3/31/12

Today was a very busy, very Easter filled family day. The girls were up VERY bright and early. After taking some time to relax and actually wake up, we had ourselves a big breakfast, got ready, and were off on our first adventure. Mall of America, to meet the Easter Bunny! The girls have always done well with Santa and the Easter Bunny, so I was interested to see how it would go this year. Olivia was very into it. She ran right up to him to give him a big hug. Amelia was more nervous, she gave in and sat next to him, but did not offer up any smiles. LOL. We still got a couple shots though.

After wandering the mall for a while, we headed home for some lunch and naps. While the girls napped, I ran to pick up some final egg dying and cooking making supplies, then quickly got my workout in before starting up our evening activities.

I boiled our eggs and gathered all of our supplies. The girls woke up from their nap, ate some dinner and we got to work. We dyed our eggs in a variety of fun ways...your standard "dip in the cup" colors, the egg spinner, tye-dyed with a paper towel, and my newest experiment, silk-dyed. It was fun, the girls had a blast! It gets better every year when the girls actually get into it and can do things. Next up, we baked our Easter cookies. I wanted to do lots of fun shapes, but it just wasn't working out, and it was getting late, so we just went with regular old round cookies. Still delicious, obviously :)

It was already past bedtime when we finally finished up our Easter fun, so the girls took a quick bath, and off they went. Christian's friend from work stopped over, needing his help with some car stuff again, so I cuddled up with the DVR while he did that. Nice relaxing night after a hectic, fun filled day :)

Here are some pictures from our day!

3/30/12

Friday, sweet Friday. If only it were my Friday off, the day would be complete :)

I posted about my "friend" issues on facebook last night, and throughout the day I was reminded of how many amazing friends I really do have. All of the nice comments, the kind posts and the uplifting words just made my day. I have so many REAL, great friends, I truly am blessed. Definitely need to remember that when I'm feeling down!

I weighed in this morning, and lost another pound!!! YAY, that brings me to 16.4 today. Feeling good, and hoping it continues! Tonight my workout was a kickboxing workout, and HOLY MOLY it seriously kicked my butt! I love it though, I'd say that and the Ballet video are my favorites. They are such different workouts, but they leave me feeling like it was worth my time.

I left work a little early today so that I could get the workout and a shower in, because we actually had plans to go out!! YES!! Much needed adult time, and catch up time with our friends Nate and Gini. We met them at Buffalo Wild Wings for some yummy dinner, a beer or two and lots of laughs. It was great catching up with them...hopefully it can be a more regular thing!

After some adult time, we picked up the girls from my mom's, headed home, and relaxed for the rest of the night. I caught up on a few shows before passing out.

Tonights picture is Olivia, coloring away. Coloring seems to be her new thing suddenly. The best part is that she actually colors, like tries to stay inside the lines and everything. It's cute!

3/29/12

Today is my stepmom's birthday, so a big HAPPY BIRTHDAY to her :)

It was a pretty low key day today. Ended on a bit of a frustrating note though. It amazes me the way people act sometimes. You think adults can be adults, let bygones be bygones, and just move on from differences, arguments, etc. It's really annoying when you learn that just isn't always the case.

What's more than that...I hate to be left if decisions you've made in your fact, were the right ones. The people you choose to have in your wedding, the people you assign important "titles" to, the amount of trust and faith you place in people. When those people let you down, or show their true colors and make you start questioning those decisions, that trust, that faith, it just makes everything that much more frustrating. I hate feeling like we've made "mistakes", regretting important decisions. But, what do you do. There's no going back, there's no changing the past or redo's in life. So, moving on is the only real choice that we have.

So, other than that, it was a pretty standard day. Work was work. We continued the suppositories on Olivia, and they seem to be helping. After a workout, dinner, a little playtime and some baths, we were all in bed for the night. Another day down :)

Here is a picture of my cutie, trying on Daddy's hat....

3/28/12

Well, Olivia was up all night last night, screaming and crying. Poor thing. She finally slept out on the couch with Christian, and that seemed to help her actually sleep a little bit. I decided this morning it would be best to take her in and get her checked out. I figured if nothing else, they can give us some good advice of what to do for her. So, I headed into work, took care of some priority stuff, and picked her up from school at 12:30 for her appointment.

