So far, so good

I am having a better week so far. I have not been awesome at getting to bed early, but better. Ian distracted me with THIS. It was fun though. I have exercised every morning except yesterday, so that's felt good. I have been trying to be more patient. Weston has been doing much better with not having accidents. Just one so far this week.

On Tuesday I got to go with my Young Women to the LDS Humanitarian Center to do some service. We spent 2 hours putting together 576 school kits. It was really a lot a fun. Exhausting, but fun. The kits consisted of: a sturdy canvas bag with handles, 3 lined paper notebooks, a ruler, a pack of colored pencils, 4 regular pencils, a pair of scissors, a large eraser, a pencil sharpener, and a card with the church's name and phone number in multiple languages. Our kits will be sent to Europe. Pretty cool. I can't wait to sign up to go again. If you are looking for a group service project, check it out.

Yesterday we went to the Tracy Aviary with Tara and her kids. It was a beautiful day and the kids loved it. We saw all kinds of ducks and birds. Here are some highlights.

Weston and Makenzie with the Golden Eagle. The eagles were so cool. They were just right there in front of us with no fence above. The fence you see is the only one. Apparently all the eagles at the aviary were rescued and all have healed wing injuries that prevent them from flying or surviving in the wild.
Weston and Kenz found this peacock wandering around. It didn't spread it's feathers for us, but we got to get really close and check it out. Davin was too enthralled with looking at the peacock to pose for a picture.
Here's Davin and Jarom hanging out in the strollers while we watched the South American birds.
In the South American enclosure you could go inside the "cage" and see the birds. This was Weston's favorite part of the day. He and Kenz spent at least 15 minutes playing "tag" with this little brown bird that had hair (at least that's how Weston described it).
I was excited to see the flamingos, but these ones weren't as brilliantly pink as I had hoped. They still are cool birds to see with their stick legs and weird beaks.
After we were done seeing all the birds, we went out to the adjacent park, which is huge and awesome, for a picnic. Weston threw a little hissy fit because we weren't going on the carousel they had in the park, and basically refused to eat lunch. Had we not been with friends I probably would have taken him straight home. Instead he had a timeout by a tree, then managed to recover for some play time at the park.

I selfishly allowed Weston to go play at Makenzie's house after the outing because I wanted to chat some more with Tara. It actually worked out pretty nicely. The rest of the afternoon was naps, of course.

Today and tomorrow we have plans to go visit friends, so we are certainly keeping busy. I would like to find some more time to read. I have several books from the library that I want to work on, but it's just not happening right now. Oh well. I will settle for enjoying our friends and outings.

Sigh.

First of all, Grandma, this one's for you. I ordered the kids a few things on sale from Children's Place. I got these adorable shoes for Weston. They look SO cute on him. I can't get over it. I paid $4.25 for them. Totally worth it. He posed this picture all by himself too. What a ham.
This weekend Weston went to a big kid birthday party. I ended up staying instead of just dropping him off because it was about half an hour from home, but he did pretty well. It was a fun water party, so all the little boys ran around squirting each other with water guns, throwing water balloons, and jumping in and out of the pool.

I have to be honest, going to that party made me really sad about where we live. I really love my house, but there are seriously no kids in our neighborhood. I hope hope that when Weston starts preschool in the fall he will make a few good friends that live a lot closer to us. In the meantime I am willing to keep driving far away to play with the friends we do have.

I really felt the need to blog tonight even though we haven't been doing too much exciting stuff lately simply because I need to vent. I have been SO short on patience lately. My sweet Davin is such a busy baby. He is making me want to rip my hair out. One of his new favorite things is to sneak into the bathroom (on the random times that I happen to leave one of the bathroom doors open) and unroll all the toilet paper and play in the toilet. He inevitably manages to do this within hours of me putting a brand new, full roll of TP in the bathroom. I totally lost it when he did it again today. I had JUST finished using all the unrolled TP off the floor of my bathroom this morning and he got to the new roll. I reacted in a decidedly un-Sabbath day like manner. Oops. I feel bad that I lost my temper. It's just this age where they do all this naughty stuff, but don't really understand punishments. The other thing that drives me nuts is that he spits his drinks out all over himself/the floor. I give him a sippy and a few minutes later I come back and he's soaked.

I know this is just normal one year old stuff, but it is seriously getting to me. Arg. On the good news side, Weston has been doing better the last few days with not having accidents. It got to the point where he was having accidents every single day. I didn't end up taking him to Jumpin Jacks on Friday because he pooped in his pants. We had a big talk about him acting like a baby, so I would treat him like a baby. He freaked out when I tried to put him in one of Davin's diapers and was disgusted that I was going to make him eat baby food. The kicker was that he couldn't go to his friend's birthday party if he had any accidents. He had a couple close calls, but he made it and we have been accident free since. Hopefully the threat of being a baby was enough. We'll see how this week goes.

