Growth Spurt

Let's hope Ashley is going through a growth spurt. Let me document what she had for dinner:

Main Course:
1/2 marinated chicken breast (I had the other 1/2 in case you were wondering)
some green beans
at least 10 strawberries
milk
apple juice

Then her friend Hayden came over to play, and they had a snack:
1/2 of a sugar cookie (split with Hayden)
One Go-gurt
most of an individual bag of goldfish
box of raisins
one of Ray's bagel bites that he was eating for dinner when he got home
more milk

And she was still saying she was hungry!!

Audrey had her usual, some mush and those puff things.

It Happened

Well, it finally happened. Ashley told me last night she "didn't like me." I thought she would at least be twelve before she said that. Nope, she's three.

We were walking home after playing with some neighbors and their kids, and I made her stop before she attempted to cross the street by herself. I picked her up and she abruptly told me, "I don't like you." How do you respond to that? I just told her that wasn't very nice and that I didn't want her to run into the street. And then I kind of left it at that.

I think she might have picked it up from her good friend Max. Our friends were visiting this weekend, and Max told his Mom Heather that at one point. And he told me that, and Ashley might have heard. Or she could have learned it from school, who knows and who cares. I just wasn't prepared to hear it. Ashley does tell us she loves us unprompted all the time, so at least that is some consolation.

Ten Things To Do While Feeding Your Baby At Some Point in the Middle of the Night

1. Sleep
   
2. Try to stay awake so she doesn’t choke on her formula or suck just air since the bottle isn’t being held upright since you are sleeping.
   
3. Think about how Christmas is only a couple of months away.
   
4. Sleep
   
5. Try to scratch your nose while holding the bottle and trying not to disturb drinking baby.
   
6. Sleep
   
7. Curse the squeaky rocking chair.
   
8. Try to keep your mind off the fact you have to pee.
   
9. It’s a small world after all, it’s a small world after all, it’s a small, small world. Get senseless songs out your head. Sing better ones like “London Bridge” by Fergie.
   
10. Pray to the sleep Gods she will stay asleep when you lay her down.

You can get perfect baby names on the internet along with gift ideas and baby supplies too. Not to mention lists of baby songs that you find on a baby guide site.

Pictures of Parade

The only picture you will get will be of Audrey. For some reason, I let Ray take the pictures that day, and there just aren't any good pictures of Ashley. I have no idea what he did. And yes, I printed those pictures off the internet and taped them to Audrey's wagon!

Friendly Street

When we moved to North Carolina, we wanted to live in a “family friendly neighborhood”. We wanted kids for the girls to play with, and happy, social neighbors. We were coming from a neighborhood where our street had no little kids and not so friendly neighbors.

We are very, very happy where we live. It’s just things are getting a little out of control on our street…

It all started with a playgroup set up for the kids that will go to kindergarten in 2008 with Ashley. There are about 15 kids on our street in that category, and one of the moms set up a playgroup to meet twice a month so these kids can get to know each other. One Saturday a month (basically because I bitched that I worked full time and can’t attend during the week) and one Monday a month.

Then one of the moms wanted to do a Halloween parade on Saturday, October 28th. I actually did the flyer for it. Well, the simple parade ended up being a parade with cupcakes, pizza and gifts for the kids at the end (there are 48 kids on our street). And the parade is at 4:00 pm and will likely be over at 4:15 pm. Yea for dinner on a Saturday night at 4:15 pm.

So I am sitting at work, and I get this email:
Hi everyone, I know it's a little early to start thinking about Christmas,
but I wanted to make sure we got the clubhouse, because it's the
nicest.:) We are all set for December 16th at 4:00, I just need to drop off
the deposit. Jessica and I were talking about having it catered by Daniel's,
let me know what you all think
Thanks
Heather

So I guess we are having a Christmas party catered for the kids at Christmas time. Interesting. And it’s at the clubhouse. And it’s catered by Daniel’s (no idea what that restaurant is, so don’t ask).