When I got to school, I spied on her for a few minutes. She was just beaming, she looked so incredibly happy! She was running around with some of the other little girls, playing and laughing. Just having the time of her life. They had just finished lunch, and were getting ready to settle in for a story before naps (waiting for everyone to finish washing hands and cleaning up). Olivia finally spotted me and came running over. She took me on a little tour of their classroom and all of their new stuff. They are growing a little garden, and raising some butterflies. She thought it was all SUPER cool. They made bird seed shakers today which she was really excited about as well. It’s so fun to see her so excited about everything. Just justifies our decision to put them in even more!

We were finally off to her appointment. Everything checked out well…the doctor wasn’t worried about a blockage or anything, so that was good. She had us start Olivia on some suppositories, and said to just keep doing what we’ve been doing. Hopefully in another couple of days she’ll be back to normal. So, I took her home and she took a nice long nap. I ate some lunch, relaxed for a while and got my workout in. Once Christian was home, I was off on tonight’s adventure. A screening of “Mirror Mirror” with my friend Gini. We grabbed some dinner and chatted for a while. I haven’t seen her in FOREVER, so it was great catching up. Lots of venting, lots of laughs. The movie was actually really good too. I didn’t really know what to expect, or how adult entertaining it would be, but it was actually really funny, very cute and great for every age. It was a nice stress reliever from everything! By the time I got home from the movie, the girls were in bed, and I tucked myself in for the night. All in all, it was actually a pretty good day!

In other news…Amelia turned 20 months on Monday. We finally got her 20 month picture today. She seems to be growing and learning like CRAZY these days. Her talking, especially since being in school, is pretty amazing. She can clearly repeat just about everything you say to her, and she has a lot of new phrases. “I need help”, “I want more”, “Milk please”, “I want Daddy” (this one, I’m not such a fan of, LOL – but she almost instantly reaches back for me anyway when he takes her. Ha.) are what we usually hear. She can say her own name, thank you, excuse me, let’s go, puppy, juice and all of her other usuals. It seems like she has a few new words every day. She has picked up the “Twinkle Twinkle” tune and “sings” that a lot. She’s been doing a lot of coloring and arts and crafts in school. She comes home very dirty every day. LOL. I’m just so proud of her, she’s growing up so much! She is still in 12-18 month clothes. Most fit her just fine, some are getting small, but only because of her belly. According to the tags of most brands, she’s still not even in the weight range for 12-18 month clothes. LOL. As I collect summer clothes for them, I am getting her 18-24 month stuff though, so hopefully they’ll actually fit! She’s been sleeping really well, no issues for a long time now. She really just tunes Olivia out now and sleeps right through when she wakes up. At the park the last few weeks she’s shown that she can climb the rock wall and all of the different stairs, she goes down the slides and everything on her own. Her new favorite thing is to do summersaults, which is very cute. She’s still our little cuddle bug, but she has a very mischievous side as well. She definitely eggs Olivia on in a lot of their “rumbles” and gets herself into a lot of trouble. She’s just so dang cute though! My baby, getting so big!

3/27/12 (vent ahead)

Today was kind of an aggravating day. Work was fine, nothing bad…busy enough, and the girls made it through the day at school. I checked in with the director a few times, and she said Olivia was doing great, no issues. I was worried about sending her, but I thought the distractions at school would help take her mind off of her issues…seems to be exactly what happened.

I ran home to let the dog out after work, then met Christian and the girls at his mom’s house for dinner. This is where things got pretty aggravating to me. I’ve been semi-vocal over the years of his parents, and their care of the girls. But I think I “ignored” a lot of the issues I had and the things his mom did, or just let them go because it was really our only option at the time. Now, I’ve just had enough with it. Tonight, it’s like everything that bothers me was happening, and I was getting more upset by the minute.

