Good times

Ughh it's tax season but we still have been managing to have a good time. The weekend before last we hung out with Stacy and Landon at the beach. Zach had a blast with Stacy's dad and Landon. He was definitely taking advantage of his wanting to play.

I didn't have my camera because I knew that since Joe wasn't going to be there I would not be able to take my eyes off of the kids. Melissa and Nicole took some pics but I'm not sure if I'll ever see them :-) I'm still waiting on pics from Christmas from my sis.

This past weekend we went to the park with Liz so she could take pictures of our family. We woke Zach up from a nap to take him to the park. He was fine with playing but he wanted nothing to do with the pictures. Liz was really patient and worked really hard to get a good pic of the four of us with my little stubborn man. Liz did an amazing job!!!! Thank you so much!! I have two friends at work already that want to book her!! She isn't done editing the pics yet but here is a sneak peak that she gave me. PS-I just sat here for 10 minutes trying to pick out which pic to give the sneak peak of. They are ALL so good!!!

Whoops

Kaitlyn is so mobile now and she just now turned 5 months. I cannot believe how much quicker she accomplished this than Zachary. It is ironic because with Zach I was always waiting for the next milestone hoping they would come quickly but with Kaitlyn I just want her to stay in each stage as long as possible.

Last night we were playing on the bed and she was rolling from one end to the other. I was right there laying on the bed with her and watching her. Well on her last roll she literally threw herself over and rolled right off of the bed. She went over two feet on this roll. Like I said, I was right there so I caught her by the legs so she didn't fall. I thought she would be completely freaked out, but no...she was giggling hysterically. She kept trying to do it again. What a crazy girl...I think she is going to be able to keep up with her brother any day now.

Thanks Keri

How cute is Kaitlyn in this outfit that Keri bought her. I've loaded a bunch of miscellaneous pics up on our gallery from February.

Oxymoron

Again to those of you who received my email about the password thingee I have changed my blog name to "protect" my family's identity.

When I went to log on to post a new blog I realized how silly my blog title was now. What an oxymoron...a working mom. Any mom knows how silly this is. The very title mom implies work. All moms "work" whether you work outside of the home or not. I work outside of the home from 4 or 5 until 1 and then come home to start my "real" work with my kids. This is the part of the day that I enjoy though. I LOVE being a mom.

When I leave my office, I'm done with "work" for the day. Once I get home though my "work" is never finished. I'm sure all of you stay-at-home moms feel the same way.

We are constantly thinking of ways to enrich our children's lives or make our family better or run more smoothly. I don't think my family brain ever turns off. Our work doesn't stop because we are sick or tired or stressed...we are still "on duty". Here is to all of the "working" moms out there who love their jobs :-)

Happy Valentine's Day

I just got back from Zach's little Valentine's Day Party at school. He was having a blast. He had a great time giving all of his teachers his homemade candies. I put a picture of him making the candies on the bag and he had to show everyone "Zachary making the candies"...it was super cute!

I hope everyone has a nice day.

I got the cutest pictures of Leah and Erin and Halle in the mail yesterday. Those pictures were all SO cute!

Pre Valentines Day Fun

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I just have to tell you all about a GREAT craft project for all of your little ones. Zach is having a Valentine's Day party at school on Thursday and we were in charge of bringing in 2 things for the goodie bags. I headed up to Micheals and bought some candy molds, paint brushes and those little meltable candies.

I melted some of each color in little bowls and let Zach "paint" all of the molds before I poured the rest of the chocolate in them. He had a blast and he loved that he could eat the "paint". I'm a little worried that he might try this with real paint but I made it pretty clear this was "special" paint. The chocolate was just barely melted so it wasn't very hot. I of course had to try rubbing it on myself just in case :-)

The candies that Zach painted came out amazing. An adult never would have mixed all of the colors together the way a child would. I'll post some pics on the gallery tonight when I get home.


I also took the kids to Sadies to get some Valentine's Day pics that I'll post later.

