and then there were four…

I know that some days are harder than others. The past two have been some of those days.

Sophia is still teething. For someone as fearless as she is (she throws herself around like a ragdoll), it seems as though she has a very low pain threshold. I just don’t remember Olivia being as fussy when she teethed, but I could have fuzzy mommy memory. Perhaps, it is not the pain, but the annoyance with the world when she is in pain. When things don’t go her way on a GOOD day, she fusses. On a bad day? The world has ended for Miss Sophia.

Olivia has been, rather difficult, for the past couple of days. Sweet as pie for the most part, but bucking me when it comes to cleaning her room (yeah, I celebrated too soon). The weird thing is, she cleans up everything in her room, but has such a hard time with cleaning up her blocks. I’m not sure if the mess is overwhelming or what, but she just would not budge today, driving me crazy.

I threatened to take her (cardboard box) fort away from her. She crumbled into a big pile of tears, which made me feel so bad, but I took the fort and put in our room, and told her if she cleaned up she could have it back. If she didn’t, I was going to throw it away.

It didn’t work. Bill made me stay true to my word (yes, he’s right). So I dismantled the cardboard box fort and put it by the door, destined for the trash. Didn’t phase her.

“Can I have lunch?”

“Sure you can have lunch, but if you’re not going to clean up your blocks, mama is going to put them away and you can no longer play with them.”

Olivia was nonplussed as I picked up all of the blocks and shoved the block bucket into our room.

“Mama and Daddy will play with the blocks now!”

So she ate her lunch. THEN she went into her room and cleaned everything else up.

Little bugger. She’s still not getting her blocks back. Not yet. I told her if she could keep picking up after herself for two days, she could have them back.

Also: she licked my laptop. Yesterday she drew on the kitchen linoleum with her crayons, fed her sister peanut butter when I walked over to refrigerator during lunchtime (don’t worry, Soph seems fine), and bit Sophia’s hand.

Sophia has been really cranky, has pulled entire shelves of DVDs out in 10 seconds flat when I go to the bathroom, climbed on top of a small plastic tote, yanked the laptop cord out of the wall and tried to eat it, pulled (heavy) computer books off of the shelves and gotten stuck in the bathroom by closing the door and and not understanding how to move back so I could open it.

So both girls have been full-throttle for the past two days. And YES these are common occurrences in our house, they are kids, after all. However, I am usually able to put out one fire at a time, I usually have one behaving child when the other is going apeshit. Not this week! Both seem to have eaten some crazy kid flakes and are having issues at the same time. On top of it all, I tweaked my back. Not nearly as bad as the last time six months ago, but bad enough to where I want to lay on the couch and not chase after munchkins. Needless to say, I’m not getting what I desire most. Maybe that’s why it seems amplified, but whatever the reason, it kind of sucks.

I wish Mamas got sick days.

Bill and I decided yesterday, that the time was right to teach Olivia personal responsibility. At 2 1/2 years old, we felt she was old enough to clean up her own room.

It took all damn day, but by goodness, that little girl understands (as much as a 2 1/2 year old can) that her mess is her own, and she is responsible for cleaning it (at least, I hope that is what she gleaned from the experience).

Normally,  Bill or I will “help” Olivia clean up her room at the end of the day. The majority of the work is done by us, since we are not sidetracked by any and every thing (“Oooh my Mrs. Potatohead purse! I forgot about it, and now I found it!” etc. etc.). Of course it is much easier that way, it gets done in 5-10 minutes and life can proceed as usual.

But, we decided, way before we even conceived Olivia, that we were absolutely NOT going to be those kind of parents. Our children would understand that they are responsible for themselves and no one owes them anything in life, nor is anything worth having ever easy. I’m not saying I’m going to send my babies out into the coal mines or anything, but Olivia IS old enough to clean up her own toys.

On Saturday we tried to get her to clean up her room right before bed. She stalled, hemmed and hawed. We finally realized it was too late to argue with her and she needed to go to bed. So it stayed dirty. She was informed that she would not be watching any television, nor doing anything fun until the room was cleaned the next day.

On Sunday, we stayed true to our word and informed her after her mid-day nap:

“Olivia, it’s time to clean up your room.”

