an afternoon in the woods

Jeff wanted to get out in the woods on Sunday and enjoy the autumn leaves and the warm weather so we headed out after church. We got a sub to share for a picnic lunch and drove about 30 minutes out of town. Lily obviously didn't like our plan and screamed most of the way there so we stopped earlier then expected for our lunch. We sat down at a picnic table and within a minute of two we were up and moving around because the gnats were so horrible it was impossible to sit still so we walked and ate.
here is lance, lily and I walking down to the river after eating, trying to keep moving to keep the gnats from swarming


After lunch we went on the bridge that crosses over the river and goes underneath the road and back, we didn't explore the other side due to the ridiculous number of gnats.

the view from the bridge, it is beautiful and once more of the leaves change it will be even prettier

Jeff and Lance walking back across the river with the parkway overhead.

After hitting the restroom we got back in the car and went to the Foot bridge, our planned destination. The Foot bridge is a bridge that crosses over the river and is in honor of Bill Foot a local man who was an avid hiker. Right when we got on the bridge a train came by which made Lance's day since he could get such a good look at it and it was so close. It was so close that it shook the bridge we were on, a little freaky.

Jeff and Lance walking out to find a good spot to see the approaching train.

watching the train go across the river



Lance pointing to the passing train, the highlight of his adventure.



Lance, Lily, and I on the Foot bridge.

After crossing to the other side we explored, well Lance and Jeff explored, I was carrying Lily and since it is usually my down time I was tired and didn't feel like doing much hiking. Looking back I wish I had been more motivated to do the trail loop, but I was so tired and couldn't get motivated.

the trees and leaves were very pretty even though they hadn't turned yet

a cliff that was blasted out to make room for the original train bridge and track and in this area is not a small part of the AT.

Jeff and Lance exploring a small waterfall, lance is holding a rock he found

sharing a snack, m&m's.


it was such a beautiful day and nice and warm for October.


unfortunately Jeff just takes pictures and doesn't look to see if how they look, this is such a great picture of Lance because he has a nice smile, but you can hardly see his face.

perspective

I got a new perspective today and I hope I won't take what I do have for granted.
I am more of a glass half empty person and I don't always see the bright side of things, well I do in other people's lives, just not my own.
I have been very frustrated lately and negative because business has been slower than slow, bills haven't been paid, and I don't know how we are going to make it. We are so far in the hole I don't know if we can get out. I have been dwelling so much on what we don't have that I have forgotten to be extremely thankful for what I do have.
After running across some blogs today of women who lost their babies full term or close to, I realized how blessed I am to have Lily as well as Lance. These women were due around the same time I was so there loss really hit home to me because we were at the same stages of pregnancy that I was and yet we had such different outcomes. I know many women lose their babies early on which is difficult, but I forget and can't imagine going through 9 months of pregnancy, hours of labor, delivery or c-section and then not have a healthy baby in the end. I naively believed that once you reached a certain stage of pregnancy you are immune to loss, but you aren't. I have realized I am extremely blessed. My heart goes out to these women who suffer such a difficult loss and I am amazed at how most of them have such an amazing heart and they can still say that God is good. So I now know that I need to be better at thanking God for everything that He has given me because though I don't always feel it, I am rich. A new perspective that hopefully won't be lost in the daily chaos of life. Thank you to you who have put your story out there so lives will be changed and that through death comes life. May your loss make am impact on many people's lives, it has made a small impact on mine.

it is a lot harder with two

to try and clean the house.
with two kids you never can accomplish anything and right now both kiddos are asleep so I probably could be getting a lot more done then I am, but I also need some down time myself.
We are trying to refinance our house so someone is coming by to appraise our house tomorrow morning so I am trying my best to get the house looking neat, clean, and nice which is not easy because for everything one thing I get accomplished Lance messes up two things.
I love my home to be neat and clean and though I have had to drop my standards a bit now that I have two in the mix our house is too small to let it stay a disaster, there is just not enough room for everything. We need a bigger house, but we can't afford one right now so I am trying to use all the available space to the best of my ability. I need to edit down Lance's toys, but I don't know what to choose and if I put some away for awhile will I remember to rotate them out again? I am kind of nervous about someone coming over here and looking at our house. I love it and I know it needs some work, but I hope it really is worth what I think it is. I know it doesn't matter what others think, but I am a people pleaser so I do care. I really hope if we are able to refinance we can get a storage shed and replacement windows, oh that would make things so much nicer around here. Motivation for cleaning: new windows that won't let stink bugs in!

