Christmas Pictures

My kids' mood can change in an instant. Really, they quite possibly are 13 year olds disguised as small children. Knowing this, on the day that I wanted to take their Christmas pictures I knew I had to be quick. We set up our backdrop and got all of that ready before we even clued them in to the fact that we were going to take some pictures. I even had my camera completely ready before we got them dressed. Basically I knew we wouldn't get much time haha

I'm pretty happy with how they turned out though. Of course I wish I could have gotten more and I wish my lighting would have been better etc, but I feel like it captures them pretty well and so I'm happy. 
Here are a few of my favorites:

Did you have Christmas pictures taken? Did you take them yourself or have someone else do them?

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Brrr!

Apparently we keep our home a little too warm for an Elf. I should have known that an Elf is probably use to cooler temps!

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Meet Christopher

You've all heard of the Elf on the Shelf right? Sure you have, if not you either don't have children or don't have any sort of social media presence. If you haven't here he is:

But this post isn't about him, though about something very similar. This is about the original. Meet Christopher Pop-in-kins:

I will be posting our adventures with our elf on my blog vs my Facebook as I know not everyone enjoys this sort of thing :) You can find Christopher here. The Christopher Pop-In-Kins book was released in 1985 and the story is about an elf that is sad because he wants to see the kids that get the presents they make. So Santa allows Christopher to "pop-in" to check on the kids. The rules are that no child must touch him or he will lose his magic and have to come back to the North Pole to get it, so he needs to be careful. Another rule is that he return by Christmas Eve so he can report back to Santa before he has to pack his bag with gifts. 

The book is colorful and while it is a tad long, Norah, who is almost 2 1/2 sat through the whole thing without a problem. Christopher himself is cute. I love his oversize shoes! I also love that he is bendable/positionable. He looks very friendly to me. 

There is also a "Christina" elf and we may add her next year so they can hide together. You can find her here. You can purchase the elves as well as the books separately as well.

From now until Christmas Eve I will post where we find Christopher each day. Christopher will sometimes be found simply hanging out and other days he will have suggestions for us (such as coloring a color sheet, doing something together such as baking or finding a way to do something nice for our community). 

Last night before bed we read the book for the first time and let Norah know we'd be looking for him in the morning. Wes is of course a tad young for it so he'll be more in to it next year :) This morning we went from room to room asking if she saw him yet and when she did she was pretty excited and all day she kept going to where he was saying, "There he is!!" I'm hoping tomorrow when she wakes up it'll take less prompting and when she sees him she'll realize he moved. 

So here is where we found Mr. Pop-In-Kins this morning. He wanted to remind us just how to spread Christmas cheer this holiday season :)

I'll update this post with each day's new adventure with Christopher:
Day 2

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Learning To Not Rush To Bedtime

Many days bedtime seems to be the prize. If I can get to bedtime I've accomplished something. If the kids and I are still in one piece and they are asleep, I've made it. Sound familiar at all?

Sometimes I get so busy, so self consumed that I forget my children are to be enjoyed. After I've reached that "prize" of the end of the day I often feel guilty. How much of me did the kids get today? Did I enjoy them? Did I simply rush them through the day hoping for the least amount of hiccups until The clock finally said 7:30? Did I love on them... did I enjoy them?
I'm challenging my husband and I (and you!) to make sure we are enjoying our kids. That we don't make parenting a burden. That we fully experience the joy that our children are. Sure, it isn't jump up and down fun all of the time, and that's okay. It's okay if some days bedtime can't come a moment too soon. Days like that are bound to happen. But I have felt convicted lately about not being fully engaged enough to appreciate the kids. 
Maybe I would be less tired if I played on the floor a little more with them. Maybe I would be less stressed if I laughed at them when they splashed in the tub. Maybe I would feel more happiness if I embraced being asked for yet another story at bedtime. Maybe, just maybe, I won't look back on this time, sad that they have grown up, if I take the time to appreciate them being this age, while they are this age. 
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Hot Coffee?!

