Aedan: Week 14
Since we got mostly settled in over the weekend, we took advantage of our days this week to explore our new town. We were going to go to the library on Tuesday for their story time, but Samantha was not being a very good listener, we didn't get ready on time, and therefore, decided to just stay home. She has been acting so tired lately, even if she naps and gets good sleep at night. Sometimes she's already tired by 8:30 in the morning. I'm sure moving, being in a new home, and learning a new routine is a lot for a little girl to handle.
At nap time, I usually nurse Aedan and put him down first while Samantha plays and reads quietly in her room. She always does such a great job playing quietly at this time, making a nice environment for her brother to fall asleep. Then, I put her down for a nap after that. Because of Aedan going down first, he usually wakes up before her as well, which gives us good time hanging out and playing together for a little while in the afternoons before Samantha wakes up. Here are some videos of Aedan playing on his floor gym that afternoon.
We tried again for the library on Wednesday since they also had story time then. Samantha did a much better job listening to us when we were getting ready that morning, probably because she knew we were serious about staying home like we did the day before. You never know what to expect when trying new things. I obviously knew the Lane Public Library would be smaller than the Monroe County Public Library, and I had fairly low expectations, to be honest. However, it was much better than I thought it would be. They had a cute little children's department with a dollhouse, dolls, Little People toys, puppets, play food, a basket of dinosaurs, computers, and even two large frogs in a tank. We got there early so I let Samantha play for awhile before story time started at 10:30. It was only for 2-3 year olds, so it was a pretty small group, but Samantha really enjoyed herself. I put Aedan in the Ergo because he was getting sleepy and needed a nap. Story time was a mix of singing, dancing, and reading books. Samantha loves to sing, so she really enjoyed that aspect of it. However, I probably would have preferred a little more emphasis on the books and stories. One thing I loved about the Monroe County Public Library was how the librarians took the time to really develop the theme for the week, having all stories related to that theme, and also setting out books around the room related to that theme that the kids could choose to check out. The MCPL librarians also were excellent story tellers and would often memorize stories and tell them orally, using the flannel board with pictures depicting the events of the story. Samantha loves libraries and loves story time. In fact, she actually cried at the end of story time because she didn't want it to end. I was really surprised by her emotional outburst, but as I thought about it later on, I realized she probably cried because she wasn't used to the order of how they do things, she didn't realize what the last song would be, and she didn't realize that story was over. The librarian was concerned about her, hoping that she had a good time and wasn't upset about something. We will definitely make going to the library part of our weekly routine again.
Samantha was a bit silly about taking a nap Wednesday afternoon, sleeping until about 5:15 since she played in her room for awhile before allowing herself to fall asleep. However, since she did finally end up taking a good nap, we decided it would be a good night to make a trip into the suburbs of Cincinnati to buy Uncle Matt and Aunt Christy presents for their baby shower that coming weekend. We made an evening out of it because there was a Chuy's restaurant just about ten minutes farther than the Babies R Us, so we went there for dinner before going shopping. Aedan took a good nap in the car on the way there, and Samantha enjoyed looking at her new library books that we had just checked out that day.
I had to take a picture of the two of them together while we waited to be seated. Samantha insisted on wearing her sunglasses, even inside. Do you see how Aedan is staring at Samantha? He ADORES her. He lights up when she's in the room. When she's around, he could care less about Mommy and Daddy. Aedan is Samantha's biggest fan, and I think Samantha is Aedan's biggest fan as well. I knew Samantha would love her little brother, but I had no idea how much she would love him. Especially with Aedan being so young and not interacting as much as he will when he gets older, that doesn't seem to matter to Samantha. She loves to play with him, interact with him, and counts herself the luckiest girl in the world when she gets a smile or laugh from him. I know I say this a lot, but man, she is a great big sister.
Both kids did a fantastic job at the restaurant. I think it was the first time we went to a sit down restaurant, with both kids, all by ourselves. We ate delicious tex-mex food and enjoyed our time talking together.
After eating our dinner, we drove to the Babies R Us to go shopping for Uncle Matt and Aunt Christy's baby shower in Chicago. I was in charge of the games at the shower, and I decided to do a game called "Price is Right" where the guests try to guess how much each baby item is in the basket and whoever gets closest without going over wins. So, we had to purchase the ten baby items that were a part of the game, and I wanted to get as much of it as I could off of her registry, so we were getting things they actually would want and use. We also got her a package of swaddle wraps because they have been so handy for us with both of our kids, so much easier to use in the middle of the night than a regular blanket. We were out pretty late that night, and Samantha was doing fine since she took such a late nap, but Aedan is a pretty scheduled boy and doesn't appreciate being out past his bedtime. Right around 7:45ish he gets tired and fussy and there's not much you can do to appease him except for nursing him and putting him to bed. Ben did most of the shopping so that I could change Aedan and nurse him, and that made him happy for awhile, but as soon as he had to go back in his car seat, he was not a happy camper. I tried our usual trick of draping my arm over the seat so I could hold the pacifier in his mouth, but this was not making any difference. Aedan was just tired and wanted to be in bed, not in the car, so it was a LONG 25 minute trip home with a very unhappy little man in the back seat. I guess that will teach us to not be out past his bed time!
