My Dreamy Mondays... errr.... Tuesdays

How is it that being home full-time I still barely have time to get anything done?  The housework is actually not a problem because C loves to help with laundry and vacuuming... in fact, the vacuum is one of his favorite items.  But it seems that I have no time to get on the computer to check emails, research, make posts (as you know - sorry), enter giveaways, or anything else.  When I do have time for the computer, it is to log into my work computer and get actual work done.  A friend of mine was telling me about a schedule she wrote up for her and her kids to balance their activities during the day, so that she gets in music time, alphabet activities, crafts, etc.  I was thinking I need something similar because sometimes the day goes by so fast and I realize after C's asleep that we didn't do flashcards, or we didn't build, etc., so I asked her to send it to me.  As I'm looking at it, I'm thinking... wow, and I thought I was organized and liked to plan.  Then I tell K about it and he says... is she a super-mom?  So, I took her schedule and changed it a little bit to fit for C and I... and yet I am still wondering a little if I'll be able to keep up with it all.  Although it's not like I'm going to set a timer and be a drill sergeant, it's just a good guideline for the day.

Some of the things I've needed to research that I finally found the time to do:
     -Washing Cloth Diapers in a front-load HE machine.  I love cloth diapering C, every time I pick up a diaper I think, "cool, this is so soft, it must be so comfy for him".  Yet, after the first couple times of washing them... I started feeling like they didn't smell completely clean.  They didn't smell bad, just not totally fresh... maybe a little musty smelling.  So, I finally was able to look that up and I think we found a solution that works... we'll see.
     -Next, I wanted to look up a potty seat for C.  We currently have this one for his bathroom:

But I wanted one that was more like an all-in-one for our main floor half-bathroom.  All I could find were ones for round toilets and ours are all elongated.  Then, I finally found this one:

     -The other thing I really wanted to find was a cute t-shirt for C to wear to announce him becoming a big brother... if we get pregnant again.  There are lots of sites out there, but my personal favorite design was this one at Cookie Baby Inc.:

Now, will we really order it?  I don't know.  I'd like to but we're not pregnant yet and I don't want to jinx us.  But if I wait until we're pregnant... we won't be able to use it as the way we let our family know... because we could never wait that long (the whole week for it to ship) to tell them.  So, we'll see, but at least I found a design we really like.

Whew... I feel so much better now getting this post written and this stuff researched and the schedule done.  I still need to look up AT&T U-Verse which just became available to our area, because K has been wanting it forever so we might switch.  Also, I need to look up diaper sprayers - I am not one for the dunk and swish method.  It's okay temporarily, but I'd like a sprayer.  Any suggestions on a good brand that isn't too expensive?

My Dreamy Mondays... A day late

So, I really did mean to write this yesterday... but besides the intermittent internet issues we have been having, somehow the day just got away from me.  I was lucky that I got a little time to catch up on all my emails though and finally I feel like I am getting somewhere on housework and laundry.
This is my 4th week as a stay at home mom and I am loving it.  Everyone said it would take some time to adjust, and it has, but not to adjust to being with C all day... just time to get used to doing all the housework, cooking, laundry, etc.  The biggest thing has been trying to get a schedule for us.  Of course I would love to stay in bed until I have to wake up.  I did that the first week.  C would wake up so K would bring him to me and I would nurse him in bed, then we'd both go back to sleep until 9:30 or so.  Sounds great, right?  It was, until his normal nap time rolled around and he was no where near tired.  In fact, he only took a nap 2 out of the 5 days that week.  Well, that certainly was not a good schedule.  Don't get me wrong, he is great whether he misses his nap or takes it, he really is never fussy or anything, but Mommy needs that time to work.  Yes, I am still doing some work (from home) on an as needed basis - which seems to be about 10 hours per week so far.  So, now I get up when K gets up, then when C wakes up I am already ready for the day.  So I nurse him in his room and neither of us goes back to sleep.  Then we can eat breakfast at an actual morning breakfast time and get some stuff done before lunch and nap... or just play, either way, at least we have time.

I know I thought I did this before, but I haven't stuck to it.  I really need to make myself a weekly reminder list of what I want to get done and on what days, but in time :)  1st things first... the reason I am home to begin with... to spend quality time with C!  I need to make sure I remember that... I don't want to get all caught up in trying to accomplish so much stuff that I don't spend enough quality time with him.

My Dreamy Mondays - More free time

My dream is for some free time... not a lot, just a little to get caught up with everything. I am so sorry that it has been a week since I have posted... where has the time gone? One would think that during their last few weeks of work, you could kind-of glide out stress-less-ly... well, that is certainly not the case. I have had more work in the past 2 weeks then I have had in the past 2 months! My time at work and home has been overwhelming with all I have had to do... I feel like I am trying to shovel snow in a blizzard. Hopefully this week, for my last week of full-time work, things will start to calm down to give me a few moments to wrap stuff up. That's all I have time for now... but hope to have a review posted soon.

