2015 -Week 4

After a long weekend of dealing with Eliza’s crabby sickness, Monday was a Holiday. President’s day. The big girls were off to daycare for the day….my mother in law had to work, which I was pretty upset about. I had literally been looking forward to this day for soooooooooo long. A day at home, with the house ALL TO MYSELF, all day long. I’ve had it planned for months…it was my day to finally tackle the basement. Luckily, Christian has some leave time he has to use up by the end of the month, so he was able to take the day off. So, after a morning feeding, he was put to work, on daddy duty, and I made my way downstairs. It was beyond a disaster, I can’t even explain. I was overwhelmed at the thought of it. Today, my main focus was going through everything, gathering it up and getting it back in the room it belong. Toys in the toy room, princess stuff in the princes areas, the Holiday stuff packed up and into storage, the “storage” stuff back in storage where it belongs. I didn’t have much to show for all of my work, but it was Step 1. Eliza napped for a while, Christian gave her a bottle at some point in time, but around 3:00 she was up and ready for another feeding, so I called it a day and made my way back upstairs. We watched “Zero Dark Thirty” while I fed her and relaxed, before picking up the big girls. Good movie! I picked the big girls up around closing time, we ate some dinner and we spent the evening listening to music at full blast and dancing around. I love when we have spontaneous dance parties! Before I knew it, it was time for bed, time to call it a night. The long weekend came to an end WAY too fast, but at least it’s a super short week!

Sweetness!

Tuesday…back to work. No Bueno. To top it off, back to another LONG day of interviews. I seriously hate it, HATE IT, and I’m so glad it’s officially over. Now comes the part where I get to deliver bad news to all of the consultants that didn’t get the project….that’s much harder to do when you’ve actually seen the people, in person. Somehow it feels more personal now. Ick. The interviews and meeting afterwards pretty much took up my entire day…between the Holiday yesterday, interviews all day today, working from home tomorrow and my Friday off this week, I don’t see myself really getting a ton of stuff done this week. After work I picked the girls up from daycare and we stopped at Target. We needed a couple of groceries, and I was on a mission to buy a new curling iron. My hair is super, SUPER long. And it’s super fine, so it doesn’t hold anything. Curling it is a complete waste of time. I thought if I buy a large barrel curing iron, it would at least give it some volume. I ended up finding a new fun gadget though that I’m pretty excited about. It’s kind of a cross between a flat-iron, a curling iron and a crimper. It’s a “3 Barrel Waver” and I can’t wait to try it out! When we left the store it had started snowing…thankful I don’t have to drive in it tomorrow! We met Christian at home for some dinner and a quiet evening. Eliza was asleep when I got to daycare tonight, fell asleep on the way home from Target, and went to bed super easy tonight. Fingers crossed, maybe she’s finally feeling better!

There is a lot of hair going on in the Duran household right now. Just about time for cuts all around!

Well, fingers crossed didn’t work. It was another long night for little Eliza. Seriously, I LONG for sleep. Amelia was a horrible, HORRIBLE sleeper. She didn’t sleep through the night even once until she was about 9 months old. But, once she did, she did it pretty consistently. That doesn’t seem to be happening with Eliza. It’s such a rollercoaster with her! But, my one saving grace is that it was my work from home day. So, at least I didn’t have to worry about showering and getting ready and rushing off to an exhausting day in the office! Christian ran to Menard’s for some things for the house (really he’ll look for any reason to go to that dumb store), so we met up at home after I picked up the girls from daycare. We had dinner and a quiet night. Looking forward to my “Friday” tomorrow!

Blocking out the world around them...

Thursday, my last work day for the week. WOOT!! I spent the day pretty much catching up after being “away” all week. Routing things that had been sitting, responding to e-mails, getting my work from home going. It was definitely a busy day! I got a call from daycare around 2:45 that Eliza had been having bathroom issues all day, watery, green stools, and had to be picked up. By the time I got the message, finished up my work, got to daycare and got her ready to go, it was just about time for Olivia to get back from school, so I got Amelia ready and we just waited for Olivia in the van. She was pretty excited to see me…she usually gets mad when I get there early, LOL. We made our nightly store run and stopped at Walmart before making our way home. Eliza napped for a bit while I washed bottles and got dinner started. Christian finished cooking when he arrived home while I fed Eliza and relaxed with her. It was a pretty early night for all of us. Christian and I are both off tomorrow, but after this long week, I don’t know how productive it will be!

