"a perfect day"

that's the phrase that keeps coming to mind.  have you ever read that book?  we just returned it to the library the other day.

last night i put brady to bed at 10.  he didn't wake up til 5:05.  seven hours!  that's his longest stretch yet, knocking his previous four and a half hour PR out of the park.  after eating a few minutes he went right back to sleep without a peep and didn't wake up til 4 hours later around 9:15 or something.  maybe there is hope for him and his sleeping habits!

around 9, i finally decided to pump because i knew i had way more milk than what he was going to eat for breakfast (ended up being 10 ounces so good call on that) and bottle fed him (he only ate his usual 3.5 ounces) when he woke up a few minutes later.  i got him bathed and dressed and got abigail out of her crib (every day i am so grateful that she really loves hanging out in there so much.  it's a lifesaver that i can just get her out whenever i feel like it) and bathed and then we were all headed downstairs.

we've gone a complete 180 with baby girl and diapers because on our way downstairs (to use the potty and get our thomas underwear!) i grabbed a few diapers for brady from his room.  well, they look just like some of baby girl's because they're luvs and she FREAKED OUT.  remember how i mentioned how it's been the norm for her to throw a tantrum wanting a diaper so i would carry her diaper downstairs for her and then hide it in that drawer?  well, i guess she thought i was doing the same thing this morning because cue the meltdown: "i don't want a diaper!  i want my thomas undies!!!"  ha.  that's one tantrum i really didn't mind witnessing and she calmed down once she got the message that those were brady's diapers and were being carried down to my bedroom.

so then baby girl went potty while i gave brady his zantac and eye drops and she came running in two minutes later exclaiming "i want my marshmallows!!!" which always makes me smile.  so much joy from getting the opportunity to hand my precious girl two well earned mini marshmallows.  then brady went down for nap without a peep and i put in a load of laundry and baby girl and i made eggs for breakfast and she ate everything and had good manners and asked for extra toast (and how cute was it when i looked over later - i was doing dishes by that point - and saw her breaking off little pieces of her bread, which she calls toast, and dipping it in her milk before gobbling it up?!) and since then i've just been doing laundry and getting stuff done while she enjoys some thomas and i'm just soaking up the good life.

what a wonderfully perfect morning.

Showers

This morning we all went to the library for story time. My first time taking both kids by myself and it went really well. And there was a new storyteller today and she was awesome.

Honey got home early tonight because I had my baby shower. It was great because I got to take a shower before my baby shower. Between those two showers, my night was excellent. I have pictures from the baby shower but they're on my real camera. Which I pretty much never ever use anymore. I need to stop forgetting about it and take some videos!

My honey got an iPhone on Monday. And then he got Instagram. Which I had thought was more of a girl thing but he assures me it is perfectly unisex. I feel a little strange that my husband has Instagram and I don't. Now I'm considering it. The last picture is one he sent me during my baby shower while he and baby girl were playing play dough. She's wearing Santa pjs. Size 18 months. She wore them last winter too.

Sooooo tired. It's crazy how excited I get for bedtime these days.

Another free zoo day

who knew it was even possible?!  i took two kids to the zoo today!  i woke up at 7:30 so that i could shower, pump, nurse, eat breakfast, etc. and we didn't even get out of the house til 10:05 but i managed it without yelling at either of my kids!  as a bonus, brady cried himself to sleep in this swing while i was getting abigail dressed and out the door.  good job brady!  but aren't swings supposed to be magical enough that they make babies happy without a binky in their mouth constantly?!

parking was a pain and the weather was nowhere near as nice as forecasted (15 degrees colder and no sun?!) but we met up with some friends and had an excellent time.

baby girl kept kicking her shoes off so i decided to let her exercise her agency and go barefoot (she was staying in the stroller the whole time) so my child was the one barefoot (with black feet from dragging her feet along the stroller wheels) in 50 degree weather.

a pygmy something or other.   or a glorified monkey rat.

we came home, ate a banana for lunch while watching thomas, had a quick bath and took a nap.  oh, did i say we?  i meant baby girl.  i ate no lunch, took no bath, and had no nap.  but i did sit in bed for three hours with a baby that refused to fall asleep.  and baby girl stayed in her crib until after 7 because she didn't get down for nap til 3:30 and i wasn't keeping track of the clock to get her up by 6.

i took brady to costco and the library with me tonight.  i got a lot of sympathy looks.  in case you're confused, yes, he's doing so much better than he was before the zantac, but he is by no means a "happy" or "easy" or even "average" baby.  and the reason i rarely post (or take) pictures of him?  because they look like this...

one of honey's clients sent us this coat and hat made in her hometown in germany!  

this is the very best picture we could get.  it was a tag team effort between honey and me.

ps- i got some awesome yoga pants at costco.  you should too.  i'm in love.  they come in talls!