Now, time to vent (haven’t done one of these for a while)…

First, it’s been frustrating dealing with Christian and the daycare switch. He just doesn’t understand some of the things the daycare does, or how it works. He doesn’t get that they have a classroom full of kids to take care of, so the level of attention is obviously not going to be the same as it was at his parents house. We get into arguments about it, but it’s obvious he talks to his mom about these things, and she just fuels the fire because she does not get it AT ALL either. As soon as we sat down to eat she started in on things about the school…why don’t they give us a recap sheet for Olivia every day, do they help them go to the bathroom, they probably just give them pizza every day for lunch, yada, yada, yada. I was getting so upset. No, they don’t do recap sheets for Olivia’s room…because, they don’t. The older the kids get, the more structured it is. It’s more like actual school, and they are old enough to tell us what they did, what they ate, etc. I mean, they’ve been in business for how long? Obviously they know what they are doing. They DO help the kids go to the bathroom…but obviously, just like at home, if the teachers are busy or with another kid, and Olivia has to go potty, she’s just going to go. She’s been potty trained for almost a year, she’s not going to wait for help if she has to go. No, they don’t eat pizza every day…they have something new every day – REAL food, just like if they were at home. Fruits and veggies are part of every meal. Amelia’s daily sheet tells us what they ate – the entire school eats the same thing, so we KNOW what she eats every day. I finally lost it a little bit and said – you know, I don’t make the rules and I don’t run the school. They know what they are doing, and if they have issues or problems with the girls, they would tell us. And I pretty much dropped the subject. What really bothers me, is that Christian KNOWS all of this, he knows what it’s really like, but he lets his mom brainwash him and refuses to just stick up for us and our decisions.

Next, she’s has randomly over the years complained that we “treat her like an employee, and not like ‘grandma’”. This is completely untrue, and ridiculous. If anybody treated our situation like a business, it was her. I mean, just look at what she charged us to watch her grandchildren, and you don’t need any more proof than that. She started talking about one of the neighbor kids, and that they have a nanny come every day and watch her. She said she talked to the nanny one day and asked how things work…that she works 40 hours a week, never any more, and she gets paid vacation and sick days – she kept repeating this, and emphasizing it, as if she was trying to make a point…as if that’s how we should have been treating her. Yeah, she watched them more than 40 hours a week…she watched them Mon-Thurs, from about 6:45 to about 5:00. So, OK, 41 hours a week. Anything more than that was because Christian sat over there with them every night, for like an hour, instead of leaving to come home right away. Apparently she was counting that time? And, why would I pay you when you don’t watch them? When she started watching Olivia we paid her the full amount, every week, no matter what. Then, she started canceling days because she “had to work”, or because she had an appointment or something. So, I finally put my foot down and we stopped paying her for days she didn’t work. So, this was obviously a stab at that – and she also brought up the fact that we have to, pay the daycare even if they don’t go/are sick. So I had to explain the way it works, and that you are basically paying them to hold your spot in class – like any daycare. So, again, who treated our situation like a business? Again, Christian says nothing, doesn’t stick up for me or OUR decisions. Just sits there. Seriously, grow a backbone. It IS OK to stand up to your mom, and stick up for yourself.

Finally, the last straw. The girls have always been really competitive with each other. Somewhat natural with their small age gap, but a little extreme really. I’ve never understood why they haven’t changed or gotten over that “phase”. His mom has always talked about it too, just baffled by it. Tonight she was trying to get them to eat yogurt, and it turned into a fiasco. It was the kind of yogurt that had fruit on the bottom. So, I mixed it up. Olivia wouldn’t eat it, apparently because she doesn’t like it mixed together. So she got a new thing of yogurt out for her. Really – I can’t imagine why she’d be picky like that when you give into her every fit. The girls weren’t cooperating, so she started taking a spoonful and yelling “who wants the last bite”, and they would both come running and push each other around for the bite. Then she looks at me, laughing, and says “This is how I get them to eat”. Wow, I can’t imagine why they don’t stop competing with each other over everything – maybe because you basically force them to?!? I was livid at this point, put the girls socks and shoes on, and we headed home (luckily it was getting late, so it was an easy excuse to leave without causing a scene).

Christian packed up some leftover and arrived home shortly after us. I told him right away, straight out, that when he gets home from Mexico next month, we need to figure out some financial stuff so we can find a way to get the girls in daycare full time. That after REALLY watching how his mom interacts with the girls, I really don’t want her watching them anymore. All of these activities tonight were completely inappropriate. To top it off, they got rid of the crib…they don’t have any appropriate beds for the girls to sleep on when they are over there – Olivia has been sleeping on a big twin bed since Amelia was born. They’ve taken away almost every toy (95% of which we bought and kept over there anyway)…they’ve either sent it home or packed it out in the garage. God forbid they have toy “clutter” in their house, and, of course, if the girls fight over something, she’s always just taken it away and stored it away instead of teaching them how to share and play together. Again, another lovely issue that’s always driven me crazy. Everything, every issue, every annoyance, everything I don’t agree with, is just boiling over at this point and I’m so sick of it.