She went in her (extremely messy) room and sat in the middle of the mess. She put blocks in her bucket, but would get sidetracked. I sat on her bed with Sophia and just kept saying “Olivia, you need to pick up your blocks.” “Olivia, your blocks need to be put away.” “Olivia, stop playing with your books, your blocks need to be put away.”

She looked at me with her gorgeous brown eyes and said “But mama, you are supposed to help me.”

“No Olivia, I didn’t help you mess this room up, so it is not my responsibility to clean it up.”

I also informed her that if I ever helped her make a mess, I would of course help her clean it up. I further explained that I had to clean the WHOLE house, and all she had to do was clean her room. It seemed pretty fair to me.

She cried. A lot. Whined. A lot. Pouted. A WHOLE lot. We do have a “clean-up” song, but she wasn’t interested in singing it yesterday. I tried to make a game out of it, but she didn’t care because I wasn’t “helping”. I didn’t cave, but I reminded her she wasn’t doing anything until the room was cleaned, so she could sit in the room amongst the mess, but no one would be doing it for her.

I left to put Sophia down for a nap, and when Bill came home from running errands, I informed him of the situation. He explained that he was able to get her to clean by herself before, by constantly repeating “Clean your room.” Basically annoying the crap out of her until she did it. He went to her room to try that tactic, sitting on the bed and telling her that whatever she touched had to be put away. So he made a game out of it, but also annoyed her into finishing her clean-up. Whatever works, right?

It took all day, but she finally got the whole thing cleaned and everything put away. Today we started implanting the idea of cleaning up one toy before playing with another. So far, so good.

Having Olivia clean up her room may not seem like a huge deal. But, we feel it is important to teach her that no one else is going to clean her messes up in life, and if it means starting with her room, so be it. PLUS, this evening after playing in her room with her daddy, she told him “okay, you can go in the living room and I’ll clean up now.” She put away the few toys she had been playing with, and was able to spend the rest of her evening playing Memory with her daddy on the living room floor. As they were putting the game away, she said “I’ll do it myself, I learned.”

Sometimes it is so hard not to spoil the ever-loving snot out of her.

The past Friday, Bill and I celebrated our five-year wedding anniversary. We were able to go out to dinner and drive around, the way we did before we had kids, thanks to my good friend Traci, who graciously offered her services for the evening. (THANK YOU TRACI!)

We were planning on going to a fancy schmancy restaurant without a children’s menu, or high chair in sight, much like we did last year. Then I remembered how much we enjoyed going to have Teppon. Seeing as how it is unwise to bring small children who like to grab things to a restaurant where the table is more hot grill than table, we thought it was a perfect place to spend our anniversary.

And it was. I had forgotten, but we had gone to the same restaurant three years ago for our two-year anniversary. It was comfortable, and we had the ability to converse without being interrupted. It was fabulous. We were planning on going to a movie, but since it was opening night for the one movie we wanted to see, we thought our time would be better spent just driving around and talking, like we used to do, instead of waiting in line for a movie premiere. It was amazing and I was so happy to have that time with Bill.

That night, we had a wonderful “I love this about you” conversation, that made me melt and made me so thankful for what I have.

We’re not perfect, but we’re pretty close to it, as far as our relationship goes. I’ve never met another human who compliments and fits me as perfectly as my husband does. He does things that drive me crazy, I do things that drive him crazy, but at the end of the day, I can’t think of anything I would change about him. I don’t want anyone else but him, and I know that he feels the same way.

My entire life I felt like I had to live up to someone’s expectations, I felt I had to hide parts of myself because they were too weird, or would alienate me. I have never felt like that with Bill. I don’t hide anything from my husband because I don’t have to, he makes me feel safe and secure. Most people say they couldn’t live without their girlfriends, or that they love their husbands, but they can’t hang out with them.

That’s sad.

My husband is my best friend, he never makes me feel like I need to be anything more than who I am. He supports me tremendously, always wanting me to make sure I carve out some time for myself every day (and getting upset when I don’t). Helping me develop my (expensive) photography hobby, encouraging me to write, finding me sexy when I’m 50 pounds heavier or lighter (and convincing me he’s right), and those are only some of the reasons he is amazing.

I joked that I didn’t know what I would do without him, and he said “well, I would hope you would be happy…you could always go with second best.”

I’m sure I would, but I never want to find out.

I love you, and you are my heart–thank you for five amazing years of marriage, 11 years of being in love–let’s grow old and fart together on the couch. Also: I want to have more of your beautiful babies.