My Dreamy Mondays - Unreal... but I have a plan.

Happy Monday Everyone! We had a wonderful weekend celebrating K's birthday and spending time together - which is always wonderful.

UNREAL: It kind-of hit me last night as we were getting ready for the work week ahead that this coming Sunday will be the last Sunday (at least for a while) that I will have to go to work the next day! It is completely unreal to me and so hard to believe. It really is "my dream come true"... and I can't hardly believe it is happening.

PLAN: I am so excited for me days with C. I am already planning out in my head what activities we will start and what I want to teach him. He is already picking up at least 1 new word a day... if not even more than that! I want to continue on that path and start teaching him letters and numbers too.

I want to get better about meal planning. I love to cook and bake but it seems as though we never have the time to plan ahead (or we just don't think about it) - so the dreaded question that my husband and I ask almost every night is... "what on earth can we make quickly for dinner besides a frosen pizza?" I want to be well prepared for meals and also try to provide healthy meal options.

I plan on keeping up with the housework a little better - belive me, our house is not a filth pit, but it could use some dusting and straightening up. I need a schedule... Monday Laundry, Tuesday Bathrooms, Wednesday Kitchen, Thursday - Vaccuum... oh wait... EVERYDAY - Vaccuum... we have a lab... which brings me to...

Another 'plan' - our dog... an 80-pound, almost 3-year old yellow lab that is full of energy! Granted, he really is a pretty good dog and he is wonderful with C, but he could use some 'touching up' with his listening. He listens great, when he wants to... so Mommy, C and Rocco will work on that :)

C's scrapbook. Yes, I finally got our wedding scrapbook done a few weeks before C was born (almost 2 years after our wedding!) and in the time I was home on maternity leave I got his scrapbook done up through the day he came home from the hospital. I know that doens't seem like much, but it included the whole pregnancy too. Somehow I have to find a few minutes here and there to work on his scrapbook so his first year (which will be the most detailed due to all the big moments) will be done before I have to do it all over again for his sibling.

Sometimes I feel so overwhelmed just thinking about it all... and then I remind myself that right now I am working full-time and somehow we are managing it all just fine. I guess part of me is worried that I won't succeed. I have always taken care of children and I know I can do that... but add in everything else??? Some moms I know tell me that I won't have any extra time... I should stay working... I only think things will be easier... could they be right? I really, truly, honestly don't think so... but I've never been this before... I've never been 'only' a mommy and housewife. I know I will be so much more than that... but you know what I mean :)

My Dreamy Mondays – Down the Toilet

Let me start off by saying that I thought potty training would be relatively tough, mainly because I am a full-time working mom (well, for 3 more weeks at least – but I didn’t know that I would be able to be a SAHM until recently). And because I always heard boys were harder to train than girls and because I had a little experience with it and knew it wasn’t always as easy as you think it should be... I wasn't expecting it would be a cake walk.

Our 4 year old niece is a super smart little girl, she knew the entire alphabet at 1 year old and at 4 years old she can identify every letter. She has always been an early talker and all and by 2 (probably earlier but she's not my daughter so I really can't remember) she knew when she had to go… but she would never go on the potty. She would hold it all day if she didn’t have on a diaper, it was crazy. She was just so scared of going potty on the potty. Right around her 3rd birthday my husband and I watched her for a few days and I spent 3 hours one evening in the bathroom with her… listening to her scream and yell and cry, because she had to go and I wouldn’t put a diaper on her. It was an awful 3 hours... I felt awful, but I knew that she could do it if she just got past that first time. She finally went and has been completely potty trained ever since.

So, when our son was about 9 months or so (how awful… I can’t even remember this stuff for my one and only son! - good thing I documented everything... just can't get to it right now) I would put him on the potty while we waited the whole 20 seconds it took Daddy to make his bath… just to get him used to sitting on it. Well, around 13 months or so we were in his bedroom and he walked up to the bathroom door and pointed. I asked if he wanted to use the potty and he got all excited and shook his head ‘yes’. So I took off his pants and diaper and put him on the potty and sure enough he peed. After this milestone, I starting asking him at most diaper changes if he wanted to use the potty. Sometimes he says yes and other times he just acts oblivious to what I’ve said (silly boy… most kids his age love the word ‘No’ and yet that is the only one out of his 60+ word vocabulary that he barely ever uses). Anyway, no pressure, if he says yes we(he) sit on the potty and if he doesn’t say yes, then we just continue with the diaper change and sing or talk about something different. Even when he says yes, he often does nothing, but there have been a couple of times here and there when he has done pee or poo. I just chalk that up to coincidence.

