Lots going on the past 10 days. The kids don't stop cracking the whip. They keep demanding frivolous items like food, drink, and attention. Neither are interesting in napping much in these beautiful summer days, and the hot bedrooms make us all a bit cranky at the end of the day. So I'll try to summerize or else I'll never get anything written!
Currently, both children are sleeping! They both napped crappy yesterday. Kevin gave me strict instructions NOT to do any housework if I got a break.
Monday: appointment in Seattle as previously blogged. Wore me out!
Tuesday: training a new nurse. She's been a practicing midwife before, so is quite skilled at the labor part. The nursing-paperwork-prep part is new. The downside to being a good helping is sometimes they forget to ask you first. I'm getting a bit worn down. If I'm going to be charge, then I need my days to just do my job at my speed. After my shift I finished packing for two nights at my mom's house. I am very grateful I did stuff ahead of time here, because...
Wednesday: I was in the car with two kids by 6:30am and on the road to Vancouver. The timing worked great. Patrick watched his morning TV, Fiona slept for most of it. A quick break in the middle for peeing, nursing, and snacking. Arrived in Vancouver around 9:30am! We played at Nancy's house, hit the park and the grocery story, and I got to cook dinner while Mom played with the kids. Patrick alternated between running Gramma around and following Craig like a lovesick puppy. GiGi and Poppa (my grandparents) also came by for dinner. Patrick is really warming up to them, finally. As with most things, I just think his language makes the biggest difference.
Thursday: Another fun day at Mom's. We drove to David's apartment in the morning to swim in their nice heated pool. I gave Dave coffee, he gave us beer. I guess we owe Starbucks and Widmeir for this exchange :) Patrick enjoys the water but doesn't like to get his face wet. It's one of the few areas where he isn't very adventurous. Mom hosted dinner in the evening. The regular crew arrived, and my youngest brother even stayed for longer than 20 minutes. I think we get cooler as he get's older. The kids were so fun to watch. Dylan and Jess brought no-longer-baby Holly. She and Patrick got to practice sharing. It's the one reason I wish we lived closer; they get to do this all the time, these fun dinners.
Friday: I slept poorly after some possible job stress entered the picture. Mom let me sleep in and got up with both kids around 6am. I slept til 8:22am. It through off the rest of my day. I just can't do it anymore! Then I was completely disorganized trying to pack the car (as I brought so much stuff, now I had to find it all). I snapped at my saintly mother who was only trying to help. It was rough. Mom came up with me to watch the kids while I had other meetings going on, such a blessing. It took us forever to get back up. Crying babies, potty breaks, repacking the van, snack stops, traffic. Four hours from Vancouver to Tacoma. I barely made the carpool for my MOPS meeting that evening. Mom made my day by offering to keep Fiona as well (I was planning on taking her). Awesome. Threw everybody out of the car and raced to the meeting. It was on a family home on Fox Island. So beautiful. Maybe next year I'll be able to spend the night!
Saturday: More planning, this time with Fiona in tow. She did great but refused to nap, no surprise there. Patrick stayed with Mom. After the meeting I went to Valerie's Pink Party to celebrate Brenna, her fourth baby and first girl. Jenny A hosted and it was perfect. Great food, fun games (and baby shower games normally suck, but her friend Lyndie did a great job, and adorable girl clothes. The rest of the day settled a bit. We went for a family walk and played at home. Kevin cooked.
Sunday: Mom headed home on the train in the morning, so we skipped church to walk the dogs and cook breakfast. Kevin worked in the evening, so I hung out at home.
Monday and Tuesday: Worked. Vacations, maternity/medical leaves, sick calls, and the like means staffing sucks. And it's busy.
Wednesday: I found a baby sitter last minute for Patrick, yeah! A lovely teenager who is saving money for a car. She arrived at 7am and I went to Seattle to start Fiona on her propranolol for her hemangioma. After taking the medication we hung out for a couple of hours so the nurse could check her blood pressure and heart rate. The gave me a stethoscope to check her heart rate at home (Patrick loves to play with this, "I want to play doctor!") We wandered the hospital, and I enjoyed my time with just one kid. She was really great, but again, no napping until the car ride home. I snuck a bit of time at University Village on the way home. I had a pear and brie crepe for lunch with a chai cardamom cupcake for dessert. In the evening Kevin and I attended the planning meeting for Vacation Bible School at our church. This is a first for both of us. We're assisting in the preschool room with Patrick. Fiona will be with us. We are only slightly nuts. Both kids haven't had a lick of routine, and their bedtime shows it. We are all ready to kill each other by the end of the day.
