if you give a mom two kids

we're pretty crappy about having an actually family home evening on monday nights.  we definitely spend time together as a family... but it normally doesn't include a formal spiritual lesson.  well, we actually had one a few weeks ago.  honey shared with us two mormon messages videos.  one on being a mom and one on being a dad.  it turned out to be pretty prophetic... at least for me.  especially because when i thought things were really going to pick up with brady, he sprouted a tooth and his nighttime sleep regressed, daytime sleep regressed, and fussiness increased.  if he was an only child, this really wouldn't be a problem.  and as it is, it's still not a huge deal because my life is still so blessedly easy.  but the thing is... it's frustrating to me.  it's frustrating that i used to be able to do more and that i want to do more... but there is literally not enough time in the day to do everything i would like to do and save my mental sanity.  blogging is my therapy and right now... that's what i'm doing.  between popping a binky in brady's mouth every four seconds.  dude, we both know you're gonna throw a fit the second that thing leaves your lips... so keep it in your mouth!

y'know those laura numeroff books?  if you give a mouse a cookie, if you give a moose a muffin, if you give a pig a party, if you give a dog a donut... those.  that's been my day.  around noon, brady was sleeping and it was gorgeous weather so i thought it would be fun for baby girl to play outside.  well... it took a while.  took a while to go potty, get on appropriate play clothes and shoes, get an easter treat to take outside with her, and gather up the trains she wanted to bring, and probably at least five other things i can't even remember.  it's a process.  during this time, my honey texted me with the location of the pants he needed me to fix ("hanging in the closet" still took a lot of looking) and baby girl insisted on helping me find those before going outside.  so finally she got outside and i had pants.  i set myself at the kitchen table to i could watch her play in the backyard and then i realized i didn't have the right thread.  so i came back with the right thread, got it cut to size, hadn't even gotten my needle out yet and... i hear brady waking up on the monitor.  makes sense because he naps for about 2.5 hours and it had been 2h and 23 minutes.  i just hadn't expected it to take so long to get pants and baby girl outside.

so i told abigail that i would just run upstairs to get brady and be right back.  i sat back at the kitchen table and told her again, "it'll just take a few minutes for brady to eat and then we can all go to the front yard and you can ride bikes on the driveway!"  she was very pleased.  well, when brady was mostly done eating, he started pooping.  and it went on and on and on and on.  "don't worry baby girl!  i'm just going to run to my room real quick and change brady's diaper... want to come?"  so she came.  but as soon as i unzipped his sleep sack, i knew this was a job that needed to be taken upstairs to the changing table.  it was maybe his worst blowout yet.  it was of epic proportions.  so then i had to fill up the bathtub and bathe the kid.  i got him in a fresh diaper and new clothes and he spitup and of course it got on his bath towel and new clothes and even his freshly washed hair.  got him cleaned up again and took a load of laundry downstairs while brady cried upstairs.  then i got him and went downstairs again before realizing... he's already been awake for an hour... he's going to get fussy and need to nap soon and now it's 1:30 and abigail will need to eat lunch so that she can nap too.  after explaining to baby girl that there was no time for bikes on the driveway, i got her bike from the garage and put it on the patio.  i went back inside to get brady and somehow she was riding her bike on the grass.  noooo idea how she got it down there by herself.  especially so quickly and without getting hurt.  so confused.  so we all hung out outside for five minutes and then i got her set up with her bike on the patio again and i worked on stain treating brady's clothes and getting everything in the washer.  while i was doing that, abigail decided she wanted to hang out with us instead and helped grab brady a binky because he was crying again and my hands were covered with poop and stain chemicals.  she's a great helper.  then i grabbed her a banana and a sippy and sat her at the table to eat while i took brady upstairs to nap.  that took a number of attempts and when i came back down, baby girl was already running to the stairs saying she was ready to nap.  i asked her if she finished her banana and whatever and she threw her arms up at me and said "take me to sleep!"  man, i guess she was tired because we did her whole nap routine (while periodically giving brady his binky and thankfully he eventually went to sleep) and she went right to sleep... didn't even play for a minute... or get naked.  so i came downstairs, heated up a taquito from last night, ate that, brought my sewing stuff to my bed and was pulling up the scriptures online to listen to while i was sewing when... i heard brady crying.  he frequently wakes up at the 45 minute mark but goes back to sleep right away with a binky.  not today.  after several attempts i just grabbed him out of his crib.  i couldn't help think of how my day seemed like that mormon messages video.

