It's been busy...Update Part 2

Here are the updates in pictures, in no particular order!!

August 2012:  Little Man fell asleep in the car on the way home from Daddy's work party.  He was tired out because the party didn't even start until 9 p.m.  He managed to sleep the entire way home just like that, then I carried him to bed and he barely even noticed.

October 2012:  Jazzy just randomly had a swollen face.  We took her to the vet and she was given antibiotics and pain medication.  Before the meds kicked in, her face ended up looking like the Target dog's snout-all swollen and puffy and at least twice the normal size.  After that didn't work, we had to get more testing done and it was determined that she had an infection caused by grass seed and six weeks of antibiotics ensued.  Poor, klutzy Jazzy.  The weirdest things happen to this dog.  Love her.  

September 2012:  Cori replacing the gutters on the house.  Only to take the new ones down and hire someone to do it for us for less-we are finally working smarter-not harder!  (Thanks Austin for saving us on this one!)

September 2012:  Our pink, pink house.  In good lighting, it was pink with a hint of brown in the mauve trim.  In bad light (also known as daytime) it was Pepto-Bismal Pink with fuchsia trim.  And dead, dead flower bed.  Ugly.  Hideous.  Awful.

October 2012:  Our freshly painted, Devonshire Taupe with Parisian Taupe trim house.  We love it.  It is so much better!  What's not pictured is that the door is now a dark blue color and we completely replanted the flower bed, so it is looking so much more like we want it to look.  Oh, and let's note the garage door that Cori installed completely by himself with two small "helpers," all within about 5 hours while I was working.  Let's hope the plants survive this winter, and more specifically they survive my care of them (or lack thereof).  Also, we totally recommend our painter.  They gave us a bid on a Thursday, got the colors from us on Monday, showed up at 6:45 on Tuesday, and were done and gone by 12:30 that same day.  Also, they were over $2200 less than the other bid we got.  While the house looks simple from the front, the back is a walk out basement with a deck and a ton of intricate trim work, and it looks great.  We can't say enough good things about them!  (Ron at Father and Son Painting, let me know if you want their contact information-we loved them that much!)

October 6, 2012:  Little Man and Little Miss in our front yard after the morning session of General Conference.  Love this sweater on Little Man!  They were so cute that day and super excited to go see "Aunt Nellie and baby Reed" at my parents' house after Conference.  We got them up and took them to church to watch Conference because we want them to realize that is is not a day to just skip church and lounge around at home.  Unfortunately we were 15 minutes late because when we got to our church building (on time) we realized they weren't broadcasting it there, so we had to drive across town to a different building.  Still totally worth it.  I think we will continue to do this, and maybe add more sessions as the kids get older.

October 2012:  Little Miss lost her second tooth!

August 2012:  Little Man crawled into Little Miss' bed to sleep one night, and this is how I found them when I went to get them up.  I sometimes forget how little and young they really are!

August 2012:  I made Apple Boats for the kids one day and we had a picnic in the yard while we worked on a project together.  They were super simple and easy to make and the kids love them!

October 2012:  The kids got mustaches from somewhere, I have no idea where, and Little Man taped it to his face.  They thought it was so funny.

July 2012:  This picture was taken in July, and is one of my favorite pictures of Little Miss.  In color it is even more beautiful and just so Little Miss.  But I saw this thing on Pinterest about transferring a black and white photo to canvas and this was my attempt.  It's too rough and some of the print peeled off, but I'm going to keep trying to do it the right way-I really really want it to work because it will look so awesome!

October 2012:  Cori reading to the kids.  Aren't they all so cute?!

September 2012:  Cori putting together the toy Little Man picked out and bought with the money he got from cooperating with eye ointment after his surgery.  The first time we put it in his eyes was absolutely traumatic for all of us.  I literally had to sit across his body and pin his arms down while he kicked and kneed me in the back, and hold his head still with a death grip on his chin and face.  It was awful.  Little Man cried so hard he cried tears of blood, which the surgeon told us would happen but was still just terrible.  So, we told him that for every time he did his eye ointment with no problems, he could earn a dollar.  The second time was almost as rough, but by the third time he and Cori had it down.  We had to do this twice a day for 10 days, so he earned $20.  And it was worth every penny!

August 2012:  My mom wanted us to go get some family pictures, and here we are posing outside after we got them done.  First official family pics!