Scene: Living room floor.
A 2 1/2 year old is laying on the floor, pretending to go to sleep for amusement. A 9 1/2 month old crawls over and leans in really close to her cheek.

Sophia: “MMM-MWAHHH” (kisses sister on the cheek)
Olivia: (hugs sister back–then suddenly shoves her forward). “I’m sleeping now!”

Ahhh, sisterly love.

I’m still working on the blog, I’m viewing different themes, talking to my extremely smart husband and trying to work out what I want to include on my site. I have a bunch of brilliant ideas, (okay, they’re brilliant to me).

I would love to include a recipe index, and make recipes a bigger part of my page. I have friends who ask me for recipes and being able to direct them here would be nice and convenient (for all involved, I’m sure). I want to make the “Me Likey” a bigger portion also. I’m always finding new stuff and I love to share. Writing more stories from my childhood is something that I am interested in doing. I keep remembering these little snippets of things and writing them down would be a nice way to archive them for my children.

It has been well documented on this here site how much I love my photos and photography. I love looking at other people’s photos, and am really trying to develop my hobby. I’m a work in progress and I love every minute of it. One would make the leap from my well documented love and ask “So, why no photos?”

The majority of you who read this site are my friends and/or family. YOU know what we look like. We’re probably facebook friends so you see (some) photos, you possibly even have our family photo gallery information and can look at the thousands of photos there (BTW: if you don’t have that and you want it, let me know–haha). If you don’t know what we look like, well, you could always try to get to know me and I may let you into my world. I’m friendly like that.  My husband has asked me to keep this blog free of family photos. I respect his wishes and even understand. If you were really intelligent you could probably figure it out anyway, but making it blatently obvious isn’t something Bill wants me to do. However, I have been playing around with the idea of including photos of other things, so we’ll see if that pans out.

A few weeks ago, I was lamenting on my body issues. A good friend of mine (Thanks Rachel!), told me I should rejoin Weight Watchers because it was really helping her. I had been a Weight Watchers member when I was in college, and lost a tremendous amount of weight, so I knew it could work. However, because I had been in the program, I assumed “I know the tricks, I can just use the same rules without paying any money for the program.” I had also been using this free online site, and when I told her that, she replied that she had done the same thing, “But I finally decided that I need the extra motivation of paying for something to keep me on track.” I tried their one-week free trial for the online membership, and I love it. As of Monday, I have lost five pounds, so obviously it works for me. The program is slightly different, and I’m doing their online program vs. their physical meetings, but I still enjoy what it has to offer.

Another big change is that for the last six days, we have been night-weaning Sophia. With Olivia, we had moved into a new place, and she basically weaned herself after we put her in her own room. Since we don’ t have a third bedroom right now, Bill and I have been sleeping in the living room on an air mattress. I was afraid I would cave if I were in the room with her and she woke up crying–plus if she can’t see us, it makes it easier for her to settle down. The first night she woke up around 1 a.m. and cried for an hour (which was agony). We have an all-or-nothing approach with Sophia, because if we go in the room to comfort her, it only makes the situation worse, so we just try to block out the cries. However, for the past 5 nights she has slept through the night with only a small 10 minute wake-up around 4:30 Tuesday morning. We’re hoping to move back into our room, and eventually transition her into Olivia’s room. That should be fun, as Olivia likes to “talk” herself to sleep.

She’s been a much happier baby, and I don’t feel like a dairy cow now that I am only nursing her four times a day. She’s still very clingy, but I have been giving her more freedom to play with Olivia in the bedroom without hovering, (sitting on the couch in the living room gives me a good line of vision into the bedroom), so I hope that this will help her be more independent.

The more independent she is, the more time I have to write, which is good for you and for me. Assuming of course, you still enjoy my drivel.

Please bear with me. I’m making some crazy changes to the website and to my life, which is why I have been a little absent recently. I promise I’ll fill you in.

By the way, what do you think of the new theme? Too girly? I’m not sure how I feel about it yet. Hell, by the time you read this, I may have changed it twice over.

Oh, and just to make you laugh: it finally happened: Olivia decided she wanted to feed her baby, “just like mama feeds Sophia, with her boo-boos.” Got out her boppy, lifted her little shirt and tried to nurse a cabbage patch kid.

Have I scarred her for life?