OK – vent over. It feels good to just be able to get it out! I am SO happy to have the girls in school now. It’s such a huge relief to have them in that environment, and know that we’re doing the best thing for them and their futures. No more sitting around the house, and they are so much happier. Now, if we can just undo all of the damage that has been done, and get them to act at home the way they act at school, we’d be golden!

Needless to say, I didn’t get a picture today. I was a little too preoccupied with my anger! LOL. So, I threw together this Collage of Christian’s past Birthday’s…lots of memories!

3/26/12

Today is Christian’s birthday!!!! The big 2-8! Yahoo!!!

Really, it was a pretty typical Monday. Work was busy, catching up from my Friday off. I ended up leaving an hour early so I could get my workout in before making Christian his birthday dinner. He choose Chorizo and Potato tacos, with rice and beans. YUM. I actually decided to try out the Food Processor that’s been collecting dust in the cupboard since our wedding. What an amazing contraption! Sure wish I would’ve given that a whirl a long time ago! The girls ate some soup while we ate our yummy tacos.

Olivia seemed worse yet. His mom said she did go a tiny bit again today, but was obviously still backed up, and was still crying out in pain. It’s like she gets a small burst of energy…enough to chase Amelia around and drive her crazy, then she’ll just drop where she is and start crying. I hate it. Poor thing. We continued the same “treatment”…Miralax, prune juice, heating pad, warm baths. I’m thinking another trip to the doctor might be in store soon if we can’t get things moving…

Here are some pictures of the girls helping out the birthday boy with his presents…

3/25/12

Today was another pretty relaxing day. Olivia was up at her usual time, but Amelia slept in again. This time until 10:00! Whoa! I started on our weekly cleaning as soon as I woke up, and Christian handled breakfast once Amelia was awake. I got the dishes done, the counters are clean and visible again, the floor swept, some laundry started and some general picking up around the house! I was on fire, that’s for sure!

Olivia was not any better. Still complaining she was in pain, and wouldn’t eat much. We continued the prune juice, and I started her on a small dose of Miralax. I hate that there really isn’t much we can do, its pains me to see her in pain like that! As the day went on, she seemed to get worse. We started using a “Happy Tummy” kids heating pad on her, which seemed to help with the pain. She took a nice warm bath which worked a LITTLE bit. Poor thing.

After I finished cleansing, and while the girls napped, I made our weekly Target trip. Christian grilled for dinner and we had a relaxing evening. We’ll see what the overnight brings though…

Today “our” ducks made their return home for the year! Olivia and I spotted them roaming around the yard. I guess I cannot guarantee these are the same ducks…but every year we’ve lived at the house we spot a male and female duck in our yard, randomly, through the year. Always together. It would be quite a coincidence. Here are pictures of our blooming tree and “our” duck…

3/24/12

Saturday!!!! I LOVE Saturday! Even better, we don’t really have any plans this entire weekend, which always excites me!

Technically, we did have plans for this morning. Last year we went to a local indoor park for a little Easter Egg Hunt. Of course, like most everything we do, we had intentions of making that an annual thing. I found out a while back that today was this year’s hunt date, so we planned to go. For a variety of reasons, we made the decision earlier this week to skip the event…I was a little bummed, but it ended up being for the better anyway because Amelia didn’t even wake up until 9:00AM! Yes, 9:00AM…it was GREAT!

So, once we finally rolled out of bed, we just hung out for a while and had some breakfast. We had a pretty relaxing morning. Olivia was complaining that her belly hurts….she does this often, it’s hard to tell if she’s being honest, or trying to get out of something (eating usually), so I didn’t think much of it, and let her just kind of relax. When they went down for their naps, Christian got ready and was off to hang out with his mom for a while. She wanted to take him to lunch and hang out for his birthday, so I had the house all to myself J I did my workout and just took the opportunity to relax. The girls woke up from their naps completely out of control. They would not leave each other alone for a minute…fighting, not sharing and just getting on each other’s nerves like crazy. For some reason, today, it was really stressing me out. Christian ended up picking them up and bringing them over to hang out at his mom’s for a while. It was such an amazing break. It was such a long, busy week at work, and then dealing with Olivia’s weekly illness and still fighting a little bit of my cold, the stress of the week must have finally gotten to me. It’s nice when Christian actually recognizes that! What a guy J

They all arrived home just as it was starting to get dark. We decided to have a little family bonfire, cooked up some s’mores and hung out for a while. Olivia was still complaining that her belly hurt, and we realized that she hadn’t been going to the bathroom. We’ve NEVER had a constipation issue with the girls. She hasn’t had any changes in her diet or anything, so it definitely took us by surprise. So, we started her on some prune juice and I started googling different things we could do if she’s still not feeling well tomorrow. I should have figured…it’s been a couple of days since we’ve had an illness to deal with; it was about time for something to come up. BUT, here are some pictures from our fire…

3/23/12

Today was weigh in Friday, and another great one! Down another 2.2lbs, for a total of 15.4lbs. Yay. It feels good to see the hard work pay off!

