Back from Indiana
Posted by happygrl6
We’re back from a wonderful trip to Indiana (I’ll try to post pictures & write about it in the next few days). We actually got back a bit ago but its taken me awhile to get back into the swing of things. Jim went back to work the end of last week.
Ben is full-steam into crawling and moving onto cruising the furniture. Jim has him on the deadline to walk before he deploys. I’ve laughed at Jim with the crawling. He was so anxious for Ben to start since he was deployed when E did. Now I think he’s regretting that! LOL It doesn’t help that, with the layout of this place, its harder to do some babyproofing. In our place when he was a babe, the living room & kitchen were completely separate, so it was easy to keep her out of the kitty food & water. Plus we spent most of our time upstairs in her room (the computer was in her closet & there was a TV in her room). And it was obviously totally safe for her. And she had no big sister to chase after!!
Elizabeth is doing okay. Turns 4 next week. I don’t even know how that is possible! She’s developed a lot of fears & separation anxiety. We’re muddling through it but not well. I expect it will only intensify when she finds out about the deployment and it actually happens. *sigh* I got the name of a good child psych if we need it. They’ve recently hired a few new ones because of the demand with the upcoming deployment. *double sigh*
I did the kids’ bathroom and it looks cute! I need to take pictures. I haven’t done the bedrooms yet. I need to find a couple picture frames still. I’m planning to do them one day while Jim is at work.
Thursday Ramblings
Posted by happygrl6
I don’t have much to say, really, but I wanted to post tonight. So let’s see…
Elizabeth has been in VBS this week. She has loved it. Our church is really into getting the teenagers to serve in the church, so they are leading all the classes. In the 3yo class they have two male teenagers. Quiet ones at that. I love that they would take on the 3yo class but these two also seem like an odd choice. Tomorrow they are doing songs & skits for the parents. I was reading the sheet about it and E wanted me to read it to her. So I did. She then says to me “Parent, let’s wait and talk about this tomorrow. Its too much for me right now. Just too much.” Okay, then. Where in the heck did that come from?
Jim is off tomorrow. Yea!!
They put a playground in our front yard. Not directly in front of our house but a couple houses down. Its nice to have one close. The other closest ones were 10 minute walk and a 20 minute walk. On the other hand, it can be a little annoying as well because she sees it and wants to be down there all the time. We go down every evening after dinner and I try to get her down there a few mornings as well. There’s another mama who is down there most evenings. She has a little girl a little older than E and a little girl who’s a little younger than Ben. I really like her. She’s a cloth-diapering mama too! She’s really nice and we seem to have similar parenting styles. Thought I may invite them over for a play date.
Today I met a mama from LLL at Starbucks. I don’t know her well but, after last month’s meeting, we exchanged numbers. We didn’t do anything though. LLL was Tuesday night and I mentioned I’d be in her town this week, so we met up today. I had a good time with her, very relaxed.
We booked our trip home for September. We’ll be home just barely a week. It’ll be nice. But it also means that this deployment really is happening.
We’ve decided we’ll tell E about this deployment after we go to Indiana. She has no real sense of time, so telling her now would be nuts. And she gets SO anxious about things that are a long way off. So we’ll tell her when we are 3-4 weeks out.
This morning I woke up to her crying in my doorway. It was a 3yo whiney cry, so I told her to go find something to play while I slept a little more. She broke down. She wanted Jim. I told her to go find him. She said she looked everywhere but didn’t know where he was. Then I remembered he had to go in early today. I told her. And she really broke down. She was hungry but needed HIM to fix her breakfast. And she couldn’t eat cereal because he may want some. And he may be sad if she ate cereal without him. She didn’t want to eat at all but I finally got some food in her. And I just cried. I called him but he didn’t answer. And that made her cry even more. And me too. Its gonna’ be a long year.
My baby has a tooth! He’s been teething on and off for a couple hellacious weeks. One tooth has barely broken through the gums, just enough to feel the sharpness. And the other too is getting ready to break–you can see the ridges of it just under the gums.
I took a two hour nap this afternoon. I have a feeling I’m going to be awake late tonight!!
Truly, I have the cutest kids ever. Ever! 
Shhh…..
Posted by happygrl6
<whispering>
She’s slept through the night the last TWO nights!!! TWO. T-W-O!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Whether this continues, it definitely gives me hope.
Now, if there only was a way to guarantee that Ben won’t take that long to sleep through the night!!
