Christmas

As usual Christmas Day came and was over super quick. The kids made out really well with gifts from Santa; they must have all been super nice kids this year (yeah, I don't think so). We told them that we are going to tell Santa that next year he has to restrain himself a bit more.
Shhh, don't tell anyone but I woke up during the night and saw that Santa had come so I took this picture


Once again this year Christmas was at our house and it was really nice. It was a little sad with it being the first Christmas without GG, but I know she was there in spirit. I am hoping that next year the boys will be more aware that Christmas isn't all about getting, getting, getting; but I do remind myself that they are only kids. I just wish they wouldn't expect gifts from everyone that walked through the door that day, lol.
As we have done in the past, before kids, the adults played a game at the end of the day. Uncle Robby and Joan came over and we played Quelf and had a great time. If you have never played the game I highly recommend it and recommend some adult drinks to go along with it :).

It has been a nice week so far as Dave had off Monday and yesterday and will be off Friday. We finally have plans for New Year's Eve (with the kids though). We are going over a friends house where we will celebrate various New Year's at different times during the night. This way the kids can celebrate before they get all tuckered out and doze off. I will be amazed if my kids want to make it to 12:00; I sure know that I will have a difficult time doing that as I am always in bed by 9:30/10:00.

Well I hope that the few of you that read this have a wonderful New Year!!!

Busy day today

Today after Dylan gets out of school we are heading to have family pictures taken. We haven't had one taken (besides the one Kevin took in California) since before I got pregnant with Keira. Hoping to get some nice ones of just the kids as well.
After pictures we will come home and get the kids in for naps and Grandma and Grandpa will come over to babysit while Dave and I head out to do our Christmas shopping. Of course we will enjoy a nice gingerbread latte while out and about :)
After shopping back home so that I can put Keira to bed and then out for a sushi dinner with Jaime and Craig.
Looking forward to a fun and festive day. Just pray that the kids all do well for pictures.

No more morning naps???

Well that is what I was thinking this morning at 9:40 when I could hear Keira whining and playing in her crib. She is only 13 months old and I am thinking it is still too early. Well now it is 10:05 and all is quiet up there and has been for the past 10 minutes. So now I think she might have finally fallen asleep. Of course I will only let her sleep until 10:30 so she doesn't ruin her afternoon nap.
I did notice yesterday that her upper gum cut for a tooth to come in so maybe that is why she had a hard time going to sleep this morning. There are days I wish she didn't take the morning nap so I can get errands done and then there are days like today when I am glad she takes one because we are just sitting around the house and while she is in there I can get some house chores done without worrying about her.

So for now I guess she still needs them; just hope she takes a decent afternoon nap.

Less than 3 weeks

I cannot believe that there are less than 3 weeks until Christmas. Dave and I haven't done any real shopping (a few things here and there but nothing major). Luckily he has off on Friday so after Dylan is done with school we are going to have family pictures done and then home for the kids to take naps when Grandma and Grandpa will be coming over to babysit so we can go and get some shopping done. I am looking forward to it and hope we have fun :)
We still have some more touching up to do to the house that I want to get done before Christmas so I will be back to priming and painting at nap times to get it done as our next two weekends are pretty busy.

Turkey Day

Wow, I can't believe it has been a month since I last wrote. Probably due to the fact that we were in California for a week where Aidan came down with the flu and then had it a bit when we got home and then I had the worst cold of my life. That led to me having, for the past week, having a rally bad pain in my left rib area. Unfortunately yesterday, on Thanksgiving, the pain was the worse it has been.
Other than the pain I was in yesterday the day was nice. My mom and dad did a great job hosting their first Thanksgiving. Yes that is right, after all these years we have never had Thanksgiving over there.
Now that Turkey Day is over we have to get up in the attic and get all the Christmas decorations down. But also at the same time we need to clean off the patio of the boxes that are still out there from moving back into the house so we have room for the Christmas boxes. In hindsight I probably should have had Dave get down some of the boxes for me last night so I could do some decorating today. Oh well, probably for the best so I can rest my side more today and not overdo it.
Hard to believe Christmas is 4 weeks away from today. We have only bought a couple of gifts and really need to get moving. The one big gift Dylan wants, Devastator Transformer, is hard to come by this week. We saw a bunch in different stores before Wednesday but didn't pick any up because Dylan was either with one of us or we didn't have the money at the time and figured we would get it in December. Now we just have to hope the store restock them. Wish us luck.

