I feel like such a blogging-dropout these last few weeks.  After Kelvin’s sickness, Ava got sick and then Kelvin started teething, so that hasn’t left much time for blogging.  And now that I finally have a few minutes to myself, we’re leaving for vacation in a few hours and I can guarantee you I won’t be updating then.  In fact, I don’t even know if we’ll have room for the laptop.  We decided to take my car instead of the van and it is packed to the gills!  We won’t even have room to bring back the patio furniture my grandparents bought for the kids!

But I have a couple post ideas to put up right now and then I hope to be back to regular blogging sometime next week after we get home!

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**WARNING** Lots of whining ahead.  You’ve been warned.

I just need to whine for a few minutes.  Just get it out of my system.  I’m all for getting it out there to avoid a future need for wrinkle remover.  LOL

I don’t think I have ever been so exhausted in my life.  Chad has been working really hard to finish off our porch to turn it into a playroom for the kids and it’s been taking up all of his free time.  He’s either working or he’s out on the porch.  I really can’t complain, since he’s doing it for us (it’s not like he’s goofing around on his video game or something), but it’s exhausting taking care of the kids by myself for two weeks straight.  At least it’s almost done though!

Last night, I was supposed to have my monthly Moms Night Out and he ended up having to work out of town until midnight.  I feel bad whining about this, since he was the one working so late, but it wasn’t easy being home with grumpy, nap-less kids, either.  It wouldn’t have been so bad if Kelvin hadn’t woken up every few minutes all night long.  I think he was overtired because he didn’t have a nap because the kids had dentist appointments right in the middle of naptime.  But whatever it was, he was basically up until midnight.  He would fall asleep for like 3 minutes and then be awake again screaming.  I was ready to pull my hair out by the end of the night.  And also when Ava decided to get up at 5:45 am.  That was just fabulous.

Today I put the kids down for early naps so we can make it to Snack n Chat with our MOMS Club friends this afternoon.  I absolutely must be there…..my sanity depends on it!!  LOL  Speaking of which, I need to go start getting them up.

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I just hate it when I think I have everything under control and then something comes along to prove me wrong!

My mom’s birthday is on Monday and for once, I was going to get her card to her on time!  Her gift is a different story…I don’t have time to get to the post office today, so that’s going to be late, but that card was going to get there by Monday!!  Or so I thought.

I spent quite a bit of time in the card section at Walmart picking out the perfect one, got the rest of our groceries and checked out.  The cashier put the card in a thin paper bag to keep it safe and I remember taking it from him and putting it in the cart.

That’s where things got a little fuzzy (probably thanks to sleep deprivation…and no, it’s not from lack of sleeping pills, just from lack of children who sleep through the night!) .  The kids were getting restless and I wanted to run over to the plant area (or whatever it’s called) to pick up some tomato plants.  By the time we got back to the car, I loaded up all our stuff, got the kids in the car and left.

When we got home, the card was nowhere to be found!  I’m assuming I left it in the cart because I know it was in there at some point and I don’t remember trying to find a safe spot for it in the car.

I’m so frustrated….we have a jam-packed afternoon and evening today and my grandparents will be visiting next week, so I don’t anticipate getting back to the store before her birthday.  I guess the card will just have to get sent with her gift and they’ll both be fashionably late!

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Ordinarily, after a period of nine days with no posts, I would open this post with a whole list of excuses about why it’s been so silent here.  But I’m not going to.  You wouldn’t have believed me that I was trapped in circuit city for a week anyway, right?  Didn’t think so.

The truth is, I just haven’t felt like writing.  Anything.  Which is weird for me, because that’s my creative outlet.  I don’t paint, I don’t craft, and I’m not that good at sewing….so I write.  But when the juices aren’t flowing, they aren’t flowing.

But did you noticed the new header?  The old one was from over a year ago, so my mom made me a new one with more recent pictures.  I love it!

Last week, it finally got warm outside and we went across the street to the park and flew the kids’ kite!  Kelvin couldn’t care less (he just wanted to run), but Ava thought it was coolest thing ever.  She thinks we should go out and fly it again this week, even though it’s going to rain ALL. WEEK. LONG. I’m thinking not!

And now I’m off to restore some order to the house that, incidentally, I also did not feel like cleaning last week!  It’s good to have my mojo back!

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You are never going to guess what my 15-month-old has become obsessed with over the last week. Never in a million years! Are you ready for this?

Coffee!!!

I know! I would have to be clinically insane to give Kelvin coffee, but for some reason he thinks he needs it!