Today: We had a nice breakfast as a family. The kids slept OK. We talked about how to cut our budget. We went to the Farmer's Market and got raspberries, blueberries, cherries, tomatoes, and squash. Kevin ran off to work. The kids fell asleep! Mom and Craig stopped by on their way home from a vacation in the San Juans. I will now not do any chores.
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Monday, July 19, 2010
Seattle Children's Part Deaux
This time, it was a touch more annoying.
The biggest hit was waiting for ONE HOUR in the clinic room. Not the waiting room, the clinic room. I had to entertain my wiggle worm five month old for ONE HOUR. There was no cell phone coverage, so I couldn't text or call Kevin. I had all Patrick's snacks since right before I got called in Patrick announced that he pooped. Kevin was in the bathroom with the boy, I was with the snacks. I poked my head out at 40 minutes and was reassured the doctor was dictating and would be in next. At ONE HOUR, I stuck my head out again and aimed for the polite yet terribly irritated tone, "I've been in here one hour, do you know how much longer it might be?" Turns out the doctor didn't know I was there! Fantastic.
I work in health care, I know the schedule doesn't always work. I also know doctors tend to throw the staff under the bus without mentioning their role in the whole escapade. So I was not a jerk once it got going. In fact, I was rather gracious about it all. But it sure starts the whole experience on a rough note for all.
But we were done after the appointment, ready to get out of there. I decided to schedule separately Fiona's first medication dose for her hemangioma. She'll need a few hours of monitoring to make sure her heart rate, blood pressure, and blood sugar aren't doing anything weird. We won't be stuck in a room, but able to wander the campus between timed check ins. Patrick can stay in Tacoma for that appointment.
And I forgot to get our prescription as well. That can get called into Tacoma. We have medication down here, I've been told, you snobby Seattle people.
Off to University Village for playtime and lunch. I lurve me some Blue C Sushi. Except somebody in our family forgets to do math and figure out how much they've spent. Especially when the other person takes the 3 year old to get a cupcake leaving Dad...I mean...the other parent...to enjoy the rest of the meal with a quite baby. The bill was $28. I spent $6.
Do you think I'm owed a foot rub for this? And I was very nice about how I told him I was pissed as hell. He even said so.
REI yielded more playtime and a successful shoe buying purchase for Patrick. Blue crocs! One pair of shoes just doesn't cut it. When you have an accident and get pee on your shoes, then you don't have anything else to wear!
Currently, I'm in the living room with the baby. She's cooing adorably and trying to crawl. Both my boys are asleep in the van. One of these days I'll get to have that nap.
The biggest hit was waiting for ONE HOUR in the clinic room. Not the waiting room, the clinic room. I had to entertain my wiggle worm five month old for ONE HOUR. There was no cell phone coverage, so I couldn't text or call Kevin. I had all Patrick's snacks since right before I got called in Patrick announced that he pooped. Kevin was in the bathroom with the boy, I was with the snacks. I poked my head out at 40 minutes and was reassured the doctor was dictating and would be in next. At ONE HOUR, I stuck my head out again and aimed for the polite yet terribly irritated tone, "I've been in here one hour, do you know how much longer it might be?" Turns out the doctor didn't know I was there! Fantastic.
I work in health care, I know the schedule doesn't always work. I also know doctors tend to throw the staff under the bus without mentioning their role in the whole escapade. So I was not a jerk once it got going. In fact, I was rather gracious about it all. But it sure starts the whole experience on a rough note for all.
But we were done after the appointment, ready to get out of there. I decided to schedule separately Fiona's first medication dose for her hemangioma. She'll need a few hours of monitoring to make sure her heart rate, blood pressure, and blood sugar aren't doing anything weird. We won't be stuck in a room, but able to wander the campus between timed check ins. Patrick can stay in Tacoma for that appointment.
And I forgot to get our prescription as well. That can get called into Tacoma. We have medication down here, I've been told, you snobby Seattle people.
