Template 59, P365, and An Update

Once again, I'm behind on my picspam. But I'm catching up today! And it's time for that in-text update as well. Rather than delve into every detail I haven't posted about (because let's face it: I can't remember all of them), I'm going to point out some highlights.

First, some kid cuteness info. Emma is speaking SO much. She says EVERYthing. She's so smart and aware. Here are some of her more common things to say:
- "I like it."
- "I don't like it." (even with foods I KNOW she likes...when she wants to do something else.)
- "Red means STOP."
- "Green means GOOOOOO!"
- "Yellow means sloooooow dooooown."
- "No I tickle self."
- "No I hold him."
- "No I feed him." (hahaha, nice try)
- "No I touch him."
- "Jesus likes it, too." (funny story here. She pointed out a chocolate chip in her granola bar, said it was chocolate, said she likes chocolate, then said, "Daddy likes it, too. Mommy likes it, too. Jesus likes it, too." LOL, so apparently He likes chocolate!)
- "I did it!!"
- "Fire's daaaaaangous."
- "Fire's hot."
- "I broke it."
- "I want...something."
- "I need something."
- "No I need it."
- "Snake is not not nice." (about Hiss in Disney's Robin Hood)
- "Fire soon." (she says this just before the castle in Robin Hood catches on fire)
- "Fire's aaaall gone." (and this when the fire is gone...)
- "Noah's borrowing Nemo." (her cousin Noah borrowed Finding Nemo for awhile and she kept saying this while he did...and after we got it back, too!)
- "I wear hat, too!"
- "I like strawberry jam, not strawberries."
- "It's Wedge." (my cat who lives with my parents - she'll point at his picture and say this)
- "I'm cold."
- "Night night Mommy, night night Sara. Night night Daddy, night night John."
- "Love you Mommy, love you Daddy."
- "I love you, too." (sometimes said at random)
- "No I wake up." (when I told her it was time to get ready for bed LOL)
- "No I do self." (NOT like that!! Get your mind outta the gutter people! She says this when she wants to do something herself.)
- "I play PlayDoh."
- "I color."
- "I drink water."
- "I hurt."
- "I poop."
- "My bathroom." (talking about her potty...but she won't actually USE it...)
- "Noah's timeout." (she likes to tell us when other kids are in timeout)
- "I fussing/screaming/crying" etc. (we have her tell us why she was in timeout afterwards)

Emma LOVES music. She sings along and dances to Primary songs and songs from her favorite movies. She has a good sense of rhythm, too; she bounces or sways to the beat, depending on the song. At the beginning of Robin Hood (can you tell that's one of her current favorites?), she runs around like crazy when they sing "Robin Hood and Little John runnin' through the forest" as if SHE'S running through the forest. It's hilarious. Emma's favorite movies include Robin Hood, Cars, Finding Nemo, Sleeping Beauty, Anastasia, Thumbelina (NOT the stupid Barbie Fern Gully wannabe version), Meet the Robinsons, The Tale of Despereaux, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, The Incredibles, and anything VeggieTales or Elmo.

Emma is entirely too smart sometimes. We finally got around to putting plastic knob covers on our doorknobs Saturday afternoon/evening. Monday morning she opened her door with the cover on...*sigh* Oh well. At least she only opens her own door first thing in the morning and then knocks on MY door to let me know she's up (after knocking on her door before opening it). It's a good thing she's never been one to get into and destroy everything in sight!

Emma knows all her colors extremely well, and has for awhile. One of her fun little quirks is that she insists on having her plates, bowls, and silverware match. If she has a pink bowl, she needs a pink spoon, etc.

I know there's more - there always is - but I think that's a decent Emma update for now. And now for a baby update!

Hyrum is doing great. He weighed in at just under 11 lbs about 10 days ago, so he's probably close to or over 12 lbs by now. He's growing SO fast! In that sense, he's totally the opposite of his sister; she didn't hit 10 lbs till 5 months...but she started 3 lbs lighter and I had supply issues. All the same, it's definitely a change. It's fun to see the differences and similarities between my kids. The main difference (apart from the obvious gender) is sheer size. Emma wore newborn clothes for 3 months; Hyrum only wore them for 3 weeks, and he was pushing the bottoms of his sleepers pretty much from the beginning. Some of the 0-3 sleepers is already too small. I find so far that both kids grow out of sleepers before anything else in each size. Well, and dresses for Emma, but girl dresses tend to be too short for my liking so we go up a size or 2. Anyway.