It's been awhile

I cannot believe how long it has been since I last wrote. I think it is because I just haven't had the time. I have been so busy thinking and doing things with the house and for Keira's first birthday party. That's right, in less than 1 week my little girl is turning 1. I just can't believe it; it is bittersweet that my baby is growing. Why can't they stay this way forever and not learn to talk back and be disobedient and not listen?
Can you tell that I have been having issues with her two older brothers lately? I don't know what the problem is but they have been pretty bad this past month. Lately it has been more Aidan and I just don't know what to do. He can be so disobedient at times that I get really angry. I try time-outs and they dont' seem to be helping. Today he took a blue crayon and drew a 6 inch line on 4 walls going down the hall and then scribbled all over their little table. I asked him why he did it and he said he was pretending to be a race car. I put him in a timeout and then tried to put him in for a nap without a story and he just screamed and screamed and kept coming out of his room. I ended up having to put a gate up in front of his door.
I now kids go through phases and I just hope this one passes very quickly.

DAK update

Now that Dylan has started kindergarten and we decided not to send Aidan to preschool this year I have decided to work with Aidan at home. So far we are off to a good start with him doing a couple of worksheets a week. Once I am no longer stressed or preoccupied with the whole house situation I will work more with him.
I felt so bad for him when we dropped Dylan off that first day and he asked me when he was going to go to school. It didn't help when Dylan reminded me that he went when he was 3. We chose not to send Aidan because we didn't think it was worth the money. He will definitely be going next year. And he seems to enjoy doing stuff at home with me so we save money and he is happy.

Dylan is loving school, of course it is only the first week but am glad to see him so excited about it. As for me it is taking getting used to getting them out and driving to the school 5 days a week. I think I may need to move my afternoon coffee to the mornings :)

Keira is now 10 1/2 months old and I really need to start planning for her first birthday. It is just so hard with so much other stuff going on. I really don't know how working moms do it all. I think we are going to go with a pumpkin theme since she was born close to Halloween and we nicknamed her "Pumpkin" before she was born.
I have been trying to work with her to get her to stand or walk but she just refuses to lock those knees and stand. She goes rubbery in the legs whenever I try. No big deal really as the boys didn't walk until they were a little over a year old.

Kindergarten

Holy cow, Dylan starts kindergarten tomorrow. Now I would have thought that maybe I would be a bit emotional but don't think I will be. He has gone to preschool now for the past two years so this is pretty much the same thing except that he will be going 5 days a week. But who knows tomorrow after I drive away from the school I may get a little emotional; it would probably be worse if I was putting him on a bus as that would make him seem so much older. But we are within the limit for walkers/drop-offs so I will be the bus driver for quite some years.
Now that he is going 5 days a week I am unsure of how/when I will be able to get out and get minor errands done as Keira still is taking her 9:00 nap and I would never get out of the house until 10:15 or so and then I need to pick Dylan up by 11:24 (I know, such an odd time). And then we have to be home for lunch at 12:00 and then naps until 3:00ish and then dinner needs to be started by 4:15 the latest. So I may be running a lot of errands on my own at night until Keira no longer takes that morning nap.

More on moving back in

I forgot to mention in my previous post another issue I encountered upon moving back in. I noticed the day we moved in that I was missing an entire set of drinking and juice glasses, two good pots, crock pot and a couple pieces of silverware. After a few days I began to realize other stuff had gone missing such as my wok and dutch oven. Now I would think that maybe someone wandered in to the house (since it was kept unlocked all the time) and took the stuff but why would they leave behind my food processor, bread maker and ice cream maker? No, I do believe that the workers took them to either cook in on the job or take home to use. I will be letting the contractor know as soon as we are completely moved in; I would hate to say something now and then discover them in the pack rat.
It just really makes me mad that we were told it was okay to leave all of our kitchen stuff in the house. If things are not found I plan on taking a few hundred dollars out of the final payment to cover the cost of the missing items. Plus some of those things were gifts and could have had sentimental value (they didn't though).

