My way fun Christmas gift that I can finally post

Naptime post

The container is just as fun as what is inside.

"Smile for the camera!" always gets a big, open-mouthed grin.

The kitchen and food supply endless fun.

He looks cute but he's a stinker.

Staying awake half the night--or so it feels like. The other night he only woke to eat once but it took an hour and a half to get him to sleep afterwards. Last night it took almost two hours after one of his feedings and his screaming gave Adam a migraine.

Today he continues to refuse to sleep in reasonable places (like his bassinet) and only wants to sleep on me--but NOT in the sling. I got a couple of short naps from him when he was in the wrap, at least, and a short nap in the swing. Not even his boppy is good enough for him today. Thankfully Katrina has been a sweetheart today.

Now that Christmas candy is gone I am cutting out sugar in case that's making him fussy. Oh, and he also wants to eat every hour and a half today. On days like this I am practically forced to be on the computer all day because I'm stuck on the stupid couch!

Like I said, he slept in the wrap for a little while, so I got to eat lunch, organize my new craft cart, and start my thank you cards. I was super lame and only got about half my wedding thank you cards sent out (and the other half had insufficient postage--darn post office giving me the wrong stamps!), so ever since then I have been extra diligent to try to make up for it.

My pj's happen to be the exact same color as this wrap!

Katrina just woke up, so even though I just got Daniel to sleep, I have to disturb him to go get her. Sigh. Two hours until Adam is home.

Christmas Day!

What a wonderful Christmas we had today. It was our very first Christmas morning that we did on our own, and I really enjoyed it. I'm sure it will be even more fun next year with two children who comprehend what's going on. Katrina barged out of her room fairly early this morning and we decided to go ahead and begin the festivities.

Discovering gifts in her stocking.

Whenever we say, "Smile for the camera!" she opens her mouth wide and grins.

Adam had to coach her through the process of ripping paper off of presents. Once she got the hang of it, she really liked it. After her first present she tried to stack the paper neatly but gave up very quickly. I like how really young kids are so happy to receive gifts and would be content to play with the first gift all day. They're too young too be greedy!

Shoes! Katrina loved her new sneakers and protested whenever we removed them for diaper changes. She also got some Sunday shoes, so she no longer needs to wear her pink sneakers with her dresses.

A little chef's hat from my parents, as well as some other kitchen things. She loved the hat and wore it for at least an hour.

How did my mom know that Katrina loves measuring cups? She must be psychic. Katrina now has her own set, which is great.

And this was where Katrina spent most of the day. She got several other great toys and books and while she loved those, the kitchen was the most fascinating. Several family members pitched in for food, dishes, and pots and pans, so she is all decked out. Along with the kitchen stuff from my side of the family, she's all set!

She can finally play with the microwave to her heart's content.

There's Daniel swinging in the background. He had a good day too, sleeping and eating and crying loudly whenever he wasn't doing the former two activities. We got a bunch of really cute clothes for him and I'm thrilled.

Katrina also loves the baby doll she received from her great-grandma.

It was a great day. We headed down to Jersey midway through the day and joined them for their traditional eggs Benedict and more gift opening. Now that we're home we're both exhausted. Tomorrow we may head back down there but we may also just stay around here and relax. Or maybe I'll send Adam and Katrina there and "relax" here with the baby. The whole house needs cleaning up from gift packaging and several loads of laundry need to be done. Laundry's my favorite chore though, so that's not too bad.

Wow, I need sleep. As soon as Daniel wakes up and eats, I think I'll join him for an early bedtime. I hope everyone enjoyed a wonderful Christmas with family and friends and that you continue to have a great holiday weekend! To all of my family--I miss you tons and thought about you a lot all day!

Merry Christmas Eve

Merry Christmas! Tomorrow, that is. Last night Adam got the urge to put up our big Christmas tree so that Katrina could see it. She thought it was great. She also left it alone, which surprised us. Maybe we could have put it up for the whole Christmas season after all!
We spent the evening in New Jersey. This was our first visit there since the baby was born, and it went quite well. I was very nervous of how Daniel would do and thought that I would end up nursing him in another room all evening and trying to get him to sleep. Well, we just ended up holding him a lot and he slept in our arms, so that worked out. Adam's sister made a wonderful meal. Adam took Katrina to the Grove, which is a neighborhood of small homes. A group of them have this lights display every year that's a lot of fun. They put together these life-size diorama sort of things with Santas, penguins, elves, toy soldiers, etc. Adam said that Katrina loved it.

I mentioned awhile back that I had just a couple more gifts to make for Christmas. Well, I put them off until this week, but they are finally done. I made some books for one of my nephews with pictures of his family and of Jesus. For his brother I made these puzzles of his two favorite characters:

I like the Curious George one better since the Thomas one is slightly messed up with the angles. But they were fun to make and I have a couple more so that I can make some for Katrina too. I'm not sure what I'll put on them.

Daniel is having some trouble falling asleep tonight, so we stuck him in the swing. I thought he was cute in his swaddle blanket and snapped a picture.

