Crazy Days

Things are officially crazy in our house!! We are busy and stressed. But L continues to be the light to get us thru, he is a true joy!!
We are slowly working on potty training. I wish I had 3 solid days at home I believe that if I just put him in big boy underwear and went to the potty often with prompting he would train. He LOVES his big boy underwear and has successfully asked and done to the potty (#1 and #2) several times. I'm hoping to accomplish this during the summer.
Isn't her cute in his Thomas undies!? Do you see my mess of a house in the background?! Ugh!

I've started school, its going OK. I am not finding the work itself difficult at all. Its intro statistics. I took the course during my undergrad. Its more the 8 hrs a week I am gone for class/lab and the time required for studying/doing assignments. So far I am handling it OK.

My mom is a saint and when she had L Sunday while Les & I both worked she came and cleaned my house. We have managed to keep it up so far! Its a struggle. Les has been more helpful. Its his 3rd of 4 12 hr shifts today, so he is tired and cranky.
I am prayerful that all this work and strain will be rewarded in my future with a job that suits our family better! And one that I can really make a difference in!

We are still thinking of #2. Although we have A LOT going on right now, I feel like its time. We are hoping to add to the family in the next year or two. We are committed to a young family right now and would like L and his sibling to be about 3 years apart!

Our biggest struggle right now is financially. And this makes NO sense. We both have good jobs (we are both registered nurses) and make good money. We didn't buy a house out of our means. However I am making less then I did when we first got married and we tend to (out of habit) spend a lot on eating out and other luxuries that we are trying to cut back on. I need to work on a budget, we had never had to live on a budget before. Anyone have any tips for me? I am the financial one in the house, and i have a lot going on already!

This is the face L makes when we pray, or when I tell him to close his eyes and go to sleep! Its hilarious! He is a lot of fun right now. Talking a lot, he has about 80-100 words, he is finally starting to put 2 words together a bit more consistently and even said a 3 words sentence the other day! "Daddy help me!" hahaha Les was tickling him and he yelled this between fits of laughter! Of course then Les and I were both in hysterics. It was very dramatic!
I think he is working on his 2nd year molars. He still has his guk (pacifier) and I know I need to work on getting rid of it. I'm not ready for that just yet, maybe once some of my current challanges are behind me!

A little time away...

In my pre baby days I always said that Les and I would make time for date nights and vacations just the two of us even after we had children. I believed ( and still do) that a strong, loving, healthy marriage is what a family needs to be based upon. I am the first to admit that in day to day life and the chaos that comes along with it we are not always able to make this a priority as we should. We often take things out on eachother, take eachother for granted and just let things slide. We both still love eachother, and while we do have date nights once every 4-6 weeks its not what we thought it would be, before this little man came along...

He STILL likes to lounge on the nursing pillow in the morning. I prop him up on the bed with a cup of milk and he watches cartoons while I do my hair!

Anyways....a few months ago some friends invited us on an adult couples trip to Vegas. Neither of the other 2 couples going have children. I really debated on this. I KNEW in my head we should do it, and Les REALLY wanted to go. It was a bit of a stretch money wise and my heart did not want to leave Logan AT ALL. But Les persisted and I will admit I "gave in".

We arranged for my mom & sister to take care of L and booked the trip! I was a ball of nerves before we left!

But once we were there I was fine. I am SO glad we did it! We really needed it. It was great to relax and enjoy eachother and our friends. I missed L like crazy and I had some serious mama guilt about spending our time & money on a trip that wasn't family oriented (I feel strongly that we should focus on our family). But I am very happy with did it! Here are a few photos...

Here we are all dressed up, we went to a DELICIOUS restaurant (Fiamma Tattoria) in MGM and then dancing at studio 54!


Here I am I cut my hair short again and I am really happy with it!

We spent most days at the pool. And one day the boys went golfing and the girls had a spa day, it was AMAZING!!