Personality-wise, they are SO similar. Both are (or were, in Emma's case) easy-going happy babies who just love to nurse and be held all the time. Hyrum even has a similar "bedtime" (meaning 2 AM). He's slept through the night a few times, but mostly he sleeps from about 2:30 to 7. Like his sister did, he wants to be held when he sleeps. I usually end up nursing him in bed late at night and we both fall asleep there. Not ideal since I'm not really into co-sleeping, but it works for now. Gotta get sleep somehow, right? Though right now, he's napping in the crib! Yay! I put him in there after changing his diaper right after a feeding so I could wash my hands and get something to eat. He cried a little while I was getting my food, but mommies need to eat sometimes too, you know. When I went to check on him, he was asleep. Woohoo!

Hyrum started smiling at 5.5 weeks (same as Emma). We just LOVE to see his cute little smile! Emma tries to make him smile, too and says, "baby smile" or "Hyrum smile" when he does. He's been cooing for awhile (not sure when it started), but he spends most of his awake time eating. Yep, he's a boy alright! Like Emma, he pretty much held his head up from birth. It's awesome.

Aw poop, he just woke up. Spoke too soon, I guess. Oh well; at least he slept there for 45 min. It's a start, right? John should be back soon, so I'll give him baby duty so I can finish this post:)

It's funny; Hyrum can sleep through Emma poking and prodding at him, and even through her neck hold hugs...but if I put him in the bouncer, pack n play, or crib, he wakes up right away. He just wants to be held! He does fall asleep in the car seat more often than not, so that makes errand running easier. And if he's asleep when we get home, I let him stay in the car seat till he wakes up on his own.

John is super busy with school these days. Every single class this semester has tons of group projects and such, so he's been gone a lot working on those. It's been frustrating and stressful for all of us. OH are we looking forward to the end of the semester! Every day I'm reminded of how glad I am to be done with school myself.

As for me, I'm doing pretty well for the most part. Adjusting to 2 kids hasn't been too hard. Meeting their needs is fairly easy; it's getting everything ELSE taken care of that I struggle with. My house is an absolute disaster. I rarely have time to get on the computer and veg. Dinners typically consist of frozen entrées (Stouffer's is our friend these days). I'll figure things out eventually. The main thing is how much time I spend nursing the baby. Once he spreads out his feedings more, I'll be able to be more productive at home. The fact that he wants to be held all the time makes housework more challenging, too. I pulled out the awesome Mei Tai baby carrier Kimi made me the other day and it works great:) I definitely plan to start using it more.

I had my 6 week postpartum check up on Friday. It was pretty disappointing. My regular OB was out of town, so I had to see the other doctor he works with. Meh. I'm not really a fan of him. He isn't as personable and I'm not comfortable talking to him. I've only seen him a handful of times, but he has a tendency to say things that just rub me the wrong way. I mean, this is the doctor who said "I've never seen that before" as I was pushing Emma out. I'm sorry, but you do NOT say that to a women giving birth! Especially if it's her first time! Yeah, it was an unusual circumstance (head coming out where it should, shoulder coming out the other end at the same time), but STILL! That's just not something you say! At my appointment last week, I explained some issues I've been having (see next paragraph) and he replied that it was something really skinny people are more likely to have a problem with. Then he squeezed the flab on my arm and said, "you've got some body fat." Thanks. Like I didn't know. I JUST had a baby, you know. Way to make me feel good about being 10 lbs UNDER my pre-pregnancy weight...sure, I was overweight before (and still am), but it's not like I'm morbidly obese. Anyway. As for the issues I've been having, I came away not really feeling any resolution whatsoever. Heck, I got more answers from talking to a girl at a church activity last night who has similar issues! *sigh* I wanted to see MY doctor about it, dang it. I want to just redo the whole postpartum check up thing, but I doubt my insurance would cover a 2nd postpartum check up.

