Reading herself to sleep

    I'm obsessed.  I have so many pictures of big L reading herself to sleep or falling asleep with books.  It's just the cutiest thing to me.  I can't help but smile and snap a picture when I see her doing this.  The best part is when I hear her "reading" the story.  

This is the first time she fell asleep reading.  :)

And the second time <3

Here are a few taken off the baby monitor

Nursing a 20 Month Old

The joys of nursing a 20 month old.

   My first at this point was done and a while before that she was mostly down to right before bed.  This child is a nursing fiend and I don't have the will power at the moment to cut the sessions back, at least it's healthy stuff right??!    

Here is what nursing a 20 month old can look like.  

Ok that's enough we are doing side lying position! 

Aww sleepy baby

So cute until she woke up right at the end of my shower. Right back to it. 

I maybe should start putting my foot down a bit more but until I do this is my life; some moments I love it and some moments I hate it but she won't do this forever.  

    *not pictured are the "I'll stand while you lean over on the couch mom"

The "sit toddler on counter while mom stands" 

And the "big sister is feeling left out so she will give toddler a hug while said toddler is attached to mom's nipple" 

Finding my Happy

Just a little poem I wrote up today about my constant struggle to stay happy.  

Finding my happy

I'm on the road 

The road of happiness 

Well at least I want to be.  . . 

I keep getting in the car and drive a little ways.  I'm feeling good, I've got the music blaring, the sun is shining, and the coast is clear.  Happiness- yea I like this drive. 

I come across some speed bumps, no problem I say; we can do this bumps and all just keep going.  There are some pot holes now, that's what makes like interesting right?? I come into some traffic, it's harder but I pep talk myself along.  But now the traffic is all but stopped and my can do attitude is gone.  I get off the road, I park my car, and I cry. 

10 Minutes Is All You Need Sometimes

    Today I was feeling touched out, exhausted, and I was having a hard time staying calm with L as the day was coming to a close. 

    The hubby got home after dinner was served.  When he walked in the door big L was in her room because she had been playing in a milk mess she made and refused to clean it up.  After I sent her upstairs she dumped out a basket of clean clothes.  I closed the door and set a timer for three minutes, she needed a time out and so did I.  

   The hubby fixed a bowl, ate, and then disappeared for half an hour.  I mean it was to use the bathroom and then to go in his office for a few minutes.  I'm sure he lost track of time and did not intend to be gone that long and there is a good chance he even returned a few work emails and or texts.  I told myself that he deserved some him time, time to decompress after his day too but I did too.  My day was long and demanding and even though my to do list was not completed I did accomplish a lot.  So when he came out of his office at 5 past 7 while I was shooing the girls upstairs, I decided to leave him to jamas and teeth brushing so I could take 10 minutes.

    I'm so glad I did!  I set my timer, sat cross legged on the couch with quiet music playing and meditated.  I focused on my breathing.  I thought about how I really needed this, what I needed to clean still, and how thankful I was that my husband let me have that time, and that with Gods help I can do this mom thing.  I went upstairs feeling more calm and much happier.  

   A certain cat was also glad I took some me time as he sat purring on me for most of the 10 minutes.  lol

Picture Face

    Little L is 16 months old now.  Time is just speeding by (sorry about the hiatus on the posts). Anywho this post is all about her picture face that has us cracking up lately.  She is in love with the camera.  Every time I pull it out to take a picture she makes the same face and it's not a smile, it's not a frown either at least, it's well how bout I just show you.  

    Ok last one, I don't know about you but I love it and can't help but chuckle when she makes her picture face. 😂

Washing dishes

 

    This is an old picture; from when big L would still let me put her hair up, but it's still how I wash dishes 85% of the time.  If she is not right next to me "helping" me wash dishes then it's a safe bet to assume she is sleeping or watching a show.  

    She stands on her folding step stool; this is about the one we have.  Before her daddy bought her that she would use a kitchen chair.  It's also what she uses to help bake and cook.  

    When I first started letting her "help" me wash dishes I gave her a little sponge with soap.  It turns out "helping" me wash dishes really means pretending to cook.  Which I suppose is fine, there are worse things for her to be doing and it keeps her busy.  She usually "makes" spaghetti, Mac and cheese, pancakes, or birthday cake just in case you were wondering.  

    It's a little harder to wash dishes this way since I'm a little squished but the job gets done so I will continue to let her "help".  

Hiding my late night ice cream snack

    Last night I had a snack of chocolate ice cream.  Little L woke up before I could dish some out so I just brought the whole carton to the couch.  With her asleep on my lap I absent mindly ate the whole thing :O.  I'm ashamed to admit that there was only one bowl eaten out of the carton before.  

    The hubby walked past me to get a drink and asked if he could put my ice cream away.  I had to admit that it was gone to which he responded "would you like me to throw that away for you".

    This morning I looked in the trash and saw this. 