I'm sure part of my frustrations are my own fault, so my goals this week are:
1. Get to bed by 10:30pm every night this week
2. Get up and exercise every day this week
3. Make plans for playing with friends
4. Spend more time outside with the kids when we get bored and annoyed with each other
5. React calmly and adult-like to the kids' bad behavior.
6. Pray more.

Randomness

I have felt very off this week because of the Monday holiday. Today being Friday really snuck up on me. We have kept pretty busy. We had some friends come play with us on Tuesday all afternoon. Dawnie was a dear and stayed with my kids while I went to pick up other friends from the airport. Ian worked super late that night, so I had some down time.

Wednesday we just cleaned and baked and went to the library. I juiced and zested lemons for the first time and then made this delicious recipe for Lemon Poppyseed bread. I added mixed berry yogurt instead of plain and cut down to about 1 T of lemon zest and it was delish. Davin seriously devoured it. Weston was so funny and told me he didn't want any while it was baking because he doesn't like lemons. When it was done and I was eating a slice and feeding it to Davin, Weston said, "I was just kidding Mom. I do want some of that bread." What a silly kid.
Yesterday we drove down to the dinosaur museum with Tara and her kids. We had a great time. It was nice that we all piled into Tara's van for the drive too because we moms got some chat time. Weston and Makenzie really do play so well together.
Today I am going to take the kids to Jumpin Jacks since I have a coupon for it to be free. In the meantime we have been watering the grass, practicing baseball, watching movies, reading books, and blowing bubbles. I am trying to take full advantage of the gorgeous 80 degree weather we have been having.

Davin is still not walking and I am SO ready for him to be, so I need to start practicing more with him. He says mama, dada, wow, and rawr (when he's playing with dinosaurs). This video is from a couple weeks ago, but it's so cute and you can hear Davin saying his "wow."

Jam Packed

For a weekend with no big plans we sure were busy. We had planned to spend most of the weekend working on the yard. And by we, I mostly mean Ian. Saturday morning Ian went and rented an aerator. He had it for 2 hours and got all our front and back lawns aerated. Then he took it back and went and bought grass seed and a bale of hay. He seeded the lawns (I helped a little bit) and we spread hay over the backyard grass (to keep it moist) while the boys were napping. After that we were mostly done. It just needed watering, but since my handy hubby had fixed the sprinkler system it was not a problem.

Saturday afternoon we all went to the park to play. It was actually a little chilly, so we didn't stay too long, but the boys sure enjoyed getting out. Sunday I had a YW presidency meeting after church that ran pretty long because we were working on planning camp. We ended up last minute inviting friends over to play games that night. It was really fun. We taught them Mormon Bridge. It's a great game.

Monday Ian wanted to weed whack some of the forest of weeds in the driveway, but it was maybe supposed to rain. The day ended up being sunny and mostly clear. We decided to all go to Farm Country at TP. Daddy had never been with us, so that was really fun. We let Davin go on his first pony ride. He looked mildly happy the whole time, but didn't cry when it was over or anything like that. Weston was a pony riding champ, as usual. My picture is a little blurry, but if you make it big you can see the expression Davin had the entire ride.
Weston wasn't as into feeding the animals this time, but the boys did have fun playing in the jail.
There were two brand new day old foals at the farm yesterday too. They were so cute and gangly. It was fun to see them. We all went on a wagon ride too. It was much less bumpy and windy than last time, so I had a good time.
After the farm we went out to lunch. I really do love hanging out with my family. It's extra fun now that Davin is getting so big and can play too. It was great having Ian with us for our outing. That afternoon Ian worked on the yard some more while I obsessively read Angels and Demons. It is so hard to put down. The boys took naps. When they woke up Ian suggested we go to the pool, so we got all our stuff together and went. It was the opening weekend of the outdoor pools at the fitness center, so I expected it to be insanely packed, but it wasn't too terrible. Davin was happy in his new floatie and Weston just wore arm floaties and showed off his swimming skills to Daddy. I got to wear my new bathing suit, which I LOVE.

We ate dinner a little late, so as soon as I finished dishes I had to dash off to help the YW take down flags (we do flags in peoples' yards as a fundraiser for camp). Davin was exhausted, so I asked Ian to help Weston get toys cleaned up and put Davin to bed. Well, when I got back about half an hour later, the house was spotless, there was a fresh cut rose in a bud vase on the table, Davin was asleep, Weston was in jammies, and there was a babysitter here. Ian and I went and saw Angels and Demons. It was so incredibly great. Earlier in the day I had said that I wanted to go see a movie or something, you know, go on a date. Ian totally made it happen. What a wonderful end to the weekend!