My throwback this week...not much has changed in the morning routine, there are just more of them to delay the process.

Friday, FINALLY! We were both off, and thankful for the short week (Christian really never gets those, so he was in Heaven!) After getting Eliza fed and down for her morning nap, I got some cleaning done upstairs and ran to Target to do a big shopping run (you know, rather than my daily runs after work, HA!). When I got back home, I hung out with Eliza while Christian and his dad worked on the snowblower. Ick, the garage just reeked of gasoline for days afterwards. So gross. I did actually do a tiny bit of work while Eliza took her afternoon nap to make up for leaving early yesterday. I picked the big girls up from daycare around closing time, we picked up some pizza and settled in with a few movies on Netflix for the girls. Once they were in bed, Christian started “The Expendables”, but I was way too tired and passed out (I’m thinking I didn’t miss too much though).

There's a smile from my sweet baby!!!

Saturday was a busy day. Everybody seemed happy and healthy, and ready to go. We started off with some breakfast and Christian and I showered and got ready for the day. Then, we were all off to the big girls’ first day of their new swim classes! They were SO excited to finally be back in the water, and picked right back up. Olivia still amazes me, I cannot believe what a good swimmer she is becoming. Amelia seems like she’s really matured since her last session, she was listening way better than she ever has, and really trying, putting in some effort. Very proud! After class, we stopped home to get all of the girls ready, packed up a bag and we were off to my BFF Kari’s house for her little ones 1^st Birthday Party! So crazy, I can’t believe little Addison is already 1, I swear I was just meeting her and snuggling her. Time just goes way too fast. It was so great getting to catch up with Kari and her family for a while, and the girls had a blast playing with the other kids there. And, poor Eliza, she’s much bigger than her little best friend Addie, even though she’s 3 months older than her. That’s OK though, she’ll protect her while they’re growing up, LOL. After the party, we made our way home for some dinner. Christian went out for a couple of beers with his friend Lorenzo, while I got the girls to bed, caught up on some of my shows and watched a little SNL before passing out. Way too much activity for this old, tired mom!

Swimming and Partying

On Sunday we were up way too early. But, I got right to work on my Sunday chores. I got the kitchen cleaned up…counters, washed dishes and bottles. I made a big breakfast for the family, and a couple batches of baby food. I swapped out Eliza’s closet for 9-12 month clothes – so sad, I can’t believe it! And, I did a few loads of laundry throughout the day and relaxed with the family in between. Overall, it was a pretty quiet day. All of the girls took a nice LONG nap…Christian and I found “Wahlburgers” Season 1 on Netflix and binged on that for the day. It was quite a perfect day actually! Even Eliza had a pretty good weekend, so we’re hoping she’s feeling better and is on the mend. I made an evening trip to Walmart for a few things I forgot on Friday and grabbed some Chipotle for dinner on the way home. I ended up getting a monster headache out of nowhere once I was home, and had to call it a night early. I hate when those hit!

She LOVES oranges!

Until Next Week! XOXO

2015 - Week 3

Well, here we are, into the middle of January already. I have to be honest here. I’ve been worse at blogging than ever before, and I’ve fallen so behind that I honestly have no idea what we’ve had going on. Being mid-January, likely not much. School, daycare and work have been going well for all, no big issues or tragedies, just pretty much life as usual. I can say, there is a new obsession in our house….Maleficent. We’ve been watching it pretty much daily. We first watched it over this past weekend and when it started, I got a little worried that it wasn’t appropriate for the girls…it was a little dark, a little scary quite frankly, but the girls loved it. I of course turned to facebook for opinions and everybody that had seen it seemed to agree that their kids loved it as well. So, I don’t feel quite at guilty. Christian hasn’t been feeling too hot this week, kind of sick to his stomach, so we pretty much spent the week hoping it wasn’t going to hit all of us again.

My Throwback Photo this year was of Olivia, 5 years ago. Such a cutie!

Friday is what things really picked up for me at work. Friday I had to facilitate a series of consultant interviews for a project I’m working on. I’ve been at my job for going on 14 years and this is the first time I’ve had to do this. I’m not a people person at all, so I was extremely nervous about this. Everything went pretty well, and honestly I’m pretty good at faking the people-person thing, but I was totally overwhelmed and intimidated by the whole thing. It basically took up my entire day, AND I ended up stuck there late, so I was pretty happy when it was over. I called my mom as I left work to find out Eliza was having a pretty rough day. She watched her at her place today because with Christian’s recent illness, I didn’t want to risk exposing my mom to anything if we didn’t have to, so I swung by on my way home and picked her up. We picked the big girls up at daycare and made our way home. Eliza was a crabby mess all night, and it made for a very long evening. Followed by a VERY long night, where I barely got a wink of sleep. No fun!