My bag

Lately baby girl has taken to carrying her trains around the house using this handy pink bag that came with her baby doll pack n play set.

She still loves to take those self portraits.

We're learning hat the Thomas picture sometimes goes on your bum and how undies feel better when they aren't backwards.

Ps- I'm so glad yesterday was so awesome because the first half of today was so so difficult. Overwhelmed with anger and guilt and so much yelling at my sweet baby girl. The day kept getting better and y'know what helped the most? Getting in bed and watching that one talk from president uchtdorf. You know the one. Happiness, your heritage. That man speaks to my soul. And makes me cry. Every single time. He really saved the day.

boy undies

i can't believe it's been an entire week since i randomly decided "hey!  let's go downstairs and potty train you, baby girl!"  it's been going really well.  i ended up not going as hardcore as what i'd planned to back in the day.  because i knew i wanted to do the three day method (ever since i'd researched things 6 or 8 months ago), but i knew baby girl would still spend a lot of time in diapers since she's probably going to stay in a crib for a good while longer.  that's 12-13 hours at night and 3-4 for nap.  so doing the "oh no!  you outgrew your diapers!" thing wasn't going to work for us.  but i didn't want to wait any longer to potty train because so many people say it only gets harder the longer you wait (after a certain age) because kids get more opinionated and it can become a power struggle.  

well it started out great but then baby girl turned into a bipolar potty trainer.  sometimes it was like she loved going potty and she'd sit on there and say "i wanna keep trying" when it would take a while to come.  but then other times (like whenever she woke up in the morning or from a nap), it was like she'd forgotten that she likes to go potty and she would throw a tantrum because she didn't want undies and she wanted to wear a bear diaper.  so i'd take off her dirty diaper and tell her we'd put on her new diaper downstairs (meanwhile she was just commando under her pj's) and when i got downstairs, i'd stick the diaper in a drawer and when she got down there would be no mention of it.  she'd completely forget and then she'd sit on the potty like i asked her to.  

this morning i braced myself for the diaper/undies struggle and y'know what?  i walked into the room and the first thing she said was "i wanna go potty!"  ha.  way to keep me on my toes baby girl!  and in case you were wondering about all of those previous diaper tantrums... here's proof... in a drawer.

that's a lot of tantrums

so today after the park we went to target.  i'd gotten a sweater on clearance last week and got it home only to realize that even though it was really cheap, i really didn't love it and probably wouldn't ever really wear it.  so, inspired by my lawyer friend sarah's closet cleanse, i returned it.  my closet is already cluttered with too much stuff i don't wear.

but since we were already there and had time to kill and baby girl was doing great and brady was asleep... we decided to take a stroll around.  i was looking at baby onesies when baby girl pointed in the distance and said "i wanna see thomas!"  knowing there was no way she knew where the toy section of target was, i was curious what she was pointing at so i asked her to show me where.  umm she wanted this thomas swim shirt.

but tell me how on earth she saw it because we were standing by this white wall when she initially saw it.  like i seriously didn't even know it was possible to see a three inch thomas from that far away.  amazing.

earlier in the day i'd gotten a text from honey saying he'd be getting home from work early and that we should do something fun.  when he said "early" i was thinking 4:30 or 5.  but here we were at 12:37 getting a text from honey saying he'd be home in 15 minutes!  man!  so we headed to the toddler underwear section and i let baby girl pick out some underwear (i'd already gotten her some but obviously it was less cool than her bear diapers and i needed to spark more enthusiasm in this girl!).  can you guess which underwear she picked?  thomas!  i pulled them out of the package so she could see the designs to make sure that's really what she wanted.  and she was so excited she had to hold the pair with harvey and luke... all the way until we got home!

colorado is the sunniest place ever.  being a mile high helps too i think.

ha, she'd been trying to put on her underwear the whole way home.  

like took off her shoes and was trying to put on her undies over her leggings/skirt while still buckled in her carseat.

and when we got home she was so excited to take off her diaper, go potty, and pick some new undies to try on. 

i think she tried on three pairs before she finally settled on...

these!

and she was sooo excited that christopher was home early.

we played hockey on the driveway

and baby girl took more pictures of herself.

i love going back in my camera roll and seeing 30+ new pictures of my lovely little girl.