It's not often that I get to finish a cup of hot coffee. Usually I find my abandoned mug half filled with cold coffee. My kids wake up before the Sun and so while I would love to always wake up before them, get myself together and sit down and consume a hot coffee, it just doesn't happen that way. I get busy with the kids and well hot coffee just doesn't happen after those first few sips. 

Source

Until this morning. This morning I was up very early and made myself a cup of joe, very excitedly knowing that I was going to sit in a quiet, near dark room and enjoy it. My last sip was not going to be cold this time! Ohhhh the simple things in life. I poured my coffee, added my milk and made my way to the couch. Yay! It was going to happen!
I plopped down on the couch. I should have never plopped on the couch. See this was my mistake. With a 2 year old and 8 month old, they coffee I do get to drink I a typically standing, taking swigs of it as I walk by it on the counter. 
Darn the glorious option to plop. When I plopped myself on the couch, my coffee plopped itself all over me. I had filled that mug up to the brim, what was I thinking?! I now had hot coffee all over my lap. 
Oh, then the kids woke up. 
It's okay, one day I will know what the last sip of coffee tastes like :)
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Halo Sleep Sack

Fall has finally arrived here in Indiana, and it looks like we're going to be headed straight to winter rather quickly. We live in an older home and my kids' rooms never feel quite warm enough. Wes has outgrown the option of swaddling and with him only being 8 months old I don't feel comfortable giving him a blanket yet. I LOVED the Halo swaddle that the hospital sent us home with because I felt like he could stay warm but be safe at the same time. We could never get a tight enough swaddle on him with just a blanket and he was always breaking free (stinking escape artist). There was no way for him to break free from the Halo swaddle (take that Houdini!).

Did you know that Halo makes sleep sacks for older kids?? I seriously had no idea that they made products for older children. I mean, did you know?! When I was contact by them about featuring their product on my blog I was so surprised that they had a product for my older infant. I just assumed they were just in the swaddle market. 
This is what they look like:

Image from Halo's website

Basically it's a blanket they can wear. They can't get tangled up in it and they can't suffocate themselves with it. 

Safe sleep has always been a biggie with me. I've never been one to load my kids' crib up with blankets and stuffed animals. Here are some safe sleep tips straight from Halo:

HALO Innovation’s SleepSack® wearable blankets have become the standard for hospital nurseries and parents alike. In fact, 1,000 hospital nurseries use the HALO SleepSack Swaddle instead of blankets through the HALO Safer Way to Sleep Initiative. HALO Innovations also offers free Safe Sleep Practices kits to childbirth educators to help further the cause of SIDS prevention.

ALWAYS

• Place baby to sleep on his or her back at naptime and at night time.
• Use a crib that meets current safety standards with a firm mattress that fits snuggly and is covered with only a tight-fitting crib sheet.
• Remove all soft bedding and toys from your baby’s sleep area (this includes loose blankets, bumpers, pillows and positioners). The American Academy of Pediatrics suggests using a wearable blanket instead of loose blankets to keep your baby warm.
• Offer a pacifier when putting baby to sleep. If breastfeeding, introduce pacifier after one month or after breastfeeding has been established.
• Breastfeed, if possible, but when finished, put your baby back to sleep in his or her separate safe sleep area alongside your bed.

NEVER

• Never put your baby to sleep on any soft surface
• Never dress your baby too warmly for sleep; keep room temperature 68-72 degrees Fahrenheit.
• Never allow anyone to smoke around your baby or take your baby into a room or car where someone has recently smoked.

Halo is actually donating $1 to SIDS awareness for every new "like" they get on their Facebook page during the month of October. I love when companies show support to a great cause! 

How cute is this rocket design? 

Aside from how cute it is, my absolute favorite thing about it is that the zipper starts at the top and zips down. There are so many baby clothes (mostly pjs) that my kids can access the zipper pull and chew on it and I absolutely hate it. With this, that isn't possible. Oh my goodness the fleece is so soft as well!

