Feeling Good

In the last couple of weeks, I have had two very wonderful developments. The first one:

ANNIE IS SLEEPING THROUGH THE NIGHT!

Which also means:

MOMMY IS SLEEPING THROUGH THE NIGHT!!!

Most of the time anyway. Logan still likes to get us up in the middle of the night occasionally and get me out of bed, and Annie sometimes wakes up briefly needing her pacifier. I don't have to get her out of bed, though. How did we do it, you ask? Well, when Logan was a baby our doctor gave us some information to help train him to sleep through the night, and it only took two nights. We did the same thing with Annie, and it took her about two weeks, BUT she only had a hard time the first two nights. (NO; I did NOT let my little girl scream her head off. She did have to fuss some, though.) Curious???

Here's a link to the method. I have absolute faith in it now that it's worked with two kids. (The links are slightly different; they are based on the reason the baby wakes up at night.)

http://www.med.umich.edu/1libr/pa/pa_nightfd_hhg.htm
http://www.med.umich.edu/1libr/pa/pa_nightcr_hhg.htm

Wonderful development number two:

I AM EXERCISING!

I feel great after I have a baby, absolutely wonderful, fantastic, and energetic. When Annie was born, I couldn't WAIT to start exercising. I was so motivated; I thought it would be easy. I was SO VERY WRONG. I ran into a LOT of problems like:

I ALWAYS have two kids in tow, and they aren't very tolerant for most exercise I've tried.
I don't live near a neighborhood, so I can't even go for walks.
I don't have much time.
It's BORING to exercise for the sake of exercising.
AND the biggest problem of all...I couldn't figure out what to do in a tiny little apartment. I tried jump roping, jogging the whole 20 feet back and forth across our living room and dining room, kicking a soccer ball against the couch, etc..

Almost two weeks ago, I borrowed a kid's dance CD from my mom, along with a Pilates DVD that I'd liked when we lived with her. Almost every day, I've danced to the CD, and I'm amazed! (I do the DVD on the rare occasion that Jim doesn't take the computer.) The kids like it because it's fun, and Mommy is being silly. Plus I can dance with them if they want attention (that's a REALLY good workout). I like it because it's only 25 min., it's fun, and all of the songs have particular movements that go with them. The CD is called "Disney's Dance Along", and there's songs like "The Chicken Dance", "YMCA", etc... By the time I've finished the CD, a few sit-ups don't seem like a big deal, so I do that for a few minutes too. The best part is that I feel wonderful! I've been feeling really blah lately, and even pretty grumpy at times; I know it was because I wasn't being very active. I can't get over how good I've been feeling since I started dancing to this CD. This is by far the most enjoyable home workout I've ever tried. Sorry for the book, but I'm done now.

These pictures are totally unrelated, but I wanted to post them anyway.

Mommy Paranoia

Last week, we received a gift in the mail from Jim's grandma, and it came packaged in a large box full of packing peanuts. Well, I thought it would be really fun to let Logan play in it and make a big mess; it was vacuuming day anyway. He was a little wary at first, but eventually got really into it.

As my two-year old was having a blast "swimming" in the box, I suddenly remembered a warning I'd heard about small children suffocating on Styrofoam. Just then he decided to put his head under, and I began having visions of ambulances and parental arrests. I couldn't stand it anymore. He was done. (But he sure had a fun time.)

Hitting, Kicking, and Lucky Stars

Lately Logan has had a real problem with hitting and kicking, and we've been struggling to teach him that it's not okay. I've also been losing a battle with him to climb the four flights of stairs up to our apartment. He thinks it's funny to sit at the bottom until I finally carry him AND Annie up. No amount of time-out phases him. He sits there patiently, and does it again the next time he has an opportunity. We've tried everything we can think of. Which isn't much because there aren't many consequences he understands and natural consequences don't work so well with these behaviors; Annie isn't exactly going to hit him back (not that I'd want her to) and I am NOT leaving my two-year old at the bottom of the stairs while I go up myself...we'd have bigger problems then.

So, a couple of days ago we came up with the idea to try a behavior chart. Logan has the opportunity every day to earn ten stars through good behavior, and he can lose them if he does something naughty. If he has ten stars at the end of the day, he gets to choose a special activity from the "reward bag". I've got things like bubbles, chalk, photo albums, and special books in there...basically everything he really likes that I normally keep up high. So far it's worked well. He likes earning stars, so he's been really helpful this week, and he REALLY does not like to lose them. We haven't had any problems on the stairs, and he's only hit a couple of times (vs. 20 times a day). He's earned his reward every day so far, but today he hasn't been very keen on doing things to earn his stars, so this may be the first time he doesn't get the reward. I think that'll be good, though, so he fully understands the process.

Too Cute

I think my kids are the cutest on the planet, and every picture seems to be better than the last.



Too cool baby!


$0.33 vs. $6.00... After my impulsive shopping experience, I bought some knee highs and made Annie several headbands.

I don't really like the color of this one.


He clearly put these on himself.


Okay, Mom, I have your swimsuit on; now where did those goggles go?


I've been finding that Halloween candy is a wonderful bribe. Haircuts are normally a HUGE battle, but he held still this time. :) (I wonder what I'll do when the candy runs out...just kidding.)


I failed to take any bath pictures of Annie when she was a newborn, so I'm making up for it now.

Halloween

Halloween started for us on Monday when we carved our pumpkin (actually I guess it started on Friday when we bought the pumpkin). Logan was SO excited about that pumpkin; he wanted to haul it around the apartment with him even though it was too heavy for him to carry. That quickly became a problem and the source of a lot of crying, so I went back to the store and bought a Logan sized pumpkin. No more crying...especially when we cut up the big one. I was pretty pleased with how my carving turned out.

We went to our ward Trunk or Treat party on Wednesday night. We arrived late, and a lot of people didn't recognize me and Jim. Most of the adults figured us out before long, but there were several kids who never knew who I was. When I was handing out candy, and called them by name, they'd give me the "How do you know my name?" worried look. It was funny.
I was a scarecrow. (Just in case that isn't obvious.)

Annie was our little angel...so appropriate. Her costume is actually a bib.

Jack Sparrow anyone? Jim grew his beard and shaved it in the most unusual fashion for a couple of weeks just for his costume. Apparently a lot of people in our ward were relieved to know it was for Halloween. He received just as many comments about his beard as he did about his costume. I must say I was happy to have my clean shaven husband back!

Logan was a giraffe. A lot of people couldn't figure that out. He had a blast when we did the trunk or treat out in the parking lot of the church. After he received candy from the first two people, he ran car to car, and crawled his way to the front of crowds. (This is the child who NEVER runs except in the house. He has to stop and smell the daisies along the way...each and every daisy. He only gets to walk if we have an unlimited amount of time. So he definitely loved trunk or treating.)
On Friday night, we went to the other end of town to spend the evening with my sister and my mom. We watched old movies, ate candy and other junk, and Jim took Logan trick or treating for a very short time. It was a little bit later than most little kids were out, so Logan got handfuls at a lot of the houses. I guess they were happy to see a cute kid instead of a teenager. He had a full bucket after only about fifteen or twenty minutes. I combined that with the candy he'd received at the Trunk or Treat, and the candy I'd bought to hand out (which I didn't hand out because we weren't home) and we were well loaded. I never knew a two year old could come home with such plunder!

Bath time