so i brought him downstairs to my bed and i nursed him while i watched the mormon messages video... and cried.  i guess really i just listened to the video while i looked at brady.  he was so intently looking into my eyes and he was holding my finger with his hand on my chest and was just precious and calm.  i love when nursing him is like that... not him arching his back and screaming and kicking... because we still get plenty of that too.  it was a precious moment.  elder holland's words are so encouraging.  also they made me think of what my christopher said to me on monday after i was almost in tears telling him that aside from keeping the kids alive, the only thing i'd accomplished in the entire day was a trip to walmart... which was so depressing because it took my whole morning to get ready, a ton of time while we were there, and then all afternoon to recover from the trip, kids getting late naps, and groceries not even getting completely put away.  he told me that he was impressed with what i had done that day.  that a trip to walmart was a great thing.  he said that keeping the kids alive every day is the only thing i need to accomplish every day and "everything else is just gravy."  i go back and forth on my feelings on this but i know it's at least part true.  there's too much i consider "absolutely necessary" when really, there are actually very few things (like keeping the kids alive) that fall into that category.  i constantly feel like i'm not doing enough when i know it's not for lack of trying (i helped set up, clean up, and speak at our new beginnings program when i freaking had the flu with a fever of 101 and the worst full body aches of my life).  i feel like been learning and relearning this lesson about every five or six days for the past few months, ever since brady was born.  which speaking of... he's finally asleep again... and now i can go fold that laundry in the dryer.  after that maybe throw together something edible for dinner, pick up the house a little bit, finish icing the cake i made for our neighbors (let's all pray they'll be home this time!) and maybe shower or at least get clothes, hair, and makeup done before my friend's baby shower tonight.

seriously, how am i supposed to have five kids when i already feel like such a failure with two?  i need another pep talk with my dear weed.  although i did talk to her a bit last night... it may have been about nasty cherry vanilla coke concoctions, bad math and losing two cents on a deal, quick trip, racism, and a husband carrying his amputee wife into a QT... among other things.  maybe i'm only hanging in here because of that phone call and talking to my sister emmy and skyping with my wonderful carolyn.  yes, sara snow, it's the little things.

and one last thing because i can't figure it out for the life of me.... how do moms with toddlers get bored?!  like all those mom's that pin ideas of things to do with their toddlers because i guess they've got just so much time on their hands?!  i was totally bored when abigail was a little baby... but not now.  i've gotta be missing something because i can't even seem to get my kids outside for a few minutes... much less make super cool forts and creatures out of cotton balls and pipe cleaners and homemade playdough.  ohhhh, someday.

service yields love

yesterday was a fabulous fun filled day with the turnages since they were in town visiting.  they came over around noon and we partied clear until after 9 when all of our kids needed to go to sleep.  by the end of the day, i was exhausted and our house was a wreck.  so while i took baby girl up to bed, honey cleaned the kitchen, including taking care of a massive pile of dishes that had been accumulating all week.  when i walked downstairs to my spotless kitchen i was overwhelmed with love for my sweet husband.  i've been slacking on our love journal lately and it has really shown in my increased irritability and under appreciation for my honey.  but today?  not the case.  every time i looked at my kitchen i knew my honey loved me and i knew i loved him.  i'm a non abstract sort of person when it comes to showing love and affection.  i need phone calls, texts, letters, and blatant "i love you so very much" professions of love.  and let me tell you that when it comes to the in-your-face, i-love-you-this-much facts... a clean kitchen is the ultimate trump card.  because as long as my kitchen is clean, all is right in the world.

including my marriage.


and on a somewhat related but not really too much note, baby girl started saying "honey" because she has picked up on the fact that that's what her parents call each other.  hearing "hello honey" out of her little baby mouth tonight... oh my goodness i about died.

skyping

this morning we woke up early again.  honey woke up at 5 30.  i woke up at 6.  at 6 15, we each figured out that the other was awake.  ;-)

so we hung out in bed for a long while and then we heard baby girl upstairs, so like two kids on christmas day, we raced up as fast as we could to love on our baby.  the three of us got ready together and then while i finished up, honey made eggs and fed baby girl.  it was such a wonderful husband dad sort of thing for him to do, i didn't even get upset later when i found a wrapped up poopy diaper sitting on the stair rail.  i'm not sure what the deal is, but my honey has an inability to change a diaper and actually throw it away.  i find diapers ALL OVER the house.  bathrooms, stair rails, sofa, bed, changing table, floor, closet, kitchen table, kitchen counter, you name it.  anywhere but a trash can.  it's comical really.

anyways, we were all ready and fed by 8 15 or so.  insanely early.  so we had time to kill before heading out into the real world.  

we skyped.

there were some near misses with bashing keys and tossing a sippy full of water, but seriously, most of the time was spent nicely skyping and not touching.

i. was. amazed.

and the morning was excellent.