speech therapy

Before kiddos I taught high school biology. I had to attend several IEP/special ed meetings in my four years teaching and they weren't my favorite kind of meetings especially when they were for students with very pushy parents or those who wanted the sun, moon, and stars for their kid without the student putting forth any effort on their part. After several years of attending ridiculous special ed/eligibility/IEP meetings I promised myself that if I were ever a parent I didn't want to be like "those" parents (note: not all parents were difficult and a lot of time meetings were very helpful and productive, but of course, the difficult ones remain engraved in my memory years later). So now we will see if I will live up to my promise or not. I am now a parent of a special education child, well not exactly, I think, hopefully by the time he is school age he won't be special education. The tables have been turned and I am sitting on the opposite side of the table, I am the one who decides what services/accommodations my child needs and think the school system should provide for him. I was nervous about this mornings eligibility and IEP meeting. I didn't want to be one "those" parents, but I also wanted the best for Lance. Lance doesn't talk, well he talks, but not with words and he is delayed significantly. The city school system provides free speech therapy as well as other services for special education students starting at age 2 so we have sought out the free services available since we are very low of money and the insurance companies don't like to pay for speech therapy and I don't want to deal with the hassle of trying to get them to pay. So a few weeks ago we had him evaluated to see if it was just a speech problem or if their were other development delays going on. He passed with flying colors every aspect of the child study and then a week later he passed his hearing and vision screening. Last week the speech therapist evaluated him and found him eligible for services so today we had an eligibility meeting and wrote an IEP- an individualized education plan. It was so strange being the parent in today's meeting and not the teacher. So after going over results of the tests, his strengths, weaknesses, goals etc. we discussed what needed to be done next. The speech therapist recommends 2 hours a month of therapy which is the equivalent of 30 minutes once a week. At first I thought that sounded good, until I talked to my friend who is a special ed teacher. She said that I should request two half hour sessions a week because half an hour once a week isn't enough time and there is too much time between sessions for him to make progress. I see her point, but once again, from my experience of sitting on the other side of the table, I don't want to be one of "those" parents so I am questioning what is best. Our schedule already seems very busy and hectic and adding an additional morning activity doesn't leave us a lot of flexibility in our week. Also, ideally I wouldn't want to take Lily so I can focus on what Lance is learning so I can work with him at home so going more than twice a week could be cumbersome to find someone to watch Lily. Also, I would rather him go once a week and have it be productive then twice a week where he might get bored or too comfortable and not make any progress. The once a week recommendation is from the speech therapist, the professional, the one who has been doing this for 30 years, I want to trust the professional because this is what they do, what do I know? Then again, I wonder would he talk sooner if he was receiving services more often? Will I be disciplined enough to make sure that we are working on what he should be doing at home regularly or will I get lazy, thus making speech twice a week a better option? The other thing is, when it comes to IEP's it is easier to reduce services, frequency, goals then to add to them so should we start out with more and then reduce if he is frustrated or is too much for our schedule? So much to think about. I want what is best for my child, but I also know that you want to be on the good side of those who you are counting on because then they will do the best for you and your child, so I don't want to be a pain. Also, I don't want to be the know-it-all, give me everything you can, but I am not going to do anything kind of parent. Is what is best for Lance also best for me?