No more chocolate

So I don't eat a whole lot of chocolate, but Adam got a box of Godiva chocolate from his boss and then one of their clients sent them a bunch of Henry and Davids stuff, including some bing cherries. So I've been snacking on lots of chocolate over the past few days. Yesterday I had particularly bad self-control and then Daniel had a horrible time last night. It seemed to be related, so I threw away the rest of the chocolate-covered cherries today and decided to stay away from chocolate. Adam is sick from lack of sleep and these nights are particularly hard on him. Thankfully two nights ago was excellent (meaning Daniel fell back asleep without problem after each feeding), so at least we have some good nights among the difficult ones.

Yesterday we made it out of the house for church, though we were almost defeated by the snow. The roads and parking lot were plowed, but there was a snow drift all around our car. Adam tried to scrape away some of the snow with our snow scraper, but it didn't work. I got into the driver's seat and he pushed the car and after several tries, we were able to get out of the parking spot! I enjoyed going to church and both Katrina and Daniel did well. Katrina started yelling as soon as we started singing each hymn, which was weird and funny. Maybe she was singing along? She was definitely trying to imitate the conductor, who is also one of her nursery leaders.

Today we braved Walmart for our grocery shopping like we do most Monday nights. We live near the King of Prussia Mall and the traffic was pretty horrendous. Daniel doesn't like stop and start traffic, so that was no fun. We split up and Adam took the grocery shopping while I took the babies and tried to find shoes for Katrina. That was a little difficult, picking up Daniel and calming him down, then putting him back and trying shoes on Katrina, and then picking him back up... She really didn't like trying on different shoes. She's pretty attached to her Stride Rites. Unfortunately they are getting too small!

So Katrina is pretty cute with Daniel and also with her baby doll. She likes to put the doll in the swing or in the carseat. Today she picked it up and was holding it and patting its back like I do with the baby. She also likes to pretend to put diaper rash cream on its bum. She likes to pat Daniel or give him high fives and kisses on the head. Today she grabbed his feet, actually just the feet of the pjs, and wiggled them back and forth while saying, "Deedeedeedeedee!" I laughed at that.

Snow!

After the bath last night with fuzzy hair:
Today and last night were really hard. We can't get Daniel back to sleep without a huge struggle. He spent a good amount of the day like this, but usually screaming.

He has fallen into a schedule already that I sure hope changes soon. He eats every two hours or less during the day, 2-3 hours at night, and has two four hour naps late each evening and early each morning, which is sure nice but not for getting sleep. His nighttime nap is usually on the boppy:

Katrina had a fun day today even though we were stuck inside because of the snow. She insisted on going out on the balcony once but didn't like walking in the snow.

View of the tree and snow earlier today.

Pictures I took just a few minutes ago.

That's our car. Adam has even gone out twice and brushed it off so it won't be as bad tomorrow. We still have church but it's been delayed until 2 and it's only Sacrament meeting, so I think I'll go.

Daniel is waking up, so it's off to feed him, try to get him to sleep, feed him more, walk him, collapse on the bed while Adam takes him out in the living room so I can get some sleep.... At least one of our kids sleeps 11-12 hours through the night!

First bath

I've got a few blurry pictures for you of Daniel's first real bath tonight. Adam was bathing Katrina in one bathtub while I bathed Daniel in the other. It was an exciting time as he proved his kidneys and colon work just fine in the water too. I was expecting a scream fest, but he only cried on the way to and from the bath--he seemed to really like the warm water. Awesome! Katrina hated baths until she was six months or more.

He discovered his thumb, apparently.

Snug in his pjs.

I kept getting his "ugly" faces, as we call them.

Katrina seems to have permanently cut her naptime in half and Daniel requires cuddling constantly in order to sleep, so it was a long day. Katrina only climbed on the shelves of doom once. Two nights ago she climbed up them in the dark, and then cried for us. Ahh! We will likely borrow a dresser from Adam's parents so we can move our lower, non-stairstep dresser into her room. She also likes to climb on our coffee table with a glass top, so we're considering some alternatives there.

Tomorrow we had family pictures planned but canceled them for a few reasons: 1. Tomorrow is the Saturday before Christmas. 2. We don't really want to face parking and navigating the King of Prussia Mall (largest mall in U.S.). 3. We're supposed to get a huge snowstorm starting tonight. We'll see how it goes. Now I am going to try to figure out how to escape from under a sleeping baby without waking him so I can eat dinner. And would you believe I typed this whole thing with one hand? I'm pretty quick by now.

Mini heart attack

I'm recovering from a pull-your-hair-out moment in an otherwise good day. So it all started yesterday during Katrina's naptime. I heard a crash in her room and immediately went to investigate. I found her perched at the top of her dresser. Well, we call it her dresser, but it's just one of those tub things from IKEA. Here's the best picture I can find of it:

So, anyway, she was crouched on top of that and the picture of Jesus on the wall had fallen down. Now, while I find it endearing that she likes that picture so much that she wanted to get it off of the wall, I don't want her hanging out four feet above the floor!!! I removed her, but was of course too nervous to let her stay in there by herself. So naptime failed, and trust me, the rest of the day was pretty miserable. We put her to bed an hour early.