Pics

I've finally uploaded all of the zoo pics and some pics I took of Zach and Kaitlyn tonight. See pics at our gallery


We officially started our tax season hours this week so I'll probably drop off the blog face of the earth for awhile. I'm going to try and keep posting so I'll be able to remember what it was like to have two little ones later but we'll see how that goes.

As far as the healthy lifesyle goes, I'm still doing well with the dieting aspect but I'm still finding it hard to follow through with the exercise. Each week I'll just try to do the best I can. I'm down 12lbs. :-)

I took the kids to the mall tonight to get pictures for Valentine's Day and Kaitlyn's 4 month pictures. What an adventure that was. Zach lasted about 5 minutes and then he wanted to play. The backdrop was a little kitchen to make cookies for Valentine's Day. It was adorable but Zach really wanted to cook. He didn't understand that the idea was to take pics not cook. Kaitlyn was adorable. She laughed and cooed the whole time. We got some really great pics. I'll post them later this week when I get the disk. Zach tried to help me get Kaitlyn to laugh but he kept getting in the pics...he was trying to be helpful but...it was hillarious. I love my children :-)

When you leave the house with both kids you know you are in for an adventure. After my second photo shoot alone with both kids I think I've decided a need a helper for this job. I've mastered Target (my home), Publix, the Dr.'s office and the mall but pictures...I need a helper!

Scenes from the life of a 3 year old

Act 1
Setting :Publix (Publix has the grocery carts that look like cars with steering wheels with horns)

Situation: Stocker blocking entire aisle unnecessarily

Stocker (to Zach): Hi there are you going to honk your horn at me?
Zach: No that is rude. Excuse me sir.
Stocker and me: uncontrollable laughter

Act 2
Setting : Bathroom

Situation: Zach just dunked his finger into the toilet and then put it in his mouth (luckily, I think??? there was nothing in there)

Me: Zach don't ever do that. That is disgusting. Toilets are very dirty...blah blah blah
Zach: But mom I was seeing if the water was too cold to go swimming
Stocker and me: uncontrollable laughter

Keri was right kids make you laugh

Progress...

So I've been doing really well with my eating so far but the exercising...not so much. I'm sure everyone feels like this but I need a few extra hours each day.

I weighed myself today and I'm down 5lbs. Yippee!!!

This past week I focused on being more active but I never watched my exercise tapes or took any power walks. We went to the zoo last Saturday and walked through the entire zoo (at a very slow pace with 2 kids) but at least we were outside being active. I also took the kids to the park twice after work and ran and jumped around with Zach.

My goals for this week are to do at least two exercise videos and take at least one walk. Hopefully if I have a plan it will be easier for me to stick to than if I just arbitrarily say I'm going to exercise...I'll let you know if this strategy works :-)

As far as eating goes, I'm not following a formal plan. Arie (thanks Arie) sent me a great website and I signed up for it and it gave me a daily calorie range for my weight and height. It gave you a meal plan and many other useful tools, but I don't really have the time to keep up with it though. I've been trying to stick within that amount of calories. I don't have a calculator out and I'm not writing everything down but I divided the total into 3 meals and 2 snacks and try to eat about that many calories at each meal. It has been fairly easy for me so far.

I know one of the hardest things for me is coming up with quick things to cook for dinner. A couple of weeks ago I was searching for dinner menu ideas and I came across this free website
Menus4moms. It has been really helpful with dinner planning. I don't follow the recipes usually but I love the ideas. I've stocked my freezer with the things the site suggests (I used 5lbs of extra lean ground turkey instead of the beef) and it has been so helpful with getting dinner on the table quickly and easily. This past week I made a 2lb pork roast like it suggested and then used half for dinner the first night and saved the rest for pork lo mein later in the week. I used real lo mein noodles instead of the ramen because of all the sodium in the ramen and I used veggies Joe and Zach will eat. It truly took only 10 minutes to cook this (not including the time to boil the water to cook the noodles) I just bought a bag of shredded carrots and then I chopped up some celery and green onions and threw it in the pan. Amazingly easy!!