Off to University Village for playtime and lunch. I lurve me some Blue C Sushi. Except somebody in our family forgets to do math and figure out how much they've spent. Especially when the other person takes the 3 year old to get a cupcake leaving Dad...I mean...the other parent...to enjoy the rest of the meal with a quite baby. The bill was $28. I spent $6.
Do you think I'm owed a foot rub for this? And I was very nice about how I told him I was pissed as hell. He even said so.
REI yielded more playtime and a successful shoe buying purchase for Patrick. Blue crocs! One pair of shoes just doesn't cut it. When you have an accident and get pee on your shoes, then you don't have anything else to wear!
Currently, I'm in the living room with the baby. She's cooing adorably and trying to crawl. Both my boys are asleep in the van. One of these days I'll get to have that nap.
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Three years and Five months
Dear Patrick and Fiona:
Patrick, you are three years old! Fiona, you are five months old!
I'm afraid you children are going to have to share a blog post, because your Mommy is worn out. You two are busy, energetic, smart, fun, and inquisitive bundles of fun who are sucking the life out of me. And I mean that in the best possible way.
Patrick, you have grown so much in the past year and especially so in the last six months. You have acquired all these wonderful skills. But nothing makes us happier than to hear you talk with us. A year ago, you barely had 10 words that we could coax out of you. Thanks to six months of speech therapy with the wonderful "Miss Carol," you give us a non-stop commentary on what we are doing, seeing, hearing, smelling, and thinking. You can say all your letter sounds, usually in the right order. You repeat words back to us constantly. And best of all, we know what you want. We can ask you questions, and you answer them! Sometimes we even like the answer. Your Gramma, Papa, and Nana are all so excited everytime they see you because of how much more talking you can do and that we can understand.
You are also becoming potty trained! Daddy and I really had to bite the bullet on this one. You were ready...we were not. Something about your baby sister joining the party threw us all out of wack. So we pulled out our favorite parenting tool: cold turkey. Good-bye pull-ups (no kid uses these like underwear, we are all just getting ripped off like fools) and hello underwear. You were not impressed. You used your fabulous communication skills to ask for diapers. Repeatedly. Three days of accidents, and then you had it down. Mommy discovered a good way to get you to go potty was let you go outside. Daddy didn't like it so much when you did that in the zoo parking lot. Now you rarely have accidents and are such a big boy, wearing underwear all the time. Even at night! And there is nothing cuter than a little boy tushie in tighty-whities.
As for number two....I'm sure you'll get it the second you actually SIT on the toilet.
And my sweet Miss Fiona, you are my little wiggle-worm. Rolling all over the place, especially when I want to change your diaper. It's impossible! Thanks to a combination of rolling, lunging, and army crawls, you get anywhere you want to go. You are up on all fours and rocking back and forth. You want to crawl so badly, but the balance just isn't there yet. But it's just so cute to watch you rocking back and forth, then CRASH.
Oh, just look at those beautiful long eyelashes! And those big blue eyes! I can't wait to see what color your hair turns out.
The best is watching you start to really get each other. Patrick, you always want to know where your sister is. And you can say her name, although I really loved your little joke of "Fi-Oh-Nana." Fiona, your big brother makes you laugh the easiest of all. And you are always grabbing at him, his hair, the owie on his knee. Then he'll give you a toy and say, "Sister needs this toy." He usually throws it at you. Good thing they're stuffed.
Look at how proud you are Patrick, holding your baby sister. And she's pretty tough, just like you.
Well Fiona my sweet, your big brother sure means well.
You children are the delight of my heart, and I just think you are the coolest kids ever. We can't wait to leave you over night with a grandparent really soon!
I love you sweet kids!
Love
Mommy
Patrick, you are three years old! Fiona, you are five months old!
I'm afraid you children are going to have to share a blog post, because your Mommy is worn out. You two are busy, energetic, smart, fun, and inquisitive bundles of fun who are sucking the life out of me. And I mean that in the best possible way.
Patrick, you have grown so much in the past year and especially so in the last six months. You have acquired all these wonderful skills. But nothing makes us happier than to hear you talk with us. A year ago, you barely had 10 words that we could coax out of you. Thanks to six months of speech therapy with the wonderful "Miss Carol," you give us a non-stop commentary on what we are doing, seeing, hearing, smelling, and thinking. You can say all your letter sounds, usually in the right order. You repeat words back to us constantly. And best of all, we know what you want. We can ask you questions, and you answer them! Sometimes we even like the answer. Your Gramma, Papa, and Nana are all so excited everytime they see you because of how much more talking you can do and that we can understand.
