Aedan: 55 Months, Week 2
Owen: 13 Months, Week 5 (Week 61)
On Sunday Owen did what he had done for the past three nights: Friday night, Saturday night, and Sunday night. He slept from when I put him down until he woke up around 6:00 or 6:15. Then, I was able to nurse him and get him back to sleep. Sometimes he would sleep another couple hours until between 8:00 and 8:30. He's been doing better at nap time on most days, too, so I have been pleased with his sleep. Now, if he could just extend his night an hour longer so that he was waking up between 7:00 and 7:30, that would be perfect, and he would be sleeping all the way through the night to a time that would allow him to make it through the morning to nap time in the afternoon.
n slept through the night last night, so that was nice
Later that day, Aedan was playing with these coasters, spinning them around in circles, and Owen couldn't help but stand there and watch him. He thinks his big brother is pretty cool.
The rest of the day went by like normal with church and quiet time for the kids so Ben could get some work done before small group that night. Ben took these pictures of Samantha reading to the dolls in her room. You can see dolls on her bed and in the chair on the floor, all listening attentively to her read.
After Owen woke up from his nap that afternoon, he did something that he has been doing a lot lately that I wanted to make sure I wrote about. Oftentimes, when he wakes up, I take him out of his wrap and put him down on the floor, but instead of walking out of the room right away, he will come back around the chair to give me a hug before walking off. I love it, and it makes me so happy. He also gives Daddy the biggest hugs when he gets home from work, and it's so sweet. Owen loves for people to hold him, and he will gladly let most people pick him up and hold him. If he wants you to pick him up, he will go up to you, stand at your feet, grab on to your legs, and stomp his little feet back and forth until you pick him up.
Monday morning was set-up time for MOPS, which is always a little busy, but I've taken to just put Owen in the stroller with some snacks and leave him with Aedan and the other kids in the big church while I move bins and get the rooms set up. I had a lot of help that morning, so it made the work go very quickly, and then we were on our way back home. We didn't have any other plans that morning, so the boys and I just did stuff around the house. I have been washing and changing sheets and towels on Mondays. Plus, with Owen waking up earlier than he should be, he was just going around making lots of messes in the house as I tried to get things done. However, I felt bad that morning because I was kind of ignoring Aedan when he kept asking me to play with him. I don't know why I didn't just sit down and play with him because I would have much rather been playing with him instead of cleaning and doing laundry. I wish that I would just sit down and play with him more without feeling like I have other things I have to be doing at the same time. I know I will miss having him around a lot when he goes to school next year, and I really would like to be more intentional about playing with him when he asks me to play with him and not putting him off as much.
We get so many papers from school, especially now that Aedan is in preschool. I keep a few special things here and there, but I try to make sure I take pictures of things before I throw them away. Here is a sampling of Aedan's artwork from preschool and AWANA over the last few weeks.
Right after school the kids were begging to go outside and play in the new snow that we had gotten, so I got everyone all bundled up and went outside for awhile before we had to come back in and have a quick dinner before Aedan had to go to hockey. While they were gone, Samantha, Owen, and I finished up eating dinner, and she helped play with Owen while I got dinner cleaned up. Owen loved having his big sister's attention, she was letting him wrestle with her, and he kept eating and slobbering all over her face, while she just laid on the floor and laughed.
Ben took Aedan to hockey that night, and he was impressed with how well he was doing. They had team pictures that night, and then had different stations set up. He saw him playing with a puck, and he found games after Ben had to kick him out of the corner when he was just kind of skating around aimlessly. Kate's mom was even playing catch with him which he liked a lot. Ben enjoyed watching him have fun and enjoy himself on the ice.
This video is pretty cool for me to watch because you can see him sliding across the ice, in from the right side. I don't think I've ever seen him slide across the ice this fast. I only have seen him take his little baby steps, so I thought it was pretty awesome to see him skate like this. I hope he can keep it up!
Monday night into Tuesday Owen gave me a wonderful gift of sleeping all the way through the night again, this time making it until about 7:20 before waking up for the day. I was so excited that he has been starting to do this more lately, and I hope that he can keep it up and start sleeping through the night more. His interest in nursing has definitely tapered off, and he doesn't even typically fall asleep nursing at night anymore, so I know it's just a matter of time before he will no longer need that. I have definitely been enjoying the nights of uninterrupted sleep.