I’m alive
Posted by happygrl6
Yea, I know. Its been a long time since I updated. One thing after another and then I got out of the habit. So here I am.
Jim is gone for training. My first trial of having him totally gone with two kids. He’s been away training a lot but not REALLY gone, just 18-20 hour days gone. We’re on Day 5 and doing pretty good.
Elizabeth woke up vomitting last night. She threw up a couple times and then slept for five hours. I thought she was better this morning but, a couple hours after she woke up, she started again. Sick as in just lying on the couch sick. My child NEVER just sits still. So when she does, its bad. She’s sound asleep right now. And to make matters worse, I had to tell her that we couldn’t go across the street to the food court playground today. We go over there most days now. Its close and there are usually other mamas there with husbands deployed/away. So its adult conversation. Some days I wish it was outside but now that its pretty warm, I’m glad it isn’t!!
Guess how her sleep is going….a week ago Friday, she slept THROUGH THE NIGHT!!!!!!!!!! (Of course, Ben made up for it and was up WAY more than usual.) She hasn’t done it since but I now have HOPE. She’s been asking to fall asleep on her own too! We let her have a toy in her bed with the lights out and she’s usually out in about 20 minutes. Six months ago it could easily take 2-3 hours to get her asleep. From the moment we go upstairs until I can hear her snoring is almost always under 45 minutes now and usually under 30 minutes!
Ben is four months tomorrow. And I think he’s teething. Elizabeth was such a crier that I never really had any idea if she was crying b/c of teething pain or crying b/c she was a crier. But the last few days Ben has cried and cried so much, especially as he’s trying to go to sleep. He keeps putting his hand in his mouth as he’s crying, which is what makes me suspect teething. I thought he was doing it in a “trying to such his hand” way but now I’m not so sure. Whatever is making him cry, he is definitely MAD about it!! He is so NOT a crier, its almost harder to hear him scream than it was with Elizabeth.
I’ve been doing more to get involved on base. Unfortunately, everything is now on summer break! We’ve had something to do most days and it has been SO nice. Its reminded me how much better I do when we consistently have plans. So I want to work on finding more to do this summer while I wait for things to start back up. We have a women’s evening Bible study that just started at my church and that takes me through July, I believe. Its a Beth Moore study and I know it’ll be great. (I need to go work on it while the kids are asleep, actually!)
On that note, I think I’ll go work on the study while I can.
Update on E
Posted by happygrl6
Surprising Jim & I and her Awanas teachers, Elizabeth said her four verses tonight earning her vest! I really didn’t think she’d tell them since she will barely talk away from us. At the end of the evening, all the kids gather on the back lanai to receive awards. When she came walking out with her vest on, she looked SO big. When we walked up to get her afterwards, she was jumping up and down (surprise, surprise!!) and was so excited to show me her vest. Her four were “God loved us and sent his son” (their key verse), “Jesus loves me” (their motto), “all have sinned” and “”While we were sinners, Christ died for us.” She memorized them much more easily than I thought she would. She really enjoys Awanas and I know she’ll be sad when they let out for the summer.
*sigh* Where does the time go?? How can my baby be big enough to be saying Bible verses?? Probably goes the same place my mom is thinking “How can my baby have a baby big enough to say Bible verses?” I don’t like this growing up thing.
We had about a month where she was having crazy sleep issues (I think I blogged about that) which meant crazy behavior. I think that’s over now, thankfully! She’s sleeping until 6:30-7ish every day. Afternoon behavior has gone back to normal 3.5 year old. Who knew I’d ever be thankful for her normal 3.5 year old behavior??!!?
Her speech continues to improve. Her vocabulary grows at an exponential rate, it seems. Her apraxia continues to be an issue and I really expect we’ll have to get speech therapy through our medical center come the fall. She is completing more words but she probably only says the full word for 20%, if that.
We had little doubt that she would love having a baby brother. And she hasn’t let us down there! If she could spend her entire day holding him, she would. She wants to know what he’s doing at all moments of the day. And she has eagle ears for his crying. She’ll hear him even before he’s crying sometimes.
She’s getting close to outgrowing her car seat, so I’m ordering her a new one tonight. Its the new Graco Nautilus and I am so excited to get it! She can stay 5pt harnessed until 65lbs which is more than 30lbs away! She can then use it as a high-back booster to 57″/100lbs. I’ve spent months debating which seat to choose and I’ve decided just to go with this one. I hope its here when we get back from our trip to Indiana.