Our day at Ikea was sooooo much fun! I honestly have to say that the best part might have been just holding hands. We so rarely get to just walk and hold hands anymore, as our hands are often filled with other little glorious hands, which is delightful! But I do miss holding hands with my husband, so this was a treat 🙂

We got to the store as it opened, and made our way to the kitchen department. Keep your snide commends about Ikea kitchens to yourself, if you can help it. They are fabulous products that are often assembled and installed incredibly poorly, making them seem cheap and flimsy. They aren’t. We are SO excited to be putting an Ikea kitchen into our brand new house 😀 So we went to their kitchen department, checked in, sat down at a computer, and someone came and looked at the rough design we had started at home a few nights before. She gave us a few tips, and told us what we needed to perfect before she would finalize our list. If you’ve ever used that planning program, its pretty painful. Slow, old technology that isn’t the kind thats sticking around because its SO good, but rather just because no one has upgraded it. Its almost impossible to get anything perfect. However, the employee helping us knew a few good tips and got us on the right track after a while. But it was Saturday, and the computers filled up FAST. Everyone working that area of the store had lots of people to help. It was ok, though. We could NEVER have done it with all three kids, no matter how well behaved they were. But we knew that. It was Saturday, and it would be busy. But it was just us, so we knew it would be lower pressure. Who cared how long it took? Thats how we felt until it was clear that the woman helping us no longer was helping us. We hadn’t seen her circulate by us for a solid half hour, and finally reached out and asked someone else when she’d be around again. Apparently she was five minutes away from taking a half hour lunch break.

It was right around that point that we were mildly annoyed and impatient. We considered going to shop and coming back in a bit to try again, but we decided to just wait it out and not risk putting ourselves further towards the back of the line. We weren’t priority anyway, since we were not planning on ordering the kitchen that very day, but just needed the list all lined up for when the time comes.

When it was finally our turn, a very anxious-seeming man came to help us. He was going at warp speed and clicking all kinds of things wrong and deleting stuff of of our plan, just going like mad. Brady and I were nervous, watching each other while this guy just went snake on all of our hard work. Then he’d take his paperwork and go to another table a ways away and do a bunch of work, and be gone for quite a while. His communication skills weren’t awesome, we’ll say. But when he did come back to us, he was THOROUGH. He went through our kitchen drawing and showed us, piece by piece, what the list was made up of. It was incredibly comforting to see it so specifically. Every single panel, filler piece, door handles, feet, toe kick, etc. It was ALL there. He went pretty quick, but he would watch our expressions, and go through a second time the parts that we seemed uncertain of. He was really really good at his job!

So a LONG 3.5 hours later, we left the kitchen department with a folder full of information for our eventual kitchen order. It was a really long process, but it feels great to have it done! And to have done it ourselves!! Somehow it feels more rewarding this way. We were originally planning to take a nice long meander through Ikea afterwards, but we’re trying to practice restraint and not buy a bunch of stuff for a house that doesn’t exist yet. So we walked through and retrieved the handful of items on our list only. We grabbed some kids dishes for a friend, and then a few things for us that are for the house we are building, because we had to do some!! And we planned for that in advance. We bought our living room rug that I have been eyeing up for a couple of years already, and we bought our en suite sink!! Eek! It felt so good to walk out of there with things we are truly excited to put into our next home!

We wrapped up the day with a date. We drove to West Edmonton Mall and went for dinner at the Old Spaghetti Factory. We had the mozza sticks for a starter, which were not actually sticks, but triangles, clearly making them far fancier. Then Brady got his classic spaghetti and meat sauce while I got their fettuccini con pollo. Apparently they are the only location that serves that dish, and if you are ever there, I highly recommend it!!! The white sauce is NOT alfredo like I expected. It was exquisite. Unlike any pasta sauce I’ve ever tasted. Ridiculous. Anyway, we both ate our body weight there, and our plans to get ice cream elsewhere were thrown out the window. We headed home instead. We were going to lose an hour on our way back, and we were driving away from the sun, so it was going to get dark fast, and we were SO tired!!!