You can purchase any of the Halo sleep products directly from their website or from target.com and amazon.com

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Sleep Texting

As I've mentioned 345,603 times before, we have terrible sleepers. We've tried every trick in the book from immediately going to them to cry it out to prayer to baths. Pretty much everything shy of casting a spell of some sort, and sometimes at 3am I wouldn't rule it out... Finally our almost 2 1/2 year old is sleeping through the night almost every night, and while our 7 month old had been doing okay (but not sleeping through) before, he is now up much more often as he is teething. It certainly is a challenge, and I forget what it is like to consistently sleep through the night myself (I can probably count on one hand how many full nights of sleep I have gotten since the summer of 2011), I have come to accept it and repeat "This too shall pass" often. I wouldn't trade my beautiful children for a full night of sleep. 
So two nights ago when he woke up during the 2 O'Clock hour Matt went up to him in an effort to not have him nurse back to sleep, which we are trying to break him of. Well after a while I rolled over to send him a text (Matt, not Wes... though maybe that would help - "Wes, Hi this is your mother, please STTN, TTYL... you know in the AM") telling him he could just go ahead and bring him in our bedroom and I would nurse him. Typically my husband does not have his phone on him in the middle of the night so this was my first half asleep error. I remember holding my phone thinking I was texting him. Suddenly Matt walks into the room with Wes and I sit up and tell him I was texting him and look down at my text. This is what I saw:

Apparently texting while you are half asleep results in gibberish that no one can interpret (and he didn't even have his phone on him of course). 
Have you ever texted someone while you were asleep or almost asleep? Maybe you texted the wrong person?

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This Or That: Baby Edition

Having a 2 year old and a 6 month old we have tried several baby items. We've weeded our way through several brands and products. I would like to do a series in which I compare like products with each other that we have tried. So if you have any ideas of two brands or products that you would like to see compared let me know and I'll see what I can do :) After I've finished this series I'll be moving on to "This Or That: Toddler Edition". 
The first post of the series will be on wipes. We use wipes constantly and not just for diaper changes! I'll be comparing 3 brands and let you know how they have sized up to each other for us.  *I will link each new post in the series here on this post for easy reference as they get written.  This or That: Wipes This or That: Cloth vs Disposables

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Thankful Thursday

Over the last week or so we've settled into as much of a routine as we can considering we have a 3 week old and a 20 month old. We haven't really had a normal bedtime established with Wesley yet as he's just kind of went to the cosleeper in our room when we went to bed at night. Tonight though for the first time I was able to sneak away for a few minutes and rock him to sleep for the night (well for his first round of sleep) in our room. 
I'm thankful for that. I'm thankful for the few quiet moments alone with him in our darkening room as he drifted off. With an active toddler running around the house I haven't gotten very many quiet calm moments with him and I saw the opportunity for it and took advantage of it. I'm thankful that I was able to safely rock my baby to sleep  and not worry about him being in danger or worry about his comfort  unlike so many parents in the world. He had a full tummy as he happily was in my arms, I thankfully (thankfully isn't nearly a strong enough word) don't have to feel the anguish of knowing that my child is falling asleep with true hunger in their gut. 
Tonight as I put him to sleep in that frozen moment in time, it didn't matter that our house is sometimes often chaotic, that there are clothes to be washed, that there are uncertainties in the world, that evil exists or that one day he'll be all grown up and I'll no longer rock him to sleep - none of that existed at that moment because in that moment all that was happening in my world was my rocking him to sleep. I'm so thankful that I'm so blessed to be able to have that moment with my child, as I know not all parents are given that opportunity. 