weekly meal plan

cooking is not my thing.  i'm not good at it and i don't enjoy it.  i'm way too add to multitask so cooking stresses me out hardcore.  lucky for me, i married a guy that didn't care if he had a hot meal. ever.

our first year of marriage (senior year at byu) was filled with cereal, canned ravioli, and frozen corndogs.  no joke.  i used to buy all of that stuff in bulk and it is all. we. ate.

the following four months of our marriage were spent in pennsylvania while my honey hated his life in exchange for lots of money worked for apx selling security systems.  i was a nanny so i got home at 4 and honey got home between 9 and 10.  so i tried my hand at cooking.  it wasn't too hard since i had nothing to do anyways.  seriously, my alternative was staring at the ceiling.  which i actually did frequently for lack of anything more entertaining.  anyways, i cooked a few times a week but honey and i found we didn't really care for hot food.  he was still loving cereal all day every day and meanwhile i was addicted to granola (mom's recipe) and yogurt (i actually make my own now!) and was way too happy to eat it morning, noon, evening, and night.  i consumed gallons of granola and yogurt that summer.

then we moved to colorado for 11 months.  i actually don't remember eating during this time.  actually scratch that.  i do.  breakfast was normally two or three pieces of white bread... eaten in the car... on my way to work at the daycare.  honey also grabbed several pieces of bread on his way out the door and called it breakfast.  neither of us really packed a lunch so honey did a combination of starving and eating out during lunch meetings, and i did a combination of starving and eating leftovers of the nasty food (except on wednesdays because it was mexican and rosa always made something amazing) the kids ate at lunch.  i am not proud of this but laziness got the best of me.  dinner?  sundays we ate dinner at the in laws after church.  but at home?  i actually only have one memory of eating dinner in our apartment... i remember it because honey made it for me.  so really we'd both get home from work at the same time and we'd maybe grab a quick bowl of cereal before heading over to play with our only friends bryan and carolyn and we would eat whatever deliciousness carolyn had cooked up.  she's one of those people that married someone that likes a hot meal.  thank you bryan, we all benefited from your need to eat good food.  and then we would hang out, snack, watch tv, and play games before heading back to our cold, gloomy, empty cupboards apartment to go to sleep so we could wake up and start our day with more bread. i don't even remember going to the grocery store for more than milk.  seriously.

then we moved to california.  food was way more expensive than colorado but the produce was cheaper than the rest of the country.  so being the cheap person i am, i bought tons of produce.  i have many many memories of buying produce from milk pail and hating my life while i got everything else from the worst ever non super walmart.  the first month i was there, i was at home all day looking for a job and i prepared and ate tons of food, all super healthy.  i actually gained over 10 lbs in six weeks.  it was all part of my plan to increase my fertility to help me get pregnant.  well... it worked.  and then i was so sick i didn't eat anything for three months.  the rest of the time we were living in our tiny one bedroom highrise apartment, i only ate while i was at work (nannying) and then a bowl of cereal before bed.  i think honey lived off of cereal.  i was tired (ha, that's an understatement) throughout my entire pregnancy and spent every waking moment at home in my bed.  true story.

then we moved to a two bedroom townhouse apartment, i finished working, and we had a baby.  i tried my hand at cooking because i had so much downtime with a constantly napping newborn.  but honey was super involved in school and rarely home to eat.  and he seemed to always bring food home from club dinners he'd be helping out with.

then we moved here to lovely parker colorado and we decided to be real adults.  we have a kid, a house, a garage (i feel like real adults have garages) and normal work hours (for honey).  it's not super regular but i know that 90% of the time, he'll be coming home between 6 and 8.  and since honey still believes in cereal for breakfast and nothing for lunch, he comes home from work starving and wants a hot meal.  and since bryan and carolyn abandoned us and moved to texas (yes, i'm still bitter and i'm not getting over it anytime soon), that hot meal responsibility falls on me.

so this is what i really wanted to get to... i've been attempting to meal plan.  and this past week (we've been here for six months) was the first time i've managed to make everything on my menu plan... as planned.

we had maple salmon, french dip sandwiches, orange chicken, and finally tonight we had bistro chicken.  i know that's only four things but it's only the three of us so we pretty much always have leftovers and honey was out of town for part of that too.  anyways... if anyone is actually still reading this (or just scrolled down and skipped to the end... i don't blame you), take a moment and congratulate me because this is epic.  really.

so a big thanks to my honey for encouraging me in this task in which i have no natural talent, my wonderful non blogging (but should eventually start a food blog) sister liza for her excellent recipe recommendations, and   that guy in the meat department in walmart that helps me figure out what the heck all of those cuts of meat are.

and no thanks to bryan and carolyn.  traitors.