Adventures in La La Land

1. We welcomed Lena Kay on January 23, almost exactly a year after my last miscarriage . 2. I finally achieved my dream of  becoming a full time stay at home mom. It has not been without its challenges, but it sure is nice to not have to go to work every day! :-) 3. We packed up our entire house in one week and moved in with my parents ! 4. Lucy and I worked our way through the alphabet , doing crafts and activities along the way. 5. Lucy had her second trip to the ER . Diagnosis: nursemaid's elbow. 6. I went on my first official diet and lost 9 pounds, then gave up. I also started a running plan and gave up after 2 weeks. 7. We took Lucy's binkies away when she turned 3.  It was rough. 8. We made and completed a summer bucket list. 9. Justin and I celebrated our 8th anniversary! 10. Discovered Lucy is allergic to soybean oil (through trial and error - not legitimate allergy testing). 11. I signed up for daily emails from Proverbs 31 ministries an

1. I had a rough weekend last weekend. On Saturday after Lena's afternoon feeding, I started to feel some intense pain. I was practically writhing on the couch because I was hurting so much. After some online research, I decided it had to be thrush. Lucky for me, the prescription most often prescribed for thrush is Nyastatin. I happened to have some on hand from a while ago when Lucy had a diaper rash. So I've been using that and it's feeling tons better. By Sunday, however, my Paxil withdrawals started. I wanted to die. Chills, nausea, the shakes, e xhaustion, dizziness. We had our family Christmas with Justin's side of the family that day, and I spent most of it on the couch. Stupid drug dependence. I finally got it refilled on Monday and was feeling good withing hours of taking that beautiful little pill. Haha. I sound like such an addict.  2. Our final advent activities included introducing Lucy to the movie Elf (she liked it for the first hour, then got bored -

Quick picture snapped after the Christmas Eve service at church. Lena is 11 months old. I can't believe she's going to be one next month! By the time Lucy was 11 months old, I had spent weeks researching and planning her first birthday party. Sorry, second child. I think you might just get a cake and some balloons. Lol.  Anyway! Here's what's up this month: Routine We've really started to nail down a good routine. (Which will change as soon as I hit "submit" on this entry.) It usually looks something like this: 7:30 Wake up, nurse. 8:30 Eat breakfast: waffle and half a banana. (She rarely eats much of the waffle.) 9:30 Nap 11:30 Up, play for a while 12:00 Lunch, play 1:30 Nurse, nap 3:30 Up, snack 5:30 Dinner 7:00 Nurse, bedtime Eating For a while, I was stressing about how to drop a feeding during the day. Finally, I just decided to worry less about how many hours it had been since she'd nursed, and just feed her 3 meals a day, s

1. Here's my "mother of the year" moment of the week: Lucy sleeps with a lamp on all night long. The lamp is on the floor and one morning this week, Lena crawled over to it and grabbed the light bulb. She cried for a few seconds, so I figured it must have been hot. I didn't notice til hours later that she had blisters  on 2 of her fingers. The blisters have since gotten red and scabby. Yikes. Worst mom ever. 2. Our advent activity for Monday was decorating cookies with friends: I'm pretty sure more candy/cookies/chocolate chips were eaten than cookies were decorated, but that's half the fun! ;-) Our friends stayed and played for a few hours afterward. Lucy adores  having friends to play with. I can't wait for Lena to be old enough for them to really play together. 3. We also made Christmas tree pizzas this week (which Lucy loved making, but refused to eat), watched Elf as a family, and saw the Christmas trees at Frederik Meijer Gardens. I'm

1. It was really cold this week. Like highs in the teens cold. I realized that I'm going to save on gas this winter, because I abhor  the cold - especially when I have to get 2 kids in and out of the van. And especially when said van's heat doesn't work. Grrr. I see cabin fever in my future . . . 2. I don't know why I bother putting my planned Christmas activities in a specific order on the advent calendar, because they always change. I'm glad Lucy can't read yet, because I pretend the calendar says something different than it actually says every day. Haha. Here's what we did this week: we forgot to do anything on Sunday, so on Monday we made 2 different ornaments. Scrabble ornaments: We couldn't find 2 m's, so "mom" is actually "wow." Haha. And a cupcake ornament in honor of Jesus' birthday: I cut a squiggly line out of blue painter's tape and wrapped it around a clear glass ornament, let Lucy paint Elmer's

1. In the past week, I've noticed that Lena is crawling full time now instead of scooching on her belly. I'm pretty sure Lucy started full-time crawling at almost e xactly the same age. They've been so similar all along that I could probably start predicting when Lena will walk, get teeth, etc. 2. We're getting e xcited for Christmas around here! We got our tree up and I decorated the whole house. I've been listening to Christmas music non-stop, and even got all my gifts wrapped! (I still have more to buy. I'm not totally done.) Lucy and I are have been doing our Advent Activities and changing the number on our chalkboard countdown every day.  We made a card for our Compassion child, Christmas tree cinnamon rolls,  and painted Lucy's nails red and green. The last picture is to show how each envelope has baby Jesus getting a little closer to the stable. Every day I tell Lucy, "Jesus is getting close! It's almost Christmas!" 3. Justin had