Since we are paying for 2 children's childcare now we are also on a much tighter budget. It is much cheaper than take out or one of those places where you make a bunch of dinners ahead of time and take them home and freeze them. I got the ground turkey at Sam's for really cheap! My family goes through so much milk (2-3 gallons a week) and I also discovered that milk at Sam's is over $1 cheaper/ gallon than at our grocery store. We are really lucky Sam's is actually closer than our grocery store.

I know I rarely post and then when I do it is usually extremely long so if you are still reading this...thank you :-)

PS- I'm going to load the pics from the zoo tonight and I'll post about that later.

Jumping on the bandwagon

I know it is New Year's and everyone is on the diet/exercising bandwagon but I am serious. I'm going to lose this weight and get healthy again. Hopefully blogging about it will keep me accountable. My goal is to lose 50 lbs.

I don't know why it is so hard to make myself exercise. I always feel SO much better after I work out. I feel like such a sloth right now. I'm obviously running around after Zach when I get home from work but it isn't the same as truly getting a good cardio workout. My goal is to do at least 45 minutes of cardio 4x's per week and yoga or a strength training video 2x's a week. Hopefully I'll be able to increase it but I think I'll start with that for now.

My sister who for the most part has a perfect body told me today she was also on a diet. Ughh...as if this isn't even more motivation. She said she wants to lose 10lbs. If she thinks she needs to lose weight...what does that say for me. LOSE WEIGHT NOW!!!! I know everyone has body issues but come on give me a break here :-)

Wish me luck!

Happy Mama

Zach had a successful week at school and I couldn't be happier. He has gotten a good report every day from school. His teachers take the time to really let me know what is going on during his day. YEAH!!!!

Milestones

Kaitlyn rolled over from her belly to her back for the first time on Friday. She now is a rolling fool. My parents watched the kids for us on Saturday and I forgot to tell her. Whoops!!! Kaitlyn almost rolled off her couch. BAD MOMMY!!!

Joe and I also had a milestone of our own...our first night without the kids since Kaitlyn was born. Both of the children slept over my parents house. We had such a nice night. I know this sounds like a weird date but we had a blast. I've been wanting to go to IKEA since it opened so we started out there. We spent a few hours walking around and just enjoying each others company. I had never been to an IKEA before. It was fantastic and I got a bunch of ideas for organizing things for the kids rooms. Then we went to a sports bar and ate chicken wings and I even had a couple of beers. Thank goodness for pump and dump :-) I think it was the first alcoholic beverage I've had in over a year and a half. I'm not much of a drinker anyway but I was feeling very good. We then just went home and chilled on the couch. Aghh...I forgot what it felt like to truly relax :-)

Funny Stuff

We were getting ready to leave tonight and Zach says, "Let's go team". ???

Then Zach and I walked out of the restaurant before Joe and Kaitlyn. Zach starts to pull me over to the curb and says, "Let's sit awhile."

I don't know where he gets this stuff from but he cracks me up!

Updates

Zachary and Kaitlyn had their Dr. visits this week. Both are doing great and growing well.

Zach is 39" tall (75-90 Percentile) and 34lbs (75th Percentile)

Kaitlyn is 23" tall and 11 lbs 14oz. She's itty bitty and in the 25% for height and weight.

It was an adventure taking them both to the Dr. at the same time. We were there over 2 hours. UGHHH!!!! Zach was surprisingly well behaved except for when he was getting examined. He didn't want the Dr. touching him at all. It was horrible but then as soon as he was done with the exam he was fine again. Oh well hopefully year 4 will be better :-)

Kaitlyn slept most of the same and was the perfect little angel. She only cried for about 30 seconds after she got her shots.

To eat or not to eat

It is so weird some days Zach won't barely eat a thing and others I think he is going to eat everything in the house.

Tonight was an "eat everything in sight night". I seriously didn't think he was going to stop eating.

Do your kids do this?