If you have a two year old that's not how you throw away chocolate ice cream!  She will see it and ask for chocolate ice cream.  She will get upset that I will not let her have ice cream for breakfast and chocolate cereal may or may not be a suitable substitute.  No amount of crying will get me to cave but the whole situation can all be avoided if you just do a bit of rearranging.  

Fixed!  Think before you throw next time my really trying to be helpful hubby.  

*sorry for the trash pictures.  

Here is a cute baby picture to make up for it.  ;)

Blue mouth

    I'll admit this happened when I was paying too much attention too my phone but it could have as easily happened any other time.  

    Big L has some stickers that you can color yourself. She colored them mostly with a blue marker.  I looked up from my phone; Facebook is way too addicting, I'm trying to kick it but it's soooo hard.  Anyway I looked up and little L's tongue and all around her mouth was blue. At first I could not figure out what had happened but then I fished out the sopping wet sticker and found the culprit.  Good thing we only have non toxic markers. :/   

    

Yay for sleeping on your own; at least for longer stretches!

    My good little baby slept until I was actually ready to go to bed tonight!  It was so nice; I got to sit and have a snack, wash dishes, AND cuddle up with the hubs while we watched a show!  Then when I was ready to lay down she woke up, nursed a little, then fell back to sleep.

    This works for me, I can do this. It's the only sleeping on her own for 15 min at a time that makes me what to scream.

Good girl little L.  Is it asking too much to repeat this tomorrow night? 

Fixing a lift and flap book

    Well I may have let my 2.5 year old watch four shows already this morning and have her whole chocolate bunny.

Hey she did poop in the potty and ate almost a whole carton of strawberries, so don't judge.   I may have waited too long to check a diaper and as a result the baby had a poop out.  The floor may really need a vaccume and I have already had a good cry but this was fun; I fixed a lift and flap book.  

Some cardboard, fabric swatch, hot glue and a marker and it's kinda as good as new :)

  By the way I kinda hate lift and flap books and pop up books because they always seem to get ripped and ruined.  

Two ingredient pancakes

     

 Here is Little L enjoying her breakfast of one big strawberry and a two ingredient pancake.  

Last night I thought the two ingredient pancakes where a Pinterest fail. Today she is eating them.  Although they were not easy to flip.  I used a banana from the freezer so maybe they would turn out better with a fresh banana.  

    If you don't know what two ingredients it's 2 eggs and one mashed banana.  Some of my pancakes turned into scrambled eggs.  Yup that looked about as appetizing as it sounds.  :/.   

   Big L is having strawberries and coco puffs.  "Chocolate cereal with chocolate milk" as she calls it.  

    Disclaimer: I am not giving my child chocolate milk in her chocolate cereal.  The cereal turns the milk brown so she has started asking for chocolate cereal with chocolate milk.  Not like chocolate cereal with white milk is so much better but there are worse things in the world.   

No more pajamas

    Big L has decided she does not like pajamas anymore.  If you tell her "its time to put your jammies on".  She will respond " no not jammies, regular clothes!".  

    I would rather her wear pjs to bed but I'm not going to fight her about it as long as she is wearing something to bed.   I do make her wear elastic wast bands at least, no zipper and button pants.  

    This has turned out to be a kind of good thing though.  She puts regular clothes on at night and wakes up dressed.  No more fights about getting dressed in the morning!  I'm not sure if she has thought this through or not but she made a comment the other day that made me think she has.  I said "I need to go get dressed, and then we can go".  She looked down at her body and said "I'm already dressed!".  

    As far as I'm concerned she can wear regular clothes to bed for as long as she wants.  

    

Baby and her food

Feeding herself a spoon of mashed Avocado 

Carrots

Avocado! She loves avocado.  

Apple.  With just two teeth she can really eat a lot of this.  

Carrots agian just because I love this picture.  

Sweet potato is defiantly a fav. 

Summer squash! She has also had zucchini.  

Egg, yum!  Also we got a high chair!  A kind mom of four just gave it to us.  

Not pictured she has also had strawberries, rice, banana, and oranges as you saw in a different post.  

When we started solids she did not see to like them so we would go days without eating solids.  I've switched to chunks of food and she seems to enjoy that much better.  Now she likes to eat with us so she eats 1-3 times a day.  She doesn't ingest much but she has fun and is kept busy.  

I'm so much more go with the flow as far as food, and really other things as well, the second time around.  

On the move

    Time to start regularly cleaning the floors; little L is on the move.  She is not really crawling yet but within a span of five minutes or less she can make it across the room.  She flips over as fast as I put her down on her back, turns in circles, and shimmies back until she can anymore.  

   She puts what ever she can toward her mouth but seems to prefer any type of paper.  She also seems to enjoy licking the floor.  Hope this is modivation to keep them clean.  I guess I can at least run the vaccume a few more times a week.    