The drive home was lovely too. I’ll admit, I slept for about a half hour, but I needed to. I knew I couldn’t make it the whole way with the 3-ish hours of sleep I had the night before. After that, though, I was good. We bought a new album on iTunes, and rocked out to that. Around Lloydminster, we grabbed donuts and coffee from Tims, and I managed to stay awake until we arrived at my parents 2.5 hours later. We had a quick chat with them before we all hauled off to bed. Praise the Lord, yet again, for Rowan agreeing to sleep all through the night, even away from home! I slept considerably more last night, but in all honesty, Brady and I are both still wiped right out. But I can confidently say we would do it all over again. HUGE win! Best date we’ve had in a long long time. I hope to road trip with you again soon, my love.

As I mentioned in the last post, Brady and I planned to spend Saturday in Edmonton at Ikea. Our alarm was going to go off at 5:30am.

I woke up in the middle of the night with my ridiculously itchy legs that I tend to get in pregnancy. I clawed them to shreds for WAY too long before I decided to get up and go to the bathroom before trying to get more sleep. As I left our room, I heard something from the kids room. It was Dekker. He was sitting up, talking loud and animated. Being that it was absurdly early for him to be even a little bit awake, I ducked in and shut him down. I went to the bathroom after that, and on my way back to our room, I checked the wall clock downstairs. It was 5:25am. I decided to not be the dead weight I usually am in the morning, and I headed back to the bathroom. I turned the light on bright, washed up, brushed my teeth, put on a full face of makeup, and made a big effort to wake myself up.

On my way back to the bedroom, I heard Dekker STILL talking. So once again, I ducked into their room and told him I was sorry he had woken up, and I knew he was excited to be at grandma and grandpas house, but he was going to wake everyone up, and then be too tired to play. He agreed to “try” to be quiet, and I closed their door.

When I got back into our room, I whispered to Brady that I was going to turn on the Christmas lights to wake him gently. He asked what time it was, and I said it was later than he had wanted to get up, but not to worry, that I was up and could be really helpful in getting us out the door on time. And then he checked his phone. And it was 4:00am.

Quick side note. I have NEVER used that wall clock ever, and clearly I am not the only one, because I believe its been pretty out of commission for quite some time. Whoops! Now I know, lol!

So I lay in bed until 5:30am, wide awake, as I had a sick and snoring husband to one side of me and a talking four year old through the wall on the other side. Definitely wasn’t my best morning.

Brady and I debated not going to Ikea this morning, but I’m SO glad we did! We had SO much fun getting excited about our upcoming build, and doing some planning and organizing. But THOSE are the stories I’ll save for tomorrow. I hope you all are already sleeping well! I sure have plans to sleep tonight, wooee! Do I ever!

Today has been SUCH a lovely day! Brady had the day off, and it felt like we finally had a normal day 😊 We slept in, had a really yummy breakfast, and went downstairs to watch a bit of tv and do laundry. Just basic tasks, but a completely normal day like we used to have. Rowan went down for a nap, and we fed the kids lunch downstairs, which they have always loved but haven’t been able to do too much recently. I think they knew it was a special day. Once we were done doing laundry, Brady and I got showers and the kids played in our room while we got their stuff packed for this weekend. We haven’t let them play in our room too much. Not for the sake of privacy, but to be completely honest, we got a mouse 😟 We were so spooked for a really long time and the sucker just won’t resurface. While I’m more comfortable with the kids being in our room now that I’m less spooked, I’m still kind of freaked that someone is going to step on a trap 😕 I do NOT want that! But we kept an eye on them, and they didn’t get into any trouble in their new surroundings. It was nice!

Once Rowan woke up, the kids had a really really good bath! They were all agreeable and happy, which is not often the case, so that was a big win. While Brady bathed them, I packed up some clothes for them, and some go-to foods for Ro. After the bath, Laela peed all over the floor, Rowan splashed in it, and Dekker cleaned up what was left with the socks on his feet. Sooooo since the kids were SUPER clean, we packed everyone up and headed to my parents house.

On our way, we ducked into Costco. We got our budget allowance for our home build and decided we really needed to get different laundry machines, so we’d been looking for deals. We were planning on stopping in at Lowe’s for their awesome laundry event happening right now, but figured we’d try Costco first. Well folks, we bought ourselves some AMAZING laundry machines today!!! Eek!! Seriously, I dont know how we could have bought anything even remotely comparable for a price even close to what we paid!!! We had seen this set earlier at an appliance store, and the washer alone cost what we paid for the set today. So WIN! We grabbed the machines (Dekker LOVED helping push them around where they belonged) and they are now ours!!

