Christmas, regardless of where we’re living, so I’m rolling with it! If my emotions want to be positive, I’m going to let them!

For some reason, I’m feeling like I’d really like to send out family picture cards this year. We made them once, but I never ended up sending them out. People who I saw got them, but I didn’t mail any. Total fail, I know. Either way, I’m kind of out of the loop. People still send pictures out, right? I’ve been trying to build a picture on vistaprint like usual, but I can’t find anything that looks quite like I want. Also, I don’t have a good family picture of us! I mean, I have one from this summer, but I had to crop it kind of funny because somehow I had an unreasonable amount of cleavage in it. So with that, it doesn’t fit very nicely on cards. Ugh. I think I should get a picture of us, then address all of the envelopes so I’ll for sure send them out, and THEN try to design and order them! Is anyone else as bad at this as I am?

Other than that, I’m already compiling ideas for what to bake for the season, what gifts I’d like to give to who, and where we’ll be when. I’m so excited to plan for the Christmas season! I feel like I need to get a move on this Christmas picture thing, though, or I’m just not going to do it. Please! If anyone has good tips, design skills, etc., pass them on! I have never successfully done this part of Christmas!

Well, mostly normal. Part of today was back to our old traditional Sunday, and part of it was not.

Traditional Sunday was always church, visiting until we were basically the last people at church, and to my parents for the rest of the day. We haven’t had a Sunday with my parents after church in what seems like forever, and we were SO looking forward to today!

Unfortunately, the kids were in rough shape. Dekker was being incredibly disobedient, and was getting much too loud and upset in the service, so Brady had to haul him out. Meanwhile, Rowan was getting louder and louder, as babies tend to do when they’re tired. Its not uncommon. But the little back room specifically set up for napping babies was already occupied, and while there is room to nap more than one baby, we knew adding Ro at that volume would wake the little sleeping love already there. So while Laela was very well behaved and staying relatively quiet and entertaining herself, Rowan was twitchy and exhausted, and Dekker was SO over it. Brady had to stay, because he had committed to drum, but I loaded the kids up in the van and we left. We just sat for a while in silence, because Dekker was actually in a decent amount of trouble because of how he had handled himself that morning. Dekker and Laela say perfectly still and quiet, and Rowan was asleep within a minute of being buckled in, no word of a lie. Finally, I had to do something other than just sit and be pissed, so the kids and I drove to the edge of the city to get some Tims for Brady and I. I drove back pretty much right away, and we just lurked in silence outside the church. We had probably been back for a solid 15-20 minutes when I heard Dekker from the backseat break the silence. “I’ve changed my bad attitude,” he said. I admit, I kind of snapped back at him that I hoped he had, and he nodded profusely, and said “Yup, yup I really did. I’ll be happy now. I’m all done being grouchy.” It amazes me how he can really turn it around after that. He’s not all talk. He tells me he’s changed his attitude when it is in fact changed. In this case, I was the childish one. After he’d told me he was happy again, I recapped the entire situation, and kind of explained to him how he had really wrecked part of the morning. I wanted to make sure he wasn’t just “happy” because he was bored, or because he had forgotten. So I recounted all of the events where he had disobeyed or broken rules, and he teared up while he listened and nodded and said “I remember that” and things along those lines. He really took it. In those moments, I know things are sinking in, and I’m SO proud of him! SO PROUD. It was actually a decent end to a really difficult morning.

We had a really lovely lunch of pancakes and bacon with my parents, and then we put the boys to work. My parents’ basement fridge is pooched, so the job was to haul the old fridge away and go buy a new one on sale at Costco and bring it in. They ran the errand in great time, but upon unwrapping it, found it had dents and scratches, and even one little crack in it. So back to Costco they went and exchanged it for a fresh one. While they were gone, mom and I talked about Christmas and upcoming excitements while the kids played tirelessly for hours, all afternoon! It was wonderful, and surprisingly meltdown-free!