Stuck on the couch with a cat and a baby

    This is me right now, stuck on the couch with a nursing baby and a cold snugly cat.

    Little L's bottom two front teeth are so close to popping through the gums and her little nose is all stuffed up.   She needs some comfort and I suppose I'm happy I can give her that.  

    Mr. Mac, the yellow cat, is always cold and likes to snuggle whenever he can.  So here I am stuck in the couch.  They are forcing me to rest and I guess that's a good thing.  Hopefully I don't have to pee soon.  

Great dad!

    Big L woke up from her nap crying.  She woke up coughing and wet so I guess I can't really blame her.  

   Daddy pealed her pants off while she cryed that she wanted to leave them on and coughing.  Feeling bad he promised ice cream.  

    So she is all set up on the couch watching a show pantless, covered up with a blanket, and eating an ice cream sandwich.  He looks at me and sarcasticly says "a show and ice cream, I'm a great dad".  Big L pipes up with a big "ya!". As in "yes, you are a great dad!".  Guess who is the favorite today lol

    

What's mine is yours

    I'm sitting here on the couch nursing little L and eating an orange.  You know I thought I'd give myself some nutrition while giving my baby some too.  My little stuffy teething baby had other thoughts on this though.  As I'm taking the segments apart she looks up at me, stops nursing, grabs my orange, and starts to eat it herself.  

After she sucked the segments dry she went back to happily nursing.  

    We'll I guess what's mine is yours little baby, mom doesn't need to eat anyway.  

Driving to the airport

    My husband had to go to California for a few days for work.  Pretty jealous seeing as how they had 65 degree weather and we had -18.  Yes you read that right negitive 18.  At least the sun was out.  

    I was not about to let him drive himself and waste money leaving his car at the airport so we all piled in the car at 6 am.  Thank God for coffee because man was I tired.  I had a hard time falling asleep that night, then little L had a hard time sleeping at around 2 am, and finally big L was up and going at 4.  

    We got going pretty much on time, which really is a miracle in it self.  Of course it had snowed the night before so the roads were slippery.  We were hoping we were going to miss most of the traffic but no such luck.  Then on top of that in a laps in judgment I made the hubby some snacks for the plane, which he ended up not eating, instead of feeding Little L.  I just gave him a cut up carrot and an apple, nothing fancy, but still eat my food man!  Since I did not feed her she started crying a few minutes out. When she did not stop I climbed in the back to try to comfort her.  Nothing but the boob would do though.  So here I am squashed between two car seats leaning over Little Ls body trying to keep my size Bs in her mouth and trying hard not to care what passing cars thought of me.  She fell asleep after about 15/20 min later and so did Big L.  

    Thankfully the rest of the trip was non eventful.  Dropped the hubs off and made it home safe and sound.  

Toothpicks in a colander

    We have let big L do this activity before but this time she set it up herself.  Proud mommy moment right here.     

   Although when she first took the colander out of the cabinet I was   annoyed.  I told her to put it back; I really did not feel like washing it agian.  Par for the course she ignored me and pulled the bucket of toothpicks off the counter.  

At that point I understood what she was doing.  I changed from annoyed to proud.  I'm always happy to have her do a fine motor activity such as putting toothpicks through the holes in a colander.  

    She did dump all the toothpicks into the floor, I was not overly happy about that.  I should have made her clean it up but at that point it did not seem worth the fight.  I wish I had though.  I hate when I look back and realize I've missed a learning opportunity.  Also who wants to pick up a ton of toothpicks off the floor when they did not make the mess? Oh well that's one of the many 'joys' of mootherhood, picking up after your children.   

Emotional first bite

    Well we did it, we started solids.  Little L has had some allergy issues so we were told to wait till 5 months.  She can't tolerate if I eat soy or dairy.  Talk about hard, I can't believe how much food has soy in it.  Makes me want to do this

Also I drive myself nuts second guessing if dairy and soy both are both the problem.  

    Anyway a few days past 5 months and the hubby would not let me put it off anymore.  I gave her a tiny amount of no sugar added applesauce but I was not exactly happy about it.    

    I actually had a much stronger reaction than I ever expected I would.  I had a pit in my stomach the whole time I was feeding her and I shed some tears after I cleaned her up.  

   I guess the worry about how her tummy would handle it was part of the reason for my emotion.  By the way she was not impressed with the taste but no tummy issues or allergic reactions.  Yay!  

Still I'm going to tread lightly with solids because I can't stop myself from worrying.  

   The other part of my reaction I think stemmed from the fact that she is my last.  We are planning to only have these two girls, so now that I've jumped the hurdle of solids I have to face the fact that I won't be doing that again. I won't be giving a baby their first bite of food again.  My baby's are growing up, I can't stop it, and this is all I have.  

    Now that I have jumped that hurdle I'm kinda excited about her next first taste though.  I'm thinking oatmeal or bananas.