Mommying

Last night we dropped off my car at the shop to be re-fixed. So today we were housebound. I even forgot to get the stroller out of the trunk, so we have been inside all day. I call today mommying. I didn't shower until 10am (but I did shower!), I did laundry and dishes, fed the kids, tried to tidy (but to no avail), and got dinner started in the crock pot.

I also sat and watercolored with Weston. I especially liked his painting on black paper. It looked really cool. Perhaps he has inherited Daddy's design eye.
We also baked cookies while Davin watched from the high chair, contentedly munching Saltines. He definitely prefers cookies though.
Finally, I sat on the floor and played rolly ball with this bundle of cuteness. He has decided that his new nap time is smack dab in the middle of the day (at least he takes a nap).
Tonight we will all go together and pick up my car and then go to the fitness center pool for some family splashing. Tomorrow's outing . . . Davin's haircut.

Accentuate the Positive

First of all, Thank You, Thank You! for all your re-affirming, supportive comments. I, of course, am feeling better today. Ian bringing these home for me yesterday helped. :)
I then promptly left the kids in his charge and went to Young Womens. None of our girls showed up, so the 3 leaders just had a girls' night and went to the Draper temple open house sans responsibility. It was really beautiful and fun to see the temple. We toured and talked and talked some more. It was definitely what I needed last night. I came home to a nice quiet, tidy house, snuggled with Ian and watched the new Big Bang Theory. I slept well. Weston didn't wake me up, and after feeding Davin at 4am I got to sleep until 7:45!

Today has been much better too. Not overly productive, but enough. We didn't do much because I wanted Davin to get a good nap. He didn't go down until 12ish, but then slept until 2:30pm. Our afternoon outing was a trip to the library and a stop at the dollar store. I got some fun Easter decorations and a couple Easter basket stuffers while Weston wasn't looking. The boys came home with mylar balloons (their favorite).

Ian will be home for dinner tonight and none of us need to go anywhere. I am looking forward to a nice evening together. I am so glad to know that all us moms struggle sometimes (not just me!) and I feel lucky to have so much wonderful support. I am going to just take things one day at a time and try to remember why I am here.

Calling all Super Mom's!

It has been a long week. Yes, I am aware that it is only Tuesday. My children are driving me nuts and I am just not in a good place. Weston, my previously perfect sleeper, has been not going to sleep until at least 9pm and waking me up in the middle of the night every night except one since we got back from CA. I am at a complete loss as to what to do. I have been making him stay awake all afternoon, even though he begs for a nap. It still doesn't seem to help much since last night he didn't go to sleep until 9:20pm and was in my room waking me up for no reason at 1:33am.

So after being up with both my children and feeling completely overwhelmed they still were up at 7. On top of this, Weston has been having little poop accidents for the past couple days in a row. I also don't know what to do about that. He knows he's in trouble when he does it, but at the same time I don't want to freak out on him. We are considering taking a giant stride backwards and reinstating some positive reinforcement before resorting to giving him a cold hose down in the shower when he has poop accidents.

What it really boils down to is that I just feel like I am going in circles. Everyday I do the same things or try new things, but nothing changes. Nothing I do to change behaviors seems to work. I clean the house every day and an hour later it doesn't look like I've done anything. I just feel like there is no point to anything I do. I have no real purpose or direction or meaning in my day. I can't seem to be successful at anything. This feeling of hopelessness is doing nothing for my motivation and energy. I want to be Supermom, but I just can't seem to figure out how. I want to feel happy and fulfilled staying home with my kids, but I mostly feel frustrated and guilty.
Maybe I should go back to work. At least there I feel valued and can see tangible evidence that I am making a difference to someone and accomplishing something. I would appreciate any advice on Weston's sleeping issues. I'm tempted to just lock my bedroom door and see if he would get back in bed and go back to sleep or just scream outside my door. This is me, minus the smile and the ugly skirt suit.

Home Again . . .

home again jiggity jig. It has been a nice week home from our vacation. I cleaned the house, planned meals, grocery shopped, played a bit, babysat a friend's baby, and lots more. Nothing major going on.