Well, this weekend was huge (in my opinion). Saturday morning after he woke up I asked him about potty before changing his diaper and he said “potty”… so I put him on and he pees. Yeah C! Later, before his nap, I was walking him and he points to the bathroom and starts grunting (a fake grunt) so I ask him and he says “potty”… so I put him on and he poops. Again, Yeah C! Sunday morning and afternoon… the same thing as the day before. Then before bath we put him on and his daddy asks him to show him how he goes pee-pee. C says pee-pee, looks down, then pees! Then Daddy asks about poo and same thing (only with some grunting). YEAH C! After his bath I pick up a clean diaper and he shakes his head no and waves his hands to push the diaper away. I ask if he wants potty again and he says yes. I think “yeah right… now we’re just playing”, but whatever, I'm game :) Back to the potty we go and he pees again! Wow C… I am so amazed by you everyday! I would have never thought Little C would pick up potty training this easily… with me barely doing anything to lead him! He really is the greatest son in the world, not just because of this, just because he is always so easy going and happy and so easy with everything. I should have known that he would get this potty thing without much assistance from me and his daddy… he just does everything at his own pace on his own. He got rid of his pacifier on his own at 8 months, off his bottle on his own at 12 months and going to sleep on his own (to the point where he didn’t even want to be rocked… and without ever using the cry-it-out method) by I can’t even remember how many months - it has been that long… of course there are exceptions every now and again.

Could he really be this easy to potty train??? What a dream come true that would be. My mom said "that's great... but what about all those cloth diapers you bought that you are so excited about using"... well Mom, we'll just have to have another baby :) Anyway, I don't want to pressure him. He is only 15 1/2 months old and I am still working full-time... so if he continues at this rate, maybe after me being home with him (in 3 weeks!) and he has this consistency every day we might have him trained in a few months, but if not, then we don't. Either way, he is still the best!

My Dreamy Mondays

Last night was filled with Cloth Diaper dreams, most likely because this weekend was my first weekend cloth diapering! I had dreams about my little guy sleeping overnight in a cloth diaper (which I didn’t try yet… more on that below) and dreams about how soft and cute the cloth diapers are. There wasn’t any story line to any of my dreams… it was more just a parade of cloth diaper visions.

So… how did our first weekend go??? Pretty good I think.

I was so excited to get home on Friday because I knew my delivery of Kawaii Baby diapers would be awaiting my arrival. I did, after all, stalk the UPS tracking website all day until I saw that the shipment had been delivered. I got home with C and we ran to the front door to get our package, but I decided since K would of course want to be there when I opened the package, I would wait for him to get home. Luckily I had plenty to keep me busy until he got there. Once he walked in the door, we were all sitting at the kitchen table looking through all my new diapers.

Unfortunately we had a graduation party to get to so I didn’t have time to wash the diapers and then we didn’t get back home until super late, so I wouldn’t be able to wash everything until Saturday morning, and then we were out for a good part of the day, so no cloth diapers until I could get everything ready.

So, come early Saturday evening, C needed a diaper change and my cloth diapers were all prepped, washed and ready! I chose the Knickernappies diaper to start with, for no reason at all. Overall things went well; no leaks and he even had a #2 in that diaper. Now, it wasn’t super solid so I did have to do the swish-in-toilet method (don’t let my hubby find out) but all-in-all, it wasn’t bad at all. Unfortunately, with that less than solid #2 also appeared a very red diaper rash… just like that our of the blue – no warnings or mild rash – so for bed I put him in a disposable so I could lather on the cream and by morning his rash was gone and we started the day with a Kawaii Baby pocket. All in all, things went very well.

My Dreamy Mondays - Pregnancy Dreams

When I was pregnant with Little C, I had a lot of dreams about having pink baby gear and such... or going to visit family with a baby wrapped in a pink blanket. We didn’t find out if we were going to have a boy or girl, but the dreams were always pink. And yet every time I would wake up I would think to myself, or tell K… it’s just not right, the dreams don’t feel right, we’re not having a girl. In the very beginning I just had this overwhelming feeling that we were having a boy and that he would be born in March, instead of in April (when he was due). And that is exactly what ended up happening. Towards the last months of my pregnancy I wasn’t sure anymore… I guess because I wondered if those dreams meant something. Why would I be dreaming about girl stuff if I was having a boy, so I started doubting my original thoughts. I started wondering if maybe I was only “feeling” like we were having a boy because I knew how much K wanted a son. Although to be completely honest, we really didn’t care one way or the other as long as we had a healthy baby – which is probably partly why we didn’t find out the sex before C was born. We would be happy with a boy or a girl and we wanted it to be an amazing surprise. I remember reading somewhere before I even got pregnant that all the old wives tales couldn’t predict what you were having… they were right only like 50 percent of the time or something like that… but that a mother’s “feeling” was right 75 percent of the time. Pretty cool, I thought… I guess I should have just trusted myself and believed that what my gut was telling me was right :)

So, last night I had a dream that was pretty obscure. Sometimes my dreams are so realistic that I truly don’t always know if they were dreams or reality and other times they just don’t make any sense. So, this dream last night was of the latter version. I was in and empty field and there was a baby boy coming towards me. Now, he was wrapped in a blue blanket and he wasn’t walking… floating maybe? Anyway… all of a sudden these hills of grass rose up between him and I and I could just barely see the tip of his little blue hat beyond the hills. Then the hills started dancing, or moving like waves almost, hard to explain. Anyway, these were not just any hills, they were covered in pink… almost like they were saying “no, not a boy… a girl”. So really, this dream means nothing because I am not pregnant, but still, it was very odd.