You are also becoming potty trained! Daddy and I really had to bite the bullet on this one. You were ready...we were not. Something about your baby sister joining the party threw us all out of wack. So we pulled out our favorite parenting tool: cold turkey. Good-bye pull-ups (no kid uses these like underwear, we are all just getting ripped off like fools) and hello underwear. You were not impressed. You used your fabulous communication skills to ask for diapers. Repeatedly. Three days of accidents, and then you had it down. Mommy discovered a good way to get you to go potty was let you go outside. Daddy didn't like it so much when you did that in the zoo parking lot. Now you rarely have accidents and are such a big boy, wearing underwear all the time. Even at night! And there is nothing cuter than a little boy tushie in tighty-whities.
As for number two....I'm sure you'll get it the second you actually SIT on the toilet.
And my sweet Miss Fiona, you are my little wiggle-worm. Rolling all over the place, especially when I want to change your diaper. It's impossible! Thanks to a combination of rolling, lunging, and army crawls, you get anywhere you want to go. You are up on all fours and rocking back and forth. You want to crawl so badly, but the balance just isn't there yet. But it's just so cute to watch you rocking back and forth, then CRASH.
Oh, just look at those beautiful long eyelashes! And those big blue eyes! I can't wait to see what color your hair turns out.
The best is watching you start to really get each other. Patrick, you always want to know where your sister is. And you can say her name, although I really loved your little joke of "Fi-Oh-Nana." Fiona, your big brother makes you laugh the easiest of all. And you are always grabbing at him, his hair, the owie on his knee. Then he'll give you a toy and say, "Sister needs this toy." He usually throws it at you. Good thing they're stuffed.
Look at how proud you are Patrick, holding your baby sister. And she's pretty tough, just like you.
Well Fiona my sweet, your big brother sure means well.You children are the delight of my heart, and I just think you are the coolest kids ever. We can't wait to leave you over night with a grandparent really soon!
I love you sweet kids!
Love
Mommy
Saturday, July 03, 2010
It's Saturday Night and I ain't got nobody...
Kevin and I lucked out with a dual day off. This is not a frequent occurrence now that we are working opposing schedules. So when we have a full 24 hours off together, we do not do housework. We rarely work in the yard. We minimize anything resembling an errand.
We do have loads of fun.
While our day started at the normal time (5:42am, actually a bit of a sleep in) we lounged in pajamas until 8ish. We alternated Patrick's shows between "It's a Big Big World" (puppets in the rainforest) Wiggles Safari (featuring the Crocodile Hunter), and Leapster Word Factory. There is some pretty sweet kiddo TV out there! The Wiggles are really growing on me. I especially like Anthony. He wears the blue shirt. I guess he's straight, as evidenced by a wife and three kids. But you wouldn't know it by his dancing. We drank our coffee, checked Facebook, and played with the kids. The whole family went for a walk to Jefferson School Playground and the dogs got to run around. We went out for breakfast, and Patrick actually ATE something we ordered for him. Oatmeal, his choice.
Next, off to the mall. I wanted a good pair of walking/running shoes. I have several pairs of casual shoes, like Merrils and Keens, but I wanted something real. I now own Reeboks with micro-balance technology. We tried to get Patrick to try on sandals, but he was too busy having a meltdown. Home we went.
A pedicure or a nap...and I chose the pedicure. I now have iridescent teal blue toes with a white curlicue design on my big toes. Kevin vegged at home with the kids, neither who took a nap. By the time I got home, we were at the point of no return. Patrick could NOT take a nap or we'd be up with him forever. Now the challenge was to keep him up. We needed to get out of the house, but we couldn't drive too far or he'd fall asleep. We hit the playground at Titlow Park. And he almost did fall asleep but I kept harassing him until we arrived.
The rest of the day it was painfully obvious that the boy still needs to nap but doesn't want to nap at a good time, like noon. Patrick alternated between meltdown and hyper. Aren't you all jealous, those of you who know my sweet boy?
