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.

Long Overdue Blog

Well...I'm sorry I've been such a blogger slacker. I love reading all of your blogs and I know I need to make time to update mine. Here is an update since my last blog.

I took off six weeks from work after Kaitlyn was born and then the craziness began. My daily schedule

3:30 am - get up and dress
4:00 am - feed Kaitlyn
4:30-7:30 am - work at office (pump once while at work)
7:30 - Joe drops off kids at my office
7:30-9:00 take kids to playground on Tues and Thurs (Zach was only going to school on M,W&F so I needed to let him expend some energy)
9:00-11:30 shower, feed children, try to pick up a little
11:30-12:00 drive back to office to change cars with my mom so she could watch the kids
12:00-5:00 work again (and pump)
5:30- rush home from work so I could feed Kaitlyn before she needed another bottle
6:30 make dinner (or take out)
7:30 bath and bed time
8:00 feed Kaitlyn
11:00 Feed Kaitlyn & go to bed :-)

So as you can see this schedule was insane and was positively NOT working for me. I was exhausted. My mom was having a hard time leaving work also because she works full time as well so 12:00 was turning into 1 or 2:00 and I was having a hard time getting my hours in. I am very fortunate though that my office is very flexible with me. They don't care when I get my hours in so long as I get them in.

I knew we needed a change but I wasn't sure how I was going to accomplish this. My dream of staying home hasn't really played out so I knew I needed to make the best of what I had to work with.

Zach's daycare was not working for me either. I've posted about this on several occasions. I went and visited about 10 different daycares and found one that I really like. I'm so excited about him starting there on January 8th. He'll be going 5 days a week from 7:30-1:15.

I knew I made the right choice but again it was confirmed on Friday by the phone call I received from his current school. All of you potty-training moms should appreciate this. The owner of his school hasn't been there lately because she is opening a new school down the street so I haven't gotten a chance to tell her Zach won't be returning. She only requires a weeks notice anyway. So anyway she called me on Friday to say that beginning January 7th Zach's class will be going to the new school and he will need to be potty trained by then. She didn't read the rules of this new group that was going to run the school until then and she just saw that all of the kids had to be potty trained. She tells me it will be no big deal. I need to take him into the bathroom remove his diaper make him throw it in the garbage and tell him, "diapers are for babies...you wear big boy underwear now." She said you have two weekends before then and it should be no problem. Wow!! I was amazed. I've been trying to get them to help me with the potty training for over six months and I get this wonderful bit of advice from her and it will only take a week! We just went to my in-laws for the first weekend and I didn't really think it would be fair to let Zach have a bunch of accidents on her furniture. Zach was doing well until Kaitlyn was born and then he totally reverted. He's slowly getting back in the swing of things but it is slow going. I might try her technique but I was just amazed at her thinking he could be fully potty-trained in a week. Have any of you potty training moms had any luck with this technique??? Anyway I'm so glad he won't be going back to that school...she drove me NUTS!!

Now that we had Zach taken care of, I needed to find a solution for Kaitlyn. My mom's housekeeper recommended a really fantastic nanny. I called her before Thanksgiving and interviewed her twice. She started two weeks ago two days a week. I stayed at home with her the first week and worked from home so I could make sure she had the routine down. Then the second week I would just go and run quick errands while she stayed with Kaitlyn. She is fantastic. She even cleans the house while Kaitlyn is sleeping. She is truly amazing. She is great with Kaitlyn and I just love her.

So the new and improved schedule:
I work from 4:00am-12:00pm.
Joe drops Zach off at daycare everyday and my mom watches Kaitlyn M&T from 8-12 and the nanny watches her on W&Thurs from 8-12. Friday I'll work from home. This is so much better than before. Hopefully this will work out much better for all of us.

I'll post about Christmas later today...Kaitlyn is hungry :-)

I'm glad you all had a nice Christmas. I love all of your family Christmas cards!

Happy Halloween

We had a great night trick-or-treating. Zach had so much fun. We walked around my parents neighborhood with a little boy Zach's age. He was a little hesitant at first. He would walk up to the door and say trick-or-treat and thank you in almost a whisper. By the end of the night he was running from house to house. He didn't want to stop but it started raining. Then he came home and wanted to share his candy with Joe and I. Kaitlyn slept through her first trick-or-treating experience but everyone thought she was adorable.

You can see pics on our gallery.

Gator Poop

So we've been trying to get Zach to tell us when he has to go potty for months now. Since I've been home I've really been working with him. He had yet to go poo on the potty or tell me that he had to pee. If I asked him and took him into the bathroom he would go on the potty but he was still going in his diaper otherwise.