Thursday was another day at home because we had several things going on. A man came to do repairs in our home on a few things that were not up to par. He replaced a toilet seat, installed a towel bar, fixed a floor vent, and put railings across the shelves in our refrigerator. Then, another man came to measure Samantha's window for the new glass to replace the broken glass that had a hole in it from where a golf ball had hit it. Ben and I also finished hanging the rest of the pictures and artwork around our house. Everything was finally put away, organized, and decorated. My main goal was to have everything settled in to our new home before leaving for Chicago, so that way when we got back the following Sunday, we wouldn't be going into the week with a long list of house projects. That way Ben could start going to campus, and Samantha, Aedan, and I could start figuring out what our new schedule in our new town was going to be.
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| What do you think Aedan is thinking in this picture? Is he scared of his crazy sister, thinking who is this person who hugs and squeezes me all the time? |
Thursday evening, after we were done with everything around the house, I went around and took pictures of all the rooms. Here is a picture tour of our new home:
- This is Ben and my bedroom. It's probably the smallest bedroom, but it is just the right size for what we need and has two fairly large his and her closets across from the bed.
- This is Aedan's room. It is probably the largest room. We were originally going to give this room to Samantha, but once we got here and looked at, we decided all the nursery furniture would fit better in this room. He has a Cubs theme in the decorations on his walls, mostly re-purposed from Ben's room when he was a kid.
- This is our tiny upstairs bathroom. It does it's job just fine, but it will be nice when we have a family bathroom that is a bit bigger some day.
- This is a picture of the upstairs hallway looking down towards the bathroom and our bedroom. The reason I am including it is because of the folding doors you can see in the right of the picture. Behind those doors is a full size washer and dryer! Our apartment in Bloomington just had a stackable washer/dryer combination, which was great because many apartments didn't even come with a washer and dryer. I was so excited about the full size washer and dryer, though, because we have lots of laundry with a baby and a three year old. Plus, I'm going to be using cloth diapers with Aedan soon. It's the little things that make a Mommy happy. :)
- Here's the downstairs bathroom which, oddly enough, is bigger than the one upstairs. It's nice to have two full bathrooms for when guests come to stay with us. Now, they have their own bathroom and shower to use in the morning.
- Another great thing about our new home is that we have a one car garage. We are able to store some boxes and things we don't use as often up against the back wall of the garage, while still being able to fit the Santa Fe in as well. This will be great in the winter when I am attempting to get out of the house with both kids. Plus, Ben won't have to clean snow off my car for me anymore. ;)
- This is our dining room area that is connected to our kitchen. In our old apartment we had to have the table pushed up against the wall because we didn't have enough room to have it pulled out so you could access all sides. It's nice to have this little dining area, and we even have room to add extra chairs for when friends or family come to visit.
- Here's another view of our dining room area, as seen from the patio door. You can see two closed doors. The one to the left leads out to the garage. The one to the right has the water heater and shelves that we added for our pantry.
- Here is our living room. Everything fits in it pretty well, and we were able to pick up stations with an antennae so we don't have to pay for TV anymore. Yay! (You can see our dog, Roscoe, has already gotten comfortable in our new home as well. As long as he has a comfy couch to lay on, he's happy.)
- And here's our kitchen. Again, not the biggest in the world, but it has much more cupboard space than either of our apartments in Bloomington. You can see Samantha has already christened our refrigerator with letter and number magnets. You really feel moved in when your refrigerator looks like that. :)
- This is Samantha's room. It is up above the garage and is a really good size for what we need for her. It has a pretty large closet which is nice for all her clothes, plus extra storage for some of our stuff way in the back. She has plenty of space for all her books, her dollhouse, her train set, and her reading corner.
- And last but not least, the most important room in the house, the play room. Off the dining room, behind the garage, there is a bonus room which we have turned into a play room. It's nice to have all the toys contained to one room instead of having them spread all over the living room. This room is perfect for Samantha, and eventually Aedan, to play in.
- Here are some pictures out the patio door at our back patio, yard space, and view from behind our house. It backs up to a golf course so we have lots of green space surrounding us. Across the street in front of our house there is actually farm land. It's quiet and beautiful, quite the change from being surrounded by tons of other apartments and people at Oakdale Square.