We drove by our lot on the way to my parents place and see that the “sold” sign is finally up 😀 That felt really really good. Then we headed to my parents, where my mom had prepared a meal I have been craving SO MUCH for the last week or two. The kids ate well, played well, and even went down to sleep well. Now, we are spending the night here, but Brady and I will sneak out super early and drive to Edmonton, where we will spend the day rocking IKEA and dreaming about our home and what is to come. I am SO excited to have a day trip with my husband. I can’t remember the last time he and I went on a road trip since having kids, without those kids!! We did Vegas in 2o14, which was epic, but Edmonton trips used to be kind of common for us. Not anymore! So this will be a bit nostalgic even! I’m so excited!

That being said, its 11:30, and we HAVE to go to sleep if we want to leave as early as we want to leave!! Have a great weekend, everybody!!!

Thank you, everyone, for all of your encouragement yesterday on our decision to sleep train Ro! I am thrilled to report than night #2 was just as good as night #1, it not better. He didn’t trigger the monitor all night long. The first I heard from him was a cough at 7:30. Once again, he was completely happy when he did wake up, though he was completely soaked through his diaper, haha! Can’t blame the kid. He drank so well before bed. The kid is top notch. Whether it gets ugly still before we have this thing mastered, or its just this smooth from now on, we definitely feel like we’re on the right track. We’re staying at my parents this weekend, so that will be a big change for him all of a sudden. We’ll just have to see how he does!!

This morning was a fun, playful morning with the kids. They are currently all napping, and I am looking online for appliances for our new place. We were hoping to upgrade from the basic package that our builder usually uses, but yikes! Appliances are expensive!!! So I’ll be spending the afternoon online shopping. Lowes has a great deal on laundry machines right now, if anyone is in need!

Oh my! JUST this moment, I realized that Brady and I haven’t started our weekly savings plan yet!! Its not as though we haven’t been preoccupied with other things, obviously, but thats a big oops!! Shoot! That savings plan works SO well for us, we’ve got to get back on the horse! Is anyone else joining us in it this year? I highly recommend!!!

So last night, I said that we were moving Rowan out of our room and switching up the way we do nights. I know its a big controversial topic, so thanks for not pouring on the hate. I’m all for people not doing things the way we do, but thanks so much for not ripping us apart over our parenting decisions. Win for everyone! Including Ro 🙂

We moved him out last night, and gave him a little space heater nearby and everything. He had a nice big bottle before bed, and he even took a big poop right before he went down, so we knew the likelihood of him waking up to poop at 4am was slimmer. So we were hopeful. Right off the hop, he cried, because he was somewhere new, but it didn’t last long at all. He was nice and tired. When he had fallen asleep, we put the monitor on a standby mode, which we don’t have on our other one. This way, its basically off until he wakes up and moves around. Then it turns itself back on. Basic enough concept, just new to us. We like it 🙂 Then the screen isn’t bright all night. Rowan slept thru the entire time we were up and around. In the night, we woke up to him twice. The monitor would click on and we’d see him kind of moan and roll over, and then it would go back on its standby mode almost immediately, because Ro wasn’t “up” as much as just shifting. He did that twice. And that was it!!! No big devastating midnight wailing session or anything! Not to say that won’t ever happen in the this next stage of sleep training, but we are reasonable people also. We know his cries, and we’re not just heartless fiends who will never go check on him or console him at all. But last night, we didn’t need to. When Brady woke up for work in the morning, he could actually use the bathroom without having to worry as much about his light sleeping son waking up, which was a nice relief for him, I’m sure. It felt SO good to sleep so soundly! For everyone. Its been this way with all of our kids. There are usually a couple of difficultish nights, but our kids sleep better in a different place than with us. They just always do. They rest deeper and longer and so do we! So last night was a HUGE win! We loved it. I hope Rowan always poops right before bed.

This morning, the monitor clicked on once or twice, but just so very briefly. When I did go over to check on Rowan, he was sitting in the corner of his playpen, quietly chewing his blanket, happy as a clam! Everyone was in GREAT shape this morning! It was nice confirmation that we’d had a successful night and that we’re on the right path with things.

Yay, Rowan! Way to sleep on your own like you’ve been doing it forever!! Thanks for the full nights sleep!

… or lack there of.

I should actually say, this post is about our current sleep “routine.” I was going to write this post first thing in the morning when it was fresh in my mind, but our internet has been out all day. Its finally back up and running, so here I am now anyway.