We even saw a few famous people!! I saw Tom Calichio (Top Chef judge) at our hotel and said "HI TOm, I love your show!" I'm such a nerd! LOL

And then we saw Sugar Shane Mosely leaving the adidas store!! Its a bad shot, but it was him in the black track suit!! His guards are carrying his bags!

He is a boxer he lost this past Saturday to the Filipino fighter, Manny Paquiao, we wished we had seen him but no such luck!

And then at the airport I saw Nelly! Not the best pic, but here is what I got!

Photo Book

Click here to view this photo book larger

Here is Logan's 1st year book. I wish I could tell you my plan to stay caught up with his second year book worked, but I am so behind! I am very happy with how it turned out!!

Easter!

We had a wonderful Easter despite Les and I having to work different shifts throughout the weekend (me nights him days). We worked around it and still had fun!!

On Friday we coloured Easter Eggs!

Logan loved it!

On SUnday while Les worked (and I should have slept!) we went to my dads for a nice afternoon. We had some nice weather, so Logan got to spend some time outside chasing bubbles!Monday morning the bunny visited our house! Thanks to Logan's new favourite show & I'm convinced his first crush, Dora he knew exactly how to hunt for the eggs!

He got a few small toys as well.

His large eggs were filled with hotwheels cars, which he LOVED

My Little man, looking so handsome and big with his Easter treats!

Our little family Easter 2011

Pretend Play

These past few weeks Logan has been such a little ham!

His personality it errupting! When we are home we see it most he just loves to be the centre of attention (he gets that from his daddy!)

Sometimes when we are out he is a but more reserved and observent, but after a little time he warms up and let lose.

He is turning into a boy, and he's ALL boy! We went to a play place last week and he wanted to be with the "kids" and he did a big slide all by himself like it was nothing! He went down backwards on his belly and didn't even want me to catch him!

His vocabulary is expanding rapidly, he is able to communicate with us very well. He learns new words daily. I want so badly for him to say "I love you" but he just won't!! Stinker

Some new words are baby, please (which he will now say without prompting), girls, help and milk. I would say he has 70-80 words currently.
He has a train table that he got from his Aunti Niki and he LOVES it he plays with it every day!

The newest and cutest activity is pretend play. It started some time ago when he woudl bring me a coffee from his play kitchen or push his baby in the stroller. Tonight however was the best so far! Tonight he took his baby and used the babys hand to pretend to pull on a cupboard he was making exaggerated moaning noises like it was difficult. Then he said "help baby help" then he said "me". Next he used his free hand to easily open the cupboard for the baby!
It was soo sweet.

He has also been falling in a very dramatic exaggerated manner, then laying on the ground and groaning liek he was trying to get up and saying help help! haha what a drama boy!

I am just having so much fun being his mama these days!

Ready but not....

It's hit me, I'm starting to feel it, the itch! I'm ready for baby #2!! Well mostly.

There are days when I look at L and I just want him, I don't want to give a single second of my limited time with him away. And then I think of my sisters and I, we are so close, I want that for him as well.

So while my heart and mind (mostly) are ready my life is not. This makes me SAD.

I want my kids to be relatively close in age, around 3 years apart, which means this is something we need to seriously start thinking about. However, Les and I have our rough moments. Never do I doubt we won't be OK, I know we will, but I wonder if we shoudl perhaps work on things more before adding more stress (which a pregnany & baby can be). We need to work on helping eachother and doing a better job of keeping the house, cooking meals, etc. But part of me says that because marriages and relationships are constantly evolving there will ALWAYS be work, a marriage is afterall WORK!

There really are 2 main things that Les and I agree are a hurdle we most overcoem before TTC. (Money COULD be on this list, but again we could always use more money, we do OK and never have to worry about if we can provide, so I think in this economy thats pretty good!)

1-my sisters wedding! She is getting married in November and while I actually think I look better pregnant then not *its sersiously true! I am worried I will have complications and end up on bedrest like I did last time. My sister lives over 16 hrs away and counts on me greatly to help. We intially thought we would consider TTC after or around her wedding, but issue #2 interferes with this plan!