So during the really excellent Gator game Saturday...YUCK!!! Zach tells me mom I have to poop! What...really, lets go hurry! So we run into the bathroom and success. He went on the potty. My theory is that this was caused by the crappy play of the gators because he hasn't told me since.

I went to a school supply store and bought a potty chart and stickers for his successes. He has been doing well but only if I remind him. He hasn't told me again. I'm hoping he'll be trained before I go back to work but I'm not sure it will happen. I've read all the articles and books on potty training but it isn't working so well. I guess they all learn when they are ready. If any of you have some brilliant advice for me I'd appreciate it.

UPDATE: Tonight I saw that Zach was trying to go in his pants so I ask him if he had to go but it was to late. I changed his diaper and we did the ceremonial flushing of the mess down the toilet to show him where it goes. I remind him that he needs to tell me before he goes in his pants. Yes mommy...I'll tell you next time. About a half an hour later I smell something gross. Zach did you go in your pants again? Yup and it smells, he tells me. Aghh....at least I can laugh about it.

Zachey

My mom and sister came over today for lunch and we were all sitting around the table. Kaitlyn decided she wanted to eat too. I took her in the living room to feed her and Zach says, "Mom are you going to eat the baby? " We couldn't stop laughing. Then he started laughing too. I'm not sure even after I corrected him that he understood why we were laughing but it was hilarious!

Zach's new favorite thing to do besides kiss Kaitlyn is to blow raspberries on her belly. She doesn't seem to mind and it is pretty funny to watch.

I'm worried that all of our Halloween plans are going to be washed out. Hopefully Tropical Storm Noel will stay away and let us have a nice Halloween. Everyone cross their fingers for us.

Good Weekend

We had a nice weekend nothing too eventful. Saturday morning Erica, Liz and Ella came over for Kaitlyn's first official photo shoot. Huge thanks to Erica! Erica was amazing with Kaitlyn. I'm sure she got some great shots. Kaitlyn spit up and peed on the backdrop before Erica got any shots but everything went smoothly after that.

Zachary on the other hand, didn't want to cooperate at all. She might have gotten one shot but I doubt it. Zach missed his nap and was in quite the mood. It is amazing two year olds are the most adorable sweetest things 95% of the time but that other 5% they are TOUGH!!!

After our morning photos we went to my parents house for the Gator game. Whoo!!! Go Gators! Zach played t-ball with the little boy next door for awhile. He loves his T-ball set now. He is getting quite good at hitting it off the tee.

He had a zachey on Saturday too. My father was making fun of my mom saying she was acting like a little girl. Zach looked at him and said, "I'm not a girl. I'm a big boy!" I don't know where he gets this stuff but he constantly keeps me laughing. He said a few other hilarious things this weekend but of course now that I'm trying to remember them I can't remember them of course! I swear I need a Dictaphone on all of the time to capture these crazy comments.

Today we didn't do much of anything. We set out for the playground but Zach fell asleep on the way...so we just came home. I interviewed a nanny today. I've never "interviewed" anyone before. She barely spoke English so she brought along my mom's housekeeper as a translator. She seemed really nice and she is going to send me some references. She spoke Portuguese so I didn't have any idea what she was saying. If she spoke Spanish I could have probably had a conversation with her but Portuguese no such luck. It will be funny if both of my kids are bilingual in different languages.

I'm not sure we are going to use her but we'll see. I know my mom said she will help out so we don't have to put Kaitlyn in daycare for the first year but it is going to be really tough. I thought if a nanny wasn't too expensive I could hire her a couple of days a week so I could work from home. I'm so weird when it comes to leaving someone in the house alone with my baby. I don't know why it freaks me out so much. Daycare might not be the greatest thing but at least there is always someone watching everyone else. With a nanny there is no one there to watch her. Kaitlyn obviously can't tell me if she likes her or not. I never thought I was such a control freak about it but I guess I am. I mean it is my baby!!! I know people leave there kids with nannies all of the time. I guess you just have to feel comfortable enough with someone. Maybe I'll relax after I see them interact for awhile.

Zachary and Halle

Zachary still loves him some Halle. On Sunday Jason, Nikki and Halle came to visit and meet Kaitlyn. Zach was so cute with Halle. He shared all of his favorite toys. I was shocked how good he was with her.

Today my friend Tara came over with her two kids. Zach shared pretty well with Trevor but not near as good as with Halle. He has always done really well with her. I think it is because she is so easy going. Zach doesn't feel he has to "protect" his toys from her.

We had a nice visit with them. Kaitlyn slept pretty much the entire time so I got to sit and talk with everyone. She is very cooperative like that :-)

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