My neighbor across the street from me and I started chatting. We think some of the moms are in competition with each other to plan all these events. Part of me is like, cool, these are all great ideas, gets us all together, fine and dandy. Then the other part of me is like, we don’t all need to get along all the time. I hang out with certain people on the street for various reasons (we are alike or we have kids the same age, etc.) and it works out great. And other neighbors gravitate towards other neighbors as well.

Anyways, as I said before, we love where we live and know our neighbors would do anything for us. It just cracks me up sometimes to have all this stuff going on.

Parades, parades, parades...

I know you all are dying to find out what I did for Ashley last week for the cultural parade...well, I ended up putting her in a tie-dyed t-shirt to "symbolize" the mixture she is. That was the best I could do on limited time. I will post pictures tonight. It was pretty cute though, at the end they all sang It's a Small World. Now I hope you have that song stuck in your head all day like I do....it's a small world after all...it's a small world after all.....

On another completely unrelated topic - I reached my 10% goal in Weight Watchers!! Yea for me!!

Random Thoughts and Horrible Movies

Monday night, I went out to dinner and the movies with three other women from my street. We had Japanese for dinner, and the went to the movie theater thinking we would see The Black Dahlia. We were past the time, so the only other movie was The Last Kiss with Zach Braff. Let me just say, I love Zach Braff, he is hilarious in Scrubs, but DON'T. GO. SEE. THIS. MOVIE. Especially if you are looking for a feel good movie because you come out of the theater pretty pissed off at your husband, even if he has never, ever done anything to piss you off ever.

****
This is really pathetic, but I just had to call Ray and confirm Audrey's birthdate. I thought she was born on the 18th of January, but I was having doubts. Why can't I remember her birthday?

****
Ashley and Audrey are having a cultural parade at school tomorrow. We are supposed to dress them like their culture and bring in food related to it. Um, yea, their culture? If we really had to trace back, they are mutts, so what would that look like? My side of the family - Italian, German, Polish, West Virginian (Haha Mom!). Ray's side, who knows. I completely understand for those people who are first or second or even third generation here in the great United States. But why can't I dress them as Americans? And bring in Freeze Pops??

Bad Night

Ashley had a bad evening and night. She didn't nap at school yesterday, although her teacher told me she did great. It was raining outside, so that meant she would be able to play outside with her best friend Hayden (in the picture above). Once home though, she wouldn't listen and barely ate dinner only to ask me 10 minutes after I threw her dinner out if she could have a snack. Then around 7:00pm we were upstairs playing and she took a toy from Audrey. She is really bad about ripping stuff out of Audrey's hands. So she had to give it back to her and then she fell apart. She cried for probably 20 minutes. In that 20 minutes, I held her, got her pj's on, tried to convince her to let me read books to her, held her some more, and then finally convinced her to lay in bed. I turned off her light and layed with her. She grabbed my arm, curled up on her side, and immediately fell asleep.

So, in bed by 7:30pm meant she was up at 5:30am. Lucky us.

With Ashley, we were constantly consumed with her sleep. It didn't help that everyone asks new parents, "is she sleeping through the night?". Ashley was what many would call a bad sleeper. As a newborn, she was up every two hours for the first couple of weeks (or was it months, I can't remember.) And the magical sleeping through the night did not come until she was 18 months old. Yes, you read that right. And we did everything right, she went to sleep on her own, we tried giving her water instead of milk when she woke in the middle of the night, etc. We were even part of a sleep study with John Hopkins. We were miserable and cranky and desperately needed sleep.

Now we have Audrey, the "good" sleeper. Well, at least she was. The second night in the hospital, I kept her in the room with me. She slept from about midnight until 5:00am. I was in shock. And when we brought her home, she would go to sleep around 10:00 or 11:00pm and sleep until about 4:00am consistently. Then at about 6 weeks, she was sleeping through the night.