We had this great week-ish long stretch of Rowan sleeping through the night. He just needed to be a bit warmer, so we warmed the place up a bit, and he was sleeping through. Now, in the last few days, he’s taken a jump on his morning poop, and has decided to take of it around 4:00am. At first, we didn’t know it was a poop situation. He woke up and chatted for a bit, which was fine. We waited for him to just chat himself back to sleep. Around 4:30 he got a bit louder, so we checked on him and of course, he had pooped. Once he was changed, we’d lay him down, and he’d fuss like crazy! So we’d give him milk and he’d go back. Normal baby, right?

This is the thing. Our kids are usually very much sleeping through the night at this point. Its been different with Rowan because of his reflux, and the fact that he’d only ever drink milk in the night. If he woke up, we’d feed him, because it was the only time he’d take it. Reversing it is SO hard!!! I know the whole sleep training subject can get touchy, so let’s all just keep our opposing opinions to ourselves, if we can help it 😉 That being said, though, I am 100% in support of sleep training, because this SUCKS. Lol!

This morning was the same story. Chatting at 4:00, pooping at 4:30, and crying soon after. Now I KNOW that Ro is more than capable of sleeping through the night, and that he isn’t starving or miserable, because when he does sleep through, he doesn’t wake up wailing for food at all. So I’m confident he is just wanting to be soothed to sleep. So this morning, we let him cry.

And cry he did. I was wide awake listening to him struggle and fight until about 5:45am when he finally gave in. And when he did finally stop crying, I heard the big kids moving around. Now my Dekker and Laela don’t usually even lull until maybe 8:00, so Ro has definitely woke them. I looked at the monitor and Deks was STANDING on his bed. Suuuper unimpressed with this situation, I whispered into the monitor for him to go back to sleep, and after a reminder or two, he did. Of course, my talking into monitor woke Laela so I had to fix that too. I’m SO thankful that everyone went back to sleep, because that meant I could do. But what a crazy broken morning!

So tonight, we are moving Rowan out of our room for the night. Its just a trial run, but again, we’ve never had a kid in our room this long, and we’re about ready to be done. There aren’t too many options of where to move him here, so our only option is to put him in another chilly room and run another space heater, which will yet again load up our energy bill. Ugh. But its got to get done! This kid has got to get sleeping through the night. If not for his silly reflux issue, I think this would have happened long ago!

So the baby is moved, the monitor is set up, and we are ready to go for round #2! Wish us luck!!!

Thank you SO MUCH for the outpouring of love and excitement on yesterdays post!! We are SO thrilled about the upcoming handful of months, and its fun to have so many other people pumped with us! Its funny how it took a bit of workup for me to be ready to share the news publicly, yet the reaction made me wish we had shared it sooner. I was originally just waiting for the news to be completely official, which it has been for some time now. Papers are signed, money is in, we’re ready to go! I honestly think it took extra time just because it hasn’t fully sunk in on our end yet! We’ve dreamed about this for a solid few years, and its so surreal to think this is actually happening! So THANK YOU for being excited along with us! I hope the topic of home building interests you guys as much as it does me, because that will likely come up a lot over the next little while. That and the rest of our life, plus the pregnancy should keep the days feeling full!

The vast majority of outings recently have been errands, picking out house details, going to meetings, etc. We have still made it out to my parents once in a while just for a visit, but those of you who are close to us know we’re pretty “one track” these days. However, today, I took the kids to Kims place for a play date. Just a normal afternoon of playing toys, chatting, and catching back up. Its been a long time since we’ve had such a day, and it was wonderful!! Of course, my stupid blog is insisting on loading the pictures up sideways, so I can’t actually post any. *sigh* But they played beautifully together!! They all interacted so smoothly with each other, and you can tell everyone’s grown up a bit since the last time they were all together. Their youngest is shuffling along furniture, while Rowan was suddenly pulling up all over the place! He’s only pulled up a few times before, but he tries SO hard at our place. However, 0ur current place is hardwood, and therefore very slippery, so I think he’s a bit shy to really give ‘er and pull. But he was loving the safety of the carpet, and pulled up probably a solid 20 ten or fifteen times in Kims basement. The kids ate lots, and even had a little restful tv time. Both of the babes took turns napping, and Kim and I enjoyed some coffee and a lot of visiting. It was so comfortable. I loved it.

