Toys and noise

I have a strange tolerance when it comes to noisy toys.  Electronic toys that talk or play music?  Don't bother me.  I really don't even notice them.  The exersaucer or Kalena's toy laptop or her toy cell phones or the star on the baby Einstein playmat?  That stuff can play ALL DAY LONG and I am unfazed.  But if she turns on her toy dirt devil vacuum?  I'm asking her to turn that thing off like 30 seconds later.  It doesn't make sense, it should just be white noise (it just makes a vacuum-like noise) but MAN that thing annoys me.  I have the same reaction to those popper type toys.  Luckily Kalena doesn't own any.

I'm not sure what the deal is.  I think maybe the noise those particular toys make is louder than others?  Anything that is particularly loud really gets on my nerves, so that could be it.  Even loud white noise bothers me.  That can cause problems in the summer when it's too hot to sleep without a fan on, but the noise from the fan keeps me awake.  Weirdly enough, I can sleep through lots of noise going on OUTSIDE my room.  Just not in the room.

Anyway.  Back to the toys.  It's not like I go out of my way to buy the noisy ones, but I don't avoid them either.  I also don't hide them away, or avoid replacing dead batteries or anything like that.  The vacuum however, those batteries may need to go.  Do you avoid the noisy toys?

We'll be waiting on the solid food

When Kalena was a baby I was SO excited to start feeding her "real" food.  That was because I didn't realize that baby food is a big fat pain.  You have to buy it (or make it) and spoon feed the baby and it makes a giant mess and maybe she'll like it, maybe not.  UGH.  At Will's 4 month appointment the pediatrician said the recommendation about solid food has changed and 6 months is now the recommended age to start.  This did not make me sad.

In fact, I was sort of thinking I'd skip the baby food altogether this time.  I think I'd just prefer to nurse until he's ready to eat ACTUAL food.  (Kalena quit eating baby food altogether at like 8 months, so it probably wouldn't be too much longer anyway.)  Maybe he'll get super interested (like my nephew Eli who is just a little older and LOVES baby food.  Seriously, check out this video.)  If that's the case I'll deal with baby food.  Otherwise, I'm just not so interested.  What do you think of the baby food stage?

Too many toys

As you may know, Kalena's birthday is coming up.  On the 18th to be exact.  And that brings up the issue of toys.  She has plenty to play with, and while I make an effort to keep the toy buying to a minimum, I don't think a birthday is the time to skip on the toys.  Still, it's getting to the point that I think I should be rotating through them, or making some of them "special toys" or SOMETHING.  I've already put away toys that are too "young" for her, although we'll be getting them back out soon for Will to play with, so that may be a lost cause.

So, lovely readers, tell me-- what do you do when there are too many toys?  Do you get rid of some?  (She plays with everything.)  Do you rotate through them, or bring some out only on special occasions?  If you rotate them, how do you do it?  Weekly?  Randomly?  Are they sorted by type or all mixed together?  Tell me everything, I NEED to know!  And if you have kids of multiple ages, how do you deal with younger toys vs older toys?

I hope you all spend as much time thinking about this crap as I do.

Some days you win, some days you lose

Yesterday started off great.  The baby slept all night.  Kalena woke up happy.  I was on top of a healthy breakfast AND lunch.  I did the dishes.  I even started some laundry.  But then something happened.  It doesn't even matter what; it was nobody's fault.  Yet that one little incident made me feel like a total failure.

I know it shouldn't have, but it did.  I felt the way I used to feel in college when I would study and study and study and feel like I was ready for a test and then fail it anyway.  Like it didn't matter how hard I worked at it, I was never going to get there.  This isn't college though, there's no scheduled test date, it's just life.  Things like this are going to happen.  Days like this are going to happen.  I guess the best I can do is just pick myself up and move on.  I wish I had some eloquent "lesson learned" speech, but I don't.  I just hope tomorrow is a better day.

Last snow of the season. Maybe.

This is what we woke up to this morning.  What's that your asking?  Isn't it almost MAY?  And the answer is yes.  Yes it is almost May.  That means nothing to Colorado weather.  In case you can't tell, it was still snowing when I took the picture. 

It did make the air smell wonderful though.  Wet and cold and heavy.  The way snow tastes when you press it against the roof of your mouth.  Ah, I love Colorado.  

4 months

Will had his 4 month check up this morning.  Here are the stats:

Weight: 16 lbs (74th percentile)
Height:  24 inches (19th percentile)

So he's still short and chunky, but getting a *teeny* bit taller.  At 4 months Kalena weighed 15 lbs 5 oz and was 26 3/4 inches tall.