Then teething came. Since then (the last two months) she has been waking up once in the middle of the night for a bottle. There has been the few instances that she has done more than that, but those are only once or twice a week. But Ray and I don't seem to be as cranky or tired. Maybe I shouldn't speak for Ray, but it doesn't bother me as much this time to get up with Audrey. She is so cute in the middle of the night. I go in to get her, and she looks up at me from the crib and just grins. She takes her bottle and goes right back to sleep.

The real reason I think I don't mind as much this time? I know this is the last baby I will have. I won't have to do the middle of the night feedings again once Audrey outgrows this. I am sad that this is it, but happy at the same time that these two girls are growing up into such sweet little girls.

Underwear and Curse Words

Ashley had ballet yesterday. When I got home with Audrey, Ashley and Ray had just returned home from class and running errands. Ashley then has to go to the bathroom. Of course since she is in her tights and leotard, this requires taking all her clothes off. But this reveals – she has no underwear on. I guess when Ray took her last week and changed her, somehow the underwear came off and the tights went on without the underwear. And now she thinks that’s how you wear a ballet outfit.

Ashley and I went to pick up pizza for dinner. I was trying to help her in her carseat and hold the pizza at the same time. As I about dropped the pizza, I of course said “shit.”

“Why did you say shit?”
“I didn’t, I said shoot.”
“No you didn’t.”
“Fine, just don’t tell Daddy.”

At the dinner table, I asked Ashley what her vocabulary word was today.
“Balls,” she replied. Then she continued, “We learned about boys’ balls.”
Holding back laughter, Ray asked her what boys’ balls look like.
“Like soccer balls, footballs.”
“Do girls have balls?”
“Nope.”

Deserving

Audrey deserves her own post just because
she is too darn cute.

Ballet for 3 Year Olds

That's Ashley, the one without the skirt. She has a skirt, I just had to fish it out of her dress up box. We aren't sure if she likes ballet. Ashley's attention span isn't very good and according to Ray, she has his gracefulness, or lack thereof. The class is 45 minutes, and she probably pays attention to half of it. I would of course love to see her stick it out and make it to the recital, but if she isn't enjoying it, then it's not worth the money. Maybe if they had a I Dance Like a Crazy Person dance class, then she could go because sometimes that how she dances at home. So she will keep at it for a few more weeks and then we will decide if she should try something else.

Lack of Posts

Sorry for the lack of posts the past couple of days. It seems all my meetings always land in the same week every month. I had a band meeting (trying to raise money), a parent advisory council meeting, and of course band practice tonight. I had planned to post last night, but our internet was down. Then this morning, I grabbed what I thought was my laptop so I could take it to work and post some pictures (I get here before anyone else and would have had the time). Instead I grabbed Ray's laptop. Yup, he's pretty pissed considering it is his work computer. So he will be making a trip to the lovely hospital campus I work on today to get his laptop. And the pictures aren't on his anyways. It's been one of those mornings...

Weight loss update - I lost another 2 pounds last week, bringing my total to 16.5 in 4 weeks. I can wear pants I haven't worn in a while, so I am excited. It's been pretty hard to run at night this week, but I have attempted it twice. I did pretty good last night, but Monday night, I dropped my ipod halfway through and found that a good reason to stop.

I normally run after the kids go to bed. Ashley has been calling me to her room after we put her down for no good reason (drink of water, tell me "something", etc.). So I tell her I am going to run on the treadmill, that I won't be coming back. I swears she waits on me to finish. I normally go right downstairs (the treadmill is in my bedroom) after I finish to get water. Ashley hears me walk down the hall and calls out for me. Once I check on her and tell her I am done, she goes to sleep.

Anyways, pictures will be up tonight plus an update of her ballet class. Hope everyone has a great Thursday!

9/11 Should Be the New Flag Day

Many people wrote about 9/11 today. I spent a while at my desk at work yesterday crying at the pictures of the kids who lost their parents on that day. Because to me, that's what hurts the most - the kids who lost their parents. Loss of life in anyway is sad, but having kids of my own now makes me realize just how important life is. What I really think about on 9/11? I think about how am I going to tell my daughters about that day, or how am I going to make them understand what everyone in our country felt that day, no matter where you were.