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One Week As a Family of Four

"I got baby!" Norah babbles A LOT but she has been a bit slow on actual words and prior to Wesley being born she hadn't strung any words together at all. She was mostly just saying "Bite" "No" basic simple words. Suddenly when Wesley was born she started to very obviously say, "I got baby!" and "It's baby!" When visiting at the hospital every time a nurse would walk into the room she would point at Wesley and say, "I got baby" You know... in case they didn't know ;)
She's a great big sister. She is trying to help and does a good job for he most part (even though sometimes it appears that she is trying to suffocate him). Like I imagined it is hard to give her the same amount of attention but she seems to be doing fine. The only attention issue so far is sometimes when I'm nursing him she tries to literally climb on top of me and as you may know it's a bit tough to nurse and have another kid trying to sit on your lap. 
As far as Wesley goes, he's pretty much awesome. Mostly his only job right now is to eat, sleep, poop and look cute and he's doing well in all of those areas so he's rockin' this whole earth side thing. 
Norah is much happier at the doctor when it isn't for her. Ignore her messy hair... it was an accomplishment just getting to the Pedi. 

I can't believe he is already a week old today. This time last week I had my epidural and was waiting patiently to be fully dilated. On one hand I can't believe it was only a week ago that he was still in my belly and it feels like he's always been here - but then I also can't believe it's already been a whole week and it's went by so fast and I still look over and can't believe he is already here. 

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He's Here!

At 2:35pm Tuesday, February 12th we became a family of four. I couldn't really ask for a better labor and delivery which was only 6 1/2 total hours and ended with only 10 minutes of pushing to bring him down and then one 5 second push to bring his whole self into the world. I thought my 40 minutes of pushing with Norah was short, but it was seriously incredibly fast this time. 
It's of course and adjustment going from one child to two but we're enjoying having our little guy around and we're so glad he is finally here. Norah loves him and is walking around telling everyone, "I got baby!" She hasn't caught on yet that poking him in the eye isn't the best way to get to know him though :) 

For those who like to read detailed birth stories:  If you'd rather not read step by step details I'd probably stop here ;) My water was broken by 7:55am and I was 3cm. I immediately started having regular contractions about 3 minutes apart that were increasing in intensity. At 9am I got a low dose of pitocin to keep my contractions from tapering off. Not long after that my contractions got much more difficult to manage and seeing as I knew ahead of time that I wanted the epidural I went ahead and asked for it. 
The nurse encouraged nubane first since I had a good experience with it the last time and simply because I wanted something immediate I agreed. Just as she had the vile of nubane in his hand ready to inject it into my heplock her phone rang and it was the anesthesiologist saying he was watching my contraction monitor remotely (I was the only one in the hospital in labor so I had plenty of attention lol) and since he knew I wanted the epi he said I was in a good position to go ahead and get one. I was thankful for that because my past experience showed that once I got the epi I dilated much more quickly and up to that point I had went an hour-ish with no progression, I was still at a 3. I then declined getting the nubane as I knew he'd be there soon and would rather not be loopy if I was getting the epi soon anyways. He was incredibly slow and it took him 45 minutes to get the epidural in and the meds started and if you have been in labor before I'm sure you know that 45 minutes is a long time to sit up straight and still is difficult while contracting. Finally just after 11am my epidural was placed and the meds were doing their job. 
Right after getting the epidural I was checked again and was at 5-6cm. We chilled out for a little bit and I watched an episode of Full House (there isn't much on in the middle of the day on a Tuesday) and rested a bit. Around 1 I started feeling some pressure with each contraction. At 1:20 I felt a little bit of nausea, which is assume was me being in transition. I let them know and at 1:30 they checked me again because the pressure was getting more pronounced (my epidural was perfect in the fact that I felt no pain, but I could feel the pressure sensation) and I was at a 9 1/2 fully effaced. We decided we'd wait until I felt more pressure to check me again, so at 2pm I was checked again and I was still at 9 1/2. A few minutes later we decided to roll me on my side to help finish dilation and almost immediately I knew that he was ready. So I started pushing from 2:15-2:25 which was probably about 4-5 contractions until they all started yelling for me to stop immediately because he was suddenly deciding it was time to come NOW and the doctor wasn't there yet. They called her and told her to run. It took her 10 minutes which was probably the most difficult part of the whole thing - he was ready to be born and wasn't waiting for anyone. The doctor finally got there at 2:34 and with the next contraction I pushed for about 5 seconds before he was completely born at 2:35. I got to hold him right away and they didn't take him to be weighed or anything until after we were ready for that step. His scores were 8 & 9 (do any babies actually get a 10 on the scale, ever?!) He weighed 8lbs 3oz 19 3/4 inches long. 
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Latest Project