she's a sleeper

Too bad I didn't enjoy last night as much as say Jeff did.
Lily did it, I can't believe it. At only six weeks and two days she slept all night long.
She fell asleep a little after eleven and didn't wake up again and eat until 7:15 this morning! I can't believe it and I hope we will have many more long nights so maybe I can enjoy them since I didn't get to last night, long nights os sleep that is. I of course was up at two when Lance came into bed with us and I was up at 4 when she usually gets up to eat. I was also up at 5:30 to make sure she was still breathing and because I was worried about her. I was tempted to wake her since I thought I was going to explode if she didn't eat soon, but despite my slight nudges she slept on. I had a hard time getting back to sleep at 5:30, but finally managed too and was still amazed when seven rolled around and I realized that she made it all night. I remember at six weeks with Lance we were excited when he would sleep 5 hours. She is such a good sleeper, though I am afraid that just praising her will jinx me and she will be at all hours tonight. She has been a good sleeper from the beginning, our first night home from the hospital and she went 4 hours between a feeding, which surprised me considering how active she was in the womb. I don't know whether it is her or we are just more experienced parents who somehow have developed a good sleep pattern already? My mom says it is because she is a girl and girls are easier, and she may be right, wait, Lily is like her brother who doesn't like to be set down anywhere, not what I call that easy of a baby. Who knows, but I hope that next time she sleeps well I can enjoy it and no longer be programmed to wake up every few hours. Now if we can just get Lance sleeping better. Lance has never been a good sleeper and though he does sleep in his bed all night on some nights there are more nights when he gets up and since we have been getting up with Lily and have been tired we haven't fought him and let him sleep with us. This also contributes to my lack of a good sleep last night because Lance is a bed hog and occupies most of my half of the bed. Now if Lily will keep up her good sleeping habits and we can get Lance on one too, you will have one happy momma, well actually one less grumpy momma. On the topic of grumpy, I feel bad for both my kiddos this morning. I was very grumpy,the stress of life right now combined with my both my children's need to be held at every moment with a dash of cold weather making a cold house made me a grump. I got frustrated with both kiddos and I feel bad, our nice morning at home was full of crying, temper tantrums, and me wanting to call Jeff to come home so I could escape. I get frustrated so easily. Frustrated at Lily because I want to be able to play with Lance without holding her. Frustrated at Lance when he won't listen and he is whiny. And frustrated at myself that I don't have the patience and energy to deal with the two of them. Unfortunately this morning brought out the worst of all three of us, but I am learning how to be a mom of two and it isn't easy, especially since I have to often put aside my priorities and personal space.

shopping for baby girls to a lot more fun

Today I stopped by Old Navy to return some jeans that were way too big for little Lance and happened to walk through the clearance sections. I got my first taste of how much fun shopping for girl clothes can be. I was overwhelmed by all of the options, there just seemed to be so many different styles of clothing for girls instead of just color or screen print variations like on a lot of boys' clothing. I guess the other thing is that I found a lot more girl clothes that I liked, right now I am not a fan of a lot of the boy clothes Old Navy is offering right now (polos with diagonal stripes, they bother me, I want to straighten them) and all over screen printed hoodies and other teenage styled clothing (I want Lance to look like a toddler unfortunately he will be a teenager before I know it). I could have gone crazy buying up tons of clothes for next year that she may or may not wear based on how fast she grows, but I did buy a couple of pieces because I couldn't resist. Girl clothes really are cuter and a lot more fun to shop for then boy clothes. Before Lily I didn't even really look at girl clothes too closely because I wanted to be content with my boy, and even now I am still so programmed to look at boy clothes that I immediately go to the boy side before looking at the girl side. After my experience this morning, I now understand how some moms can get carried away with clothes for their kids, especially if they have girls, it is fun to dress them up. Though I am not much of a girly girl, but I look forward to dressing up Lily especially since nice, cute things get wasted on a toddler I know who looks for the nearest mud puddle and jumps in.