He sees me drink mine every morning (and mid-morning….and afternoon….and mid-afternoon…but that’s not the point!) and he’s never shown any interest in it. But then a few mornings ago, I hear, “Cottee? Cottee?! COTTEE?!”

He kept talking about it all morning and finally Chad said I should just let him try some, he’d hate it and it would be over. So I gave him a teeny-tiny sip. And he loved it. Perfect. You’d think the kid was a business plan consultant that had been up all night, with the way he thinks he needs his “cottee”!

Of course, I haven’t let him have any more than that one tiny sip, but the next morning, he got up after Ava had already finished her breakfast and when she saw him, she squealed, “Hi, Babycake!” He just looked at her and said, in a very matter-of-fact tone of voice, “Cottee.” Apparently, he thinks he can’t talk to any of us until he gets his morning coffee. Good to know.

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This week was already going to be kinda rough. The only time we got out of the house was on Monday and that was a very abbreviated trip because *someone* decided to throw a fit in the middle of the grocery store. I’ll give you a hint…that *someone*’s name both starts and ends with A and she’s 2! A quick check of the weather told me that we wouldn’t be getting out again this, because we were supposed to get snow and wind chills of 25-30 below zero! No thank you!

So I braced myself for a week of cabin fever and kiddo’s bouncing off the walls. Little did I know, I’d have to deal with a lot more than that!!

On Tuesday night, Kelvin threw up all over his bed and started having diarrhea. I was up nearly all night changing diaper after diaper. Not fun!

Luckily, that’s the only time he threw up. I can handle diarrhea, but throw up is really nasty. I’m lucky if I can clean up the mess without adding to it myself.

Unfortunately, Kelvin’s diarrhea was only the beginning. On Wednesday night, Ava started throwing up all over her bed. It got all over everything, and even went behind her bed. I’m so thankful Chad cleaned that up! My stomach could not have handled it.

A few hours later, I started throwing up. It was chaos….all night long. Both Ava and I were puking our guts out. Kelvin decided to boycott sleep and just toddled back and forth between the person hanging their head over the toilet (me), the person in the bath (Ava) and the person changing sheets and cleaning up puke (Chad). Not one of our better nights!

Yesterday was pretty rough, too. No more throwing up, but everyone was still dealing with diarrhea. My goal was just to make it through the day (which I did…barely).

Today, Kelvin is the only one still dealing with diarrhea, but all of us are still fighting to get our energy back. Hopefully next week will be a better week. The flu should be behind us, and we’re supposed to have temperatures in the 30′s, and even 40′s on some days! It’s sad that 30′s seems warm, but it sounds wonderful right now! I can barely wait!

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Happy New Year (better late than never, right?)!!!

I don’t really like to make resolutions, but I like using the beginning and ending of the calendar year as a marker for making goals.  I’ve made a few goals of my own, but I’m going to tell you about the ones I made for my kids!  It’s always easier to make goals for someone else than for yourself…just like it’s easier to find New York jobs that someone else would be willing to take…oh never mind.

Ava

By the end of 2010, I want Ava to know her colors, shapes and be able to count and identify numbers 1-10.  She already knows some of this, but I want her to have a firm grasp of it.  I also want her to be able to sing the whole ABC song (without the gibberish she uses now LOL).  I definitely want her to be off the Nuk (actually, I really want this by her birthday).

Kelvin

My biggest goal for Kelvin is to sleep through the night!!!  Seriously, Mama is tired of getting up 2-5 times a night every night!  I’ve been doing it since Ava was born and I want a break!  Sorry, that turned into my own little vent session there.  Anyway…I want him to learn how to jump and master identifying all the basic body parts.

Sound reasonable?  I think so…especially since I know they’ll learn and accomplish so much more than this in an entire year’s time!  These are just the things I want to really focus on…I bet they’ll surprise me and have them down within the first six months (at least on the sleeping through the night thing, please!!!)!

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I saw this meme over at Coordinated Chaos and thought it would be fun to play along.  Like Miche, I don’t like tagging people to do these, but if you post it on your blog too, leave your link in the comments and I’ll come visit you!

Here are the Rules:

1. Must thank the person who gave you the award and list their blog and link it.

Thanks, Miche!

2. Share “10 Honest things” about yourself.

See below.

