Re-entry

Well. It's Monday after my almost full week off, and it was great. I got to spend some good time with a friend I rarely get to see, Cam got to learn about all sorts of news things on the shores of Maine (crabs and ROCKS and more water and new friends!) and just focus on something other than normal life for a little bit. Not that my normal life is bad per se, but a little break was needed. I could write pages about all we did - but lets leave it at Cam was such a trooper, taking the 4 hour car ride like it was nothing, meeting all kinds of new people and trying all sorts of new things! I'm so proud of him! And proud of me too - for whatever reason I found myself telling my story over and over again, and I was OK. And I wasn't worried one bit about Maggie with Aaron - I knew Aaron would handle everything just fine.

Maggie and Aaron did great on their own - Maggie is officially crawling and cruising. If I remember with Cam, he crawled first and then tried cruising a month later. Maggie is much more into crawling in order to get close to something she can cruise on. Sigh. And for a little girl that barely made a peep (except when full on crying) she is now talking non-stop. Dadadadadammamamamamnanananananan was all I heard on the car ride to day care this morning! It's amazing the things that change in 4 short days.

And now that my vacation is over, I'm back to the gym. I stopped going when everyone was sick with hand, foot and mouth and also while I was getting over some stomach issues. But I marked today as the day I will go back - I even got a new pair of workout shorts (that fit. I was jamming myself into way too small spandex. Even spandex doesn't stretch that much, lol). Aaron has agreed to stay at home 2 mornings a week so I can go to the 5:45 spin class (he is usually out the door for work by 6) so that will help me stay motivated too.

Well - I need to weed through email, push through laundry, and other various re-entry tasks.... but first step is to hit the gym!

Maggie

Not much on baby updates lately - so I thought I'd tell you all how Miss Maggie is getting on. She is almost 9 months(!) old... and is such a happy, happy baby. She is totally and completely engaged in life around her. She loves her big brother - she watches him all the time, and when he wakes her up in the morning (I really need to video that, it's super cute) she greets him with a big smile.

I feel like she is always plotting something - she is such a quiet and observant baby - almost the opposite of Cam who throws himself head first into everything . It doesn't seem to me that she tries anything until she can do it 100%. No undignified falling over for Maggie. If she wants to sit - she sits. If she wants to stand up (which is all the time) she does it. When she is tired, she plops her butt down to sit again. Last night, she was standing up for a good 10 minutes watching her brother run around the backyard:

(side note - can you STAND how freaking cute that dress is? She wears it every time it comes out of the wash).

She wants to be in the thick of things... no riding in the stroller for Maggie! She wants to be IN the wagon with Cam. For a bit, Cam was struggling with that (NO. MINE!) but now he likes to sit facing her and make her laugh.
Health-wise, no more issues for Maggie. She is still on the fancy formula - but done with the reflux meds. She has her 2 bottom teeth in, and if night time fussiness is any indication - the top ones are working their way to us as we speak. Almost daily, Aaron and I comment on just how lucky we are to have such a wonderful family.

September 8th, Maggie has her 9 month check up - I'm dying to see how big she's gotten!

Wordless Wednesday - Washing Firetrucks

Random Again

We such a fun packed weekend, that the only way I can sum it up is to do another bullet point post:

• I took Friday off and had a super fun day with a couple of my girlfriends going to a quilt show. It turned out to be kind of a lame show, but I really needed a baby-free day off.
• Maggie is 100% moving. I can't say crawling because it certainly isn't textbook crawling...but she does this funny combo of crawling, rolling and sitting up that moves her right across a room. This weekend, if I put her down and turned around, when I would look back, she would be on the other side of the room! She is much more interested in standing up... which makes me nervous about her starting to walk soon...
• Saturday, we woke up and went to the lake - the weather was so beautiful, and for whatever reason, we were the only people there. It was wonderful.
• Saturday night, we had a babysitter watch our sleeping babies and went to the movies! Love that.
• Sunday, we got up and played outside until it was time for our town's Wash the Fire Truck day! Cam LOVED it. I have some great pictures I need to share. And, of course, Maggie was a big hit with the firemen who hadn't seen her since she was 5 days old.
• It was a little weird to see the same emergency rescue truck that was at our house for a really crappy reason to be opened up with little kids climbing all over it - but I just steered clear.
• In the afternoon, we popped over to a neighbors house to check on something, and ended up spending a couple hours playing in their backyard. Aaron was sitting in the grass, and began to obsessively remove the crabgrass (they just redid their back yard too - and they have a bunch of crabgrass). Our friend sat down and pulled it with him, then beer got involved.... and now they have a very nice 6X6 foot square of non-crabgrass area on their new lawn. Their new HUGE lawn... but we were all laughing about it.
• Sunday night, I had some girlfriends over for a night of cards. Aaron and I were talking about it before people arrived, and most people when I said to come over to play cards are like...cards? And then they come and have a blast. I think people forget how much fun playing cards is!
• In other very random news, a girlfriend gave us this fun book - it's a 'book' that opens up with a pop up town and a wind up fire turck that goes around the town. Cam loves it, I kind of hate it. But in that love/hate sort of way. I thought - why don't we bring it to school? He can share it with his friends, and I don't have to wind up the damn fire truck over and over again every morning, when I'm trying to feed Maggie? So - I was looking it up on amazon to tell you guys about it (because it IS a fun thing - and thought maybe some of you would want to get one for your little boys). It's out of print and worth $70. Oh well. I called daycare so we could laugh about it together.

Mid-week Smile

Normal Weekend

Well, normal for us. We had NOTHING planned this weekend. Just hanging out at home, playing with the kids, and hopefully, getting the back yard seeded so we could have a 'real' back yard and not just mud (although Cam would love that).