The kids, specifically Dekker, were very sad to leave to go home, but I assured them we needed to go see daddy, which helped a little. All three of them were asleep within minutes of starting the drive, and therefore, I enjoyed a very quiet drive home. It was a lovely, relaxed way to end the afternoon of fun.

Love you and your sweeties, Kim! Thanks for the lovely day of play, and the tuna melts. You know me too well.

I know my posts get boring when I’m keeping secrets. I apologize for that, but if you think about it, it actually makes a lot of sense! When I can’t tell you what I’m doing all day, its hard to recap it for you beyond “we ran errands” or “we’re all super tired.” Both statements are true, of course, and I have NEVER flat out lied on here. I’ve just been vague, but I probably don’t have to tell you that.

All of that said, I’m incredibly impatient in this case and its about time I shared our news! My gosh, tis the time of life for NEWS! First the house sale, and the pregnancy, and now this!!!

Our home build is ON!!!

We took the kids to our lot for a bit of a family “ground breaking,” so to speak, before the diggers get their crack at it. My mom was more than willing to come and take pictures of us while we did so. It was a funny but incredible celebration. We like to do things our own strange way 🙂

So this should shed some light on the last few “boring” weeks we’ve had. We have been going to meetings, signing a lot of big, scary documents, learning the ropes and details of a build, the list goes on. The best part so far has obviously been choosing all of the details that our home will be made up of. Flooring, lights, cabinets, appliances, etc. Lots to decide, and a lot of work, but SUCH exciting work! On nights where we need an outing, we just go wander home stores and dream. But the dreams are very different now. Less “one day” ish and much more “Is this truly what we want?” ish. Its been a complete blast!!! I’ll show you pictures of that another night soon, because we have a decent amount of pictures from the last little while that I’ve had to keep from everyone, but that’ll work for another day.

Today, we broke ground. Hopefully the contractors aren’t too far behind! Though I doubt they’ll be as cute as our little diggers.

Eeeeeeek!!!

THIS is why I love my husband so much. THIS. Right here.

The oil needed changing in the van. We had hoped for a warmer day, but its a bit chillier out than was ideal, so Brady figured he’d just duck out on his own for an hour and get it done. But then Dekker asked to come help, and of course, Laela will not be left out of anything. And this rockstar dad over here proceeds to bundle the kids up in all of their gear, and bring them out for the oil change. It definitely didn’t go any faster than usual, but that is beside the point. I LOVE that they were welcome to go out and work on the car with him. So many kids miss out on stuff like this.

The moral of the story is that Brady is a rockstar and my kids are completely adorable and are growing up to be handy and helpful! I love my family!

Its been a bit of a whirlwindy day, one that I won’t get into very much. This morning went from some relaxed plans to being an incredible headache and very very stressful with lots of running around. We hoped for a quite home day with naps all around, but instead, we were out until mid afternoon and while the kids definitely needed naps, they couldn’t have them. Rowan could, but not the big ones. So we worked through the afternoon, but I finally broke. You all know I’ve struggled here, but I haven’t had a good solid breakdown. Well, I did today. It wasn’t even too epic of a melt down, but it happened. I cried and could barely get off of the couch.

So I’m hiding out a little bit. Yes, I’m hiding from my kids. But they’re doing better. Once in a while, one of them makes their way downstairs, gives me a hug and kiss, tells me they love me, and then go back upstairs. I can tell they have strict instructions from Brady not to stay too long, which is actually nice right now. Little doses of love are welcomed.

I’m anticipating my leftover Montanas pasta for supper tonight, and then when the kids go down, Jerilee is coming for the evening, which is going to be SO great! We picked up a yummy dessert/snack this afternoon amidst our errands and panic, so that and the Bachelor should make for an enjoyable and low pressure evening.

On a really positive note, Rowan has now slept through the night twice in a row! Our current bedroom is ICY cold, and we’ve been running a space heater for our first few hours into the night to heat the place up. But the last two nights, we’ve forgotten to shut it off, and he’s slept through. So I think he’s waking up because he’s cold!! So I found him some fleecy sleepers this afternoon, and we discovered the heating vents in our room are closed. Sigh. I know, we should have checked those first. We didn’t think. We’ve had enough going on that no ones brains are working quite right around here. But hopefully we’ve set things up to keep Rowan happy and settled through his nights. How wonderful would that be? Full nights of sleep would really be perfect at this point in time. We could all benefit from a bit of rest around here.