our life.... right now

Chaotic. That is the only word I can use to explain our life right now. We have officially moved out of our condo – closing is today. The kids and I are staying at Grandma Char Char’s (as Caden likes to call her). Ryan and Mia are staying in our new house that is currently under construction, and our cat, Belle, is staying with a friend of a friend who may or may not give her a furr-ever home.

It took 2 ½ days to pack and 2 days for Ryan and his brother to move everything to a storage unit. Thankfully Ryan can now focus only on his job and the remodel of the new home. I already miss him and we’ve only spent 3 nights away from him already. Yesterday I only saw him for less than 30 seconds when he came to his mom’s house to grab a key to the new house (he had left his at the condo and had a truck load of items to take to the new house – which is now scattered about and in the way of him working.)

Caden is favoring his grandma over me when I discipline him and looks at her to save him when it’s time for bed. He is throwing a screaming fit when we walk in the room and consequently wakes up his sleeping sister. Once I get him calmed down I have to nurse Adisyn back to sleep. I’ve been falling sleep before Caden as he would prefer to stare at the ceiling and rub his nose with his lovey. Adisyn does not seem to notice the change. She is her normal, happy, fussy, teething self. Of course she is too little to understand anyway. Adisyn has not met any new milestones recently with the exception of her extreme interest in toys. When she gets mobile I’m going to have even fuller hands. She is so close to rolling over, but hasn’t done it quite on her own yet.

This morning I stopped at the new house to let Mia out. Poor girl. She is so stressed. I could hear her whining when I pulled up. She destroyed the blanket in her crate and peed in there. She never does this. After 20 minutes of coaxing her I finally was able to get her to pee outside and drink some water. She has not eaten in almost 2 days. I know this is an adjustment for her too, and I feel so bad.

My poor husband has been working his butt off between work, the new house and moving everything out of the corner. He has lost a lot of weight through all this and barely gets any sleep. He has a lot of pressure on him right now to get our house livable, so our family can be together again. I’ve never seen him work so hard before with little complaint. He is doing an amazing job on the house and it’s going to look gorgeous when it is completed. Before and after pictures will come once the house is finished.

The new home has 3 bedrooms, so if we can get Caden to sleep in his own room – EVERYONE will be sleeping in their own room including Adisyn. It’s a ranch, so no more stairs! We have a fenced in backyard and I’ll save 4 hours in drive time a week! That is HUGE.

It will all come together. It will all come together. Everyone will adjust.

Adisyn – if you ever read you mama’s blog and wonder why I didn’t blog as much when you were young…. It’s not because I didn’t have anything to say, it’s that life was VERY busy when you were born. I try to spend my time WITH you and your brother and NOT on the computer. Having two children makes any “mama-time” very limited, but I don’t mind because I love you and your brother with all my heart.

happy five months adi!

Little Miss Adisyn is 5 months old today although she still looks like she is 3-4 months old. We celebrated today in the sun at Grandma's pool.



All of us have been enjoying our time at the pool, playground, and the beach over the last few days. All the fun in the sun wore Adisyn out a couple nights ago and she slept through the night - from 8:30pm to 7:00am! I checked on her twice when I woke up to make sure she was still breathing. She has not slept more than a 3 hour stretch in over 3 weeks now. It's going to be a little rough going back to work next week if she continues the every 3 hour wake ups as her sleeping through the night did not continue.

Adisyn is now officially in size 2 diapers and she is fitting in 3 month clothes perfectly. She can wear some 3-6 months, but only in Old Navy brand. She is still working on rolling over from back to belly. She does a great job getting on her side and tries so hard to pull herself to her tummy. We've recently graduated from swaddling at night to sleeping in a sleep sack. I do occassionally swaddler her for naps, but mostly if she is just fighting her naps. Adisyn mostly handle 2 1/2 hour wake times, but does fairly well up to 4 hours for the last stretch of the day. If she doesn't take a nap by 4:30pm she passes the window of opportunity and I have to keep her up in order to get her to bed at a decent hour.

Isn't she just the cutest?




Caden is just loving his time at the pool. He calls it the "water park". Our first day at the pool he wanted NOTHING to do with the frog arm floaties. The next day he played with a boy who had them on and they were jumping off the first step (in the kiddie pool). I told Caden he needed his arm floaties, so he would not go under water. Naturally he did not listen and he did go under. My brave boy did not cry, but he did put on his arm floaties. He learned he could float with them and was brave enough to go in the big pool with mama and grandma. He did not want either of us holding him and enjoyed floating/swimming around. It was too cute!



Can I just say this boy LOVED, LOVED, LOVED the ocean. He was just in awe of all the water and white waves. He wanted to keep on walking out and had no fear. We didn't stay too long since Adisyn needed to get home to eat. (She refuses to nurse when we are out and about.)

I'm looking forward to our summer visit next year more than ever when Adisyn is older to walk around and enjoy the ocean and pool a little more with her big brother.

overdue updates....

I'm long overdue for some updates, but between working, taking care of the kids, house, packing and preparing for a vacation I have not had much time in between. I've even tried to make an effort for 4 Fridays in a row to have some "me" time, but every Friday that came around I had to cancel for one reason or another.