The highlights?

• Saturday morning, I got in my car, and was like - yuck. Smells like garbage. By the end of the weekend, and much drama, we figured out it was a DEAD MOUSE in my car door. Aaron managed to find it, take apart my car door, removed the MAGGOT covered mouse, and get it all back together. I love that man.
• Saturday I went for a Mom's Night Out with the gals from daycare and had a blast (and margaritas!)
• Sunday, Aaron woke up with Maggie at 6, gave her a bottle, and then got Cam out of the house to breakfast. Maggie and I slept until 9!!! Luxury.
• I met up with that twin mom I was afraid to make friends with Saturday afternoon - for $200 I got an obscene amount of clothes for both Cam and Maggie. For example - 33 long sleeve 3T girls shirts and I didn't count, but at least as many long sleeve 4T boys shirts. A winter coat with matching snow pants. 7 pairs of 4T jeans. 3 bathing suits. 3 pairs of barely worn sneakers! 20 pairs of PJs in different sizes. And Cam had a blast running around with them, after he got over being shy. Doritos got him to like them (yep. totally my son)
• Saturday, I tried to put Cam's sneakers on (to avoid too much dirt/mud on his feet in from our 'backyard'). He said Ow Momma as I tried to put them on. I told him his was fine - and he wore them all day - he was walking a little funny but I pretended I didn't notice. Since I had a coupon, I took him to the shoe store on Sunday. I figured I could confirm he would fit in all the size 7 hand me down shoes I have. Well, he is a size 8. And I'm guessing that was the issue when I jammed him in his size 6.5 sneakers. Whoops.
• Aaron DID get the backyard seeded and now we are obsessively watering in hopes of a lawn in 2 weeks! A girl can dream!
• We also cleaned out the garage, which was past due.
• Now I'm in the process of finishing up organizing baby clothes. You know, until next month when I'll need to do it all over again.

: )

Well, I took a little of every one's advice. First, for dinner I offered Cam these strange French Fry shaped chicken nuggets that he LOVED. He ate those and then a bunch of grapes, and two glasses of milk, topped off with 1/2 of a chocolate chip cookie that Aaron was baking. I had gotten into a rut of always giving him orzo because I know he likes that - maybe he was sick of it?

Then, I took Maggie up to bath, telling Cam (who was watching the Muppets - he's started to watch a little TV in the past couple weeks so I got the Muppets from Netflix. How much fun!) that we were going upstairs, and he could come when he was ready. Aaron came up with Maggie's bottle and was looking for Cam upstairs, I laughed and told him he was still watching the Muppets. He came right upstairs when he realized everyone was upstairs and he was downstairs.

Then, Aaron slowly took off his clothes while I finished bathing Maggie. As I left the room, Aaron got him in the bath. Not a word from Cam. He played in there just fine, and Aaron very slowly poured water over his head telling him to close his eyes (which we normally do - but usually faster) and washed him.... no issues. So I wonder two things - if we were trying to rush through it to just get it over with was making it worse, and also if having Maggie 'in his space' was stressing him out - being that he was so tired by the end of the day. Anyway, both kids were happy and asleep by 7 PM - and not a tear was shed.

Thank you SO much for all the advice. This morning, he was also markedly less whiny - I did let him take a truck with him to school. Usually I make him leave his toys at home... but figured what the hell. I need to bend on a few things, right? The whole ride to school he was playing with it and saying My Truck! Big Truck!

Random Toddler Advice Needed

I have a bunch of things going on with Cam that I wonder what you all would do if it was your kids - I know, asking for advice is rare here - so please help!

• Cam HATES taking a bath. He used to not mind, but since he was about 18 months or so, he cries and cries when we put him in. We tried a bubble machine (that helps), we tried letting him decide when to get in - but even if he gets calmly in, when I get around to washing his hair and face - he FLIPS out. I know the soap doesn't burn (I tried it myself), we tell him to close his eyes before we do it - but seriously. He has to get washed (he plays hard and gets filthy every day) but it just sucks, because he REALLY cries. I want to be understanding - but dude. It's just water. Maggie is in the tub with him at the same time, which he seems to like, but last night, she tipped over (face first) and started crying, and he started - and then continued to cry for over 15 minutes. It. Was. Awesome. I did even try a shower - that was 1000 time worse. He was shaking he was so upset.
• The crying in general. If Cam drops something, is asked to leave someplace he doesn't want to, falls down - he cries. He used to say uh-oh or wave bye-bye to where we were leaving - but now he usually freaks out. It's frustrating because we usually ignore it, and within minutes he is totally fine and smiling. Please tell me this is short lived phase.
• When he does fall down, sometimes it looks like he maybe did hurt himself - I'll ask - Where does it hurt? He never can tell me - he will just be crying so hard, is he to young to be able to answer that question? I would think that telling me and having mommy rub it/kiss it/band aid it would help, if he would just show me. Sigh.
• How much food should a 20 month old be eating a day? I know a baby won't let themselves be hungry, but many nights he has a few spoonfuls of dinner and declares he is ALL DONE. I decided a while back that I wasn't going to fight about food - and he always eats well at other meals. But then he has crying fits upstairs. I was wondering if he was maybe hungry? I know getting into food battles is pointless - but we usually don't give milk at dinner... he gets plenty during the day (definitely 16 ozs) - I wonder if that would stave off the misery? If I make him milk to bring upstairs, he usually doesn't drink it. Or maybe giving desert? Dinner is usually orzo and some type of fruit and some attempt at protein (which is usually scoffed at).

I think that is about it - usually he is such a happy kid - but the current cry-fest in the evening sucks.