Saturday was a pretty quiet day at home. Christian was off to work for the day, and Eliza just plain miserable. Her eyes were watering like faucets, she was sneezing and coughing like crazy. Poor thing, it’s just so heartbreaking when they’re sick! The big girls were pretty good for me…they played in their room for a while, they watched some movies…got along pretty well. I think I would’ve gone nuts if they were their usual crazy selves. It’s just too bad because the weather is actually really beautiful this weekend…it would have been PERFECT for some sledding and playing outside, I was pretty bummed. But, alas, the rest of Saturday and all day Sunday were pretty quiet and low key. A little cleaning, a little laundry and a lot of relaxing and cuddling. Sure hope little Eliza feels better soon!

Pure baby misery.

May be exhausting, but I love snuggling this baby to sleep.

Until Next Week! XOXO

2015 - Week 2

Well, after a busy weekend of fun and celebrating and unpacking toys and cleaning up, it was back to reality. Monday – back to work, back to school, back to daycare. I don’t think any of us were ready to get up and at ‘em this morning, but Olivia was pretty excited to head back to school after her long winter break. I left work a tad early to do our “Target Shopping”…grabbed some groceries and a few household items. Next up was Amelia's "Winter Gala" at daycare. They usually do it around Christmas, holiday themed, but there have been a lot of staffing changes at the center and with all of the chaos from that, they had to push it back. They did a "Frozen" theme this year so of course the kids were totally into it. Amelia did really well, but she was pretty funny. She kept getting distracted by all of the people and her singing would trail off...so I would signal to her to focus and sing louder and she'd get SUPER loud. So funny. Christian wasn't able to get off work early, so he was pretty bummed that he had to miss it. He met us at home with Eliza afterwards and we had a pretty quiet night.

She's so cute!

Tuesday was FREEEEEZING, and we also got a light snow overnight. Even though it was indeed a LIGHT snow, traffic was horrible and it took me two hours to get to work. Ick. After finally getting to work, I fought off a nuisance headache all day long. Headaches and working on a computer definitely do not mix. But, I toughed it out and worked through the day. I picked the girls up from daycare….Olivia and Amelia started fighting and bickering before we even made it home. I was seriously OVER it before I walked in the door, and Olivia was sent to her room until dinner. Eliza was crying and fussy all evening, it was just pure chaos. She finally fell asleep in my arms and we gave up on the world at that point. Christian made dinner when he arrived home, amidst the crying and chaos and fighting and arguing from the other two. They were both sent straight to bed after dinner, I got Eliza fed and down for the night and we finally got a little peace and quiet before passing out ourselves. It was a rough, rough night.

Sitting in her chair, such a big girl!

Wednesday was Olivia’s very first ever school closure! What?! Seriously guys, I live in Minnesota so you wouldn’t think so, but I VERY rarely had “snow days”. I honestly can only remember 1 in my life, in high school for a MONSTER snow storm. We had quite a few last year, and this is the first this year. The thing is…we can handle snow…snow closures are extremely rare around here. I mean, snow….it’s what we do. It’s the bitter, out of control cold that has been causing closures. Unfortunately for the kids, it will be a loooooong time before they truly know the joy of a “snow day”….daycare doesn’t close! So, she spent the day at KinderCare. I worked from home as usual, and it was nice to skip another crappy drive. After working the day away, I got to work on some cleaning before picking the kids up. I vacuumed and got the furniture moved back in place (post-Christmas). I packed up one tote of Christmas stuff (with plenty more to do). Slowly making progress. I started dinner and picked the girls up from daycare. Christian arrived home about the same time as us…we ate, the girls all got baths and we related together for a while. Eliza was in a MUCH better mood today, and has actually been going to bed much easier than usual so far this week, so YAY to that! Today also marks Eliza turning 8 months old. Come on, can you even believe it?! 8 months. Wow.  She is 19lbs and 28” long. She appears to have lost a pound this month…hopefully just from being sick a few weeks ago and nothing concerning. She’s had a few new foods and started snacking on little baby treats. In addition to sitting up and learning more coordination every day, she’s starting to support herself standing. She twirls and whirls, spins and scoots all over the place now. She’s starting to wave and loves to jump in her exersaucer. She loves to dance and hates to be alone. While we’re still squeezing her into her 6-9 month clothes, we’ll have to start transitioning her soon - all of her pants have turned into leggings and all of her shirts are just a tad short. Our baby, growing WAY too fast!