We are hoping for a girl with our next pregnancy but only because we would love to have 1 boy and 1 girl, but if we were to have a boy, we would still be thrilled. Again… I am not pregnant, just talking about in the possible future :) And if we do get pregnant again, we are thinking of finding out the sex this time. Not that we didn’t love being surprised the first time, but just for something different and to help us plan… although we still aren’t sure that we don’t want it to be a surprise again.

Did you find out what you were having when you were pregnant? Did you have a “mother’s intuition” about whether you were having a boy or girl… and were you right?

My Dreamy Mondays

First, a big THANKS to MamaB for the Wahmies Pocket Diaper Giveaway... I am thrilled that I won!

Onto my dream... which is to be a cloth-diapering stay-at-home mommy... and maybe it will finally happen!  I am a firm believer that things happen for a reason and that there are some things that shouldn't be forced... examples...

When I was pregnant and had my first ultrasound, the technician saw that I had placenta previa, which basically meant I would have to have a c-section.  I hated this idea... not because I was completely against having a c-section in order to make sure my baby would be healthy... but because I didn't want to pick my baby's birthday.  I wanted my baby to be born when he was ready, not when the doctor's and our schedule fit best.  Lucky for all of us, the placenta previa went away and we had a healthy, natural, medication free birth :)

I was worried about who would watch our Little C when I went back to work.  Even though we had looked into daycare centers, I just hated the idea of leaving my little baby in one (no offense to those of you that use a day care center) and then my parents became unemployed and were able to watch our little guy for a few months and then once my parents found jobs the neighbor across the street offered, which worked out great.  I felt so comfortable having him with people that I love and trust.

Now my husband has been unemployed since December and it is frustrating to apply for jobs and always hear "you were second choice"... but at the same time - it was GREAT that he could be home with our son.  They bonded and they learned from each other and they developed their own little tricks and traditions - this is a time that you can never get back - so I am thrilled my husband had it.  When he lost his job, we started talking about relocating.  We could move and downsize and then maybe I could stay home with our children.  And, if I can stay home... then I WANT TO CLOTH DIAPER!  So, 2 weeks ago I win 2 cloth diapers, back to back, and then yesterday I win another one.  A sign??? I think so!  Seriously, out of 302, 365 and 936 entries... I happen to win 3 different cloth diapers.  What are the odds?!?!  Okay, maybe not totally impossible, but still... WOW!  So, then on Friday my husband gets a job offer.  It is local, so there won't be any relocating, but if we watch our money a little more closely than we currently do, then I think we can manage me staying home.  Anyway, I think it's a sign.  I think it was meant to be... me at home with my baby and his cloth diapers :)

My Dreamy Mondays... A Wish for Someone Special

This Monday isn’t about the crazy dreams I’ve had lately… but it is about a dream, a wish, which I have for someone that is very special to me.

This someone recently got engaged. Of course I am excited and happy for her, but at the same time, I’m not. I want her to be happy and loved, I want her to know she is loved and to know that she deserves happiness, I want her to know that she deserves to have her dreams come true. But, the truth is, I just don’t think she believes any of those things. I feel like she is settling. I feel like she doesn’t believe she deserves better, like she doesn’t believe in herself.

As far as I can remember, she always wanted children, but once she started dating her fiancé; she started saying she didn’t want kids – because he never wants any. She was always so family oriented, but once she started dating her fiancé; her family barely ever saw or heard from her. Her fiancé is not a family man; he does not go to any family birthday or holiday gatherings with her, so she must go alone if she wants to go. Those are just a few examples.

I am sure he is a nice enough guy, but there just seems to be so much that makes her unhappy. It seems as though she is doing all the compromising in their relationship while he is not compromising at all. I truly hope I am wrong. I hope none of what I see is true, I hope she is happy and in love and that she will be happy with her fiancé for her whole life, but if I’m right and she is not happy…

I wish I could wisk her away and show her how much better she deserves. I wish I could help her stand up and believe in herself. I wish I could make her see how truly amazing she is. If she ever reads this - I just want her to know that she is loved, that we will be here for her no matter what, that it is never too late to decide you deserve better and to do something about it.