Here are Samantha and Daddy snuggled up on the couch Thursday night after dinner.
We threw around the idea of going to the concert in the park in Uptown Oxford that they have every Thursday night during the summer, but instead we decided to stay home so we could get laundry finished and get packed for our trip the next day. We let Samantha play in her pool that evening, since we now have a water faucet outside that actually works and a hose that we bought at Walmart, so now we can fill up the pool easily. She thought it was pretty cool to ride the slide and splash into the pool.
After having a fun time in the water, it was bath time and bed time for both children as we were going to have a long and busy weekend ahead of us in Chicago. I was in charge of bathing Aedan while Daddy bathed Samantha, and I decided to take the mesh infant insert out of the tub and let Aedan have the experience of splashing around in the water. (I have recently taken the infant head insert out of his car seat as well since he's getting so big and can hold his head up on his own without much of a problem.) Aedan already loved baths, but he REALLY loved being able to feel and splash around in the water. He got me pretty wet kicking his feet up and down in the water. He was just having a good old time. Bath time with babies is so enjoyable. I tried to get a video of him splashing around in the water, but he stopped at soon as I got out my phone.
Friday morning we got up, got ready, got last minute things packed up, and tried to hit the road for Chicago as early as we could. Here are some cute pictures and a video of Samantha playing with Aedan that morning. Apparently she thought he needed cookies for breakfast.
It's difficult to get places in a timely manner with two young kids. I think we left home around 10:30, and after we got on the highway, we let Samantha watch a movie in the car to kill some time while Aedan took a nap. Then we stopped at a Chick-fil-a in Lafayette for lunch so that Samantha could have some time to play while I nursed Aedan. Another layer of complication was that we brought Roscoe with us, so we couldn't leave him by himself in the car for too long. Lunch went pretty well, and we all piled back in the car for the rest of the trip, hoping that both kids would take good afternoon naps. Once we got past the area on 65 with all the wind turbines, Samantha let herself fall asleep. Aedan fell asleep pretty quickly, too. However, once we got to where we exit 65 onto 80/94, we got into a lot of stopped traffic. We were in stop and go traffic for quite a long time, which of course, made our two children wake up. (Both of them sleep soundly as long as we keep moving.) In fact, Aedan got so upset, the pacifier wasn't working, and there was no end in sight of the traffic ahead of us, so I actually climbed in the back and sat between the two car seats. It was not the most comfortable way to ride, but much more comfortable than hearing a baby scream and cry in the back seat. Aedan was much better once I could sit by him and interact with him. Samantha thought it was pretty cool that I was sitting next to her, and eventually Aedan fell back asleep, but I stayed in the back and read books to Samantha as we slowly, but surely, made our way to the Chicago suburbs. We didn't make it to our hotel until close to 4:00, much later than we anticipated when we left that morning from Oxford. I think the traffic back-up added another hour and a half to our trip.
That evening in Chicago was pretty relaxing. We met my whole family for pizza at Giordano's so I could get my fix of deep dish pizza. Samantha and Aedan both did really good in the restaurant. My mom ordered the pizza ahead of time so we didn't have to wait for it to be cooked, and that was extremely helpful. Then, after dinner, everyone came back to our hotel, since we had a suite with a living room, so that everyone could hang out with Samantha and Aedan a little longer before they had to go to bed.
On Saturday morning, Aunt Christy and Uncle Matt invited us over to their apartment complex to swim in their pool. Samantha was so excited to go swimming, even though it was a little bit of a chilly morning. She wore her floatie and spent most of the time jumping into the water, letting herself sink and then pop up again. Oftentimes she will say, "Mr. Scott would be proud of me for going under water." Swim lessons really gave her a big boost of confidence in the water this summer. It's great to see how much she enjoys it.
After swimming, we had to pick up a couple quick things for the shower, grabbed lunch at Wendy's, and then went back to our hotel to take showers and get ready for the baby shower at 2:00. We arrived at about 1:30 and were a little worried how our two kids would do confined to a small space with adults all afternoon right during the time they normally take naps. Aedan fell asleep in the car on the way there, but didn't stay asleep for very long once we got inside the restaurant. He was happy for most of the shower just being held my Grandpa, Grandma, or Aunt Christy. Then, after the games that I planned were over, I took him and put him in the Ergo so he could take a nap because he was getting a bit fussy. Samantha did pretty well that afternoon, despite the fact that she was really tired. We had her sleep on the pull out couch the night before in the hotel, and it took her quite awhile to settle down and go to sleep that night. Daddy did a great job wrangling Samantha at the shower, doing his best to entertain her and keep her happy.