Finally home

But to me it won't be "home" until we are completely unpacked, the house is done being painted, shutters and mantles are on the windows, the hideous overflowing dumpster in the driveway is gone, all the garbage from the construction is picked up from around the yard and there is no need for the contractor and sub-contractors to come here anymore. Wonder what that date will be. I am hoping it is a "home" by the end of September.

Other than that I am glad to be back in my house. I am truly grateful to my parents for allowing us to stay there for a week and store all of our stuff (that wasn't furniture) on their patio. And my dad is being a tremendous help with getting painting done. All the kids' rooms are painted except for trim and doors; Dylan's was done this morning.

The hardest thing for me is having to look at the raw sheet rock. Here are a couple of pics to show you what we look at for now:








Oh and one minor issue we encountered when we got back in was that the main bathroom downstairs, that was only touched to get to pipes, had mold growing in the vanity and all along the bottom half of the sheet rock. So we had to pull all that out and are now waiting on that to be fixed and replaced. I just want it to be all over.

Does anyone read this?

If I only knew how to add a counter to my blog I would know the answer.

Potty Training

Well it's been about a week and a half now since Aidan was potty trained. The first few days were quite hard and I was sooo grateful that Dave was home to help with the process. The first two days were really rough because Aidan would scream and fight us whenever we tried to get him to sit on the potty. Eventually he got the idea and we learned that we couldn't force him we would have to wait until he had to go.
He had only one accident one day at the park but luckily he was in his bathing suit so it wasn't too bad. And he has been really great with not peeing when sleeping. Two nights ago we stopped putting diapers on him at night and he has been really good.
For a process that started off really rough it ended quicker than I thought and with less struggles than initially thought.
This past Friday I took him to Toys R Us for a special gift for the great work he did.
We are so proud of him at how well he has done.

Wow, It's July already

I cannot believe that it is already July and this weekend is 4th of July weekend. Time is going by way too fast. But I guess that is also a good thing because that means it will soon be time to move back into our home. We have been told that the contractor's time line is to be done by the end of July. I don't see how that is going to happen and will keep mid-August as the completion deadline in my mind. We now have to go and look for bathroom fixtures to be installed. Not looking forward to that. And next week the siding should be going up. It was supposed to get started this weekend but of course something failed inspection.
In 5 days Aidan is going to be 3. That is hard for me to believe because sometimes I think he is either going to be 2 or 5 because of the way he acts, lol. And boy does he need to be potty trained; I am so tired of changing his diaper. He keeps telling us that when he is 3 he will go on the potty. So, in 5 days we will see what happens. I am going to refuse to put a diaper on him and let him either wear underwear or go naked.
Well I am off to the party store to find some things for Aidan's party. He wanted a Tropical Rainforest theme so we will go and see what they have.

