A few weeks ago

I'm really on the ball with everything right now - NOT. (remember that old joke!?)  

Here are some pictures I took of Charlie I took a few weeks ago when he was 4 weeks old.  I had planned with Savannah to take a picture of her sitting with the same frog stuffed animal every month for her first year so we could see her growth - I took exactly ONE of picture of her with that frog.  We'll see if I get any better at that with Charlie. Here's the first one. I'll probably take new ones this weekend when he will be 8 weeks old - unbelievable. 

Just a couple bros hanging out. It's cool. 

Words to live by

Someone asked on Facebook the other day if anyone had any words of wisdom to live by - I do!  

Here's a few of the things I say work.  Feel free to apply them if you'd like.  

Aim Low. 

What I mean by this is that you should expect the worst.  It sounds really depression and pessimistic but it's not.  If you expect a low outcome then you wont be so disappointed then things don't turn out and you'll be really excited and surprised if they go well! Be real.  For example, I expect to get 5 hours of sleep a night.  If I happen to get 6 - WOWZA!  Or, we had a youth event last week at which I expected 40 students tops to show up for - imagine my excitement when 115 students came! On the flip of that - I expect that Charlie will cry every day when we go pick Savannah up - and when he does, I just know that's life and we'll deal with it. I don't get upset - I just expect it. 

Dont dress how you feel - dress how you WANT to feel.  

This is a little variation of the the "dress for the job you want, not the job you have" idea.  If you're getting ready for the day, think about what you want to feel like.  Maybe right now you feel tired and worn out - but do you WANT to feel that way?  Probably not.  You probably want to feel like you have it together and you're ready to tackle stuff.  If you dress that way, even if you're just heading to the store, you'll have a better chance at feeling that way.  

Rinse your sinuses. 

If you have a cold at all, or if you're starting to get one, get a Nettie Pot like this one.  Then put as hot of water in it as you can stand (these are not the recommended instructions that come with it, but I recommend it), add the solution, and put it up your nose.  I'm telling you, even if your eyes water while you're doing it - go for the hot water.  I try to do this once a day always, and two to three times a day when I'm sick. It's good stuff. 

What words or things do you live by?

Makin it happen

Life around here is happening.  We have to make it happen!  I think if I had the way of my will, we would all just hang out in our pajamas all the time with the door locked and the tv on. With two kids, and one of them being a baby, I am so intimidated by the thought of doing things.   But life must go on.  It's healthy.  It's good.  It's right.  And actually - when we participate in life around us, instead of being exhausting (as one might think), it gives us more life!  (Wow - that  sounded a little new agey - but it's not, trust me.  I'm sure there is some Bible verse about that because it's so true)

So what's life looking like?  Well yesterday I went to the grocery store!  And today I made 5 freezer meals! Let me just tell you - this is the way to go.  Before Charlie was born my friend Laura had me over and we made 10 freezer meals that you pretty much just dump in the crock pot or throw in the oven. We had these any time that I just didn't have gumption to cook by 4pm.  That's most days now.  Enter 1.5 hours of prep and hopefully 5 nights of easy peasy dinners.  I was a little nervous to try to put these together with both kids around, but it worked!  

Charlie cries.  Did you know babies cry sometimes and you can't stop them?  Mine does.  

Yesterday we went to the mall to walk with our friend Lindsey.  5 laps around North Grand Mall is 2 miles.  How easy is that?  Charlie cried the entire time.  Oh well.  We made it all 5 laps!

I've discovered that time goes by really fast when A. You have an infant in your arms at least %50 of the day and B. The day is broken down into 3 hour increments (eat, awake and fine, fussy, swaddle, sleep, eat...)

Savannah is going on with life too.  She's been more imaginative lately than ever!  She pretends that she is all kinds of people.  Then she pretends that her toys are all kinds of characters.  It's a little like watching the movie "Toy Story" a lot of the time.  All kinds of voices and scenarios going on over here. 

And there's these little fingers in our life now.  That's alright. 

Week in Review

We made it another week!!! Charlie is now 4 weeks old.  We made it!  Before he was born Travis and I had prepared ourselves to have a rough time from labor through the first month - and we are not on the other side of the first month.  And we were pretty much right - it was a little rough!  My memory of having a new born baby was correct.  We had a lot of chaos, tears (Charlie and the rest of us), a lot of growing in patience, and now the calm has begun to set in.  Charlie is eating about every 3 hours through out the day and every 4 - 6 hour over night.  He is having times of being awake and calm, which is new within the last week.  Before it was either sleeping or crying.  We've learned that this boy really really loves to be swaddled.  Wrapping his arms up tight almost always immediately soothes him.   In the last week or so:
We made it to church and Charlie slept almost the whole time.
I went to Escape on a Wednesday and Travis had both kids alone at bed time.
Charlie went to the doctor for an infected clogged tear duct in his eye.