8 Months!

Floor Time with Daddy!

Thursday…still, horrible, horrible, HORRIBLE traffic!!! God, I hate it. It snowed again overnight, so, again, it was a two hour commute for me vs. my 25-30 minute usual commute). And, to follow that up, I left an hour early to ensure I’d get to daycare on time to pick the girls up. 3 hours of vacation….to sit in the car. Winter joy. Needless to say, the rest of the day was pretty much a wash…we picked up fast food for dinner and had a lazy evening. So glad it was my Friday!

Watching Videos Together, I love when they get along!

As mentioned, this week is my Friday off, YES!!! Christian brought Amelia to daycare today, while I took Olivia in for an early morning 6-year check-up (with baby in tote). Now, this girl was 90% in weight and height for at least the first 2 years. She was tall and chubby and delicious. She’s been slimming out gradually ever since, and the trend continued this year. Today she was 42lbs (33%) and 45” tall (26%). She is a skinny Minnie and doesn’t appear to be growing too fast. She had perfect sight and everything else checked out well. Her murmur was more prominent this visit than the last few years, but her doctor didn’t seem overly concerned about it. They’ll just continue to monitor it as they have been. Like last year, I did check with them about her lack/slow growth and they don’t seem concerned about that either. My baby, growing up! After her appointment, I dropped her off at daycare and Eliza and I spent the day at home. She napped, I had some breakfast and we spent the day hanging out. She wasn’t as crabby today as she has been, but still very clingy. I was pretty excited though…a week or so ago HuffPost Parents posted asking for parents to show off pictures of their littles in their first snow. So I shared one of my favorite pictures EVER of Eliza. Well, today they posted a pieced about baby’s first snows and her photo was included in it!!! She’s totally famous. It’s so dumb, but I was excited. HERE is the link. Other than that excitement, the rest of the afternoon/evening was pretty low key. I picked the big girls up, Christian worked his usual Friday overtime, and we just ate, watched some TV together and had a quiet night.

Off to sissy's appointment!

6 Years!!

Haha, trying to crawl...

She loves her chair!

Saturday was a pretty great day. After a middle of the night wake-up call with Eliza (ugh!), she and I actually slept in a little bit. We all had some breakfast and watched some cartoons to start the day. Christian got ready and was off to his friend Lorenzo’s to help him work on his garage door…my handyman, always up to something. My mom picked up Olivia around noon and took her to the mall as a late birthday celebration...her party last weekend was a “friends only” party, and she chose not to join us on her actual birthday for pizza and presents with the grandparents, so she had her own day with her today. They had lunch and she took her to a couple stores to pick out some gifts. She ended up getting a cute Frozen/Elsa necklace and a stuffed “Svan” from the Disney store. What a spoiled girl! Meanwhile, Amelia and I watched some movies, had some lunch and hung out together with baby. My mom came back to pick her up around 4:00 and they spent the night at her place. Eliza and I ran to Walmart for some movie snacks, and Christian picked up some gooooooooood tortas from a Mexican Deli by Lorenzos’ on his way home. YUM! We watched a couple movies before calling it a night tonight….“Chef” and “Argo” – both were really good.

Well, of course with the big girls away, my big chance at sleeping in, Eliza had a VERY rough night. She did not sleep well at all, I swear we were up just about the entire night. Haven’t had a night like that for quite a while. I was beyond tired the rest of the day. I started laundry as soon as I got up for the day, and headed off for an early trip to Target as soon as I got Eliza down for her morning nap. Once home, I hit the chores hardcore before the girls got home…of course, while watching some football. I quick cleaned up the kitchen, washed dishes, ate some lunch, made the beds and picked up around the house. Busy Busy! They arrived home around 3:00 and besides finishing up laundry, we had a pretty quiet afternoon/evening. I was up late watching the Golden Globes and folding laundry, so I’ll be regretting that tomorrow!