That's all I've got today.

It's because I posted about sleep yesterday

Last night was not so great.  Will woke up to nurse at 3:30 ish, went back to sleep for 10 minutes or so afterward (not enough time for ME to fall back asleep of course) and then woke up.  He fussed around and I ended up being up for about an hour.

What gets me with him is the unpredictability.  When Kalena started sleeping through the night, she slept through the night.  Just started one day and then continued.*  Before that, she had several weeks of waking once a night.  Will is all over the place.  Some nights it's once, some nights it's twice, some nights he sleeps quietly, some nights not so much.  Some mornings he's up early, some mornings he sleeps late, some mornings he nurses and goes back to sleep, some mornings he nurses and then he's wide awake.  I never know what I'm gonna get.  It's really throwing off any of my attempts at a schedule.  I'd really like a schedule.  I thought I was gonna get one there for a minute when he started napping at the same time every morning, but then that went out the window today too.

While we're taking about schedules, I'm trying to get Kalena on a better one.  And by "better" I mean "will maybe possibly sleep until 7 am or so."  So I got a Good Nite Lite.  I'd read about them before, and asked Kalena's pediatrician about them at her 18 month appointment.  The pediatrician said they're great (she used one on her twins) but recommended I wait until Kalena was closer to 2.  Well guess what kids- she'll be 2 next month!  Tonight is night #1, so I'll let you know in a few weeks how the whole thing is going.  You're all dying of anticipation, I know.

*Really I should not be complaining about random whole nights of sleep.  Kalena did do it all at once, but it was at 8 months old.  So any 8 hour stretches at 4 months are VERY MUCH appreciated.

Quitting the co-sleeping

I've been co-sleeping with Will.  There are lots of reasons, the biggest one being that it makes things easier.  When he was brand new, diaper changes were easier when he was already right there next to me.  It's easier to pick him up and nurse him back to sleep if I don't first have to get up, get out of bed, go down the hall, get him out of a crib and then nurse him.  Plus, MY sleep is at stake.  Getting up and out of bed to nurse means I'll take longer to fall asleep when I'm done, and I don't do so well without enough sleep.

Lately though, he'd been waking me up.  Lots.  He would wake up once or twice (usually) to nurse, but then for the last few hours of sleep he'd fuss around (trying to get out of the swaddle mostly) and that would wake me up every 20 minutes or so.  And that SUCKED.  So I decided it was time to move him to his own room.  The first night in his own room I tried some new swaddling techniques- arms pinned with a blanket behind the back, then a swaddle over that- put a fan in the room for some white noise and hoped for the best.  And the BEST is what we got.  He slept for 8 1/2 hours Thursday night.  It was AWESOME.  We haven't had another stretch that long, but I'm hoping we've turned a corner with the sleeping.  Maybe getting more sleep will make it easier for me to form coherent thoughts to blog about.  At least, I'm hoping this brain mush isn't permanent.

It's Friday!

I love Fridays. And here are some other things I love from this week.

1. Will slept for 8 1/2 hours last night. It was a beautiful thing.

2. Delicious slow-cooker chicken and sweet potato chowder for dinner on Monday. Weight Watchers recipe, so delicious AND healthy. Can't beat that.

3. When Kalena gets hurt and comes over to be comforted she'll hug me and then pat ME on the back, as if she's the one doing the comforting.

4. Bought a new perfume. Marc Jacobs recommended by some of the lovely ladies of the stylelush blog. Smells fabulous.

5. Nice spring weather for taking walks and playing in the park. I'm trying to enjoy it before it gets hot.

Any highlights to share from your week?

The zoo pictures

I promised pictures of the zoo, so here they are.

Kari with Will. He really didn't know what all the fuss was about.

Patrick and Kalena ride the train with Kirsta. That was a big hit. Who needs animals when there's a train?!

Riding the zebra on the carousel. I know it doesn't look like it here, but it was definitely Kalena's favorite part. She spent the whole ride with a big smile saying, "Wow. Wow." Fun to see. But, apparently, not so easy to catch a picture of. Oh well.

The zoo is quite a different experience with two kids. I spent considerably more time maneuvering the stroller than I did actually looking at animals. I guess that's life with kids eh? Also, we took some pictures of the animals, but I know you all just really want to see pictures of the kids right? I tried to get some of Kalena looking at the animals, you know, capture the excitement and all that jazz. Mostly I ended up with pictures of the back of her head as she looked at exhibits. The world's best photographer I am not.