Adam and I tried to figure out what to do. Finally we just decided to move it over a half a foot so it's directly next to the ledge, and then maybe if she climbs up she'll just keep climbing down. Lame solution, especially because she's more likely to fall off of the front. But we aren't sure how to fix this. Today she went down for a nap and I was extra careful to listen to what she was doing in there. She started crying and I immediately went to check unlike my normal wait-and-see approach. Sure enough, she was stuck at the top. So I took her off. It happened again. I took her down, and I think it was that time that I warned her if it happened again she would get spanked. Oh, and I don't think I mentioned that she was crying this whole time because I was mean and wouldn't let her leave the room. So the third time, I spanked her. She doesn't get spanked very often, usually only when she's doing something dangerous and abusive, like trying to kick me and dive off of the changing table. She cried and dribbled snot and immediately wanted me to hug and comfort her, which definitely made me feel better/horrible. Oh, and I had just gotten Daniel to sleep in his pack n play, but he had woken up and was crying in the background. So I was a bit stressed out. Luckily, after the spanking, Katrina voluntarily got into her bed with her blanket, and after I fetched her a sippy cup, she stopped crying and has been silent ever since. Miraculously, when I got back to Daniel, he had stopped crying and was fast asleep.

Juggling two kids makes me feel good about myself and my abilities, but situations like this are so draining! Yesterday the lack of nap was awful. Daniel isn't too bad to take care of. He rarely just cries for no reason. It's pretty much always because he isn't falling asleep and so gets upset and then wants to nurse more. Nights vary in how well they go--if I can get him back to sleep after each feeding, then it's good, but if I can't, then one or both of us spends awhile walking with him and sometimes even sleeping with him on our chest.

Oh, and one more thing. We went to the doctor yesterday to check up on Daniel, and he had gained 18 ounces in 8 days! I had felt a little bad when I had to tell the nurse that he only nurses for ten minutes at a time on only one side, but once I saw the scale, I didn't feel bad anymore! Somehow his lazy nursing still gets results. It's such a relief to have a quick nurser, as opposed to Katrina, who would nurse for a total of 45 minutes sometimes. The doctor heard a heart murmur, but said that, first of all, with that much weight gain she's not worried, and second, these things come and go. So we'll be back in two weeks to check on his heart.

Pictures Galore

One of Daniel's favorite positions when gassy.

Look at that face!

Snug in his polar bear fleece pajamas.

Another position that made him surprisingly happy.

Sleeping--his favorite activity, even more than eating, judging by the fact that he falls asleep three times each feeding.

Hi Mom.

"Call me."

And another flash in his face, disturbing his nap.

"Fine, Mom, I'm awake! Happy now?"

I decided to stay home today from church. Today is our Primary Program and since we are combining with the branch, church started later. However Adam and Katrina are currently stuck on the freeway. He has called me several times and has made almost no progress. Church started half an hour ago. It looks like it's a really bad accident.

I had two solo days this week and it wasn't too bad. However Katrina was an absolute pill on Friday and spent all day crying or screaming at me. No fun. I was so happy to have Adam home yesterday. We decided to try to get out of the house in the afternoon and went on a trip to the store to buy a stroller. Daniel slept through it all, Katrina only cried and complained a little, and we made our final decision on a stroller, so I consider it successful.

I'm not playing in the Messiah tonight after all. I wanted to so badly, but yesterday morning it just seemed so awful to have to get both kids and ourselves ready to go to the three-hour dress rehearsal, and I couldn't really feel comfortable consigning Adam to three hours of baby-watching in the nursery at church and then three more tonight. He can't feed Daniel, and I'm sure Katrina would not be happy to be stuck in the same room for three hours, so essentially it would have been a torturous morning for him. Instead we stayed home and enjoyed the morning!

Oh, I wanted to share a few cute things Katrina has done. First, she finally figured out how to give kisses. Instead of open-mouthed face-puts, she now puckers up and makes a smacking noise. She loves kissing Daniel. Second, she loves taking trash to the trash can. She's remarkably good at discerning what is trash. I see her picking up crumpled up pieces of paper, or bits of plastic, and before I know it she's running off to the kitchen and I hear the lid open and close. Along with that, yesterday my phone rang while nursing, and I said, "Katrina, can you go get me the phone?" She gasped in excitement and ran to the phone on the other side of the room, then ran back to me, making excited noises the whole time. She repeated it later on that night. And finally, Katrina knows all the motions to a couple of songs. I don't know if they sing them in Nursery or if she knows them just from home, but it was really cute earlier this week when I started singing "Popcorn Popping" and I realized she was trying to imitate all of my motions, not just the initial popcorn gesture. She also does all of the motions to Pattycake and Itsy Bitsy Spider. It's way cute.