Statues and Birth Defects

Last weekend, we attended a surprise 30th birthday party for a neighbor of ours. Kids were welcome as our neighbor had activities for the kids to do. Other neighbors that we have hung out with outside were there as well. One of their daughters has a birth defect, her right hand is deformed. I guess Ashley had never noticed it before when we have been playing with them. But in the confined room we were in, the girls all decided to hold hands and run around the room. Needless to say, Ashley became fascinated with her right hand. She kept trying to hold it and stared at it. I assume this is normal for her age. Then they had a group activity to do and all the kids lined up. Ashley then turned to me and said, "Mommy, she has a little hand." I wanted to dig a hole and bury myself. Instead, I discreetly pulled Ashley aside and explained to her that people come in a all shapes and sizes, and some people will be very different from you and I. I think some of it sank in as she left her alone the rest of the time.

The other thing that happened at the party involved Ashley and a decorative statue of a golfer that was in the room we were. The statue was exactly Ashley's height. So off went Ashley to talk to the "golfer." Talking turned into giving the golfer a hug, then kissing the golfer before Ray and I put a stop to the molesting of the statue. I wish I had my camera with me!

A Fashion Statement

Here is Ashley after coming home from school today. I normally lay the clothes out for the girls every night not because Ray can't pick out clothes (I do get the frantic phone call sometimes when I haven't laid out clothes) but to make it easier on him. Everyone believes me, right?

Anyways, I did not send her to school in this. This outfit is her extra, I will never have to wear this and that's why it stays in my backpack for school outfit. She had a nightmare during her nap today and had an accident.

Tie-dye, plaid shorts and purple crocs. Definitely will be in fashion sometime soon.

Oh, and as for the purple crocs, yes, I fell for the latest fashion item that all the kids at school have. She just got them in the mail yesterday and she loves them. I held out long enough, but they are cute and they look extremely comfortable and I am a sucker. And she doesn't have to wear socks which she hates.

Her old "school" shoes that I ordered from Land's End that promised not to smell, well those walked themselves to the trash can after I washed them repeatedly trying to get the vinegary nasty smelly foot smell out of them. And I did email Land's End to tell them their anti-microbial shoes don't work.

Anyways, I tried in vain to find pink crocs since that is her favorite color ("and Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star is my favorite song" according to Ashley). But all I found were purple.

I'm Not Pregnant

When I was pregnant with Ashley, Ray and I decided not to tell anyone until after the magic twelve week mark. We didn't even tell our parents (and my Mom is still pissed about that). We were just scared that something bad would happen. It took us so long to get pregnant, that we didn't know what to think. That and the statistics seemed to be against us. Someone said 1 in 4 pregnancies ends in miscarriage. And considering I wasn't showing until around twelve weeks, it was nice just to keep it to ourselves for a while.

With Audrey, I was showing much sooner (at like eight weeks) so we had to tell everyone a little sooner. We were still nervous, but keeping up with Ashley and the rest of our lives, there just didn't seem to be as much time to worry. I guess in my head was the fact that I had a perfect little girl, if something were to go wrong with this pregnancy, I was already blessed with one child and would be happy. I am sure I would have been devestated if something had happened, but I had worked out in my head that it would have been okay. Thankfully, nothing happened and a healthy baby girl was born.

And no, I'm not pregnant. But Ray's brother and his girlfriend are. And I told you all the above because I have waited twelve weeks to tell the "blogging" world. Ray's brother and his girlfriend told everyone right away. It just made me nervous to write about it before the twelve week mark. Call me superstitous, whatever. I just felt better waiting.

Needless to say, I am estatic. Ashley and Audrey will have cousins (Ray's brother's girlfriend has a daughter already who I think is around 18 months old). And I get to be an AUNT!! Yea for me! Finally, kids I can spoil and totally screw up, and then hand them to their parents and say good luck getting them to bed tonight!