Today was my Friday home with the girls. Of course, they woke up as Christian was leaving for work, so there was no sleeping in whatsoever. After a little hanging out, we ate some breakfast, got ready, and made a quick trip into school for their school picture day! I couldn’t let them miss their very first school pictures, of course! As soon as we walked in the door Olivia booked it for her class and was very upset when I told her we weren’t staying. Poor thing. It took her a little while to warm up to the photographer…but we finally broke her and she was laughing and smiling away. They did a few sister pictures, which helped warm Amelia up to the whole thing, and then Amelia took hers. It looked like they got some really cute shots, so I can’t wait to see them!

It was basically time for lunch and naps by the time we got home, so that worked out. I got my workout in while they napped, showered and rested for a while. They woke up just as Christian arrived home from work. Christian’s friend from work wanted to take him out for a couple of beers for his birthday, so I decided to pack up the girls and head out to the Mall of America for a while. A couple of the kids stores were having some sales, so I picked up some summer clothes for them, we ate some dinner, and got Christian some clothes for his birthday. By the time we got home, Amelia was exhausted, and went right to bed. Olivia and I hung out for a while…

We have a new neighbor across the street. He’s a younger guy, probably younger than us, and he moved in right at the beginning of winter, so we haven’t seen much of him. Tonight he and a few of his friends were out in his driveway just having a “good old time”. They were obviously all VERY drunk, one of them threw a glass beer bottle out into the middle of the street, and then they started to make their way down the street – down to the local bar I’m guessing. One of our other neighbors was walking her dog and stopped them to give them a hard time about the broken glass and stuff. They basically brushed it off and were on their way. About 30 minutes later, two cop cars pulled up to the house, apparently escorting them home. Must have been “asked to leave” the bar and sent home…or they were stopped on their way, who knows. It was quite a show though. And, a REALLY great first impression of our new neighbor. Lord.

Here is a picture I snapped of the girls before we took off to their school pictures. They’re so dang cute! I can’t stand it!

3/22/12

So, as I pretty much anticipated, today was a pretty crazy day at work. I spent almost the entire day dealing with e-mails and catching up from my time off yesterday. It doesn’t usually get quite as crazy when I’m off, but for some reason I have a lot of oddball stuff going on right now, and a lot of fires to put out, so it’s keeping me pretty busy. The day did fly by though, so I guess that’s a bonus! And, the girls actually made it through a whole day of school, so double bonus! LOL

Today my workout was a Ballet inspired video, and I really loved it! I didn’t know what to think about it, or how I would feel about it, but I think it’s my favorite one. I definitely worked muscles I’ve never worked before, and even though it was long, it didn’t feel like it. Along the exercise lines…I think I’ve mentioned it before, but a while ago I ordered a Saveology.com deal for a pulse watch. It tracks your heart rate when you are working out so you know what “zone” you are really in, and it tells you how many calories you burn. I’ve been SO SO SO excited to get this, ready to see what I’m really burning when I work out. It was supposed to be delivered in 2-4 weeks, so by late February at the latest. It’s still not here, and I’m getting so upset about it. I’ve e-mailed the company several times, including today. I’m always told “it’s been shipped”. Well, where the hell are you shipping it from? I’m not sure what to do at this point. I’m getting really upset about it.

Other than that, today was a pretty good day. Some of my friends have me hooked on a new game…as if I needed another obsession. “Draw Something”, so fun! I have zero art/drawing skills, but it’s pretty entertaining. The girls were pretty good tonight. Nothing too out of control, and, these days, a day without sickness is a great day, regardless.

Here is a picture of Amelia playing with this old car of Christian’s. He’s had it forever, and she is obsessed with it. Who needs a boy...right?!? Olivia was also trying to get Amelia to give her some "horsies" tonight, which didn't really work out too well.