Goodness, you mix the holiday season with a toddler and being pregnant and you get a very sidetracked mama! I haven't abandoned the blog I promise, I've just been so busy (Can you say exhausted?!)
I've done a few projects for Wesley's room but honestly not very much. His birth is really sneaking up on me and I feel so unprepared! 
One of the small projects I have done though is Pinterest inspired (of course). I've seen this idea floating around there. Basically you nail a shape/letter/design into a piece of wood and then use yard or twine to fill in the gaps. This was a super cheap project! We bought a board at Home Depot for $2.50 and had them cut it into 3 pieces for us (I used one of the other pieces for a project for him as well). The paint is actually left over from painting our living room (Gray is a common color between his room and our living room) so that didn't cost anything extra. I did buy yarn but it didn't take very much yarn at all. 
Anyways, here is how it turned out:

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Thankful Thursday

Yesterday we took a tour of the Women's Center where I will be delivering Wesley. It is important for me to know what to expect (as much as you can when you are talking about labor/delivery!) as it helps ease anxiety for me. I like to be able to envision what my room will look like and what I can expect as far as policies go. I'm pretty excited because they are very flexible and let mom and dad make most of the calls. You can labor and deliver in whatever position you want assuming you are capable of moving which I will most likely have an epidural so I'll be limited, but the fact that if you want to deliver in a position other than on your back tells me a lot about the facility. I'm also excited that it is standard practice for them to wait until the cord has stopped pulsating to cut it, such a small thing but it means they have put thought into things. Another thing I like is unless there is a problem they do not require continuous monitoring, every 30 minutes during active labor and 10-15 minutes at the end of labor is their desire - which is great!
While I'm thankful for what I'm hoping to be a great experience, that's not what my Thankful Thursday really is today.
During our tour we were taken into the NICU. The center has a Level III NICU which is great. The NICU was nice and seemed like the babies are well taken care of. I don't want to step foot back in there again. I hope I never see the inside of that part of the center again. I'm thankful we have the technology and know how to help those small needy babies (and the big ones too like my niece who needed it), I hope we never need them. We passed by a room on our way out and there was a baby who is probably about the size Wesley is now in an isolate, so about 3ish pounds. While I can't wait to meet Wesley, I don't want to meet him before he is ready. 
So I'm thankful that for the most part at this point I have had uncomplicated pregnancies. I've never thought with either Norah or this pregnancy that I might not make it to full term. I might complain that I'm not sleeping well, that my back hurts or that I'm tired (I'm sure my husband can attest to all of this) but I will gladly take that for the next 9-10 weeks in exchange for the alternative. 
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There's a Baby Growing In There

I had a moment when I was pregnant with Norah where I realized there was a baby growing in my belly. Obviously I knew it when I saw the two pink lines, but I'm talking about a moment when I was in the mid 20 week mark and I looked in the mirror one day while at work and realized my stomach was becoming obvious. 
It took a bit longer this time because I've been so busy with chasing our beautiful daughter around, moving and now that they holidays are here there is every more to distract me. I'm now 29 weeks (well tomorrow) and I'm getting to be very obviously pregnant both to others and myself. I know it when I try to tie my shoes, pick up that toy off the floor and as I'm carrying Norah up the stairs for her nap (break halfway up anyone??). Up until now I've known that I am pregnant but haven't really had the chance to think about the baby boy I'm growing in there. 

Now that we are settled into our new place and things are calming down (as much as they can this time of year anyways) I'm excited to start buying things for baby Wesley (It's true, we haven't bought him much... partly because he really doesn't need very much that we don't already have). I'm even more excited to meet him sometime late January/early February. 
I'm incredibly nervous about how I'll manage staying home alone all day 5 days a week with a 20 month old and a newborn but I'm so excited for all that is to come and to have a newborn around. This time I know just how quickly they move out of the newborn stage. 
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