2-school. I know I will be welcoming #2 while persuign my Masters. I am so blessed that the program I am taking is accomodating (I have heard new mama's often bring their newborns to class & nurse right there!) and since i am part time it will only be 1 class a week, which is doable ( I hope!) even with 2 little ones?! If we wait to TTC until after my sister's wedding (Nov/Dec) that would make me due in July/August, and then I would start school in September, just weeks later! We are thinking it may be wiser for me to aim for a due date of May/June. Which would give me 2 or 3 classes under my belt as well as the entire summer off with my little ones before starting school again.

This gives us a lot to think of! For now I am getting ready to start my first course (I have to retake a statistics course that is outdated from my degree) and we will see how well we manage before making too many decisions! Its exciting and scary all at once!

I hope I'm not taking on too much here!

And since this post was long and rantish, here are a few pics of my little man.

We have been LOVING this weather! L plays outside HARD with the neighbourhood kids in the evening, he rides his electric scooter, runs, jumps etc. When bedtime comes he is exhausted, one night he actually fell asleep while I was doign up his sleeper!!

Look at these smiles! He asks to go outside ALL the time now! We are going to be super busy this summer and I LOVE it!

Big Boy Room!

Bedtime at our house has started to be a real joy! Really! Logan goes to sleep so well these days! We have a pretty solid routine down, although I am SO thankful that our boy is super flexible and also does awesome if out late, or sleeping at grandma's, with a babysitter etc. He really is a joy theses days, a busy joy but a true joy!

If you remember we moved L into a toddler bed back in October. He did OK with this transition but has always preferred the big double bed in the playroom. And so I decided not to fight it, that would be his room one days anyways. And he doesn't wake up and play in the night anymore either!!

We don't have a set bedtime, I follow his ques, usually between 8&9pm he goes down. I tell him its time for "nah nahs" and to give daddy a kiss. He runs over and kisses Les and then takes my hand and we go to his room. Sometimes he even coesm and asks me to put him to bed by pulling on my hand and saying nah. So we go down the hall and he climbs into bed.....he looks like this!

He MUST have his baby and "Buddy" which is BOTH Woody and Buzz dolls. He also needs his "B" which is his train blanket and his guk. Strangely he doesn't carry any of these items around during the day, and he settles OK at my mom's with a different set of items but at home he asks for these! Then we read 3 book picuted above in the same order each night! The first one was a gift from a great friend, its called "bedtime" I think its really helped with our bedtime routine! Its talks abotu how bedtime is a happy time and how your safe and snug in bed etc. Then we read "mommy's best kisses" which just a really sweet and cute book and then I say "mommy is reading one more book then we are turning out the lights and going to sleep". I read the ever popular "goodnight moon" and then turn out the light. We then say our prayers and I sing 2 lullabyes. I do stay with him until he is asleep, I sit beside him and rub his back or hold his hand. The whole "process" from when we enter the room to me leaving is about 20 minutes, and they are precious. I am so grateful for this time with him each night!

Rarely he sleeps the entire night by himself without waking. Some nights I go in and give him hsi guk and he settles (not sure HOW we are ever going to part with that!!). many nights one of us ends up falling asleep with him while settling him in the night, and sometimes he comes into our room. This is rare, but I cherish mornings with the 3 of us snuggled in bed!!

We have decided that for L's 2nd birthday (in LESS then 4 months!) we will re-do his big boy room. I was going to wait until the basement was finished (in a few years) so that we could move the toys downstairs, but we decided to go ahead with it. We will be using his nursery furniture and so the nursery (which will be left the same decor or baby #2) will be pretty much empty, so we will move his toys into there for now. And if baby #2 comes before the basement is done he or she will be in with us for the first while anyways!

I have started to pick up items for L's room and below is the idea board for his room. I bought the bedding shown for a great price. We are just going with a classic boy theme, sports, cars, planes, trains, etc. The walls will be a light blue with one striped wall behind his bed. I am happy with the feel of everything so far and can't wait to get really working on it! Any ideas to add?