Sigh of relief

Today was Zach's first day at his new school. I was so excited when I dropped him off this morning. I sat in the classroom with Zach for about 15 minutes because he didn't want me to leave. I could tell that this wasn't going to help so I told him I was going to leave when they started circle time. He was pretty upset when I left but the teacher told me not to worry, she has been kicked, bitten, spit on and yelled at during this process and Zach would be fine. I was so happy to hear this from a teacher. The director at Zach's other school acted like she had never seen a kid spit or hit before. It made me feel better to know this was normal (well at least not extremely unusual) preschool behavior.

I called about 15 min. after I left and they said he was perfectly happy and eating snack with the rest of the kids.

He had a great first day. I already love this place. They sent this picture home with him today. They also send home a progress report every day which tells what he ate, what he got rid of and how (diaper or potty), how long he slept and what kind of day he had. I love it!! I'm so relieved. I don't know why it took me so long to make the change. I guess you just get comfortable and change is hard.

I live at Target???

Joe and Zach's conversation at bedtime tonight.

Zach: Daddy, I have a baseball at my house.
Joe: Really, where do you live?
Zach: I live at Daddy's house.
Joe: Oh does Mommy live there too?
Zach: No Mommy lives at Target.

Unfortunately this isn't entirely untrue :-)

Me and Zach's conversation at dinner
Me: Zachary eat your pork please
Zach: No thanks mom, I'm fine.

This is his new expression whenever he doesn't want to do something.

Zachary's 3 year update

Zachary is the most loving sweet little boy. He loves to give kisses and hugs. He does have a temper especially when he is tired but he truly experiences life with such enthusiasm. It is amazing to see how excited he gets over things.

He loves any sports. Thanks to his daddy he is very coordinated. He can hit the t-ball over 20 feet. He also loves to play "golf ball". He puts on his gardening gloves and hits his golf balls every day. He also can dribble a soccer ball and throw a football. He doesn't catch so well yet but I'm sure it will come.

He loves cars. My mom (Nana) got him a little tykes police car for Christmas last year (2006) that he has ridden on every day since then. He loves that thing. He even plays with the box that it came in. It was definitely a staple of year 2.

Zachary is all little boy. He loves tools. He carries his tool box around and "fixes" everything. He has a light on his firetruck toddler bed that constantly needs batteries. He loves to help his daddy take off the screws and put new batteries in it. Whenever anything doesn't work, he asks if it needs batteries.

He also loves to help with anything that you are doing. He cooks, cleans, does yard work, changes the babies diapers and brings in the groceries. He doesn't want to miss a thing.

He loves to sing and dance. He almost always takes a bath before bed but sometimes in the mornings he likes to take a shower with one of us. He loves to stand in our shower because he can see himself in the glass door and sing and dance. He jumps up and down singing very loudly and staring at himself the whole time. It is hilarious!

Zach was a late talker but he sure is making up for it now. The things he says crack me up on a daily basis. If you stop quickly in the car, he says, "Please be careful." and he holds up his hand.
He also uses good manners most of the time, saying please, thank you and excuse me. He knows that the good manners work as a manipulation tool also. He will look at me and bat his cute little eyes and say "please, mommy" with this little puppy dog look. It is extremely hard to resist.

He has an amazing sense of direction. When I'm driving in the car he knows where we are. If I drive past the street to our house, he asks why we aren't going home. He also knows where the library, salon, playground, my office, Nana & Papa T's house and the grocery store are. It amazes me that he actually pays attention to this.

Each day is an adventure. I can't wait to see what year four brings us.

Favorites:
Food: Pasta, Popsicles, Grapes, Clementines, Turkey & French Fries
Drinks: Milk & Juice
Movie: Shrek (I know he burps, farts and screams...but we have his Aunt Melissa to thank for this one :-))
TV Show: Handy Manny, Curious George, Bob the Builder, Mickey Mouse Club House
Song: Down by the Station
Books: Barnyard Dance, anything by Sandra Boynton, and Winnie the Pooh Picture Poems
Activity: Going to the playground

Kaitlyn's 3 month update - Easy Baby

I remember reading Keri's Blog on her easy baby and agreeing with many things. I don't remember Zach being a tough baby but Kaitlyn is amazingly easy. She is so happy and easy going almost all of the time.