Awesome weekend

This past weekend was a great weekend.
It started Friday morning with Dylan's graduation from pre-K. It was a special day that was shared with grandparents and Aunt Tracy. Aunt Tracy flew in for the weekend to be Keira's godmother yesterday. The graduating class put on a show for family and Dylan did an awesome job and had absolutely no stage fright. Later that night we went out to dinner with Grandma, Grandpa and Aunt Tracy to celebrate Dylan's accomplishment.
On Saturday Dylan had his last soccer practice of the season and then we attended an end of the season pizza party at his coach's house. It was really nice of them to do this for the kids; they are really nice people. Later that night Dave and I went with Tracy to Sawa for a delicious sushi dinner. The only thing that would have made the evening better would have been if Kevin could have been with us. Next time :)
That brings us to yesterday when Keira was Christened. The day started off quite dreary and I was afraid the rain was inevitable and the 30 (I think it really ended up being about 22 at any one moment) people coming to the party would be stuck inside. But luckily the skies cleared and the sun came out and we had a beautiful afternoon to celebrate the occasion. The party was really great as we got to see some friends we haven't seen in a long time and Tracy got to see some friends and family she hasn't seen in years. The boys had a wonderful time playing with their cousins Jack and Reid (Max and Andrew are too young to run around with the rest of the boys) and I thought it would have been so cool to also see Kaeden and Quinton run around with them---I know the day will come when we will see Dylan, Aidan, Keira, Kaeden, Quinton, Jack, Reid, Max, and Andrew all running around playing.
This morning Tracy stopped by on her way to the airport--okay maybe it wasn't really on her way--to say good-bye to Keira and me; she had said good-bye to the boys the night before because she knew Dylan would be at school and Aidan might not have been here as he was going to the store with Daddy. It was sad to say good-bye but I knew it would only be 4 1/2 months before we saw her again (not 18 months like it was since we saw her last). We are planning a trip out to California this coming November and we cannot wait!!

So much has happened and is happening

Well it is has been a little over 2 weeks since I last posted and I am so much more relaxed about the house situation. all of the framing is practically finished if not finished. The plumber and HVAC guys started yesterday, the stairs should be going in today or tomorrow and tonight, hopefully, Dave will give final approval on the siding color. All the windows are in and the electrician should begin tomorrow and I believe the roofing will start this week. I am just so relieved to see such progress and just hope things continue to go smoothly and that all inspections go well.

Here is a picture of the house 3 weeks ago before any work started:



Here is the house after initial work began:


and here it is yesterday:



In other news, Keira is pretty much crawling all over and I cannot believe that she is already 7 months old now. I just want to freeze time and keep her as she is now. She is such a happy baby and is always smiling.
Next Friday Dylan will be graduating from pre-K and it is really hard for me to accept that he will be a kindergartner in September, where is the time going?
As for Aidan well I am continuously hitting a brick wall with him and potty training. The kid just refuses to sit on the potty. I know he knows when he is peeing and pooping but will not use the training potty nor the big one. And he will hold it when he has no diaper on. Once Dylan is done with school and we have nowhere to get to each day I am going to let him be totally clothing free on the bottom half and see how that goes.

I believe it will finally start

Well, after a horrible night the other night with anxiety over the house situation we finally got a call from the contractor. Dave is meeting with him tonight to go over all the final stuff and hand over the key to the house and they will begin on Monday or Tuesday. WOOHOO!!!!

I finally got a somewhat decent sleep last night. The contractor assured us that he know of our deadline and he said it shouldn't be a problem. Now let's hope that you don't find a post from me in a month and a half saying that I am going to have an ulcer because they are so far behind schedule.

House anxiety

OMG, this stinkin' house project is really starting to give me agida. We were given final approval for the permits almost a week ago now and they were picked up by the contractor on Friday (today is Monday) and they still haven't started a damn thing. We were told that the guy in charge of the contstruction has been sick in bed all weekend. What I want to know is if they knew we would have the permits last week why didn't they line things up so that things could begin today like ripping off the shingles and siding? I just worry that this project will not get done in the time we were told. We ideally should have started a few weeks ago.

It just seems like nothing is going smoothly since we started this and I am worried that it will continue that way. I am praying that things turn around and once they get started they encounter no problems and get done quickly.

I want a new camera

I am not sure how old my current camera is, maybe 4 years old, but I am ready for a new one. The one I currently have is good for throwing in my pocket for on the go shots like when we are at the park, but I am ready for something better. I see the pics my dad's camera takes and they are better and then yesterday I was down at my cousin, Jaime's house and used her camera and loved how the pictures looked.
Yes, I know there is a recession and we are building up on our house so extra cash is not easy to come by now, but I believe I will save up some money and hopefully in a few months, maybe a year :) I will have a new camera to take better pics.

I'm finally back to blog

Well I finally am sitting down to enter another entry. I am not doing it as often as I had hoped but, will continue to try.
We are finally settled into my grandmother's house and are awaiting final approval for permits for the go ahead on our house expansion. We are hoping to have final word and the go ahead this week; it's only about 2 weeks later than we thought. I don't care as long as the work can be done and we can get back into the house by summer's end.