Since having Hyrum, I've had some serious issues with sugar. If I eat too much (and I'm still trying to figure out how much is too much), I get REALLY sick. Like can't-keep-anything-down-and-throwing-up-for-8-hours-with-constant-ab-and-back-pain sick. It SUCKS. I wouldn't wish it on anyone. Well...maybe on the last loser I dated before I met John...*ahem* anyway. It's happened 3 times so far and I'm really hoping to avoid it in the future. I've been super careful, too. I think it's mostly about my blood sugar spiking and then plummeting. So if I eat sugary treats, I need to balance them out by eating protein and/or fiber along with them. I should be eating more of those anyway. I'm not sure if my sugar is on the high side or the low side. During pregnancy, it was on the high side but still under the passing limit. Just barely. And my kid was 9 lbs 12 oz, so there's definitely the possibility that I had gestational diabetes and never knew. But since I only gained 17 lbs the whole pregnancy, we didn't think it'd be an issue. So I'm thinking either my sugar levels have plummeted since pregnancy and my body is still adjusting, or they're still elevated and causing issues. I don't know; I haven't had it tested and I can't afford to buy the home testing equipment. I should find out, though. Add to that the fact that I'm nursing, so the best nutrients I take in are going to my milk. As much as this whole sugar thing sucks, it's a good incentive to eat healthier! It REALLY makes me think "is that cookie worth it?" Hm, not if it means throwing up all night! Eating healthy has always been a struggle for me. I want to do it, regardless of this sugar mess, but it's SOOO hard! I'm getting there. My love for carbs and my neglect of veggies are my downfalls. I'm working on those.

Oh, and I'm going to be on our local news tonight. The other day I got a notice on my door that the power company is shutting off our power from 8:30 AM to 4 PM on Saturday so they can "improve reliability." How ironic...*eyeroll* I complained about it on Facebook and a friend/neighbor who is a reporter for a local news channel saw it and asked if he could interview me about it. Some of the other moms in our complex are upset about it, too. Hello, it's FEBRUARY. It was -6 earlier this week. And they want to shut off the electricity all day long? Yeah, trying to keep 2 small kids warm with no heat in February is SO not appealing. I understand the need to improve the system, but seriously, FEBRUARY?! Can't it wait till April or May when it ISN'T butt freezing cold out? I'm not sure how widespread the outage will be, but if Nathan and Jessica have power, I'm SO hanging out at their house all day (haha, they don't know this yet though). And of course, John works practically the exact same hours as the outage. LAME.

And now that I've got that little rant out, it's time for some Project 365 pics and digiscrap pages! First, the scrapping.




Credits:
Modern Neutrals, Christie Lemmon Designs




Credits:
Love Sweet Love, geniaBeana Scraps

And now for the pics up through yesterday. I haven't taken any yet today, but I will! I'm really enjoying this taking-pics-everyday thing. I keep my camera at my "nursing station," along with my phone, chapstick, water, reading materials, and burp cloth.

February 8

John and Hyrum hanging out. Aw, they're matching:)

February 9

Emma putting on my chapstick. She climbed up on my bed, grabbed the chapstick from the nightstand, and proceeded to put it on all by herself! Of course, she did it like 3 times...

February 10

Emma eating a gummi-vitamin while watching a movie.

February 11

Hyrum being cute:) He flashed his first real, non-sleep smile at me right after I turned off the camera.

February 12

Emma hugging Hyrum:) She enjoys it much more than he does!

February 13

Such a cute little boy.

February 14

Awww, our cute little valentines;) Poor Hyrum.

February 15

We went to IHOP in celebration of Valentine's Day (a day late since V-day landed on a Sunday). Emma loves chocolate milk! FYI, her shirt says, "conserve water: drink chocolate milk," so it's definitely appropriate.

February 16

More sibling love. It's blurry and unfocused, but still so cute.

February 17

THIS is how Emma uses her potty...she's put it on her head like a hat, too. We can't get her to use it the proper way yet...oh, and that's a square of TP in her hand.

February 18

Our little Cassanova. He likes long walks in the stroller, gazing at Mommy, and he likes his milk breast, not bottle;)

February 19

Emma gave Hyrum one of her baby dolls to play with. So sweet. Now if we could get her to share with her cousin...Oh, and she's pointing out her tongue to me, just because.

February 20

Hyrum holding himself up on the Boppy.

February 21

Emma has taken to sleeping in the hallway sometimes. It's usually at a time I can't force her back to her bed (aka, nursing the baby).

February 22

Our FHE activity (it went with the lesson). Gotta love the nursery book. Emma and I both did the coloring. I think it's obvious who did what;)

February 23

Hyrum in the awesome Mei Tai Kimi made me:D No seeing me, though - I'm all greasy haired with no make up. Just ignore my ugly frumpy PJs LOL. Haha, you can see Emma in the corner, too.

February 24

Lunch time! Yummy grilled cheese sandwiches.

Aaaand I'm caught up! YAY! Now for your free template. Template 59 is from my Jan 15-21 LO. It's a 12x12 template in PSD format. Here's the preview:



You can download it here.

Thanks for stopping by!! Now to relieve John from baby and toddler duty;)