Once the boys were back, the fridge was downstairs, and the doors were back on (big fridge + small doorway) we had a yummy supper of pizza and salad, with brownies for dessert. SO yummy. When the kids were done, they were excused, and the rest of us sat at the table and visited until it was pretty much time to go. But it felt like the perfect Sunday. No card games this time, but lots of great visiting, happy kids, and good food. Hopefully there are many more Sundays like this coming up in the future. Without the morning meltdowns would be ideal, but we’ll take what we can get 😉

I had no idea how unsettled Rowan was until he was settled. You know how, usually, when babies cry, you can carry them against your tummy and warm up their tummies, and they settle and sleep, all wrapped around your body? Rowan never did that. He was always wiggly. Which was fine, because he was a wiggly baby, and some babies are just wiggly! Right? But obviously, it has turned into something more, and while Rowan is still solidly active and loves to jump and roll and play, he is now a content baby, for the first time ever.

This evening, as I fed him his bottle, he lay perfectly still and drank it, playing with his hands the whole time. He had one point in the middle where he twitched like crazy under it, and spat it out really quickly. I teased him a bit and managed to get the bottle back in his mouth without any tears or much of a fight. And he continued drinking, easily finishing his bottle.

When I took the bottle out of his mouth, he was staring up at me, milk down his chin, with a big dopey grin across his face. From my perception, he was both proud of himself, and had a nice full tummy. It is amazing for me to see those reactions for him. Not long ago at all, his feedings ended with everyone sweating, himself all teary and soaked in milk, and everyone exhausted. This is SO much better. Its funny how successful feedings bring me to tears, but they really do. Its one of those things that I didn’t realize how difficult it really was until there was improvement, you know? It was our norm. Like how Dekker would vomit every time you’d pick him up. No word of a lie. It didn’t matter if he had just eaten, or not, or just burped, or not. It was just always. He barfed all the way down my back and into my pants multiple times a day, every day, for about eight months. And it was BRUTAL. But it was truly amazing when he started getting stronger and it became less. This is one of those things. As things improve, I am just extra grateful for them.

Rowan still has those panicky twitches, and he still sometimes struggles VERY hard during a feeding, so I think I’m going to go along with my doctors recommendation, and bump his medication juuust a bit. As in another half mil, twice a day. If he can be completely reflux free, we’ll be able to start improving a few more things and making life easier for him, and in turn, for us. We just have to help him get comfortable first.

I’m SO thrilled with the progress Ro is making. I’m sorry to those of you who are bored of hearing about this. I understand many other people and their children have much bigger fish to fry. But I’m all for celebrating all victories, big or small, and I believe that since we’re celebrating our own victories over here, I’m deciding that they’re all big 🙂

YAY ROWAN, FOR NOT TASTING ACID WHEN YOU EAT!!!!! THATS SO GROSS!!!!!

The title of todays post is based on my feelings today. I’m not sure whether my brain is fried, or I’m just toast. For some reason, last night, I was awake from midnight until sometime after 3:00pm, when I stopped looking at the time and just pretended to sleep in an effort to fool my brain. I did eventually fall asleep, but I was pretty zombified first thing this morning. I decided to adult after all, and got it together for the morning and afternoon! The kids had a lot of fun, they played together really well, and Rowan ate really really well! All things considered, it was a successful day! But I am completely. Wiped. Out.

Praise the Lord, we have learned about our kids well, and bedtime routine starts NOW! Tidying toys, brushing teeth, potty break and diaper changes, prayers and lights out by 7:00! So. Ready.

Brady has a side job lined up for the next couple of days, but thanks to the supplier not getting his finishing supplies to site until roughly 2:00pm, our schedule changed and we decided to go into the city for a bit of an outing. The idea was, after we did our stuff in the city, we’d stop by the job site and he could check over the materials, so any errors had extra time to be corrected.

We didn’t have tons to do in the city, but we did stop at a lot of places for one thing, or to check for something. So lots of stopping and starting, but without too terribly much success. But we did stock up on a few staple groceries, and have a really nice time just being out and about with the kids. They were super positive all day, in great moods, which was super refreshing!!