it is one of those days

I should say one of those mornings, but fortunately things are looking better, both kids are asleep, I should be too, but of course now that they are asleep I am fully awake, earlier when I could barely keep my eyes open they were both awake.
Well the setup for the rough morning occurred last night. Lance didn't go to bed until 10, way too late especially since he was up at 6:30 this morning. It could have been earlier, but I was too comatose to notice the exact time of his arrival, my main concern was trying to help him into the bed which meant lifting him up and over myself and Lily, not an easy task when you don't want to wake the sleeping beast (Lily who I had successfully gotten back to sleep without having to get up and feed her). Once Lance was in bed he started jumping all over us, poking us with those bony elbows of him and demanding juice. I gave up trying to sleep and got up. I knew right away it was going to be a long day when Lance got upset because his juice was watered down too much. After breakfast and some play time I was able to get Lily to sleep (why do babies fight falling asleep? especially when they sleep so much is beyond me) and headed upstairs to get a shower, I had such a rough time getting up I missed my showering opportunity before Jeff left. I quickly hoped in the shower and figured I had time to get some stuff done before Lily woke up again, well I was wrong. Lily was screaming by the time I was out of the shower, so much for a nice long morning nap. I got her calmed down and wrestled with Lance to get dressed and dealt with another breakdown from lack of sleep (by this point, he had broken down multiple times). We watched some of Sesame Street and then I started to fall asleep, but unfortunately both kiddos were awake so no nap for me. I had to get something from my mom's so I packed up the kids and headed over. I didn't want to bring both kids inside so I ran in quickly to get what I needed. Lily unfortunately dislikes the car and was screaming by the time I came out two minutes later. I was tired and grumpy from dealing two overly tired kids who did lots of crying (I don't know what is going on with Lily but she has been quite the crier lately) and decided I would swing by and pick up lunch so I wouldn't have to make it since Lily was finally asleep. I got lunch for Lance and I and headed home. Got home and realized that not all of my food was there, I was frustrated, put everything back in the car, called Jeff and headed back to retrieve my missing lunch Jeff met us and we ended up eating lunch together, well actually Jeff ate with Lance because I was in line most of the time waiting for food since I let Jeff have mine. After quickly eating we headed home. I went to get Lance out of the car and that is when I noticed that he had pulled off his shoe and was squirting juice from his juice box into his shoe. That in itself is messy, but since he was wearing crocs with lots of holes the juice was all over his legs and shorts and car seat. I got everyone inside, wiped Lance down as best I could, and changed his clothes. We go through so many clothes in this house: Lily poops out or spits up all over her clothes at least once a day, I get poop and spit up on me (3 times I had to change yesterday thanks to Lily spitting up all over me), and Lance well he thinks his shirts are napkins and towels to absorb liquids, I hate doing the laundry and these kids make it an almost daily chore. I got Lily to sleep and set up the computer I borrowed from my mom to get some work done while hopefully both kids slept. Of course, since today is not my day, the Internet kept going out and I wasn't able to get anything done at first and Lance didn't want to sleep so he was constantly trying to type and use the computer himself. At one point I was sleepy and thought I might lay down and sleep, but Lily woke up just before I could get Lance asleep so once again, sleep evaded me. Fortunately I have been able to get the research I needed to do done and I am pretty sure I am ready for swim practice tonight. Before two kids there was barely enough hours in the day to get things done, now that there are two (and I have a job) there is not nearly enough hours to accomplish anything sometimes especially with Lily who has decided she is only content when being held, just like Lance was. So though everything seemed to be going downhill this morning, Lance is asleep, Lily is for the most part content at the moment, I am halfway done with the work I needed to get done for tonight, I just can't think about all the things I wanted to accomplish today. I would love a full time nanny, no I like being with my kids I want a personal assistant/housekeeper, yeah that would be nice.

a job

What was I thinking?
I must have had a momentary lapse of judgment when I said yes.
I didn't look for this job, it found me.
It is only part time and once I get paid and get into the swing of things I might think it is great, but until then, I am kicking myself.
On the positive side, I get to bring Lily and Lance if necessary.
On the negative, it is a dinner time and most of the evening which is usually family time.
Another positive, it is only till February.
Positive: adult interaction
Negative: out-of-town trips (gone all day)
Negative: I have a 5 week old baby I am trying to handle (thankfully she is a decent sleeper thus far)
Positive: location is in walking distance
Positive: it pays money! (unlike my full time job- domestic engineering)

The Job: Assistant Swim Coach to a small private college
Practice is Monday through Friday- dinner time which makes things rough, but I don't have to get a sitter for Lance (positive), but I still have to cook, clean, etc (negative).
There are only 7 swimmers which is very manageable compared to my previous experience with high school swimming (40-50 swimmers). The swimmers so far seem very nice, low key, good students and will make the job fun and not a chore.
So this could turn out really good or really bad, only time will tell.