I was afraid to put this in writing but she even has been sleeping through the night for a little over a week now. I feed her after I put Zach down for bed around 8:30 and she doesn't wake up until after 5:00. Since I've been off of work for this week. it has been wonderful. Zach woke up every two hours until he was 6 months old. I'm sure part of that was my fault though.

Kaitlyn also is so strong. She already can sit unassisted (propped against something) and she holds her head up perfectly. She practically is already crawling. She scoots up on all fours and can make it all the way across the bed. Zach was a slow mover and I think because his head was so big compared to his body it took him forever to hold that little melon up.

She loves to be sang too. She will giggle and coo if you bounce her up and down on your lap or look her right in the eyes. She loves to hold on to your shirt and she is constantly putting her fists in her mouth. She usually only has her binky if she is going to sleep. This morning when I picked her up to feed her she was sucking her thumb...I've been desperately trying to stop this which is why we NEED the binky! She still has a ton of dark hair that needs to be brushed often because she has a cowlick.

The only time she is unhappy is when she is in the car. It is the weirdest thing. She hates the car. She can be perfectly happy but as soon as I put her in the car she starts screaming. I've tried moving the seat up and down but nothing seems to work. If I rub her forehead while I'm driving I can sometimes get her to calm down but not always. She is the polar opposite of Zach. Still to this day Zach loves the car. He would fall asleep in the car until he was almost 2 years old. He doesn't usually sleep in the car now but he doesn't mind it all. If anyone has any suggestions on this let me know.

She is more beautiful than I ever could imagine. I feel like I'm the luckiest mom to have 2 such wonderful children.

Binky Hiding and Slobberbowl 07

Per a request, here is an update on Zachary's reaction to his new little sister.

Zachary wasn't sure about Kaitlyn the first month she was. He would give her kisses and talk about the "baby" but I'm not sure he realized she was here to stay.

As month 2 rolled around, Zachary realized the "baby" was here to stay. I'm not sure he was happy about his realization. He would kiss her but it was more of an attack than a kiss. He would leave marks he would kiss so hard and she would be covered in drool. I think it was just an interesting way of really beating the crap out of her. I didn't want to discourage him from kissing her but I had to be careful obviously with his "love" for her.

His new favorite game became grab the binky out of Kaitlyn's mouth and run and hide it. The grabbing could be quite forceful and Kaitlyn wasn't too fond of this game. Joe and I were getting really tired of this new little game also. We tried chasing him down and making him apologize, blah blah blah...this approach wasn't working. Kaitlyn would be screaming and I would be chasing my little crazy man. I started off with 6 binkies but some how we were down to only 2. The last straw came when Kaitlyn had a particularly rough morning and I just had gotten her to sleep and Zach came and pulled the binky right out of her mouth. She immediately started screaming again. I know you all know the frustration level at this point. I couldn't find our "backup binky". I'm looking every where begging Zach to tell me where he put the binky. Reasoning with a 2 year old isn't always effective. He told me he put it in our Christmas tree but I didn't see it. Then after a desperate search, I returned to the tree (where in my panic I had obviously overlooked it. ) Zach had chucked the binky and evidently it landed smack dab in the middle of the tree and stayed there. I had ordered the binkies from a place Keri recommended so I called and ordered 10 more. I was going to try a new approach.

Zach was obviously trying to get attention (which I assure you he was getting plenty of). Now that I had ten, if he grabbed the binky I would just ignore him and go and get a new one. I think it took 3 or 4 more times and it was over. YEAH!!!! Why did I make such a big deal out it? Oh well hindsight is 20/20, my 2 year old had out smarted me.

I think Kaitlyn has finally won over Zachary though. The binky-stealing and mob kisses have been replaced by sweet caresses and loving words. When Kaitlyn starts crying now, Zach tells her, "its ok baby girl" and will gently rub her cheek and lightly kiss her forehead.

Ahh...peace in the household.