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There were plenty of snacks, candy, and cake to enjoy at the shower. Samantha wanted to see the chocolate she got on her mouth and nose. :)
I thought the shower went really well. There was really good turn out, Christy and Matt got blessed with LOTS of presents, and a good time was had by all. We were very glad we could come up to be a part of it.
After the shower everyone was pretty tired, but we wanted to keep hanging out with my family, so we all went over to Matt and Christy's apartment for dinner. They grilled out chicken and asparagus for us for dinner, along with potatoes. It was a delicious dinner, and Samantha had fun watching their four cats run around the house. However, Samantha and Aedan were getting pretty tired, being out most of the day and not having their normal routine, so we didn't stay for too long. We wanted to get back to our hotel and get them both down for a good night's sleep. Ben and I were pretty tired and weren't too far behind them in going to bed.
Sunday morning we hung out at the hotel for the morning until it was time to go to church. Samantha was still pretty tired, so we had a low key morning and watched some cartoons on TV.
Here is a video of Aedan giggling after a diaper change when I was getting him ready for church on Sunday morning.
My family goes to Harvest Bible Chapel in Naperville, and the service doesn't start until 11:00. Both kids were so tired by that time. Aedan fell asleep pretty quickly in the car. He had a really good night of sleep, only waking up once and then sleeping in past 8:30 in the morning, but he hadn't taken a nap yet that morning. Samantha was so tired from a long and busy weekend that she just about fell asleep in the car on the way to church. We got Samantha checked in to her room, let her play on the indoor play area for a little while since we got there early, and then went down to church. Aedan stayed asleep in his car seat until the music started. (It was a little bit too loud sitting in the second row with a baby.) I had to take him out of the service twice that morning, once to nurse him and once to change a poopy diaper.
After church my whole family went out to Portillo's for lunch because I requested it. They usually go to Denny's, but I just couldn't justify coming to Chicago and eating at Denny's instead of an iconic Chicago tradition like Portillo's. The food was delicious, and again, Samantha and Aedan did a wonderful job in the restaurant even though they were both extremely tired. After staying and talking at the restaurant for awhile, we decided it was time to get on the road. We still had to go pick up Roscoe and Aedan would want to nurse before we got driving. We decided to drive partly out of the Chicago area and stop at an oasis so I could nurse Aedan in the car while Samantha and Daddy went inside the oasis to watch traffic drive underneath and play in the McDonald's playscape. However, it was getting so late in the afternoon as we didn't leave until 3:30, that Aedan ended up falling asleep in the car before we got to the oasis, and we had to keep talking to Samantha so that she wouldn't fall asleep as well. We didn't want to chance having Samantha fall asleep and then have Aedan wake up crying because he was hungry, because then Samantha's nap would be ruined for the rest of the trip. It worked out well to stop when we did. Aedan woke up as soon as we stopped and ate well.
The kids took a good nap in the car after that, Samantha for only about an hour, Aedan for close to two hours. We let Samantha watch the Lion King on the DVD player so that she could do something quietly while Aedan was still napping. We don't normally let Samantha watch movies in the car, but boy is it nice for long trips like this.
We stopped at a Culver's for dinner since we knew they had outside seating so we could get Roscoe out of the car when we stopped. We finally got back home around 9:45 our time, making for a very long day. Luckily, Aedan fell asleep in the car after dinner, and Samantha did a good job riding back in the car even though it was getting late and we were all just ready to be back home.
Monday we got back into the swing of things, and since we were all settled in to our new home, Ben went to campus to work, leaving me at home with Samantha and Aedan.
We desperately needed to go grocery shopping, so I took the kids to the Oxford Community Park to play, and then we went to Kroger together. I put Aedan in the Ergo and he took a good little nap while Samantha rode in the special cart. The shopping trip really went pretty well with having both kids by myself. I may not always go with both of them, but it's good to know that we can do it without having too many meltdowns.
Once we got back home and got the groceries put away, it was time for lunch, and I just had to take some pictures of my two cute lunch dates. Aedan likes to sit in the bumbo with us at the table. He loves watching Samantha and most of the time can't take his eyes off of her. She makes him smile and laugh more than anyone else. Even though it's crazy sometimes, I love being home with them instead of teaching full time. I wouldn't trade it for the world.
Samantha's hair has been getting pretty scraggly lately and hard to comb because of all the tangles. We have been talking a lot about getting her haircut, and at first I was kind of unsure about it because I was afraid if we got her hair cut, all her curls would go away. We haven't cut her hair at all since she was a baby, so I was feeling a bit sentimental about it. However, I just kept getting the feeling that it was about time. At first when I would mention it, Samantha didn't seem too keen on the idea either, but lately she had warmed up to the idea more. I figured I would try to schedule a hair appointment for her sometime during that week, so I took one last picture of her long hair during her bath on Monday night.
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