We got supper and Brady went and checked his materials at work, which seem to be in order. Everyone ate well, and we listened to my new favorite music on the drive home. Now, the two big ones are tucked in, and Rowan downed his bottle!! Bradys mixing up a few more ounces to see if he’ll willingly drink more still! But Ro seems so happy to be home, laying on our bed, soaking up the attention and being able to roll around. He is at that stage of life where he doesn’t like to be held or contained constantly, yet he’s not really able to go very far on his own, if you know what I mean. So being free to roll and be on his own is a huge gift for him.

He’ll be down for the night soon, and we’ll rest up in the tub and hopefully have a good nights sleep before he’s back at work tomorrow. So glad he didn’t go in today and just putter while he waited for the materials to show up. That would have been a pretty unfortunate time suck. But he’s learned that lesson the hard way before, and thankfully, this time, it turned into a great family day.

Ro continues to improve every single day. While he’s been a royal pain to feed today (oh. my. gosh.) he slept so well at night! He woke up for milk at 1:15am, and not again until 7:00!! He still eats much better at night, but we’ll take what we can get.

Since I got home so late last night, and I was kind of wired, Brady and I stayed up together for a while so I had a chance of getting sleepy. I admit, I’m somewhat dependant on him for this. We always go to bed together. Always. So on nights like last night, of course I said we needed to go to bed sooner than I was ready, so that he could get some sleep before his inevitably early morning, but I lay awake until Ro woke up at 1:15. I was able to sleep after that, thankfully, and sleeping until 7:00 was beautiful! Shorter than I’m used to though. Tonight will be a much, much earlier night!! My mom always says any hours you get before midnight count for twice as many, and I think she’s onto something.

I’ve got to get my soak in first, though. I missed it yesterday, though my entire evening out was completely worth it! But I think anyone who also has a soak every night can appreciate how much I miss it when its not there. Halloween candle and bath time!

I’m old now, and I’m rarely up late. Ask the friends that I usually text in the evening. Lately, I’m closing up shop and cuddling in for bed slightly before 10:00pm.

Tonight, however, I had an outing with Kim. We did a bit of shopping, got some supper and coffee, and had a nice little date in the van while her baby boy slept in his car seat. We had such a nice time! But when the baby lulls, we head back home. We were met with an absolutely dark town. The power was out everywhere. The only lights we saw were those of headlights of the other few vehicles driving around. Thankfully, Kims husband met us in the driveway and helped carry everything inside. We said our goodbyes, and I drove off.

I decided to quickly duck in on my mom. I know she doesn’t need any “taking care of,” but I was around and wanted to have a quick visit. Our visit quickly became a two hour affair, which was honestly completely lovely! I’m sure lots of you can relate to how things change once you have kids, and when I get to spend time with my mom, I feel like I’m always competing for her attention with my children. I’m pretty familiar with that scene, and its fine, but it was such a treat to just sit in the living room and have a little candlelit visit.

I don’t even feel tired, but I left at 11:00, and am only home now, around 11:30. I feel fine, almost refreshed even, but my body is tired and angry, so I’m heading off to bed. Brady ran a bath 2.5 hours ago, so thats sad, hahaha! It was worth sacrificing it this time, though. I had such a lovely evening with Kim, and my mom. An outing is always a treat, but I sure have some wonderful people in my life. I wish I could have roped them all into the same evening, but these two are pretty high on the list, so I count myself lucky 🙂

I know its only been a few days since I last talked about Rowans eating situation, but I know at least some of you follow our family pretty closely, and if I’m fired up about something, sometimes you guys are too. So here’s the latest on Ro.

I could not be happier with the way Rowan’s medication is improving just his general quality of life, it seems. At our worst, he was up every two-ish hours every night, not napping in the day, always unsettled, and of course, HATED drinking his milk. Since he’s been on his medication (basically just the liquid form of a generic Zantac) SO many things have changed!!! He’s up twice in the night still, but that is a large step up from where we were, so I’m certainly not complaining! He naps so much better in the day, too, which I didn’t necessarily expect to come from this. Two nice long naps for sure, sometimes three shorties, depending on the day. He likes rolling around on the floor considerably more than he did literally just last week, when he was only happy in the jumper, in a standing position. Best of all, when he is good and hungry, he cries for his bottle. And better than best of all, he takes it!