We closed on our new house one week ago today. I'm so excited to get out of this condo and have more room where we are not all on top of each other. Both kids will have their own bedroom too! Now if we could only get Caden to STAY in his bedroom. I ruined it last weekend by letting him come up to bed with me at night because I was too exhausted to stay downstairs with him until he fell asleep. Ever since he has been fighting it and I've been giving in for the sake of getting some shut eye. In fact, he is even fighting his nap time as I type this post. I'm actually sitting in his room waiting (impatiently) for him to fall asleep.

This picture is from about two weeks ago. He was doing well for naps and stayed in his bed. We even had to go in and wake him after 2 1/2 hours.

A new favorite thing Caden discovered after reading "No More Monkeys Jumping on the Bed"

My mother-in-law has been great about watching Adisyn a few times on the weekend, so I can spend some quality time at the park with Caden. He absolutely LOVES the playground and frequently asks to go. He even made a friend, Brett, last time we went. Brett was following Caden around and both seem to enjoy eachother's company.

We've had some great summer weather in May and took advantage of playing outside in the kiddie pool. Although, Caden would much prefer to fill his Easter eggs with water and throw balls in it than use it for what it's for. As long as he is having fun, right?

It is very rare that for me to capture the front of Caden's face on camera let alone a smile. Instead of telling Caden to remove his feet from the table I grabbed a camera and captured some great smiles. He thought he was the funniest kid on the planet.

As for my princess ~ she is doing great. She is still waking 2 times a night to nurse, but falls back asleep quickly. She can usually only handle up to 3 hours of awake time during the day, but will stretch it to 4 hours in the evening. She has a cut off on late afternoon naps, and if she misses that window she has to stay up. Otherwise, she will fight bedtime.

Her smile literally takes my breath away. I love her to itty bitty pieces.

Both babies go back to the doctor today. Caden for his ear recheck and possible vaccines and Adisyn needs one vaccine. We leave next week for South Carolina to visit my parents while Ryan stays behind to work on the new house. He will fly in a few days before we are suppose to head home. Lord knows I'll need an extra set of hands on the plane.

caden (2yr) and adisyn (4mo) well visit

We survived our trip to the doctors for both Caden and Adisyn's well visits (2 year, 4 month). I took the day off work because Lord knows we needed two parents to handle both kids. Both of them are doing well with the exception of a double ear infection for Caden. He is battling a cold that started last Friday.

Caden weighs 26lbs and he is 33 inches. Adisyn is 11lbs/13 oz and 22 1/4 inches long. Adisyn is not even on the charts yet and both are in the lower percentile for their height.

Our pediatrician was very impressed with Adisyn's alertness. She smiled and did well during tummy time. She gave us the okay to hold off on solids until 6 months. We discussed our main battle with Adisyn - her refusal to take the bottle. She said that typically the hunger will be stronger than her will to refuse the bottle. She was surprised to hear that Adi will go almost 12 hours without eating anything. On my days off I have to be sure to feed her from a bottle 1-2 times a day in hopes that will help. She also said the sitters could start trying to spoon feed her the milk. I can only imagine how much would actually stay in her mouth. None. I guess it's worth a try. Adisyn received the Prevnar shot and didn't even cry. My brave little peanut.

Caden was a bear for the doctor. He cried the entire time. Well, as soon as the doctor took his binkie from his mouth. She wanted to hear him talk, but instead she got a nice earful of loud screaming. She couldn't even listen to his lungs or heart. He does have a double ear infection and because of this we could not do any vaccines. We'll be going back in two weeks for a recheck and if his ears are better he'll receive the Hep A and HIB vaccines. We'll go back at 2 1/2 for the MMR.

As for Caden's sleep issues - he is still having them, but since my last post he has slept in his room three times since. Last night I tucked him in bed and told him I would leave his door and gate open. I explained Mommy wasn't tired yet and I would be watching TV with Daddy and then I left his room. Within 30 minutes he was fast asleep. He did wake up at 3:45am whining a little and I found him sleeping on the floor in front of the gate at 5am. Our pediatrician said his behavior is normal and just go with whatever makes Caden comfortable. He may feel lonely because our room is upstairs (with Adisyn in our room) and he is downstairs. In our new house we will have all three bedrooms in the same hallway, so hopefully he'll feel more secure. We'll most likely keep his and our door open, so he can wander in there if he feels the need.

Overall we are very blessed. Despite ear infections and colds we have very healthy children and are very grateful.

happy 4 months

4 months old for Adisyn hit me a little differently than it did with Caden. It made me a little sad, but still excited at the same time. With Caden I was always looking forward to the next month and new milestones. Now I’m trying to savor every last day of Adisyn being a baby. I was thinking just two months from now Adisyn will be 6 months old and on her way to sitting up unassisted. Six months led me to thinking around the fall and Halloween where she’ll be 10 months and before we know it she’ll be a year old. How fast did I just make time go by? Time does go by way to fast. (Except when your stuck in a rut of children not sleeping through the night ~ this goes for both, but we won’t get into that now.)

Adisyn is for the most part still laid back, happy little sweetheart. This last week she has seem to cut back on her sleep time during the day. Yesterday was significant. She only took three 30 minute naps. She has taken a few better naps today though.

While she isn’t rolling over from back to front yet I don’t think it will be long. Today she was laying on her back and reached over onto her side to grab a toy.

Happy 4 months Adisyn Emily. Your parents love you SO much! XOXO