For the New Year...

At almost 6 months I thought I would have a baby that slept through the night... or at least slept consistently. What I have learned after having 2 children is that you can prepare for nothing, I am a super planner so this is very hard for me. Audrey doesn't sleep, there are days where she naps for a total of maybe 1.5 hours all day... from 7 am-6pm she will take 2 - 45 minute naps, and to tell you the truth if she slept at night I would actually be okay with that.

The issue is that she wakes up a million times a night, she sings and plays and cries and eats... but she doesn't seem to do much sleeping. I swear an adult would have issues sleeping as little as she does and she is supposed to be getting about 12 hours a day. I miss my husband and having a rested family. If I was a single parent I would have thrown in the towel, luckily I have a great husband who requires less sleep then me and takes over at night... can you imagine going 6 months without getting more then 3 hours of sleep at any given time? Yeah I can't either...

So this New Years Eve my resolution... okay my prayer (that I have no control over- but man I hope and pray for it) is that my lovely, happy, wonderful daughter starts sleeping.

I am writing this alone in my living room as my husband puts Audrey back to sleep for the 3rd time tonight (and it's only 10:15 Pm). So far she has peed on me, woken up to eat and woken up after losing a pacifier... We have been watching the movie hangover for about 3 hours now and are about half way done. My husband is convinced the Audrey does it because she doesn't want us having any more children... that she wants to be the baby of the family forever.

Send some good sleepy thoughts our way this New Years night!

Snow Day!

We are having a very white Christmas (okay the day after but it's close enough in my book). We have 8 inches which for the south is HUGE. Ryan is running around outside yelling "Really fun, really fun!!!"

Gingerbread House

Making Gingerbread houses has never been one of my area of expertise. I think they are very nice looking but honestly it is just out of my skill range. Well if you add a 2 year old into the mix it just becomes so entertainingly bad it's funny. So here is the adventure of the gingerbread house in pictures...

Opening up the candy... well this doesn't seem to hard...

Look at how neat and tidy everything is... well just FYI it didn't stay that way.

Here is the end result... there are no in between pictures because the walls started falling down and the roof started slipping and it took 2 people (I was one) to hold it all together while it dried. If you were wondering... the upside down gingerbread man is holding up the roof. You can't see in this picture but one of the walls completely fell into the inside of the house... but I have to tell you, while I wouldn't want to live in the house it sure was fun making it.

Christmas Pictures!

I confess there are a lot of pictures here... but honestly if there is ever an occasion to take a lot of pictures this is it, enjoy!

My angel opening up her stocking!

Ryan playing in his new kitchen

PJ time... we have a tradition where on Christmas eve everyone gets a new pair to wear that night and through the present opening the next day.

Nice shades

New dinos

Our traditional picture of the men

3 generations of women

Quick update

This week, okay the last two weeks have been sort of overwhelming and so I haven't been blogging. It wasn't anything in particular it was just sort of that I was always busy and therefore never had a moment for blogging. Let's see what's been going on...

- Audrey doesn't sleep... like at all. She can go for days without being asleep more then 3 hours at any given time. It's not that she has night and day mixed up, it's that she has awake and sleep mixed up. I have been a little under the weather and this sleeping pattern is wearing me out. I have never been as thankful for my husband as I have been lately. I'm hoping one of these days a switch will flip and she will start sleeping.

- Ryan went from not being able to say more then a few words 6 months ago to speaking in long complex sentences. Today I took a bite of the muffin he was eating... he gave me a look and said "Mom, Say 'thank you' for a bite of Ryan's muffin!"

- Ryan and Audrey are still obsessed with each other. He holds her hand, he tries to take care of her if she is upset and he has figured out how to make her laugh uncontrollably.

We are getting ready for Christmas.. I am still trying to figure out what to cook. I am at a loss for some reason. I think I'm trying to hard to make it perfect because I want to start establishing traditions. Hopefully by tonight I will have decided on everything. I'll post some new pictures soon!

Santa Train

Today we went on the Santa Train! A real (open air) train that took us on a little adventure and even included a visit with Santa and his elves. It was really cold and raining a bit but now that I am inside and warm again I am going to say that it was just part of the fun memory. We ended up going with two of Ryan's friends and their families which was lots of fun. Ryan loves trains and the fact that he not only got to see a real one up close but got to ride on one really made his day, I have a feeling we will be watching Polar Express when he gets up from his nap.

Pictures!

Here are some pictures we got back from our photoshoot a few weeks ago. I kept out the one that we are using for our Christmas cards so they would be a suprise. Enjoy!