And back by popular demand (especially from the Grandparents), here is a video of Audrey on the swing. That is her laughing which is all she does in it.

Halloween

Yes, it is only the beginning of September, but I tend to think about holidays pretty early. So I asked Ashley the other day what she wanted to be for Halloween thinking she would say a princess or a ballerina or JoJo again (the costume from last year might still fit her). Nope, none of those. She wants to be a PUMPKIN. I have no idea why.

Then I got the Pottery Barn Kids Catalogue in the mail and showed her the pumpkin costume in there (which wouldn't fit her because the biggest size was 2T-3T). I asked her if she really wanted to be that and she continued to say yes. So then I thought, let's look at the Disney website at the princess costumes! Brilliant Idea!! So I think I have finally convinced her to be a princess. But what princess, I don't know because every time I try to nail Ashley down on which princess (Ariel, Belle, Cinderella) she states that she just wants to be a princess. Good, I can buy the generic costume from Target.

In my early searching of costumes, I did come across this Doodlebops costume. Yes, I dislike the Doodlebops (not because they are Canadian, I swear Jen!), but look at the hands on this costume. How scary.

Weekend Recap

Here are some highlights from this weekend:

- The world is truly a small place. On a walk down the street yesterday to the newest houses that have been built, I met some new neighbors. They went to Virginia Tech as well, and the husband went to my high school (although he graduated a few years before me). And he said some other people that had just moved in also went to my high school. And Sunday Ray and I took the kids to a park. We ran into a guy we went to college with and was in the same fraternity my husband and I were in.

- Audrey is beginning to get the finger food (see picture above of her and her biter biscuit). I gave her some of my cinnamon roll one morning, and she ate that. She has the pincher grasp down, just doesn't necessarily get the food to her mouth. And she can clap her hands and she stands with weight on her legs when you hold her in a standing position.

- Ashley has started to ask "why" just as most of you predicted. Here is a sample of one of our conversations from a public bathroom visit this weekend:

"Ashley, we have to wash our hands."

"Why? I didn't stick my hands in the toilet."

"Because you touched the toilet"

"Why do I have to wash my hands?"

"Because it's dirty in here."

"Why is it dirty in here?"

"Because it is."

"Why do I have to wash my hands?"

"Because I said so!!"

- If you let your kids watch the Backyardigans DVDs in the car enough, you will wake up in the morning singing the songs in your head.

- I finally made it to the attic to go through and actually the label the tons of bins of clothes I have from Ashley that will hopefully fit Audrey at some point.

- We ate out a ton this weekend, but I was very good. And it shows, at my weigh in Monday morning, I had lost six pounds!

Bare Bottoms

I took the day off from work and decided to meet my friend Julie and her daughter Jordan at Playspace, a kids museum of sorts in downtown Raleigh. We get there and the girls start playing. Julie goes to check on Jordan and comes back and can't even talk she is laughing so hard. Come to find out, she forgot to put underwear on Jordan this morning. It wouldn't have been so bad except Jordan was in a dress. So every once in a while, someone got a show!

Then a little while later, Ashley had to pee. I had Audrey in the Bjorn, so I take Ashley to the restroom. I was estatic because they had the short toilets there, so Ashley could do everything by herself. Except she hopped onto the toilet and proceeded to fall in. Needless to say, I had to dry her bare bottom off before she pulled her pants up.

Other than that, it was fine. After playing, we went to a sports bar next door that serves lunch. If you went to the museum, the kids eat free. What was nice about it being a sports bar at night was that it had tvs everywhere So the lunch staff put cartoons on them during the day. And the place was full of Moms and kids. So Julie and I actually had a conversation while we ate.

I am back at home now. Yes, it is still raining here, but not as bad. What sucks is that it is only 60 degrees outside. Guess I need to go shopping for clothes for the girls this weekend.

Thanks Life and Times of a Working Mom for including me on your post!

I hope everyone has a great holiday weekend!!