And our other child was with us today. She's just forced to go with the flow. So I forget to write about her. And she napped at convenient times, like throughout breakfast, during shoe shopping, and half the park trip. Currently Fiona is sleeping in the swing with the vacuum on. If I turn it off, she'll wake up. As I type I'm listening to Spilled Milk podcast on headphones. I occasionally turn it off to make sure Patrick is still in bed. Kevin is at the movies, cashing in on my pedicure this afternoon. He's going to see Twilight: Eclipse. I love that my man is cool enough to go see a teen chick flick by himself. On a Saturday night.
I'd been fighting a headache for three days. Interrupted sleep, too little water, and poor eating habits caught up with me. As I sat in the spa pedicure chair with my new Julia Quinn novel, I realized that I was really feeling depleted. Not enough time for myself at all. It seems like such a cliched Mom complaint, but I'm understanding why we all keep talking about it. Because it's such a hassle! Yesterday my "alone time" was sleeping in the car in the parking lot of Trader Joe's because both kids fell asleep. Appreciated, but still pretty lame. I remind myself daily that this time is short. Fiona and Patrick won't always be this young. Fiona will sleep through the night (someday). Patrick will poop in the potty (someday soon please God). They'll be off to school and their world will expand beyond me. Someday I'll be sweetly nostalgic about being their everything. I might even miss it. But today, tonight, it's still hard.
We do have loads of fun.
While our day started at the normal time (5:42am, actually a bit of a sleep in) we lounged in pajamas until 8ish. We alternated Patrick's shows between "It's a Big Big World" (puppets in the rainforest) Wiggles Safari (featuring the Crocodile Hunter), and Leapster Word Factory. There is some pretty sweet kiddo TV out there! The Wiggles are really growing on me. I especially like Anthony. He wears the blue shirt. I guess he's straight, as evidenced by a wife and three kids. But you wouldn't know it by his dancing. We drank our coffee, checked Facebook, and played with the kids. The whole family went for a walk to Jefferson School Playground and the dogs got to run around. We went out for breakfast, and Patrick actually ATE something we ordered for him. Oatmeal, his choice.
Next, off to the mall. I wanted a good pair of walking/running shoes. I have several pairs of casual shoes, like Merrils and Keens, but I wanted something real. I now own Reeboks with micro-balance technology. We tried to get Patrick to try on sandals, but he was too busy having a meltdown. Home we went.
A pedicure or a nap...and I chose the pedicure. I now have iridescent teal blue toes with a white curlicue design on my big toes. Kevin vegged at home with the kids, neither who took a nap. By the time I got home, we were at the point of no return. Patrick could NOT take a nap or we'd be up with him forever. Now the challenge was to keep him up. We needed to get out of the house, but we couldn't drive too far or he'd fall asleep. We hit the playground at Titlow Park. And he almost did fall asleep but I kept harassing him until we arrived.
The rest of the day it was painfully obvious that the boy still needs to nap but doesn't want to nap at a good time, like noon. Patrick alternated between meltdown and hyper. Aren't you all jealous, those of you who know my sweet boy?
And our other child was with us today. She's just forced to go with the flow. So I forget to write about her. And she napped at convenient times, like throughout breakfast, during shoe shopping, and half the park trip. Currently Fiona is sleeping in the swing with the vacuum on. If I turn it off, she'll wake up. As I type I'm listening to Spilled Milk podcast on headphones. I occasionally turn it off to make sure Patrick is still in bed. Kevin is at the movies, cashing in on my pedicure this afternoon. He's going to see Twilight: Eclipse. I love that my man is cool enough to go see a teen chick flick by himself. On a Saturday night.
I'd been fighting a headache for three days. Interrupted sleep, too little water, and poor eating habits caught up with me. As I sat in the spa pedicure chair with my new Julia Quinn novel, I realized that I was really feeling depleted. Not enough time for myself at all. It seems like such a cliched Mom complaint, but I'm understanding why we all keep talking about it. Because it's such a hassle! Yesterday my "alone time" was sleeping in the car in the parking lot of Trader Joe's because both kids fell asleep. Appreciated, but still pretty lame. I remind myself daily that this time is short. Fiona and Patrick won't always be this young. Fiona will sleep through the night (someday). Patrick will poop in the potty (someday soon please God). They'll be off to school and their world will expand beyond me. Someday I'll be sweetly nostalgic about being their everything. I might even miss it. But today, tonight, it's still hard.
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