The one struggle that remains is that he still really isn’t a fan of taking a bottle. He doesn’t get half as upset, because it doesn’t hurt him anymore. (Disclaimer: This is obviously just as far as we can tell. We don’t know anything for sure!) But I think its sort of built into him that he hates drinking his bottle because he always has. So he’s pretty unimpressed every time we set him up for a feeding, unless he’s reeeaaally wanting it badly, but once we get him latched onto the bottle, he’s good to go. He’s adapting well to his new bottles, I’d say. Its taking a little while, but he’s catching on.

All things considered, we’re hopeful! We thought we’d need quite a bit more outside help, and we were fine with asking for it! But he’s really doing an amazing job of working his stuff out on his own 🙂 He’s eating more in the day, and we’re learning more about his preferences. We don’t have to be afraid of him having opinions now, because we know he’s not in pain or discomfort anymore. At least we sure hope he’s not.

So thats the skinny on Rowan. Thanks, everyone, for being so patient with the blog switching over and having some glitches. I think things like some people seeing pictures sideways and different borders and such will just work itself out over time, as its totally out of my control what your browsers see. Hopefully everyone will be seeing the same thing soon 🙂 Thanks again, guys!

This was the crazy busiest Sunday we’ve had in SO LONG! It was awesome, but sooo full! To a lot of you, it probably doesn’t seem too full, but we’ve been feeling stretched a little thin for one reason or another for quite some time, and being out all day takes a lot out of all of us. Our bodies are physically aching, but it feels like that good ache that comes with accomplishing something, and just being worn out from all of the fun activity. Its been a great day.

We actually made it to church!!! Brady had been asked to drum this week at church, and also next week, so we knew we needed to go, even though the kids were wiped out from Halloween the night before. It was good to go, though, and the kids were all anticipating it. Dekker was in a bit of a bad mood most of the morning, unfortunately, but we tried to keep it upbeat. I actually convinced him to try out childrens church for the first time, and he went with me! I snuck out after a few minutes, and one of the lovely women supervising told me she’d bring him up if he got upset. It was only a few minutes before he came up. He was completely fine, but she has a fabulous radar for him and decided not to stress him out, which is EXACTLY what he needs. So he came back up for the service, but said he had fun down with the kids while he was there. We’ll try again next week.

After church, we lurked for a bit, but then went to the city for lunch. My parents had lunch plans with friends, and we had afternoon plans anyway, so we just grabbed some lunch quickly before making the drive to our friends sons birthday party! He recently turned one, and his party was this afternoon. It was a pretty good drive from where we were, and we sooo hoped the kids would sleep, but none of them did :/

Thankfully, the party was full of loving people and was set in a school gym, so there was lots of space to run, and even some games set up! The kids got right into it, and thoroughly enjoyed themselves. It was even better when we took their socks off and they stopped falling on their heads. Always learning, lol! Anyway, they had a great time, and I got in lots of visiting with the other guests. I knew almost everyone from one place or another, so it was nice to catch up and see where they all are now. We had pizza and cake after some good play time. Blue cake, to be exact.

When it was time to start packing up, Laela followed around one of the guests as she swept the whole gym floor. It was so cute to watch her do laps ride alongside 🙂 But when it wrapped up, both kids were given a big coloring book and some crayons. They whined about not being allowed to color in their car seats, but once we were driving, they were asleep within minutes. Now, I’m sure a lot of you can attest to the fact that kids napping at 6:00pm isn’t ideal, but thanks to the busyness of the day, the kids slept the whole way home and are now all tucked in. They’re quietly talking, but no one is anxious to be getting up, or energetic, or hungry, or anything. Everyone is ready for bed, including Brady and I.

First a bath. Then a sleep. I’m so excited, haha!