The biggest news, that I'm really excited about, is that we decided to join the Kearns Oquirrh Park Fitness Center. This is the facility that I swim at, but we hadn't bought a membership yet because I still have to pay for my swimming separately and we weren't sure if we were going to be living so close to the fitness center for long. Now that we have decided to stay put for a couple more years it made sense to get a membership. So far it has been great. We haven't had a gym membership for almost 2 years. It feels good to be able to go work out whenever we want. I prefer to exercise in the mornings before the kids wake up and Ian likes to go at night. I'm hoping to get myself back into fighting shape, or at least lose the 20 pounds I've gained since having the boys. That's my goal.

It's going to be rough I think. I have a major sweet tooth and there's something extra difficult about staying home all day and trying to stay out of the kitchen. I always get really snacky in the late afternoon, but since I am aware of that I am trying to come up with some new strategies to avoid the pitfall. Any helpful ideas would be great. I don't call it a diet though, so I am not asking for dieting tips, just healthy solutions, substitutions or strategies.

It's funny because I have always had pretty good self esteem. Almost to a fault, like I think I look better than I actually do. However it has finally gotten to a point where I am not comfortable with the way I look. I am hoping to be able to take better care of myself. Anyway, sorry about that detour. I didn't mean for this post to be so health centered. Oh well. I suppose that's just what's on my mind.

Last night I got to go shopping all by myself for a couple hours. It was so fabulous. I forget how much I love to shop sometimes. I had a gift card to Old Navy, so of course I had to scour the store and try on at least 10 things. I ended up spending my birthday money on a new great pair of black sweats (I live in sweats, so this is highly exciting) and a cute spring hoodie that's white and yellow. Ian's only comment was "good luck keeping it clean." He's so encouraging. :)

I also hit Barnes and Noble, where I could literally spend hundreds of dollars, but I only got a couple books for Davin for his upcoming birthday. Then I went to Target to try on some capris that were on sale and pick up a new pair of headphones for my aforementioned trips to the gym. The capris were hideous, but they had the headphones I wanted for only $10, so the Target trip wasn't a waste. It was seriously just so much fun being able to browse and look and try on when I normally can't.

In an unrelated vein, I was making an old recipe from my childhood the other day and realized how incredibly easy and inexpensive it is, so I though I'd share. Seriously a quickie meal that uses mostly ingredients you probably already have.

Tuna Biscuit Casserole

1 tube of refrigerated biscuits (I used the Pillsbury Grands this time and they were wonderful)
1 can of tuna
1 can cream of celery soup
1 c. milk
1 t. parsley
1 c. grated cheese

In a greased 9x13 pan arrange the biscuits with a little room in between each one. Mix the tuna, soup, milk and parsley in a separate bowl. Pour the tuna mix over the biscuits, covering. Top with cheese and bake at 375 for 30 minutes.

CA Trip- Children's Museum & a Birthday

Friday of our trip was fun and mellow. We spent the morning playing in my parents' backyard while Davin took a forever long morning nap. When my mom got home from school at lunchtime we went over to the La Habra Children's Museum for the afternoon. It is a great little museum and the kids had a lot of fun. They had this exhibit with several little displays of different countries. Here is Davin playing with/eating the plastic food that the people of Indonesia eat.
Weston and I in a real rickshaw.
There were dress up clothes from the different countries too, so my mom and I had to put on hula skirts and Weston favored the Japanese fashions.
The museum also has a really small carousel in one of the main rooms, so Davin had his first ride on the merry go round. He looked bewildered through most of it, but I think he had a good time. He rode twice and was mellow the whole time.
Weston enjoyed being the bus driver. He had to take turns though because Daddy wanted that job too.
Friday afternoon we took the kids in the "pool" again. My dad brought home In N Out for dinner and then we celebrated Davin's birthday early. He opened his presents from my parents. Weston really wanted to help him rip into his presents, but he did pretty well waiting until I said he could help. Davin thought ripping the paper up was a fun thing. He loved his new book too. After he opened his presents we had cupcakes from Beverly's Best. Yum.
I was interested to see how Davin would do with his cupcake. Weston was not a fan of getting messy with his 1st birthday cupcake. The singing seemed to make Dav a little nervous, but he thought the candle was cool. He didn't try to touch it though. Mom and I blew it out for him.
Then we set the cupcake on his tray and he just ripped into it and ate and ate. It was quite the mess, but he was happy as a clam. He ate every crumb he could find on his tray. When we went to take him out of his high chair and clean him off he cried and cried and was still trying to eat the crumbs that had fallen on his legs and diaper. I would say it was a successful first cupcake experience.
After we got kids to bed we played cards and sat in the spa with my parents. It was nice to have some down time to just visit. We gathered our stuff up from the four corners of the house and set our alarms. We decided to drive all the way home on Saturday, so we got on the road at 5:30am and after 3 stops made it home a little before 6pm. Wow. What a trip. I am so glad that Ian was able to take the vacation time and that we got to do so many fun things all together. Thanks for bearing with me and my 5 post recap of our trip. Now back to reality. Ian is back at work, busy as ever and I am getting caught up with the grocery shopping, house cleaning and getting back into our routine. Fun times in CA. Can't wait to go back . . . already.