We also got quite a bit of snow overnight. Here is the view of our backyard that morning. You can see Samantha's snowman on the table covered with snow, making it look more like a snow mountain. It definitely is pretty seeing the yard covered in white, but sometimes it's still hard for me to get used to it being so cold and snowy this early in November.
Tuesday was a MOPS day, and it was the day of the "Mom Olympics." I participated in it last year, and even though it's not my favorite thing to do because it's a little out of my comfort zone, it's fun to watch all the moms play games and be silly together. I volunteered for the stroller slalom, where I had to buckle a baby doll into a stroller and push it down the hallway around toys all over the floor. I also brought our pack and play with the broken bar along to try and trick Juli, the pack and play master, but she still was able to figure out how to get it together and then taken apart again faster than anyone else. It was a fun time, everyone had great laughs, and our team ended up winning silver for second place.
After getting all the kids' stuff put away and lugged to my car, we rushed home for a quick lunch before taking Aedan to preschool MOPS days always feel hectic to me, and I feel exhausted by the time afternoon rolls around. Luckily, Owen finally took a good nap after MOPS that day, which he hadn't done in a while. In fact, he was still asleep when Calla got there, which was really nice. I was able to get away quicker without having to sit with him and help him get settled before picking up the kids and taking them to gymnastics.
As Tuesday went on, I started to feel more and more sick with a pretty bad cold. My nose was running like crazy, my head felt three times bigger than it really was, and I just felt miserable. I found myself being crabby and snapping at everyone that evening as we were doing bath time and bed time, and I knew I just needed to take it easy for the rest of the night.
Aedan prefers to take baths by himself so he has space to play, whereas Samantha has enjoyed taking baths with Owen so she can play with him and also so she can sit in the bath rather than take a shower. In the bath tub that night, she decided to do his hair in a mohawk, and she wanted me to take a picture of it. I even flipped the camera around so that Owen could see himself, and he thought he looked pretty funny. I sure do love this little boy and his smile. He really enjoys all the attention he gets from Samantha in the bath tub.
As the evening went on, it just kept snowing and snowing, and it was also pretty cold outside, 20 degrees but felt like 7. I couldn't believe how much snow we were getting, and I wondered if this was the beginning of the snow piling up, or if it would go away some before snowing again.
After a snowy night, we were met with a surprise on Wednesday morning: a SNOW DAY! The kids were excited to be able to stay home and play together, and snow days still make me excited, too. I was glad to have them home with me for the day. It was like a little blessing from God after the conversation with Samantha on Tuesday night about how fast time was going by. Here's what our back and front yard looked like that morning. Later in the day I measured it with ruler, and I think it was about a foot or so.
After getting back home from the library, we had lunch together and while I put Owen down for his nap, Samantha and Aedan went outside to play in the snow. When they came back inside, they requested hot chocolate with marshmallows, and then I let them watch a movie in the living room. They had a blast on their first snow day of the year, and I was glad to have this unexpected day with my kiddos.
Owen woke up toward the end of the movie, so while the credits were rolling, they all decided to get up and dance around to the music. However, Aedan got a little too crazy, grabbing Owen around the neck a little too hard and knocking him down. I had to stop the video because Owen started crying from falling down on the floor too hard. They love each other, but sometimes they forget that Owen is still little and they have to be a little more gentle and careful with him.
Since school was cancelled that day, AWANA was also cancelled. Because of that, we decided to have Aedan go to hockey practice that night for the extra practice, and it was my turn to take him. I'm not sure what was going on with him that night, but he wasn't trying very hard. He just had no motivation to try or to skate faster. He was the only one still taking little baby steps and not gliding on his skates much at all. I didn't know what we could do to help him start pushing off more and gliding on his skates. I felt a little embarrassed because I felt like he was the slowest skater. I wondered if part of it had to do with the fact that we have him miss half the practices with only going on Mondays, where as most other kids probably go two nights a week.
Thursday was our typical morning of grocery shopping, preschool, and getting Owen down for a nap. I thought about inviting a mentor mom over to hang out that afternoon, but I was feeling really crummy with my cold and decided it would be better to lay low. I didn't feel much like talking with the way I felt.
On Friday morning, Ben and Aedan got their hair cut at the same time in preparation for our family pictures on Saturday morning, and then since it was finally not going to be snowing and was going to be above freezing, I spent some time outside planting the tulip and daffodil bulbs I bought a while back. I planted some in the front and some in the barrels in the back, so it will be interesting to see what grows once spring time arrives.