4 weeks really fly by

So Lily was born 4 weeks ago to day, by the time I post this is will probably be the exact same time. 4 weeks have really flown by. I remember with Lance the first four weeks seemed to tick by so slowly. Lily is a pretty good sleeper which helps time fly by, she went 6 hours Saturday night which would have been great if I would have slept the whole time, but I was up and ready to go at her normal 1:30 feeding. She was back to every 3 hours last night which I have surprisingly adapted to. It is amazing how you can adapt to broken sleep, I never thought 3 years ago that I would be able to survive because I was an 8 hour a night girl, but I guess having a first born who didn't sleep through the night consistently till 17 months and then stopped this past summer gets you use to lack of sleep. These last few weeks have really flown by because I can do so much more this time around. With Lance I was still pretty sore, exhausted, up all the time at night and doing little things was hard like walking down to the end of our street took all the strength out of me and this time I have been going places, taking walks, going to the park, etc. I also have a lot more confidence this time around, I am not afraid of taking her out and I can handle her crying better. I have a hard time remembering what it was like to be hugely pregnant and life was just the three of us. I miss the ease of going out (especially in the evenings), going to the park with Lance (and not holding a baby), I miss not having to sit down every 3 hours to nurse, I miss my belly (maternity clothes don't fit the same and my old clothes don't fit), but I don't miss the heartburn, not being able to eat so much (I love eating and food right now), and being uncomfortable most of the time. Four weeks, I just can't believe it. Tomorrow is my follow up doctor's appointment. I am kind of sad to be saying good-bye to my OB and the nurses that I have seen on a very regular basis for the last nine months, it will be strange not going to an appointment for a whole year, that seems like such a long time (and who knows if I will ever be back on a regular basis again). I will be going to the pediatrician on a regular basis, but they aren't as nice and friendly as the OB's office and a lot of people there are sick and not there for something positive. So four weeks down, countless more to go.

for the most part she is easy

"They" say that all babies are different and if your first was difficult your second will be easy and vice versa. I know that there are exceptions to the rule, but so far it is true. Lance was a very particular baby, ate a lot (every 2 hours), slept little, would cry if anything was not exactly the way he wanted it, hated all baby equipment (swings, vibrating chairs, car seat, etc). Lily in comparison, is a very easy, content baby, she will hang out in baby stuff, she does not scream every time we put her in the car seat (she does sometimes), she sleeps pretty good ( i sometimes have to wake her up to feed her), she doesn't have a scream that will send you into a panic, she is for the most part a very happy baby. We kept waiting for her to wake up and become like her brother, but after three weeks, though we have our moments, or should I say our hours from 6:30 to 9:30 every evening, she has not become the difficult baby we were expecting, though there is still time. We have been able to take her out a few times, Target, Panera, the playground (me being germ freak made sure no one touched her and she was tucked away in a sling the whole time) which we could never do with lance. Lance fortunately loves Lily and is always a big help when he can. Fortuantely she is a good sleeper and I have had some one on one times with him which I really missed our first week home. Today we are having issues because Lily seems to be extra demanding (she wants to eat every two hours) then add in Lance who did not sleep well last night and we have a recipe for disaster, oh did I mention it is suppose to rain today too, so little man might not get the outside time he needs daily. For the most part things are going better then expected. We have had our issues with nursing, why is something so natural, so hard??? Last night I finally got her nursing on my "bad" side without it hurting, so hopefully things will get better, I hate this beginning, learning stage. I keep telling myself I can do it, I did it with Lance and we can't afford for me not to, formula is so expensive! 3 weeks down, 11 months and 1 week left! I must set smaller goals. Lily is having a hard time going to sleep, must go help.