3. Present this award to 7 others whose blogs you find brilliant in content and/or design, or those who have encouraged you. *Which I’m not doing!*

4. Tell those 7 people they’ve been awarded HONEST SCRAP and inform them of these guidelines in receiving the award.

So here are my 10 things:

1. I’m hopelessly addicted to reality TV.  The Bachelor and The Bachelorette are my biggest weaknesses, followed closely by Dancing With The Stars.
2. I’m also addicted to babywearing.  Especially since Kelvin is a very needy baby.  He’s already 14 months, but I still wear him for at least a little while almost every day.  It’s a good thing I sprang for the comfortable baby carriers!
3. I don’t scrub my floors nearly often enough.  We have hardwood floors everywhere except the stairs, so I really should be scrubbing them more often than once every couple months.  But they hide dirt so well (unlike my kitchen floor, which gets scrubbed a bit more often!).  I really want to get one of those steam mops, but they’re pretty expensive.
4. I really want a puppy.  Bad.  Chad actually brought a puppy home last week and ended up returning it the next day because it was an impulse decision and he didn’t realize how much it would affect our lifestyle.  This incident did not help the puppy-fever.  In fact, it intensified it considerably.  Especially since it was a short-haired dog that could be in the house, wouldn’t shed and would follow me all over the place and be my buddy.  Chad’s lucky he didn’t find himself in the doghouse because of this!
5. I get a “natural high” from getting amazing deals on products using sales and coupons.  And I also feel a little bit stabby when cashiers mess up my deals by forgetting to scan coupons.  I had this happen today and I literally obsessed over it for several hours.  Apparently I’m still obsessing, since I’m talking about it now!
6. I love winter, but only when I can look at it from inside my cozy warm house!  I do not enjoy going out in the cold and I enjoy it even less now that I have two kids to keep hoods and mittens on.
7. Every couple weeks, we have a roast chicken, mashed potatoes and veggies kind of meal.  Then the next day, I make tons of chicken broth with the carcass  and the next day I make about half of the broth into cream of chicken soup.  I freeze it all and it saves us lots of money…not to mention it’s much better for us than the canned stuff.
8. In the very near future, I have a feeling that I will be in over my head with the terrible two’s….times two!!  Ava won’t be three until March and Kelvin seems like he’s entering his terrible two’s early.  When something happens that he doesn’t like, he throws himself facedown on the floor and screams.  Classy, huh?
9. I love horses and horseback riding.  Most people wouldn’t know it, though.  I only get to go horseback riding every few years, but I would totally do it more often if I had the opportunity to actually learn to ride.  But I wouldn’t be caught dead in breeches, FYI.
10. I have to go to the municipal court tomorrow to deal with a ticket I got for expired registration….on CHAD’s van!  I am not amused.  Especially since I mailed in the paperwork to renew registration on both of our vehicles, but then forgot about it and never realized they didn’t send us our new stickers.  So now I get to drag myself down there at 8 am sharp.  Yuck.  At least Chad will keep the kids so I don’t have to bring them with me!

Can you tell I was having a leeeeeeetle bit of a hard time at the end?  Because I was.  And now it’s your turn!

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If you’re wondering why I have dark circles around eyes so often lately, it’s from keeping up with two active toddlers!  That’s right…Kelvin is walking a lot now!  He probably walks about 50% of the time at this point.  He does fall every 5-10 steps, but picks himself up almost every time and keeps walking.  He’s getting so big!!

However, I’m not getting all weepy about him being a toddler quite yet.  This little guy is still a baby in many ways.  He’s a really needy baby, so he insists on being held (or worn in one of my baby carriers) quite a bit.  And he still wakes up 2-5 times a night (on a good night).  Until I’m sleeping through the night on a regular basis, I still have a baby, as far as I’m concerned! 

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If I’ve learned one thing since becoming a mother, it’s flexibility.

Before children, it’s a little embarrassing how little flexibility I had.  I was the master of my day…I made a schedule and I stuck to it.  Occasionally, something came along that required me to change my plans, but not often.

Now that I have children, they are the masters of my day.  The schedule has pretty much flown out the window.  Of course, we have appointments, but that’s as far as rigid scheduling goes.  I do still make a to-do list every morning, but I have no definite time for getting those things done….I just squeeze things in around the kids and their schedules.

Yesterday, I planned to have a baking day along with most of my Twitter friends.  Let’s just say that it did not go as planned.  Kelvin has been really clingy and fussy, so I got very little done.  I planned to continue trying to get through my Baking Day To-Do list this morning, but it ended up taking me 3 hours just to get some apples peeled for applesauce!  And forget any actual baking (by the way, did you know glucomannan is dietary fiber that you can add to your cooking?  Me neither until I just looked it up).  After that, I pretty much just gave up and took the kids outside to play for the rest of the morning.

And you know what?  I was OK with that.  The “Before-Children Me” would have been completely stressed out, but the “After-Children Me” was pretty proud of herself for learning to roll with the punches.

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