Wednesday, July 09, 2008

Will I ever Keep up?

june 19,2008

You know your child is head to geekdom when
1) He insists on wearing socks with sandals
2)Puts his underwear on his head (imitating his uncle David)
3) His favorite new videos are the Multiplication Rock from the school house rock series, you know the ones when we were kids. Though he does like Lolly Lolly Lolly get your Adverbs, and Electricity Electricity too. Goes around singing those all the time now.

june 20,2008

yesterday was pure luck on naps at the same time.

I can get Alex to nap once every three days at this point. Quin never got rid of his morning nap. I can push it back somedays from 11 to 12:30-1:00 but usually he's ready by 10:30-11:00. If Alex takes a nap it's after 1:00. So sometimes there is a half hour overlap most times it ends up being one on one time for me and the kids. Quin naps 2 hours max most of the time but then he sleeps 11-12 hours at night so I really can't expect more. Alex when he does nap is out 3 hours but he sleep 8 1/2-10 hours at night. Yeterday Quin woke late, after 8am so he wasn't ready for a nap until we started lunch at noon. After I got him settled I gave Alex some craft time then told him he had to turn off the TV and rest, he was out ten minutes later. His nap was short just over two hours while Quin's went long at almost three. So it was a little out of tthe ordinary for both.

Then of course both had nightmares last night. At least with Quin all I have to do is bring him downstairs for 5-10 minutes in the vibrating rocker then he's ready to go back to bed. Alex on the other hand I have to calm down. Last night he was screaming about wanting to watch Phineas and Ferb. Luckily in his half wake state I was able to calm down with a promise to check when/if it was on today. Somenights are not so easy. And it's even worse when he gets nose bleed.

I forgot to mention date night wednesday got postponed until next week. Ken has a pesentation today, in Utah. His boss was suppose to go over the slide show over the weekend. He didn't then he told Ken Tuesday as he was leaveing they needed some major revisions. So he had to stay late wednesday to fix that because the flight was a buttcrack Thursday morning. Since Amanda was coming anyway to take the boys for a little toy shopping and ice cream (treat for Alex consistantly using the potty) I love Amanda, we were so lucky to find her. It's so nice to have a sitter you can count on. So I took the opportunity to go over to the gym. I have been taking a dance aerobics class the last few weeks. Though I get there and find out it was cancelled, the instructor's daughters had a dress rehersal for their recital. I spent 45 minutes on the bike instead. And I figured out that treadmills are really hard for short people unless yu have the co-ordination to us it without hanging on (I don't) because the arms rests/ are at an akward height when standing upright if you're under 5'6".

june 29,2008

SO a short update before we leave for TN, where I'll most likely have no internet access. Heh I can't even use my cell phone until we get out to the main highway. I think the only way my dad can get high speed access would be satelite and there is no way he's shelling out for that. Dial up won't cut it.

Yesterday was a crazy day. We went down to the inner harbor to meet up with family for lunch. My cousin's Kerrie and Becky were up visiting (both their mom and dad have family in MD) with their kids. So my aunt Pat arranged for everyone meet and go to the Aquarium. We decided not to do that part because we had a birthday party/playgroup BBQ to go to at 4pm and needed to bring certain food items. We needed the morning to prep that. Combined with the aquarium would ahve cost us $60 and we'll be spending $300 minimum for gas to and from TN. Not in the budget.

We had lunch at the Hard Rock out on their deck because it would have been a 20 minute wait to be seated inside. Luckily with the storms rolling in there was a nice breeze. I think there were 15 of us; Kerrie and her son, Becky and her two, Justin, his wife and their two girls, Katie and Doug and their two girls, Patty, my mom and us. Quin slept through lunch, and all Alex would eat was chips. Once we got home I had to feed them. We loaded up the car and headed over to Jen's for the BBQ. The kids had a great time I don't think they ate a single thing that was good for them. Ken was grill master once more. One of the other dad's, Brian told me if I ever divorced Ken he'd marry him. I think by the end of the night there might have been two of Ken's almost famous wings left, and several burgers and dogs. Quin found the water slide before any of the kids, so he was playing with the water that pooled at the bottom. Once the other kids started going down it he stood at the bottom and laughed everytime he got splashed and/or knocked down.


I just had to go up recover Quin's tooth brush for him. Since he started getting in his second year molars he needs a tooth brush to chew on to go to sleep. Could be worse things, I suppose. Occasionally as he drifts off it drops out of the crib, this wakes him and he starts crying. So mom must run upstairs recover toothbrush, rinse it off and hand it back to him. As soon as he has it in his hands he curls back up to go to sleep.

July 8,2008

Learn something about your kids all the time. It's amazing how different they can be. This trip to TN taught me that it doesn't matter what time Quin goes to bed he'll wake up about twelve hours later. So if I put him to bed at 8 he'll wake at 8. I now realize this is why he was up at 6:30 every morning, he was going to be at 6:30 every night. Why? because that's what we did with Alex when he was that age. No matter what time he went to bed he was up at 6:00 am. So if I wanted more free time it was better to get him in bed earlier.
The result of this is Alex is going to bed before Quin now, of course he's not taking a nap very often either.

I think it's going to be easier to get Alex night trained than it will be to get him to actually poop in a potty. 3 days out of 4 he wakes up dry and is still dry an hour later when I help him get dressed. I don't even bother with a pull up on the days he does take a nap. But man, I would just love if once just once he'd actually poop in a potty. Not sure how to motivate him on this.

Quin had a bunch of achievements this week. He learned to crawl up the stairs. Getting down is still a problem but up certainly isn't. He also started the "he's touching me/I'm not touching you" teasing. I was hoping they'd be a couple years older before this started. It was cracking Ken and me up. What he does is swing his leg over the arm of his seat and wave his foot at Alex. This of course sets him off and he's yelling an whining for Quin to stop. The he starts pushing the foot away. Quin brings it right back giggling the whole time because to him it's a game to relieve his boredom. I told Alex to ignore him and it would stop, because it's not fun if there isn't a reaction. Ken just shook his head no way that was gonna happen. Alex can't ignore anything unless it's something he doesn't want to do.

We have skin sensitivites in this family. I have to be very careful what I use or I get a rash/hives. Heh, I just found a shower gel I can use everyday a couple months ago. In most cases if I can use it my kids are okay with it. So I found a new sunblock and it works really well on me and Alex. Quin was not so lucky. The problem was I first tried it on him Saturday when we were at the party. He spent most of the afternoon playing in the water at the bottom of the slide and there were mosquitoes everywhere. So when I noticed Sunday there were only three-four bumps on his calves and thought they were bug bites. We weren't outside for any length of time until Tuesday. Well Tuesday night they were all up and down his legs and arms. Making for one miserable boy. Benedryl cream to the rescue. So now I have to find something new for him. I'll see if I can find california baby around here.