and check it out!  brady is awake!  and not being held!  and happy!  yeay!

and then honey put baby girl down for nap while i fed brady.  and we watched duck dynasty (have you watched this yet?  i'm loving it.  and i have my awesome friend chelsey to thank for getting me hooked) and then i kept honey company while he washed my car.  it had about twelve layers of filth on it and i suggested "we should wash our cars!" but honey's car was pretty clean so i said "well, we should at least wash my car!" and we both know what that means.  "we" = "you" so i filled up a bucket with sudsy water and was in charge of rinsing the car with water.  and then honey put a freezer meal in the oven and we watched more duck dynasty and it turns out that i had pretty low expectations for today (mondays can be like that) and mlk just totally knocked it out of the park.

and baby girl woke up from her nap so excited to wear her thomas undies again.  and now keeps saying "thomas don't like to get wet."  (should a 2.5 year old be better with tenses and conjugations by now?  when does that verbal milestone happen?)

life is good.

MLK day

growing up in atlanta, i learned to take mlk day very seriously.  it's a holiday gosh darn it!  and we're going to celebrate it!

last night honey was taking out the trash when he asked me "is the trash coming tomorrow?" and i assured him it shouldn't and wouldn't because of mlk day.  "well everyone else on our street has theirs out so i'm going to finish taking it out anyways."  the trash truck came at one.  is that normal?!  i'm remembering now that i was surprised last year when it came too.  it's funny how some things you don't remember until it happens a second time.

this morning i decided we all might die if we stayed home one more day so i packed up the kids and rushed to the library for storytime... we would be 15 minutes late but oh well.  ummm, this is how add i am.  remember how it's mlk day and the library is closed?!  so we went to the park and target instead.  it felt so good to get out.  and it was a confidence booster that i can leave my house with two kids!  easy as pie.  now i just need to always remember to bring a bottle for brady.  it could have been disastrous had i attempted to nurse him while chasing baby girl around a crowded park...

what a beautiful view to wake up to, no?  like a tiny little baby cocoon burrito concoction.

we've had this bib forever and somehow i just now noticed it has a train on it. i'll have to point this out to baby girl next meal.

i'm still in love that she swings on her belly.  it looks so lazy-day-at-the-lake to me.  not a care in the world.

this swing thing made her giggle and smile and laugh and it was so infectious i couldn't help but giggle and smile and laugh too.

and then she was kinda over the park so i asked her if she wanted to go to target and she was amazingly on board for that.  like couldn't stop talking about it til we got there.  ha.

Revolving around kids

My life revolves around these two kids. Today especially felt like that. I woke up, fed Brady, and then wrapped presents after he fell back asleep. Baby girl had two birthday parties today.

We pulled her out of bed at 9:40 even though she was still happily playing because she'd been awake for over an hour and the first party started at ten. She loved it. But when I picked her up you could tell she was tired.  she instantly put her head on my shoulder and in her sleepy voice told me she wanted to go home and watch thomas.

but as we walked to the car i reminded her about lucy's birthday party and tried to get her pumped. lucy is our neighbor and was the only person at the party that abigail knew.  it was a parents-stay-too party so i tried to get baby girl into it.  we were an hour and a half late and it was a three hour party... but we left after about 30 minutes.  i think baby girl told me at least twelve times that she wanted to go home.  she seemed soooo tired and was not her usual self.  as we drove away she told me she wanted to go to lucy's house.  maybe that was the disappointment?  that she wanted a regular playdate with her friend and not a big party (it was at our neighborhood clubhouse) where her friend was too busy with all of the other guests.

also today, baby girl still loves taking pictures of herself with my phone, brady is still doing better and better, we watched an avs game tonight together as a family because thank goodness the hockey season actually started, and i've been trying to find a baby app to use with brady.  i've been using my itzbeen this time around but itz kinda inconvenient that i keep leaving it all around the house and losing it whenever i'm needing it.  so i'm trying out apps now.  so far i hate the similac app and am thinking i'll stick with the ibabylog baby tracker.  we'll see how things go more long term.  and as of yesterday and today, baby girl is back to whining and begging for naps and bedtime.  i know she's getting another molar right now... maybe that's contributing to the crankiness too?

it's been a good day (i even got a [terrible sleep quality] nap!) but busy enough that i'm super excited to sleep and not that excited about sunday.  i get overwhelmed too easily these days and meetings and church just seems like a lot.  especially because i'm hugely sucking at my calling lately.  oh the guilt.

ummm, miracle of miracles!  my pictures actually posted in order!!!  how do i get that to happen every time?!