September 2012:  Little Miss and Little Man's first candy apple, supplied by Grandpa Randy.

August 2012:  First day of school pictures.  I got some good ones with our real camera, but this silly picture I took with my cell phone.  Little Miss was "too pretty" to be very silly, but they are still funny.

August 2012:  College Day at school!  Little Man was home from surgery, so Little Miss represented CSU for the family.  (That's a 6-12 month baby outfit, but it was all we had and it fit her perfectly.  Still does actually).

August 2012:  Little Miss "helping" Daddy lift a bookshelf/entertainment center so they could take it downstairs.  She actually got it a couple inches off the floor.  At one point as Cori put it together, he yelled for Little Man to come help him with something.  Little Man came running into the room and exclaimed, "I knew you would need me!!"

September 2012:  One of Little Miss' more "creative" outfits.

August 2012:  Little Man got new glasses.  They weren't the ones we originally picked, but when his prescription wouldn't fit in the first ones, the optical center just picked these for him without consulting us, and thankfully he likes them and we like them.

August 2012:  Little Miss got new glasses!  Cori and I saw some pictures of her as a younger child wearing glasses, but she has never had them since she came here and Little Man says she hid them (in a cornfield?) while she says she lost them.  Anyway, we were worried that she was supposed to be wearing them so we took her in.  We also noticed that one of her eyes tends to be lazy, and since Little Man has this issue and they are genetically correlated, we thought she should get checked out.  Sure enough, one eye was doing most of the work, so glasses it is!

August 2012:  Little Miss' reaction to finding out that Aunt Nellie is having a boy, not the girl that Little Miss had her heart set on.  However, soon after this she cheered up and actually picked out an outfit to give to him.

August 30, 2012:  Little Man had eye surgery to correct the horizontal and vertical crossing of both his eyes.  The surgeon and nurses all said that kids come in, get the procedure done, go home and take a nap, and then wake up back to normal.  Soooo not true for Little Man.  This was such a traumatic thing for him and it really took him about five days to get even some resemblance of normal back.  I was so irritated that this had never been handled when he was a young child or infant and he had to have this done at an age that he will vividly remember.  His eyes were super red and bloodshot (think horror movie) for almost two solid weeks.  I was so worried about how the kids at school would treat him and what they would say to him, so I tried to prep him before he went back.  He never said anything so I hoped it had just gone well and there weren't any problems.  A few weeks ago he told me that when his eyes had been red, he and the kids at school pretended he was a vampire and he got to chase them around, and it was cool.  Thank goodness vampires are in right now!  Now he's completely healed and back to normal, and his pretty little eyes are straight!  I am so happy he finally had this corrected!

August 2012:  Little Man drew a volcano and a monster.  The picture says, "The volcano is Little Man.  The monster is Mom.  The monster is looking at the volcano."  He thought it was absolutely hysterical to draw this picture, and he even gave me some long blue hair to go with it.  He belly-laughed for a good ten minutes over this one.  It's now in a place of honor at my work :)

July 2012:  The kids were missing Cori this summer while I was home and Cori was working, and I just explained that Daddy loves us all so much he works really hard to take care of us.  This was Little Man's processing of that information.

September 2012:  Little Man and Jade, both eagerly watching out the window for Daddy.

September 2012:  The Princess Carriage.  Cori dubbed this as such because Little Miss (and Little Man when given the chance) LOVE to ride in here.  Little Man would rather ride his bike, but Little Miss is perfectly content to ride in the trailer and do no work for the ride.  I was working so much that I would wake them up early and take them both with me on a ride before work just so I could spend time with them, and they loved it.  It was a good workout pulling 90+ pounds of children around the hills in our neighborhood, and we had a ton of fun just chatting and watching the sun come up.  We are sad it's too dark to go before work and school now!

No pictures for these, but Little Man has been in trouble once already at school for "pushing" when someone cut in line in front of him, and then again with us when he told us someone pushed him down and kicked him in the ribs and the teacher wouldn't listen to him.  I went to bat for him that time, but when the principal talked to Little Man about it, he "remembered" to tell her that he had accidentally tripped the other kid before it happened.  I was not so happy he "forgot" to tell me this the two times I talked to him and the one time that Cori talked to him about it.  Then, the next day Little Miss brought home a ticket for playing in the boys' bathroom because she "thought it would be funny."  Yep, so funny the principal got a copy of the ticket as well as her teacher and us...not so funny afterall.  It was a rough week!  We've been talking a lot about appropriate behavior in our house lately.  I think it's getting through more to the dogs than the kids, which is a scary thought considering their issues (food stealing, jumping the fence, destroying every sock and tissue in sight, destroying basically anything in sight actually, and the list goes on...).  However, it was a full moon recently and the weather changed drastically, so maybe that's it?  One can only hope...  