On Friday morning, Ben and Aedan got their hair cut at the same time in preparation for our family pictures on Saturday morning, and then since it was finally not going to be snowing and was going to be above freezing, I spent some time outside planting the tulip and daffodil bulbs I bought a while back. I planted some in the front and some in the barrels in the back, so it will be interesting to see what grows once spring time arrives.
Then, that afternoon Kristen, a mentor mom from MOPS, came over to talk over coffee. We have some things in common with our family upbringing, and we have talked about getting coffee together, but I figured it would be easier for her to just come over to my house while Owen napped because it would be easier for me to be able to talk without having to chase Owen around the house. We had good conversation, but my cold was still making me feel pretty miserable. I was going to go to a mom's night out that evening and Ben was going to put the kids to bed, but I just didn't feel like going anywhere. I just wanted to lay on the couch under a blanket and watch TV, and I certainly didn't feel like socializing and playing games. I was sad to miss it, but I will look forward to going to the next mom's night out.
Saturday was a fairly busy day at our house. We had planned to get our pictures taken by a friend, Lindsey Allen, who has her own photography business, but hasn't started it back up since moving up here from New Orleans. She offered to take some family pictures for us, and we planned to go over on campus for them. We went with a blue theme for our outfits, and even though it was pretty cold for pictures outside without coats on, the kids really did a great job and were great sports standing out in the snow and in the cold. Aedan is usually a stinker with pictures, and it's difficult to get him to smile, let alone smile in a normal way, so I was so pleased by the results we got when Lindsey sent me the link to the pictures. It was a little tricky getting good pictures of Owen, especially of him actually smiling at the camera, and he was not to pleased with us keeping him out in the cold, but overall, I think the pictures turned out wonderful. I love getting family pictures done every year, not just for Christmas cards, but just to see the change of the kids from year to year. Last year we had a two month old baby at this point, and now he is a toddler, running all over the place, with his own developing personality. And don't even get me started on how much older Samantha and Aedan look. Samantha has grown like a weed, loves school, and is such a wonderful big sister to her two little brothers. And Aedan looks more and more like a school-age boy, but he is still my little boy and hugs me and tells me he loves me all the time. We have some good looking kids, and I love seeing the five of us all together in pictures. Thank you so much for capturing these wonderful moments, Lindsey. :)
While the kids warmed up inside one of the buildings, Ben and I even got some pictures taken of just the two of us. I think all these pictures turned out so great. Lindsey is a talented photographer, and it will be hard to choose which ones to print for our home and which ones to use for the Christmas card.
After getting our pictures done, we went back home to warm up and have some lunch. Ben planned to take Samantha and Aedan to Canada to go swimming that afternoon during their public swim time. It just doesn't work to take Owen to the pool right now because he is too wild and just wants to walk around, but then of course just falls face first into the water, and he isn't quite big enough or heavy enough to wear one of the Puddle Jumper floaties. Plus, it was his nap time anyways, and Ben was looking forward to spending some one-on-one time with just the big kids. He doesn't get much time with them, so this was a special thing they could go do together.
While they were gone, I put Owen down for a nap and set up the Christmas tree, fluffing out all the branches and getting it ready for Samantha and Aedan to help me decorate it when they got back home. They helped me spread all the ornaments out on the kitchen table, and we even found all of their ornaments from each year and talked about why we picked that ornament for them for that year, and how when they grow up and have a house and a tree of their own, they will be able to take all these ornaments with them as memories of their childhood. It's a fun tradition that we started. Samantha and Aedan were great helpers with the tree, even if one or two ornaments got dropped and broken. I only had to remind Aedan a few times to spread the ornaments out so they weren't all in the same spot, and they did a great job of putting the more breakable ones near the top so that Owen couldn't reach them. I had no idea how Owen would react to the tree, and I hoped that it wouldn't be too difficult to tell him not to pull the ornaments off. Owen took a nice, long nap that afternoon, giving the kids and I plenty of time to get the tree all decorated. Here are my little helpers. :) I'm so glad they like to decorate with me.
After a later dinner that night (since we were decorating the tree and Ben was moving wheelbarrows full of wood that we had delivered for our fireplace), we did bath time and bedtime. It was my turn with Samantha, and Owen had found Aedan's old toothbrush to chew on while he walked around like a silly cowboy in Samantha's room. Owen really enjoys making people laugh and will purposely do something silly again if he knows it will make you laugh. He is such a funny kid, and he makes Samantha and I laugh so hard when he is being silly at night.
(Blog about November 11-17, 2018)