Until Next Week! XOXO

2015 - Week 1

Here we are. The first few days of 2015. There’s something so wondrous about a new year. I don’t know why really…I mean, today is no different than yesterday. But somehow the thought of a new year, starting from scratch, is just always so appealing. I don’t have any resolutions for the year, we don’t have any huge goals, but it’s still exciting nonetheless.

The “week” started on Thursday, with all of us home for the day. Christian and I were home from the day, Olivia is still on winter break and daycare was closed, so we had a nice family day at home. After the late night, everybody was happy to sleep in this morning…the big girls slept until 9:30, and even little Eliza slept until about 8:30. WOOOOOOOOT!!! Now that’s a way to kick off the new year. But, she was rather crabby and very clingy most of the day, so we really didn’t get too much done. We were all pretty happy to enjoy a quiet, low key day.

Sister Kisses

Lazy Day with a Crabby Baby

Friday. Well, let’s start with the basics…Christian and I were off to work (seriously, going back to work for one day, after a day off, is dumb. Definitely should’ve taken today off!). My mom was over to watch Eliza and the big girls were off to daycare. It was pajama day, which is always a big hit.

In more important new….OUR BIGGEST BABY TURNS 6 YEARS OLD TODAY!!! Oh my God, seriously, I don’t know how this is even possible. Our sweet, independent, mature, shy baby is growing way too fast. I can’t believe how fast these last 6 years have gone. I can remember everything about the day she was born like it was yesterday. All of the emotions, all of the chaos. Feeling more love than I ever thought were possible. Being able to watch her grow over these last 6 years has been truly amazing – it’s a gift I could never appreciate enough. She’s so smart, so responsible. She’s rough and tough and a wee bit cruel to her sister, but will stick up for her under any and all circumstances. She is independent and helpful and loves her baby sister like nothing else. We’re so lucky. So, so, so blessed. She was pretty excited to celebrate her big day with all of her friends, and brought some cookies to share with everybody. After school/work, my dad and stepmom, along with Christian’s parents stopped over to celebrate with us. We had pizza, a little cake and she opened her gifts from us. The day was over in the blink of an eye, but we had two very excited girls, ready to party the next day!

Roses from Daddy, for Olivia Rose

Saturday started off pretty typical. We had some breakfast, I did a little picking up around the house. We got all of the girls bathed, dressed and ready for the day. We showered and got ready. I made a quick run to Target to pick up the birthday cake and a few final birthday party needs, grabbed some lunch and headed home. We quickly ate, packed up the van and we were off to Olivia’s birthday party. This year we held her party at “Good Times Park” in Eagan. It’s an indoor playground…like a REAL playground, inside. It’s pretty cheap for parties…there’s no rental fee or anything, you just pay per kid, use a table in the picnic area for 2 hours, and bring in whatever you want pretty much, so it worked well. We did a middle of the afternoon party to avoid a need for lunch or dinner, so we just had cake and ice cream after playing for a while and opening gifts. She of course got lots of new Shopkins (her new obsession) for her birthday, along with a few puzzles, some clothes and some cold, hard cash! After the party, all of the kids returned to playing, and slowly left, one by one. Her best friend Bella and her dad stopped over after the party for a while…we had some leftover pizza for dinner, I tried out the glitter tattoos we bought Olivia on each of the girls and they played for a while before they left for the night. We all settled in for bed and the girls definitely passed right out. What an exhausting day!

Sunday was fairly busy, but also kind of a lazy day. Eliza has not been a happy camper lately – I think her teeth are really bothering her. Seriously, I can’t say it enough – teething is the pits! Christian made some breakfast and the girls played on their tablets for a while, while I dealt with the crabby one. When I finally got her down for a nap, I got to work on my tasks for the day. I started collecting all of the Christmas decorations onto the dining room table to start packing it away, and took the Christmas tree down. It’s always kind of sad taking down the Christmas stuff….it adds so much color and magic to the house. But, it is definitely nice to get the space back and get back to reality a little bit. Don’t get me wrong – it will take FOREVER to actually get everything put away, we all know that. Finally I vacuum up the living room and tree mess, cleaned up the kitchen and called it quits for the day. Christian hung out with the girls most of the day, before heading out for a haircut and dinner with his friend, Lorenzo. The girls had a pretty lazy day, watching movies, playing games, taking nice long naps. Once I got them to bed for the night I settled in to watch some TV…didn’t make it long before passing out, but at least I got a little quiet, alone time in.

Until Next Week! XOXO