CA Trip- Aquarium of the Pacific

My mom took Thursday off work to play with us. We took a kind of slow morning and let Davin have a nap then we headed out for our aquarium trip. Weston was really excited to see all the fish. The aquarium was tons of fun and had plenty to keep us all entertained. We hit some bad traffic on our way down there, but it worked out because by the time we got there and ate some lunch all the bazillions of school field trip kids had cleared out and it was fairly empty. This was the first big wall tank when you first walked in. It seriously was so cool.
Outside they had these low, open areas where you could touch the rays and little sharks. I can't get over how they always feel SO slimy. Ick. Weston didn't go for sticking his entire arm in there, but later on in a different area with rays, the rays were coming up to the surface. He was happy to touch them then. He also spent some time with Grandma B touching the tide pool creatures like starfish, anemones, and urchins.
Also outside by the open ray pools was a play area with this fun boat and several big sea animals that squirted water when you pushed the buttons on them. This was probably Weston's favorite part of the aquarium. I was actually surprised we didn't have any major meltdowns when leaving here.
The boys and I were all pretty enthralled with the sea lions who were swimming all around this tunnel. They are so cute. We went to watch their feeding/training session too and they did some fun tricks.
Weston thought the rainbows from the water and sun were so cool. This is by the shark lagoon. See the huge shark right behind Weston? Wow. It was really a great aquarium.
We also got to see lots of jellies, seahorses, an underwater diver giving a tour of the coral reef exhibit, and this crazy fish called a weedy sea dragon. It was a really fun day. On our way out Grandma B got Weston a shark shirt and a toy whale. He loves them. We will definitely have to go check out the tiny aquarium near us in the near future. Thanks for the awesome outing Grandma B!

CA Trip- Double Date & Palmdale

After our high adventures at Disneyland we decided to take Tuesday easy. We slept in, had a leisurely breakfast . . . oh wait. No, we were up by 7am and had Cocoa Puffs for breakfast. :) Anyway, we went and met up with my Dad for lunch in the park. It was SO nice to be able to play at the park since in UT it has been too cold for the park for months. The boys came home and all took naps, which was fabulous. When we all woke up we got to swim in Grandma B's pool. Really it is just the hot tub that we turn down to 95 degrees and splash around in, but it's as good as a pool for the kids. Davin loved the water and had a blast splash splash splashing.

That evening Ian and I left the boys with my dad and we headed out for our official date. We doubled with my sister, Jules and her boyfriend, Jason. It was quite the marathon date. First we all got massages at Happy Feet (which felt amazing), then dinner at Lucille's (Yum). After dinner we tried to go mini golfing, but it was already closed, so we detoured to Jules' apartment to grab socks and went bowling instead. We all pretty much sucked it up at bowling, but the evening still ended on a good note with frozen yogurt at Yogurtland. It was fun to hang out with Jules and Jason. Ian and I could barely keep up though. We got home late and were exhausted. I don't know how I did that night after night when I was single.
Wednesday morning we got up fairly early and drove out to Palmdale to visit with Ian's Grandma, Aunt Teri, Uncle Mike, Todd, Jenni, and baby Preston. It was a pretty relaxed visit. We just hung out with Grandma and watched Wall-E then headed to Todd and Jenni's for pizza and playtime. The 3 boys played well together and Weston LOVED all the fun new toys to play with.

Here are all 3 of the Bowles great grandkids. Davin, Preston, and Weston.
Grandma Bowles getting lovins from Dav. He actually took a nice long nap that afternoon, so he managed to stay awake until 8pm.
We really are so grateful to have such awesome family (on both sides) that we really love and wish we could hang out with on a more regular basis. In the meantime we will just have to continue making the most of our visits!