Savannah is doing really well too.  She hasn't had any "this is why I don't like Charlie" moments in a while.  She's learning to be okay when things have to change and learning to be much more flexible.  We have eaten way way more meals in the living room in front of the TV lately and I know she's loving that!  She's been great to help us with Charlie and also at occupying herself when he's having a rough time and wont stop crying.  Usually when she's starting to get warn down from his crying she disappears into another room and plays pretend with her dolls or her stuffed animals - loudly.  She's joyful in it so I just let her sing and yell at them as much as she wants.

Here's a picture that I stole off of Savannah's class room website.  She cracks me up!

She loves Charlie so much. Even when he's crying.  She says "I'm glad Charlie cries because I want him to tell us that he needs something"

Spiritual frontline

Since about a week before Charlie was born I have had one heck of a time getting my head together to spend any kind of time focusing on talking to or hearing from God. I'd attribute that to a few things : tiredness, lack of routine, believing lies, and having little connection to church I name a few. Today we finally got back to church for the first time in a while. Our church has a section in the back for people with babies. Charlie did great and slept the entire service! Travis and I did not do so great. We talked most of the service. We have no attention span hen we are that far back. We'll try again next week!

The other thing that has helped me to not totally lose touch is the book and the app - One Thousand Gifts. The book and the vision behind it all are written to help people remember all the gifts of grace that God has given us. The challenge is to make a list of 1000 gifts, big and small, that God has brought into your life. I've been using the app to record at least 3 gifts a day and its been a (small) way that I can spend a couple moments a day connecting to God and thanking Him.

This week I start back to work with Escape, we are going to go to connection group and I hope to spend a little time reading through 1 Thessalonians. Baby steps!

Yo Gabba Gabba Yo!

Oh man!  This is awesome. We had the Gabbaland Gold treatment!

So the other night I was having a little pity party for myself, when my phone rang and we were offered free tickets to Yo Gabba Gabba Live.  Long story short - Leslie Hall and Kate Kennedy had tickets for the show to give away and they thought of us!  Leslie was on tour last year with Gabbaland so they gave her some tickets to the show in Des Moines and since she's seen the show "like 90 times" - she wasn't going. I had so badly wanted to take Savannah to it last year, but it wasn't near enough to us and it was too expensive.  The night before the show, Charlie had kept me and Savannah up with some crazy crying fits and I could tell we were both about to lose it.  So it could not have been better timing for us!  My mom came over and helped with Charlie and we took off.  

Not only did Leslie hook us up with tickets to the show, but she also gave us passes to a little after party/meet and greet event where we got to hug on and take pictures with and dance with all the Yo Gabba Gabba peeps! They also had a coloring station and free fruit snacks.  Swanky!

I will also mention that from what I observed - DJ Lance is actually a genuinely nice guy. He obviously had some kind of cold or something, but he still talked to and swung around each kid that was there.  Sometimes I wonder about those characters from kids shows - like, they could be total jerk creepers or something.  

Savannah colored pictures for some of the characters and was totally confused when they didn't take them out with them when they left.  What's funny is that she knows they are just people in costumes, but she still expects them to take gifts as if they were really Gabba people.  She's still in a pretty fun imagination stage. 

Another highlight - more for me than for Savannah I think - Savannah got pulled on stage in the middle of the show to make beat box noises with The Diabolical Biz Markie!  For those that don't know, he was big in the early 90's.  Then they kept her and the other kids up there to dance for a song - she was all over the stage.  I'll try to post a video sometime - it's more a process to get those from my phone to the blog. 

We were so blessed by this little 4 hour get away.  Thanks again and again to Leslie for getting us in!  We're a better Momma and a better Big Sis because of it! 

Two weeks later

We've been fairly silent with updates lately because there aren't many. Turns out raising a second infant is less eventful than the first. Charlie is definitely experiencing a much more laid back approach to parenting than Savannah was at this point in life. Of course, two weeks down the road with her we were just figuring out that she was lactose intolerant and we were in the middle of moving in with my parents.

Charlie is doing well. He is eating about every three hours around the clock and doing about half fussing and half sleeping during the times he's not eating. Unlike big sister as a Baby,Charlie loves to be swaddled an like to be carried around in a baby Bjorn carrier while I clean house. He is much more of a snuggler than our crazy girl was. We started giving him formula last week. Nursing, and all that goes with it, not only stresses me out and makes me feel violated, but it was also making me super depressed. I felt like I could never have anyone over or go anywhere. I know I didn't give it a very long shot, but Travis and I both agreed that in the long run formula was better for us. So now we are in trial and error mode with trying to find the right formula.

Savannah buns is great. She is getting more used to her role as big sister and since we changed our feeding strategy I have been able to spend more time with her. Every once and a while she gets upset - like when we tell her she has to quiet down or when we have to break the regular nap routine because Charlie needs me, but we are reminded that this is part of why we had another one. She's a wonderful and caring girl who is now discovering that not even my entire world is just about her - I'm hoping that this will give her an even greater desire to love people and love God.

Next week I start my way back to work at the church.  I have a couple meetings and things to go to, and I'm planning to bring baby Charlie to some of those.  If you think of if, please pray for him to be a good sleeper and to be quiet.  I feel a little like I'm diving into something that's totally unknown, which is strange because I've had this job for 6 years.   Here we go!