SoapBox

I don’t often write about things going on outside my family on this blog, that’s not what this forum is all about for me. Today I read something that really made me want to vent… and the more I thought of it the more my reaction changed from anger to a need to understand and to do something about it. I figure that one of my goals of blogging is to give my children when they grow up I glimpse of what sort of person I was.. at least that is how I am going to justify this seemingly out of place blog entry. So here goes...

Know that I am not a very religious person; I am one of THOSE that think of myself as spiritual as opposed to religious. There are a few reasons that I am the way I am when it comes to the subject; I’m not going to go into that now because well, that’s not what this post is about but who I am and what I believe colors my opinion on the matter so I thought I would put it out there.

Earlier this week Elizabeth Edwards died after a long battle with cancer. I didn’t know her personally, but from everything I have read the consensus is that she was kind and full of grace. She lost her teenage son in a car crash, her husband publicly humiliated her and she had a very long, painful battle with cancer and yet through it all she continued getting out of bed, held her head high, and spoke kindly about others.

There is a church that is planning on picketing her funeral. This is the same church that pickets the funerals of fallen soldiers. My first reaction to reading about this church was that I would like to show up and if I could just get one good punch in I would be happy. Then I took a step back and realized that 1) I don’t want to end up in jail, 2) people do things for a reason and I maybe I should take a step back and try and figure it out.

Religion has always made me somewhat uncomfortable. I know, there are some people out there that agree with me and there are some that would like to show me the greatness of religion. But honestly I get it, I actually think that at the heart of religion there are really great things, if I can focus on peace, and love and goodness that seems to be the true message in religion I can get behind it 100%. It is when we as mere mortals get involved that we seem to mess it all up. We get scared or greedy or power hungry or whatever we do and lose sight of the goodness we should be striving for. Wars, sex scandals, terrorism and this story have taken the focus of the goodness in religion and replaced it with fear and skepticism.

After a lot of thought, here is how I am going to look at this church that is being so disrespectful as to picket a funeral, to if possible make the worst day of her children’s lives even worse. The leaders of the church get off on the publicity and fame of all of it; they get their few minutes of fame because they see any publicity as good publicity. They aren’t true Christians, they have found a platform in the church so that people will listen to them and they can feel important, shame on them. I feel bad for the followers of this church; they were looking for guidance and ended up at this place. Yes I think they should take responsibility for their grossly insensitive actions but I can see where they got off track.

I hope that they see the error of their ways and don’t end up at the funeral. I hope that they can find what they are looking for in a more productive way. There isn’t a lot I can do about this personally, any sort of attention that I would bring to it would just give them what they want (I learned this from my toddler). So all I can do is be the best person I can be, go out of my way to help others, be kind, have compassion and bring as much grace to the world as I can. It’s possible that my actions could influence others to do the same and that my children will follow my lead. This is how I chose to fight the ignorance and meanness these people are showing. This is how I chose to practice religion. This is how I choose to honor the memory of the Elizabeth Edwards.

IMMD

There is a website called It Made My Day... it's just little things people say and do that make someone else's day. It inspires me to try and make someone else's day when I can and keep an eye out for the little amusing things around me (with kids there tend to be a lot of them), a few days ago Ryan was the one who really made my day.
We were sitting in my bed flipping through the channels on TV, I stopped it on a music video station. Madonna's Like a Virgin video came on, Ryan looks at me and in a very serious tone said "Mommy, turn it off it's TOO scary!"

Family Picture Time

Today we got some pictures taken for our Christmas cards, I love getting pictures taken- well not the process but the end result. The bigger our family gets the harder it is to take a picture where everyone is looking at the camera much less looking good. Ryan has always loved getting his picture taken, he listens super well and can smile with the best of them so for the most part he isn't a problem and we have loads of great pictures of him. Audrey on the other hand is squirmy, doesn't want to look at the camera and if she does look at it refuses to smile. Then there is Don and I.... I swear we aren't trying to look odd it just happens.
Well today all the rules changed, Audrey was a super ham, she was perfect and smiley no matter what we dressed her up in. Ryan refused to do anything remotely like what we or the photographer asked him to do. I don't know what was eating him- it wasn't that he was upset he just didn't want to do it. I have no idea how Don and I looked... we were so focused on keeping children happy I think I forgot to think about how I might look.

I guess we will find out if we got any good group shots when we get them back!

Childhood Friendship

Nicki came back to town for Thanksgiving! I love Nicki, we met in second grade and since reconnecting some years back our lives have been strangely parallelled. The only issue we have is that she lives in Texas. Our first babies were born 1 day apart and our second babies were 6 weeks apart. It is great having someone to talk to who has a similar parenting style and kids the same age- it's hard to find and that's one of the reasons I hold this friendship very dear. Our oldest kids seem to get along great, they played together the whole visit and the young babies were just meeting for the first time. I wish we lived closer so we could do playdates like this EVERYDAY!