As for the family we are adjusting well to our new habitat. In the beginning the boys were having fun going up and down the stairs; not so much fun for the grown-ups that were around. The newness of the stairs has worn out and they don't go up and down as much, thank goodness.

Dylan celebrated his 5th birthday and since that day his sugar levels have been all over the place and Dave and I are having a hard time trying to adjust his insulin levels to get him to be within his range. The weekend we moved into the house we went to Friendly's for dinner and they boys had sundaes and later that night Dylan's number was in the low 400s; that was even with giving him extra insulin to cover the ice cream. We thought that maybe we underestimated the amount of carbs but since then there have been two other occasions when he has had ice cream and we have given more insulin and even tried to split his dose and he still is quite high during the night.
He has his endo appointment on Monday and I am sure the doc will ask why his numbers have been high and hopefully he will have some suggestions on how to deal with ice cream.
I am also wondering if he has had a growth spurt on top of that and we just need to figure out how to adjust all his insulin doses to get him back on track.

Bike riding

The past couple of weekends have been pretty mild, and we have been taking the boys outside to enjoy some outside time. Well they were super eager to ride bikes so we got them out for them. Now I fully anticipated to push Aidan on his bike (more of a tricycle) as he was unable to pedal it himself the last time he was on it back in October. But to my and Dave's astonishment after just a few pushes he was pedaling all by himself. We were super impressed as Dylan wasn't able to achieve this until he was 4 years old and on a bigger bike. So now when they go for a bike ride there are no more sore backs from pushing Aidan. Now he just needs to learn how to pick up the speed to keep up with Dylan.

Rolled over and wacky numbers

So, Keira finally rolled over from her belly to her back yesterday afternoon. It only happened once but I will considered it a milestone achievement. Both boys did it around this age as well. I was wondering if she ever would be able to do it because she doesn't spend a lot of time on her tummy because she always spits up and then gets upset. So today we will see if she can do it again.

Wacky numbers
Dylan's sugar levels have been so crazy lately. Yesterday at lunch he was 58 and then 2 hours later at snack he was 300; what gives? I thought that maybe I didn't give him his shot but he remember me doing it. Then I thought maybe I didn't dial the pen correctly and he didn't get enough insulin so I gave him a shot at snack time and then proceeded to check him every 1/2 hour to make sure he didn't go too low. He was fine. Then last night at 3:30 he was 205 (normally he is around 100 or lower) and when he woke he was 242. We just can't seem to figure out what is going on. He does have a cold so if that is the culprit his numbers should be high throughout the day. So we shall see what today brings.

What was he thinking???

Today I was sitting in the parking lot waiting for Dylan's school to open when I saw a car drive through the parking lot with a kid in the back seat not buckled in at all. He was probably around Dylan's age and he was hanging on to the head rest of the driver's seat. At first I just thought maybe the guy was just moving to a different part of the parking lot, but NO he pulled out onto the main street and drove away. I sure hope that nothing happened to them.

Pre-school or no pre-school

Well it is that time of year when pre-school registration begins. I am not sure what to do with Aidan next year. I would love for him to go but I need to find something close and that has hours that work with Dylan's kindergarten schedule as I will have to drop off and pick up both of them. I would send him to the school Dylan goes to now as the hours work perfectly and it is close enough but I wasn't overly impressed with the program last year; and for 2 days next year it is only $20 cheaper than it is this year for Dylan to go 3 days a week.
There is another pre-K nearby that has the same hours but when I looked at it for Dylan the class rooms were very small.
Ugghh, I just don't know what to do.

New Blog

Well I have decided to start a new blog since the previous one was titled Life with Dylan and Aidan and now our lives include Keira as well.
Hopefully I will be able to post more frequently than I had been, but who knows.

Can you believe that my little girl is already 3 months old today, next week I have to register Aidan for pre-K and in the beginning of March I have to register Dylan for kindergarten. Time is going by way too fast.