Deals-Part III

I have been scanning the ksl.com classifieds for the past few days looking for a swing set. While on there I have also been checking for dining room tables since we have only 2 real chairs that don't match our table. I really wanted a set that matched and had 4 chairs. Weston can't sit in folding chairs and I don't want to put the booster seat for Davin on a folding chair either. It wasn't the highest thing on the priority list though, so I was just looking for a sweet deal. Well, yesterday I found it. We got this used (but in really good shape) set for $25. That's right.
The table is a few inches narrower than our old table, but it works for our little family right now. We relocated the set more into the middle of the room. So far I LOVE it. In a few months we will start putting Davin at the table with us too. I listed our old table and chairs on ksl this morning for $20, so we may even end up almost breaking even.

Getting Out

This week has been pretty rough. Especially the last few days. Davin has been throwing up and not feeling good, therefore not being content and happy. Weston has been having accidents all over the place. I have felt very isolated and been in pain too. I was at the end of my rope by Wednesday night after Weston had pooped in his pants during quiet time, then dumped it in his trash, changed his underwear, took a nap, and didn't tell me until we were playing in his room at dinner time. That was a fun clean up. I was so mad, but I felt like I had nothing in my arsenal. I didn't know how to punish him. About an hour after that I fed Davin dinner. Before I even finished he just yakked ALL of it. It was disgusting. Another nasty clean up.

I know that this is all just a part of my job, but seriously, it gets old real fast. I was feeling very alone in it all too. Ian does a great job providing for our family and taking care of things around our house, but he will just never understand this part of my life. It's not his fault. He can choose to help out when he is home, or stay with the kids to give me a break, but I don't get to choose. Even if I am surrounded by other people, I am the one responsible. Sigh. Moms get that. Dads don't.

Luckily we had plans to hang out with friends on Thursday morning. Despite Davin not feeling great we ventured to Gardner Village. It was a gorgeous morning. The kids played and enjoyed the sunshine and feeding the ducks while Tara and I got to talk. I really needed that.
My friend, Wendi's, store Posh Frippery is closing at the end of the month. I found a fun gift for my mom at her shop and it was fun to see her. We also went for a nice walk yesterday. I am loving the warm, but not sweltering hot, weather. I managed to make it to the gym this morning for the first time in over a week. It felt good.

I decided to make Davin a doctor's appointment even though he didn't throw up at all yesterday. Sure enough, nothing wrong. Well, probably a stomach bug or something, but nothing specifically diagnosable or treatable, so just keep doing what I was doing. I'm hoping he will sleep it off today and be back to his normal self tomorrow.

We are working on our yard this weekend. Ian is going to aerate the lawn, then lay grass seed. He has been working so hard all week getting the sprinkler system all repaired and working with a timer! I hope the seed grows and the lawn looks better by the end of the summer than it does now.

Next on the agenda is to clean up the house, eat lunch, and plan a girls night! I for sure could use one. Anyone else up for it?

Things I Need to be Doing:
-eating lunch
-vacuuming
-paying bills
-reading my scriptures
-taking the kids to the park
-taking a nap
-researching horrendous punishments for the 3 year old. ;)
-reading Angels & Demons so I can go see the movie
-folding laundry

Things I Am Doing:
-blogging
-waiting for my egg salad to chill in the fridge
-giving Weston kisses
-taking advantage of Davin napping
-listening to the dishwasher doing its work
-trying to find last night's episode of SYTYCD somewhere on hulu or pirate bay
-worrying
-stretching out my tense muscles

Ideas

I am feeling almost back to normal. We didn't really leave the house yesterday though, so today will be the test of my energy levels. We are going to attempt the library and Walmart. Not major grocery shopping Walmart, just a few random things. I am bored still, so if anyone wants to hang out this week let me know.

We passed 90 degrees yesterday and I couldn't sleep last night because I was so hot. I am going to have to dig out the fans from the garage today and pump in the cooler night air tonight. I am so excited for the outdoor pool to open this weekend! We will for sure have to check it out. I couldn't resist posting this adorable picture I took of Davin yesterday. He just all of a sudden looks like such a big boy! Still not walking, but he's getting closer every day. It probably won't be long now.
As for the ideas that I am looking for. I got my produce box this morning. It was a good mix of things that we like and will use: lemons, apples, pears, lettuce, baby carrots, broccoli, and then this. I have no idea what to do with this bunch of raw beets. I have been scouring allrecipes.com, but so far haven't seen anything that looks remotely appetizing. Does anyone have any ideas of what to do with beets? I can only remember ever eating canned beets on salad as a kid.
In other food news I actually ate solid food yesterday! I ate scrambled eggs, hash browns and toast. It tasted so good. I still have to eat softer food since it hurts to chew hard, but it is encouraging to be able to eat something other than yogurt and slim fast. I am slowly trying to get my house in order and start feeding my family again. Also, I forgot to mention it earlier, but Weston passed his Tot 1 swim class! That means when we do our end of summer sessions he will be in the next class up. I am so proud of him for sticking it out and doing so well, even if he was a little nervous about some of the skills. I am also letting go of any and all guilt that I had from making him get in the pool when he was crying.