Little Miss continues to struggle with accidents, though things are much better.  I got some pull ups for her to wear because she was just sitting in her wet clothes after an accident instead of changing, and we didn't want her to get an infection, smell bad, etc.  That seems to have really helped-why we aren't sure, maybe it's embarrassment or maybe she is just more aware, but we are just glad it's helped.  Little Man continues to be SUPER bossy all the time.  He's our little sheepdog, always chasing us around and trying to herd us in one direction or another.  He's constantly arguing with Cori and I when we tell him something, even something minor.  It's so.freaking.irritating.  We've been working on it a lot and finally enlisted the kids' counselor for help.  Interestingly, when she asked him to draw a picture of our family, he drew us all, then labeled our ages as Little Miss age 6, Cori and I age 10, and himself as age 18.  It's all so clear now.  He really thinks he is the grownup (understandable with his history) and that is just how he thinks.  Still frustrating, but now at least we have a little insight.  Cori and I refer to him as 18, and when he's being particularly bad about it, we just shrug and say, "18."  It is making it a little more manageable.  Someone also told me it is just the age he is at, which I super hope it is, because that means it will go away at some point!!

It's been busy...Update Part 1

The last two months have been completely insane.  The kids are back in school and I have been working crazy, ridiculous hours.  Since the middle of September I have worked close to 225 hours-that's about 5.5 weeks worth and I've only paid for 4 of them-my employer is getting a ridiculously good deal!  Last Thursday I walked in my door at 10 p.m. and for at least three days a week, the only time I've seen my kids is while we are getting ready in the mornings, which is generally rushed and chaotic.  Oh, and I got my first cold in three years a week and a half ago and it is hanging on for dear life!  Add this all up, and it makes for a stressed out, unhappy Mama.  And a stressed out, crazy busy Daddy.  Thank heavens for Cori!  He has completely  held everything together by himself.  I have had to call him at the last second multiple times in the last few weeks to handle things with the kids that I was supposed to take care of, but just could not do.  He's fed them, bathed them, done homework with them, gone to appointments with them, and just generally made sure they are okay.  Also, he has completely taken care of getting our house re-painted, repaired some fascia that had been rotting since we bought this moneytrap house, tore down and put up new gutters, only to take them down and hire someone else to do it for less money (yay!) and completely replant the flower beds in front of the house-oh and completely replace our garage door by himself.  Someone needs to get that man a drink!

Even though the kids have been in school for nearly two months, it still seems like we have not yet fallen into any sort of routine.  The kids go to bed anywhere between 7:15 and 9:00 p.m., though it's usually between 8:00-8:15 p.m.  This is a problem because these kids need their sleep and they need their routines!  Both kids, but especially Little Miss, just fall apart if they are not regularly sleeping 11.5-12 hours a night.  They are not the type of kids to sleep in if they are up late the night before or take a nap to catch up-we either hit their window or it's a lost cause.

I told one of my co-workers that I have just lost my mojo.  I can't keep up at work, despite working ridiculous hours, and it seems like the multi-tasking that my job demands just completely escapes me.  I can't keep up at home, I haven't gotten to spend any time at all (much less quality time) with the kids during the week, and forget keeping the house up to even my modified standard!!  It's really crazy-making.  I have no idea how working moms keep things together, and clearly I missed the memo!!  So working moms, how do you do it?  Any tips or tricks?  I'm dying on the vine here and I would LOVE any direction I can get!

In the midst of all this, we have attempted to keep on living life!  The kids are growing and learning, they are absolutely hysterical at this age and we love it!  They definitely keep us on our toes and we are busy busy busy.  They have lived with us for nearly 10 months, and it is hard to believe so much time has flown by, and yet it seems they have always been here.  I sat down and watched tv for the first time in months the other day, and it felt so weird!  Cori had taken the kids to the park and I was sick, so I felt justified in doing nothing but sitting there and zoning out.  It was nice, but felt so strange and the house was way too quiet!